9: Who Wears The Crown?

father is Irvil LeBaron. Children naturally worship their parents, but my experience with my dad was taken to a holy level because he actually was the representation of God on earth. This is the book of the New Covenant. It's a manifesto of Irvill le Baron. I mean, it's just wonderful, right, consistently crazy all the way through. The cult wasn't even a word reknew of. There was no cult. We were the KG if anything. Yeah, we called ourselves KG. We

were God's Kingdom. Changed my life forever, as far as my worry about personal safety for me and my family. Like the mafia, right, so the mafia breaks apart. One team goes against the other team. Now everybody was going to try to kill each other. We were in the car and she just said, I have to tell you the Arthur's been killed, and I froze, like my whole body went like cold, white frozen. Don't tell anybody that you know that was it. See Hebrew didn't study. He

was not one of those kind of guys. He was more of a party like a rock star type of guy. But the thing is in the cults, is it? A person can't do that. M Of all the stories Gabrielle LeBaron told me about her childhood living in the second generation of herbal LeBaron's cult, the Kingdom of God, the Kog, there's one that sticks in my mind. I keep coming back to it. I went swimming in the ocean. I was eight years old by myself, and I swam and swam and swam and swam as far as I could.

Unlike many of the stories Gabriella told me about her life, it wasn't about violence at the hands of others. I was having this grand old time. I would play this game where I would pretend to be a dolphin and jump over the waves, hop over the waves. Gabriella was out alone in the Sea of Cortez, swimming free, and I try to hop and hop over waves as they were coming in little mountain waves, and I was hopping

over them and hopping over them. Then when I finally came back to the present moment and turned around and to see the shore, I had swam so far that people were itty bitty way out in shore. And I was like, no problem, you know, just turn around, float on the waves, let him bring you back. And I came back and it drifted me down like a half a mile. When Gabriella started this story, I thought she was telling me about happiness, about one of those rare

moments where she felt real joy. And I walked back up and I was like, did you guys see what I just did? You know? I came back with like, but everyone was doing their thing. Nobody noticed, you know, nobody noticed. But as her story went on, I heard something else. If I wanted to walk forever into the horizon, I could. At this point, Gabriella was just eight years old. She had no adult in the world to look out

for her. Her protective big brother Arthur was dead, her mother gone to But it was worse than that for Gabriella and all the children and teenagers around her. There was no one to protect them from each other. There were no boundaries for me. There was absolutely not a single person that would stop me. The horizon was forever. These traumatized and indoctrinated children and teenagers re enacting the

abuse and violence inflicted on them. Everybody was a crazy, little, freaking spartan extremist terrorist, not knowing anything else in the world. This was the Kog. Their horizon was forever, no boundaries, not a single person to stop them. This is God's law. We have to do it, otherwise the whole world will go to hell like armageddon. You know, Satan will win in the end. We don't do this. And now in there was this nineteen year old kid, newly at the

helm of their death cult. Hebrew was the authority. William Hebrew LeBaron, Gabriella's half brother, just like their dad. He was tall, good looking, He had bright, bright blonde hair, raised up in an extremist faith, schooled in crime and violence, and with a rage inside him that no one seemed able to control. We were terrified of him. From the Team's at Novel and I Heart Radio, This is deliver

Us from Herville Episode nine, Abdication. No child of Herbal le Baron was permitted a conventional childhood, and his son Hebrew was certainly no exception. In age. Just eleven years old, he was pulled out of school sent to work in an appliance repair operation in Denver run by Herville's then right hand man, Dan Jordan's. Here he'd labor alongside his siblings in what was essentially a sweatshop. He was one of those child slaves, and they worked so hard, all

of them. There was no wages, right, You couldn't own anything. You couldn't buy a new pair of shoes. You couldn't you couldn't do anything. He had to send all this money back to the family, to the cult. Unlike his brother Arthur, who had been Hervil's chauffeur, Hebrew had virtually no relationship with his father. This was the case with most of Hervil's children. He'd only seen him a handful of times. When he was in Denver. Hebrew lived under

Dan Jordan's brutal supervision, and he was whipped. What they would do is these things that they would put inside the screen window to hold the screen down, this rubber, whatever thing they would stick inside the window. They would pull those out and whip the children with them and

they would get a minimum of pretty lashes. As a kid, Hebrew was frail, and he often had little to eat, sometimes just living off what the mothers and the clan could scavenge him, dumpsters for him and the others, or what Dan Jordan's soft fit to pass their way between the beatings. Gabrielle lived in fear of those steam belts too, but she says Hebrew often got the worst of it. And I know that Hebrew grew up with that abuse like this earlies who's you know, three or four or

five years old. The boys were all made to work really hard, and they were beat and beat and beat and starved and beat and made to work in all cold, freezing temperature. They weren't allowed sweaters and you know, warm blows or anything. In his teens, Hebrew got to live in another colt house in Dallas, Texas. Life there seemed better. But at the age of eighteen, a year after Evil had died, Hebrew was instructed to return to Dallas and

the appliance business. When he refused, Hebrew's mom showed up and she had a gun with her and some other guy, and they were there to force he were to come back into in them either come back or die. His own mother, Anna Mae Marston, a devoted wife who married Irville in nineteen The Colt ordered her to control the teenage Hebrew. They sent his own mother to kill him. Mother was sent to kill him um. He was scared

of his own mom for a time. Hebrew had worked alongside his brother Arthur to develop the families now growing import export business. He decided to begin stealing cars from the States and bring him to Mexico and selling them and getting tons of cash. And they were so good at it. The people who purchased them on the Mexican side were the Mexican mafia, and mafia would be like, I mean mafia guys. They would be super excited to buy cars from us. We brought down like the coolest,

biggest cars. Together, they expanded their business beyond cars. They also started to smuggle marijuana from Mexico to the States. Hebrew and Arthur enlisted Gabriella in this new venture. I used to help pack the marijuana. Thought that was cool. You know, I was eight years old, you know, I was like, oh, this is cool. I get I get to be part of this like secret work that only adults can do. That was so cool and it smells

so good. So we would pack it really tightly in surrand rap as tight as we could, and then um pack it inside of guest Inc, a fake guest inc. So guess inc would be pulled off. Cut. You stick all the marijuana in there, sill it up somehow, and then drive that in a normal pickup truck and then have somebody who doesn't even know that there's marijuana in the car, some cult member who has no idea. Okay, you need to go to the States and do X, Y and Z, and you're going to drive this car.

Hebrew may have enjoyed this new line of work, the chance to escape Dan Jordan's sweatshop, but he wasn't that interested in the other side of cult life, in doctrine, theology, or really any of the religious underpinnings of the ko G Perhaps unsurprising for a teenager who had suffered such abuse at the hands of the deeply religious, or maybe hanging out with Mexican mafioso's in the early eighties distracted him from Hervil's Book of the New Covenant, a kind

of freedom for this wild teenager who loved rock and roll and the band Scorpions. He was part of the smuggling drug smuggling stuff, and he hung out with the guys and every now and then he would just he would party with them and do some coke and marijuana. So he was definitely like a heathenish personality within the cult, a nineteen year old rock and roll loving drug smuggler living a life far from the theological opinnings of his family. You know, he wanted to make money and m Hebrew

didn't really care about pryank or anything. But when tragedy struck Ine and Arthur was murdered by Leo evan ex splinter group, suddenly Hebrew, in the final days of his teens, was in charge. And having heard the stories of Hebrew's neglected childhood, it's kind of hard to square it with someone suddenly being given this role the mantle of the One mighty and Strong. Then again, Hebrew's name isn't actually written into the Book of the New Covenants as a

future leader. It was the now murdered Arthur who had been specifically named as Hervil's successor. But Hebrew had been there during that prison ceremony in one when Herville placed his hands on Arthur to pass on the title, and by birth, Hebrew was the next son in line after him. So even though Hebrew didn't have visions, prophecies, or even an apparent interest in theology to the Kingdom of God, the line of succession was clear. Hebrew's life changed forever.

Suddenly the pressure was on him to be the authority, which he didn't want. He wanted to be happy, go lucky, and good concerts and not have this pressure on him. He didn't know what to do. He was torn those flashes of hedonism and freedom and his new obligations of the One Mighty and Strong, with responsibility to keep the entire cult together, to make sure the group were tight, no one left, that the money was coming in, the

kids were clothed and fed. And added to this pressure was his childhood conditioning violence and punishment all he'd known since birth. So would it fell on him? He didn't. He didn't handle it well at all. That's coming up. After the break in. Early Hebrew le Baron, the new leader of the kog, arrived in Lahoya. His first order of business as One Mighty and Strong to deal with

the fallout of his brother Arthur's killing. Arriving at the ranch in Sonora, there was no sign of Leo Evanick, although his enforcers, the Rio's brothers, remained at the camp. They were leary on guard, but Hebrew had come in peace. When Arthur got killed, there was no vengeance. Nobody was trying to take revenge. We were worried about the attack coming to us. He told the Rios brothers he wanted

to end the violence, put this all behind them. Once Hebrew gained their trust that he wasn't going to enact vengeance against them, they decided to remain at Lahoya, and eventually they renounced their ties to Leo and score loyalty to Hebrew, the new one, mighty and strong. For several months, a calm settled over the camp. Maybe the reign of Hebrew would be an era of reconciliation for the colt.

Hebrew answered that question definitively. One afternoon in March, one of the Rios brothers, the one named Gamaliel, was sitting in the air stream talking to other cult members. Hebrew walked in. After a little chit chat, Hebrew pulled a forty five from his waistband and shot Gamiliel in the face, turned to the other sitting there and ordered them to clean up the fucking mess before nonchalantly walking out. Gami Leo's brother, Raoul Rios, was next. A few days after

Gamilio's execution, Raoul was caught fleeing the camp. He had only made it a few miles from the ranch when the Kyog ambushed and killed him. The Rio's brothers were dead, but Leo remained in the wind, as were the other factions of Herbal's former church. Those families the Kingdom of God now viewed as threats. The Kog weren't done yet. We also had to prepare ourselves for big wars that

were coming and be tough for it. Leo's group we're out there still in dangerous and we had to defend ourselves from the real or person threat from Leo's group. So um, we all just had to learn how to shoot guns. The kids as young as seven were given

revolvers and a R fifteen two rifle a shotgun. Put a little bottle up on a post and try to shoot it, you know, and try with all the different kinds of guns, and you have to like hold it and then you have to pull this thing on the air fifteen here click, and then you can let it go and then you can shoot. And then you have to like hold a position like exactly on your shoulder and then you shoot. The air fifteen was pretty heavy, yeah,

and the shotgun those are pretty big. I have a nine year old daughter, and I tried to imagine her with these weapons in her small hands, trying to hold her body fully upright under the weight of the steel of an a R fifteen or a twelve gauge as it recoils. It makes me sick to even picture it. Shooting the guns is not the traumatic part, you know. The traumatic part is the load that comes that you're actually going to be faced with a major war and

you might have to shoot people. So that's the really nerve wrecking part, and you have to prepare for it so you can't have any kind of feelings, you can have any soft feelings. You have to steal yourself and and just be really, really tough and be ready to suffer anything that comes. But passed, word reached the Kyog that Leo had moved to Monterey, California to start a

new life with his own church. The imminent threat of attack had passed for now, and yet the fear of a coming war was never far away in their minds. The Kog weren't short on enemies. The entire world was out to get them, gentiles and infidels, and so the Kog prepared like a mafia family. Think of it as a committee. It was not a top down government type of thing. So it wasn't like a kingdom more the king is like, I'm the new king, and everybody's going to do what I say. It didn't happen that way.

People influenced each other. Everybody interpreted a law together. It was the whole teenage group was a supreme court basically, and the leader was the person saying, Okay, ultimately we have to do X, Y and Z, you know. So the leader could be like influenced, heavily influenced by the other teenage kids who believed, this is what this says, this is what we have to do. So Hebrew was influenced a lot by the teenage kids. We all agree that we have to do this. The when and the

how is something we have to work on eventually. To hear Gabriella described them, these teenagers were like mafia cappos in this ruling committee, their personalities dictating distinct roles they'd carved out for themselves, and this way that they organized themselves with the one mighty and Strong at the head,

but actual decision making done through consensus. It's something a lot of cops and prosecutors struggled to get their heads around, chasing the colt like exactly who was controlling all this, pulling all the strings. Well, it seems like if it was any one thing, it was Hervill's Book of the New Covenants, the b n C, their father's Opus, which was now being interpreted by these different ruling committee members

who remember, we're mostly just teenagers. There was Hebrew's half brother, Andrew, the oldest son of Herville and the now deceased Laura Channath. He was the Kog's best mechanic. Andrew was cool. He was like funzy cool, and I was like fascinated by him. Next was Aaron, who they mostly called Mo Andrew's full brother. He was considered frail and the most kind hearted of

the remaining Labaron's sons. When Hebrew and Andrew were gone from the match, Aaron was in charge of the children, who were mostly orphans now They called him Mommy mo sometimes because he made sure that we ate well. He was the one that was like the mellow, studious moral compass for us being good and studying hard and praying and learning and reading and making sure we were well verse in our own doctrine. Other coppos and the KG

ruling committee were Hebrew sisters. Cynthia. Cynthia was pretty much a diva and Jacqueline Jackie was a hardcore extremist. She was definitely a person that kept everything to the tea. And Patricia or Trish. Trish was one of the adults I was kind of scared of. She had a little bit of an attitude, but she was definitely the cool person of the crowd. There were elite members and then there were there nobodies, and Trisha the elite of the elites.

When she was talking, everyone just had to be quiet and listen to her. All these siblings so many names. It's hard to keep track, I know, but don't worry if you've already lost track. Each would play their own crucial role in what's to come, a chain reaction of escalating tension and violence that would define the second generation of the kog and Yet from the vantage point of a kid like Gabriella in the mid nineteen eighties, her

older brothers and sisters just seemed really cool. The way they were their jeans, the way they wore their hair, the way they wore everything, everything that they did. They were the cool the grown ups, the cool kids. They got us all into. Jane fond of workouts and wearing cropped off T shirts, a big giant hair, and you know, eighties, all this eighties style stuff. I love imagining you, guys,

don't Jane on the workouts out in the desert. That's exactly what we did, Jane, funding workouts out in the desert, trailers around you. And they would teach us about being good women and preparing to be good wives, and building God's kingdom and being ready for whatever had to happen. By eighty four, the Kingdom of God had rented a house inside the mafia controlled town of Caborca, where they converted the front porch to a proper chop shop. They

specialized in building bulletproof four wheel drive vehicles. Business was booming. Clean cut looking teens like Hebrew and many of his siblings, who all spoke perfect English. They aroused little suspicion in the US, and most were dual citizens, meaning getting back and forth across the border was easy for them to

smuggle guns, drugs, and stolen cars. Things went well for a while, but then one day in the Colt's best mechanic, Andrew, that FONSI cool presence in the group, just seemed to disappear. He was around, he was one of the guys around, and he would play with the kids and scrape bonfires and it's just one of those cool kids. And I remember one day he just didn't come to the wrench and I asked about him, and they said, we don't know. Don't ask a question. And I just never saw him again.

So he was one of those that just never came back. Had Heber just had him killed. Just shut your mouth, don't think about it, don't talk about it. But Andrew's sudden disappearance wasn't the only thing going wrong with the cult around this time. Because his night turned to six, the Kog's ruling committee were getting more in a little frustrated with their one mighty and strong leader, Hebrew. There were suddenly money issues for the cult, not helped by

Andrew's disappearance. He was the group's best mechanic, so that shut down a lot of the stolen car business and drug smuggling. Then there was also Hebrew's abuse of the kids, random violence. Gabriella tells how he would just suddenly explode with rage, beat the members of the Kog, whip them like he had been whipped as a kid, relentlessly with those steam belts, no warning. And then the elephant that had always been in the room when it came to Hebrew and the Kog, his refusal to engage with the

culture religion kind of a big deal. Not just that he didn't get revelations from God. He didn't even seem to know Ervil scriptures. It seemed like all he wanted to do was party with his mafia friends. Due to Andrew's death, the Kog was no longer flesh with cash. They were back to days of hunger and the rank and file we're beginning to doubt Hebrew's mantle as the one mighty and strong. He needed a miracle, something to

make them believe in him again. So in he came up with an extremely risky plan to get some fast cash. He picked up a gun and crossed the border into the us that's coming up after the break. The Promenade Center in the Dallas suburb of Richardson is a single story strip mall underneath endless blue Texas sky. You could be in pretty much any U. S suburb on a nice day. A main road separates a parking lot from

low rise housing. Rarely are there people on the sidewalks, especially when it's hot, and of course in the summer it often is. When the traffic is light. You could say it's peaceful if you were being charitable. I guess it has that going for it. Good location if you don't want to be noticed. On November five, the Promenade Center was home to Gibraltar Savings and Loan, a small bank. It was just one big room. There were four employees.

It was small, and then there were a couple of desks over to the left side where if someone came in and wanted to open a new account, that's the part of the building you'd go to. And then to the right where the two teller windows. Jane was working at Gibraltar Savings and Loan that Wednesday in November alongside two co workers, Arlene and Brenda. So I was standing at my teller window, with Arlene on my left and

then Brenda next to her. I remember we had three or four people in each line, and I had just waited on a customer. They left, and the person that comes up next to me was Hebrew. I believe he had on a black leather jacket. I think I know. He had tape from ear to ear on his chin. Hebrew le Baron, leader of the Kog, had arrived in Dallas to rob Jane's bank, and the tape, which for some reason Hebrew had chosen over the standard bank robber mask, was to stop anyone from getting a good look at him.

I just remember the gun pointing at me, seeing the gun. Yeah, Alicia, there is a gun pointing at me. Jane had never been robbed, never held at gunpoint, and he said, give me all your money, none of that funny money either. But she had received training about what to do if it ever happened. The most important thing is just getting them out of the building. So followed directions. We followed

directions what he said for the most part. He per handed her a plastic grocery back and I took it and I emptied my drawer and put all the money in there. Including my die pack, which he told me not to do. An exploding die pack placed inside a bundle of the cash. The thought did cross my mind that I shouldn't put it in there, but then again, there's not a weight difference, so it's not like he's

going to tell that it's heavier. And it does have money, you know, actual money on the top end bottom of it. And then he motioned to my co worker and said your money too, and she was terrified. She said mine too, and the branch manager says yes, and she grabs the bag and opened her drawer and started putting money in it. Jane's colleagues were not handling the situ stuation as coolly as she was, and we're not handing Hebrew any funny money. They did not give their die pack from their drawer.

So then he just took the bag and left, and then we locked the door, which is important when you've handed over funny money to an armed bank robber. When they go through the door, it activates the die packed, and then within so many seconds of going through the doorway, the die pack will explode and spew read die all over the money, and that is what happened. They busted a hole in his bag. Most of Hebrew's newfound wealth, about three or four thousand dollars in total, was now

covered and die and spread all over the ground. I heard that he stopped to pick it up, and when he did that, he was caught by the police. Well not quite yet, but squad cars were coaching from the mall parking lot right next to the bank. Heber made it to his car, but was immediately blocked in by cops. Heber could tell he was surrounded, but he made a run for it into an underground garage. More cops arrived on foot and on motorbikes. The cops yelling at him

to stop. Instead, he turned, raised his forty five and pointed it at the nearest one before he fired. He tried to click off the safety, but hit a different button on accident, the one that releases the clip. It clauded on the ground. An officer put his gun to Hebrew's head and warned him he'd kill him if he picked it up. Six days later, Roger Samuel Harrison, the fake name Heber had given police, was arraigned on charges of aggregated robbery. With his bell set at fifty dollars.

The Kog took care of the bill, and three weeks later he was least with his crime and Bell all registered under his fake name. He had no intention of ever returning to face the music. He just switched to another one of his many fake aliases and crossed back into Mexico. But arriving back with his brothers and sisters in the Colts, it wasn't a return to business as usual. Hebrew felt he had screwed up so bad when he had the authority, he gave the authority to the next

brother in line, Mo, also called Aaron. For Hebrew, the short stint in jail for the bank robbery had been clarifying, a time of soul searching and repentance. He'd lost his way after Arthur had been killed, became more mafia godfather than one mighty and strong. So he was giving up the authority of that title and the authority of cult leadership. From this moment on, he'd dedicated himself fully to his

father's religion and let someone else lead the colt. With Hebrew replaced as leader, it was to be Aaron, the studious cult member, the Kog also called Mo, now taking charge of the Colt. He was the new One, mighty and strong. He was devout, deeply immersed in the Book of the New Covenant, and for cult members like Hebrew, this meant those nights of coke and booze and their mafia friends were gone. When Mo came, it was more of like, we have to study really hard, we have

to pray really hard. We need guidance on the right thing to do. We're gonna do things right, study and pray, eat healthy. But it wasn't all prayer, study and diets in the Kingdom of God at this point. There was also planning going on, lots of planning because by the kog were for once not on the defensive, not under direct attack, and they could start to look outwards across the border into America to try to fulfill what the Book of the New Covenant was really all about. Vengeance

on Herville sworn enemies. So he goes off to do his business, drops his drawers is in the process, and two people walk up. One drills him in the head and the other shoots him in the chest. That's coming up in the next episode 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 wolf Austin Mitchell is our creative director of production. Michae Lee Row is our managing editor. Gavin Haynes is our head of development. Willard Foxton is our creative director of Development. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. 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 and Makluso or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the team at U t A. For more from novel, visit novel dot Audio