7: Ervil Comes Home

your daddy's been shot. He said from the beginning, the only way you're going to get Herville is to break someone substantial in his group. The FBI today arrested a key suspect in the nineteen seventy seven religious assassination of Polygamus patriarch Ruling all Read. Agents arrested twenty year old Greenish and Off at the International Bridge in Laredo, Texas. Even though we didn't have solid eyewitness testimony that she was doing the pole the trigger, I was pretty confident

that we had sufficient evidence to convict. Judge raise the verdict, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty, not guilty. Back in seventy six, the leader of the Church of the Lamb of God sent a letter to Jimmy Carter, A battle is raging, he would write, a battle of the most important, decisive nature the world has ever known. The Geneva Peace Convention and the British Parliament would get similar letters from herbal two. As God's prophet on earth, he wanted, well

actually demanded, world domination. Ervil had always aimed high, absurdly delusionally high, but by this point in Irvil's mind, there was plenty of evidence to back up his delusions his belief that God was on his side, because even a few years after that letter to the President, there still hadn't been a single conviction in the United States against any of rvil A Baron's active cult members for their

murderous activities. But despite this, in Salt Lake City, the cops like Detective Dick Forbes and prosecutors like David Yoakum, they weren't going to just give up and stop. After all, Ervil seemed to actually believe he spoke for God and God wanted him to commit these killings. But many of the people hunting rvil A Baron saw this as a holy crusade too. Most belonged to the Mormon church or had been raised in it. They were trying to clean up their own house. This applied to del van Ada,

the investigative reporter falling Herbal's trail. You heard an episode four and Dick Forbes too. The Salt Lake City detective Dell was swapping information with Plus From the mid seventies. There was a certain prosecutor in California who also had the colt in his crosshairs. It was it was I knew we're in the right spot when I saw the format come back. This is Gary Rumble. For decades he worked as a prosecutor in San Diego. Mormon, like me, went to b y U, except got kicked out. Gary

isn't your typical Mormon. He's always been a little rough around the edges. He comes from Stockton, California. Even today, you tell someone you're from Stockton, people might assume you know how to scrap. If you pulled up at a stop sign, you look over at the other car and there was another teenager there, and you looked at that guy for more and about five seconds you were going to be in a fight in the street before the light changed. So Gary learned how to fight. I took

taekwon do. I went about three or four times a week. But then I got hired as a marshal at my twenty one birthday and started carrying a gun, and I immediately dropped out of taekwon do because fists are fast,

but bullets are faster. Gary's being slightly tongue in cheek here but only slightly in person, he manages to be simultaneously both warm and humorous and yet unflinching antagonistic, and these pugilistic parts of his personality well, he carried that into his job at the San Diego County District Attorney's Office. Here for nearly forty years, Gary fought cases in court, sometimes quite literally. We would go to war and in the courtroom like we were going to a sporting event

every day. I've tried crips, I've tried the Hell's angels, I've tried all kinds of murderers, and I just have a good time. I kind of treat it like a sport. My style was to be extremely aggressive, almost physically aggressive in court, but I always smile at the crook. And what makes these stories all the more amusing to me is the fact that Gary's not a big guy. He might be my size ten, thin frame. But as well as that take kwon do, he was a wrestler in college.

He has that wily style of fighting and he'd use that in the courtroom too well. Coming from a tough town, I knew I couldn't out mad dog the crooks, and I genuinely disliked the violet crooks. So what I did was I smiled at him, and when I was given my closing statement, if it was a violent crook, I love that if I could get him to attack me. I'd been to attack three times in the courtroom in front of the jury, and it's just it's wonderful because the jury gets to see what these people are like

on the streets. It wasn't just gang members. Gary used this tactic for the cold blooded killers too, and I had one murderer that had just about cut a guide of pieces and was throwing parts of him around the room. It was a horrific case. It attacked me incidentally during the trial, and he refused to come in for sentencing because, as he told the judge, I don't want to come in there because you're gonna sentence me to life. And Mr Rymple's gonna smile at me, and I don't want

to see him smile. The Labaron case, though, this was different. These weren't crips or contract killers. These were religious zealots from a branch of Gary's own faith, and what they wanted was beyond reason. Unlike anything Gary had encountered. These guys wanted to dominate the world. You see this thing about this particular cult that stands out. These people are extremely clean cut. You can see a dirtbag dope dealer

coming at you down the street. These guys could walk up next to you in the supermarket pushing the cart, more clean cut than I've ever been, shoot me twice behind the ear, walk outside, get arrested, asking if they've ever done anything wrong, and they say no, They passed a polograph. The murder Gary was trying to prosecute was a Dean vest that giant of a man who left the army after strangling his sergeant, then did a stint

in prison and joined Merville's colt. It was Geary's job to try and get a conviction against one of herbal Le Baron's assassin wives, Vonda White. She was somewhat nondescript, humble looking, straight hair, sort of an older waif, thin, hollow cheeked, blinking eyes, non threatening looking. In other words, when Gary Remple would eventually face Vonda in court, she wasn't going to try to mad dog anyone. And for Gary,

the stakes could not have been higher. So far, every prosecutor who had taken a cult member to trial had gone in confident with eyewitnesses, fingerprints, and other circumstantial evidence. And yet somehow every time Hervil's posse had been acquitted. And so the prosecutors and cops trying to take this murderous cult down really needed this one to stick. They needed to stop the killings. With one conviction. They were sure the dominoes would start to fall and they could

finally bring down Herville. But in their way were fugitive suspects, watertight alibis, plus the fact that one of their previous star witnesses from inside the Colt was about to die. From the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio, this is deliver Us from Herville. I'm Jesse Hyde. This is episode seven, Herville Comes Home. Throughout this series, I've tried to draw a clear line between mainstream Mormonism and it's

fun to mentalist branches. Partly for accuracy, mainstream Mormons haven't practiced polygamy in over one years, and the faith is trust me, anything but violent, and partly because I don't want to lump people I love in with a group like herbal abeyance. Many of my friends and family are still devout believers. That said, it also wouldn't be fair or accurate to not trace the roots of some of

these beliefs to their source. For many Mormons, these are uncomfortable truths things maybe they don't want to look at. One of the most controversial doctrines and Mormonism, for example, is called blood atonement. Mainstream Mormons rarely utter these words. If you do, things can get weird because blood atonement is the belief that some sins are so awful you

can't be forgiven and less sure blood is spilt. Without blood atonement, you become a son of perdition, gets sent to Hell, that unique kind of Mormon held known as outer darkness. Your blood is spilt to save you from that terrifying fate. Nowadays, not many mainstream Mormons have even heard of blood atonement. I never had growing up, or in fact, until I first started studying Mormon fundamentalism. And the doctrine is disputed, but some fundamentalists do believe it.

And that is what happened to the giant Dean Vest. Saturday in June was yet another sunny and cloudless day in National City, a working class suburbs south of San Diego, not too far from the border with Mexico. This is where dean Vest lived with a few of Hervil's followers. It was common for cult members to share houses like this together. Unremarkable on the outside, here they could live inconspicuously with a bunch of their kids. Herville periodically visiting.

Dean Vest shared this house with a few of Herbal's wives, a woman called Lynda Johnson and her kids, and Vonda White and her kids too. And this Saturday, Vonda had told Vest she was going to cook him a special meal. When Vest arrived at their home that day, Vonda told him the mill was ready. She told him to wash up. She was dressed in pants top in a apron as he bent over the sink to wash up, because he had to do some serious bending, because this guy was

seven ft tall in his stockings. As he bent over, she sneaked up behind him and gave him one in the back, which pierced his lungs. When prosecutor Gary Remple first started on the case, he used the evidence at the crime scene to try to build a narrative. He spun around, spewing blood from his mouth in a circle, staggered, and collapsed on the floor. Were upon according to protocol,

she gave him one behind the ear. By this time, Herville's colt had killed so many people they'd established a methodology one behind the ear just to make sure they were dead. As the shots were fired. Across the street was an off duty police officer who won the launder mat there. He was there emptying the boxes, collecting some money. Here's a couple of shots. Looks immediately in the direction from which they came. He was able to scan both the front door and the back area of the house

and saw that nobody ever left. This was great for us because that puts Vonda the only person in the house. Shortly after arriving on the scene, the cops had suspected Vonda might have been responsible, and so they brought her in for questioning. June nine, the time of seventeen forty hours. Interviewing officer is Detective E. T. Dece National City Police Department, and her name please? And where you strict? All right, Mrs why, I'm going to read you your rights now

as guaranteed in the Constitution. I wish you would listen to the rights as I reading. Listening into this police interrogation with Vonda, you kind of get a sense of what Gary Rample was up against well, accused of this although there was no evidence supporting this. The way she could lie so convincingly to police so on dramatically, honestly, it's pretty impressive. First of all, about the Colts previous murders,

which she blamed on Joel and Verlin. LeBaron's church said, it was all the actions of the followers of the Chill fundamentalists back in colonial LeBaron and members of their church have gone directly to our people and have threatened them with violence. And then when it came to the Deanvest murder itself, referring to the occurrences of this plate, can you tell me what happened in your own words

leading up to the time which police officers arrived. Yes, I was at stairs with my children, and I've heard his succession of shots. Okay, when you say subcession, is that more than one? Can you give me an exact count of shots? No, I know I heard more than mine. That I was writing them them. Okay, where were you at? I was in the upstairs band I okay? And we were the children, all right. I had my little one with me and the other children or in bedroom reading.

Because everything you told me regarding the sense of participation, and since it had been a truth point, yes, even if the cops did feel she was lying, what came out during this interrogation was troubling. Vonda had an alibi when the police arrived. She said she'd been upstairs reading a naptime story and talking on the phone to Lynda Johnson when she hears some shots that Lynda Johnson would have heard too, because Lynda Johnson was her alibi, and

she came downstairs and found the horrible scene. Linda Johnson, another of Rvil's wives. Lynda Johnson, was a very nice, stout woman who just did whatever Hervil asked and she was ill treated by him and uh just used as a servant. Basically, this servant was an expert forger able to give members of the cult multiple identities, and because the cult was operating in a period before electronic records across multiple state and national boundaries. Her skills caused all

sorts of problems for law enforcement. But Linda and her alibi weren't the only issue cops faced when it came to solving the Dean Vest murder. There weren't any clean prints on the murder weapon, for one. Also, they couldn't figure out the motive just what had happened between Vanda and the huge Dean Vest. You can hear that here in their initial questioning with Vonda trying to work out the motive. They were both known members of Hervil's cult.

Why would she kill Dean? Have you recently ran the past? And any disagree with Mr h The police have blanked out Dean's name in the recordings here as anyone living in the house at a discool Mr we random charms. Gary stuck with it. I was able to defuse the alibi. First, he dug into Linda's background, found some welfare fraud and used the threat of charges against Linda Johnson to spook her into cooperating if she had testified in the trial.

I could have easily impeached her, and so she chose to stay in Denver and I never saw her again. Vonda's alibi was gone, but Vonda was still in the wind, and Gary still didn't have a motive. The years passed see and into February of seventy eight, but then Lloyd Sullivan was arrested. Flipped the former Herville foot soldier now with his axe to grind against Hervil. And once he started giving information to the cops, he didn't just right out Herville for the killing of Ruben Alred. I'm going

to show you a photograph. I recognize this photo. I recognize this as a lady who calls herself Vonda White, gene Wal a number of other aliases. Yes, I do recognize that this is Lloyd Sullivan from that interview with cops on March where he's about to lay out for them. Just why Vonda White shot Deean vest and herbal mmle Baron told me he had turned trader to the Kingdom

of God. Excuse man must die, He must die because he was a trader of the Kingdom in what period of time with this must have been in the early part of and the next thing. I know Bonda White, he had had a commandment from herbal the killing. So sometime later, I suppose you wanted to get it up

her chest. I don't know if she trusted Nick quite well and indicated several times she thought quite well of me, And it seemed like we were standing in the kitchen, and I can recall and vividly standing there and she told me that she did indeed kill. That broke the case wide open. Prosecutor Gary Remple couldn't believe his luck.

Sullivan told the story how Vonda White had killed Dean vest She had intercepted a phone call or happened to pick up an extension where he was arranging to meet with the FBI in Seattle, where his wife had moved. He was defecting to the FBI, and he was going to bring along a trunk full of automatic weapons, sniper rifles, and explosives. What's more, Lloyd agreed to say all this in court to take the stand. So Lloyd was instrumental in Lloyd Lloyd was my principal witness. Then more good news.

In March seventy eight, not long after Lloyd's testimony, there was another break in the case. Vonda was apprehended, but it seems the good news couldn't last, and as the case moved to trial, Lloyd got spooked. By now he was effectively living in a witness protection program. He genuinely feared for his life, and then he had his location revealed by local newspaper in the Utah town where he was hiding out. He was under an assumed name in a small town in the suburb area of Salt Lake City.

They even published a picture of him, and Lloyd knew better than anyone just how dangerous this was. After all, he'd helped plan many of the cults killings. He was getting extremely paranoid. He was sure he'd be recognized in that town and killed. Also, he had a drinking problem, I should tell you that, so he wasn't in the best of health. A drunk paranoid not exactly a good mix for a man in hiding, and Lloyd was becoming increasingly convinced that some of Hervill's killers were around each

corner waiting for him. He needed a new identity, something to help him avoid detection. In May of seventy eight, he called his handlers in the police and told them begged them to help. So he's in a phone booth prior to cell phones, calling the Salt Lake Police Department where his connections were, And as that occurred, a car drove by and backfired, mistaking it for a shot. He died of a heart attack. Gary Remple's star witness, was head killed, not by Herville, but by a backfiring car.

And that wasn't the only bump in the road that's coming up after the break. It was the summer of and the heat was on for Gary Remple, that prosecutor who liked to stare down gang members and killers. As the trial of Vonda White got underway, even he felt an unnerving tension in the air, not just the usual pressure on the cops and prosecutors for a conviction or even a conviction against the coult With Herville still at large, there was a real risk to life to everyone involved

in these court cases. Rvill Le Baron had taken his belief in what he called the law of force and morphed it into this blood atonement, a theology which wasn't simply based on vengeance, but rather that a killing could be a form of compassion. For her defense in court, Erville's group had pulled their tithing and hired Vonda an expensive team of private defense attorneys. We'd have these arguments

and they'd be a sidebar. They'd get quite animated. And during one of these arguments, halfway through the case, things were getting pretty heavy and suddenly the lights went out in the courtroom. At least one or two jur screamed. I had grabbed one of the guys that was slouching and put him in front of me with my back to the wall the courtroom. I had my back to the wall, a defense attorney in front of me, and

I was pulling out my derringer. When the lights came back on one of these guys slouching against the wall had inadvertently turned off the lights. Gary's eyes light up telling me this tale. He has this mischievous panache when he's telling all his best stories. But the fact that he grabbed someone else for cover, I think that shows just how scared everyone actually was. A Hervill's colt at this point in the late seventies of their reach, would

they really hit a courtroom mid trial? Gary clearly thought they might. And if Gary had sensed he had reason to fear for his own life and just trying to prosecute this cult. He was right. The Colt had put a hit out on Arry. In fact, during his investigation into Rvil, a baron, the man himself had sent three of his most efficient assassins, his right hand man, Dan Jordan's Marchin and Eddie Marston, to Gary's home to kill him.

About eleven o'clock one night, I was awakened by a phone call from the San Diego Police Department that the FBI had just contacted them. FBI told him they'd wire tap Rville, and the word came out. Rvill had ordered three guys to come up and kill me, to drive up from en Sonata to my house and kill me. They had my address en sonatas about two hours from

where I lived. There. In the time it took the FBI to get this information from their wire tap relay it to the cops who related it to Gary, precious time had been lost. Rvil's hit team had a two hour drive to their target. So all I had was a snub nose thirty eight and I was on a cul de sac, and I didn't know if they were coming up the cul de sac, so like I couldn't leave the area. So I ran across the street to the neighbor and I borrowed his German shepherd, big Dog,

and uh, I brought him to guard the front door. Well, that German shepherd started whining. He could sense my attention. I was high amps and he started whining and crying by the front door, and I thought, it's gonna be a liability if he defecates on the floor while I'm trying to shoot it out with these guys. So I took him back to the neighbor and I stood there for my thirty eight opened that the cops got there before the crooks, and uh, sure enough the cops made it.

Then there's a bunch of cars. The hit team assigned to Gary must have seen those lights and aborted the mission. Then along about then a couple of day investigators showed up. And the byproducts of this whole episode was I had to move out of my house. I lived under a phony name in a hotel for a while until all this was over. Trying a member of hervill Abaron's colt had nearly cost Gary his life, and then another setback. In July of seventy eight, the judge in the case

suddenly declared a mistrial. He didn't like my style because it conflicted with his style, is what I think. We were kind of going back and forth in time, and I'm having a good old day in court as far as I was concerned, and so we had a little argument, and his cure for my misbehavior was to declare a mistrial. But maybe set back is the wrong word, because Gary, that kid from Stockton, was ready for another round. Gary

got some more insider information on the Colt. It turns out round one with Gary and Court his punches had done some damage. After that mistrial, I went out to a restaurant for lunch with the three defense attorneys and they admitted to me they're running through the cult's money. You know. The side effect of this whole case was that I broke the bank. Gary smelled blood in the water. When the second trial came, I was really pumped up because I knew they were suffering and I was only

going to get stronger. I wasn't gonna get weaker. On the first of May nine, just a few months after the acquittal of Riena Chinath, the second trial against Vonda White began and the court we're using similar tactics from those that had freed Rena and her accomplices. They blame the killing on one of the witnesses for the prosecution, Don Sullivan, Gary had seen that move coming a mile away.

I found out that at the time Dean Vest was murdered by Vonda White, Don Sullivan was in another state standing at the window of a teller making a bank deposit. I got that teller, and when I put him on the stand, they were done for. He had the receipt and there was a signature that we matched the handwriting on of down, proving irrevocably through an independent witness that he was standing at the teller's window, and the teller besides remembered him. The case was basically over at that point.

Shortly thereafter went the jury after just two hours of deliberation. Just two hours, that's all it took. After all these years of unaccounted for slayings by Herbal's colts, Herville promised these people that if they took these callings, they could never be convicted of a crime because they hadn't really committed a crime in their hearts. And more importantly, it showed that they could be convicted of murder, and they

couldn't get away with it. For the first time, one of Hervil's assassin's had been convicted, and it was like a spell had been broken. Vanda sentencing would take place in mid June of seventy nine, and by then another arrest would have taken place, this time over the border in Mexico. Prosecutor David Yoakum, who had failed to get a conviction against Rena and the other cult members, was about to get another shot, this time at Erville himself.

He had grown pretty free up till that time, even as a fugitive from a murder case in Utah, probably bought his way out of every problem he had down there. But Erville's time living as a fugitive in Mexico was about to be up. He had caused some problems down there and members of his group and assaulted Mexican nationals. Mexican law enforcement received a tip about Rvil's exact whereabouts. They just got fed up with him and notified the US authorities that he had been apprehended and was on

his way. In the past, he had managed to get out of prison and walk away, but this time he'd been driven straight to the border, met the federal authorities there and our investigators, and that tip the Mexican cops received about Hervil's exact whereabouts. It had come from Larive Stubbs, still tracking Herbal's whereabouts all these years later from down in Colonial LeBaron. We hadn't figured out to take him

right to the border handcuffed, and they did. The guys took off their foot cuffs and their handcuffs and told them to get out and walk, and he did, and they said, and if you try to run, we'll shoot your feet. They stood right there and they walked across the border, and we had like thirty officials they're waiting

for him. Herville LeBaron had been arrested. That's coming up after the break m. The city of Laredo sits on the northern bank of the Rio Grand one ft in Texas one in the Mexican state of tom Alippus on the southern bank of the river. This is where Rena was handed over to U S authorities, and now the

same fate met Hervill le Baron. But when Herville crossed over into the arms of US law enforcement in June of the image had to be a letdown to all those who had been reading about this so called Mormon manson. The guy didn't look scary or impressive. Even his lawyer was a little taken aback when he saw him the first images of grand fatherly figure sitting in a jail jumpsuit. Public defender Bruce Lubeck was one of three lawyers assigned to Herville to try and make his case in the

upcoming trial. My first impression was, they've got the wrong guy here. This isn't Irva LeBaron, the evil looking, dynamic figure that controls young people and multiple wives and has killed people. This is a kindly looking, gentle, meek looking old man who looks beaten down and tired, and didn't seem to be dynamic. He seemed very low key, And I said, you know how, I don't know how he could get anybody to do anything, you know what I mean,

Why would anyone follow him? Irvill was charged with first degree murder for Dr Rulin already and first degree conspiracy to murder Virlin LeBaron for that botched assassination attempt. The group had planned for Dr Alred's funeral. The lawyers hoped Irvill would give them something they could use as a compelling defense. It seemed Hervil felt this was something they didn't need to worry about. It was in God's hands,

and God had always protected him. He felt that somehow his truth was going to prevail and that I I was one who was going to help that come about. And I said to myself, I'm a lowly public defender in a small city in Utah, and I doubt that I'm a world changer. I knew I wasn't. And I told him that, and he said, oh no, no, don't sell yourself short. There's miracles going to come out of this. And he believed it. But as Hervil laid out his beliefs and justifications to his lawyers, it was hard for

them to keep up. We'd go into a small room of metal walls, no windows, metal door that they locked from the outside, and they'd say knock when you're done. Then he would start on his preaching, often in one way or another. And I regret to say this and it but it's in retrospect, it was part of it. I can remember I've got my legal pad there and I'm holding my pen and taking notes, you know, and he's talking and and I would drop my pencil and it would wake me up, and I just kind of

fell asleep a couple times. He never said, oh am I boring you? Sorry. He was always very kinous. Oh yeah, it's a hard time of day to stay awake, isn't it can be? You know he was. He never got upset at that, but I know I fell asleep. Mhm. The trial of Herbal a Baron began on Wednesday, May the fourteenth. A new decade had arrived in the hunt against Herville and his colt, with the optimism that the

saga was approaching its end. On that Wednesday, Prosecutor David Yoakum stood across the courtroom from Herville in the dot He looked very um pale. I would say he looked weak. He said quietly, and behaved himself. He was never a problem. He never got out of hand, but a lot of the witnesses said that he tried to stare him down, and a lot of the witnesses felt his spirit or his feelings or emotions felt really they were being threatened

or indirectly through him in the courtroom. After previous failures, Yoakum wasn't taking any chances this time. He brought in the big guns to testify. I testified against him in his trial, which was tough. Larie Stubbs, who had known Herville since the early days of colonial LeBaron, was anxious for her chance to face herbal down. I've never done anything like that in my life, and I was really upset.

They had to work with me for three and a half days to get me to have the confidence to go in there and just say only what I needed to say. I don't have any qualms, but it was a day good testimony. Herville was going to make the fundamentalists the Alreads pay their tithing and if they didn't, he would just have to start getting rid of him. And that's the statement I made, and I of course

said it exactly proper in court. And when I left, I was shaken beyond because they're all sitting right there trying to eye me down, because he told his lawyers, if I can make eye contact with her, I can break her down. So my lawyers warned me not to look at him, not once, because he sat like closer than that chair, and I'm sitting right here. I think that he did believe if I can make eye contact, I can mix her up, like mesmerize you because he did do that to lot of people and he didn't

know how. But I wasn't one of them. I wasn't scared of that. I wasn't scared of Hervill because I knew how to dodge him. I had already proved hundred times. He was probably more scared of me than I was at him in the end. Next up on the stand for the prosecution was Erville's teenage son, Isaac, the one who had been at the April seventy seven meeting when Herville ordered the ruling already killing. He was the most emotional and I think most believable witness The prosecution had

certainly much believable in the defense witnesses. They're all allied through their teeth. But Isaac had to come forward reluctantly because he had been threatened all of his life. In a short time he had lived that he was never to talk to the police, never to give information about it, the group, or his father or anyone else. So it was very hard for him, as young man too to come forward and speak on behalf of the prosecution at trial. So when he got on the stand, there was a

lot of tension in the courtroom. Prosecutor David Yoachum asked what did Isaac think would happen to him if the Colt caught up with him after this court appearance. He basically said, if he should ever be caught by a member of the group or he faced them directly, that he had probably killed. So he was always under the impression that he had the death penalty assessed against him, and when he testified to that, it was to me

very believable. Rvil had his witnesses too, people like Rville's right hand man, Dan Jordan's, filed into the courtroom as family and cult members called out the prosecution witnesses as liars. It was they who were the violent ones, as defectors from his church. Rville was a peace loving preacher being framed, they said, and end the defense and prosecution rested their case. It seems kind of strange, given how long the build up to this day had been, that the trial lasted

just fourteen days. Which side of the Colt would jury members believe like Plato's cave. Was it going to be the ones who remained in the cave or those whose eyes had gotten used to the light outside of Herb's colts. The answer didn't take long. Just three hours later, the jury returned to court with a verdict. Hervill's lawyer, Bruce Lubeck, looked on the jury files back in and the judge says,

I understand the jury has arrived at a verdict. The fourth person sents and and says, yes, that's true, and he says, handed to the bailiff. The bailiff takes the form, hands it to the judge. The judge lex over it and so he knows before anybody, and then hands it to the his clerk and says, the clerk will read the verdict. Has the defendants stand and we stand with him?

And then the clear Creets says, the State of Utah versserve labart in case number one two three, As to count one, we the jury, Dooley and paneled an above entitle matter find the defendant Hervil LeBaron guilty of conspiracy to commit murder of first degree felony. And then the judge says to the jury, so say you one and all. Irville had been found guilty of conspiring to kill Virlin LeBaron and guilty of first degree murder for the death of Dr Alred Well. Of course, there was a lot

of weeping and part of his that followed him. Cult members in court were outraged. This was not in God's plan. This judge said, no, no, I'll have no outburs and he would bang his gavel. Nobody bangs the gavel anymore, but he did all the time. He wore it out. But how no outburst or I'll clear the courtroom. And he was very aggressive. Judge Herville remained strangely calm. Even Rvill's lawyer was surprised by his reaction. There's certainly no

outburst from him, nothing from him. And he said, okay, now, well now we'll get to work on this and we'll get this straightened out. So thank you, gentlemen. I appreciate everything you've done for me. Why wasn't Rvil more upset at a verdict that would likely mean he would spend the rest of his life behind bars. Surely this was the end for him, for his cult, for the Church of the Lamb of God. Clearly Irvil didn't think so. I did then and even more fully now believe he

believed he simply had a role to play. There's this sculpture. This is that there should be one mighty and strong and regardless of what he faced in this life, and he believed it. I believe he believed it, and the rest of us were just playing in air, and he had the word of God and no one else did. Hervill was eventually transferred to a Utah prison, but there this attitude of acceptance, just biding his time remained. I went to see him in the prison that more as

a hand holding effort. Uh. He was never what I considered depressed or suicidal, or there was optimism. Somehow things would prevail, right would prevail, his view of things would triumph, and uh he would come off the victor somehow. Even at that my last meetings, he was he was going to prevail. Hervill started preaching to fellow inmates, trying to

recruit them. But while he sat in prison, the members of his cult on the outside, more of them had started to leave the cave and see the fire burning outside, just like in Plato's cave. They were coming to perceive reality in the same way as those on the outside. All started saying things in his doctrine and things and he had done, and things he had said that just you know, we just couldn't ignore them anymore. This is Rena Channath during her interview with the writer Dean Shapiro

for her book years later. He was doing things that weren't since that that made no sense. He was saying things that didn't make any sense. Free from Herville's grasp from the late seventies, Rena had started to build a life away from the cult. Was this the last time you saw him? I didn't going to see him. I didn't see him. I hadn't seen since Mexico, So you never did see him again? I just I couldn't. Rena wasn't the only one who was splitting away from the

cult at this point. Lots of other members were moving on to some like her brother's Mark, Dwayne, and Victor were trying and succeeding to build lives outside the cult. For Herville, these defections were the worst kind of betrayal, and from his cell he directed his rage at them. Into the pen. He had nothing but time to write, and from his early days in colonial le Baron, he

could go days writing, sometimes without sleep. Prison officers peered into a cell, wondering what was he writing in there? Locked away, his followers leaving him, It didn't seem to matter. The insignificant ramblings of a madman. Then one day in August, they peered into his cell and saw something else, Herville dead on the floor. Detective speculating about the precise cause of death would tell the press. Maybe he took an overdose of drugs, his throat was damaged, maybe he suffocated

after striking himself in the neck. But the Utah Medical Examiner's office concluded it was a heart attack. And it almost seemed like no one really cared about the actual cause. The important thing was it was finally over. Rvil A Baron, the cult, the misery, the crime, the murders. It was finished. At least that's what it seemed to the people of colonial le Baron, to the mainstream Mormon Church, scandalized and embarrassed by this rogue, bastard child souling their good name

to the former cult members. Finally, blessedly it was all over. But it wasn't. In some ways, Irville's death was just the beginning of something far more monstrous, organized, and ruthless than anything that had come before. I was nine years old. I had made a vow that I would give my life just by being in the cold, just by being born into it, and when a person had to die, it was so that that person could be saved, so we didn't see it as an evil that's coming up

in episode eight of deliver Us from Herville. Deliver Us from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written and reported by me Leona Hamid and David Waters. Production from Leona Hamid and David Waters. Sean Glenn and Max O'Brien are executive producers. Lena Chang and Megan Oyinka are researchers. Marianna Gongora is our field producer. Fact checking by Donya Suleman and Sona Avakian. Production management from Sharie Houston, Frankie

Taylor and Charlotte Wolfe. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor. Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production. Gavin Haynes is our head of Development. Willard Foxton is our creative director of Development. Mix scoring and sound designed by Eli Block. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander and David Waters. Our music

is composed by Julian Lynch. Special thanks to Scott Anderson, Scott Carrier, del van Ada, Pippa Smith, Saskia Edwards Matt O'Mara, Katrina Norville and beth Ann Macaluso, Oran Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman, and all the team at U t A. For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio