A Deadly "Messenger of God"

Cult Leader Ervil LeBaron leaves a trail of death in the West

In the verdant hills south of Mexico City, a self-proclaimed messenger of God's wrath is in hiding from man's justice. Ervil LeBaron, 52, polygamous (13 wives, at least 25 children) leader of the tiny Church of the Lamb of God, is the target of investigations by police departments from San Diego and Los Angeles to Salt Lake City and Denver. Even the Secret Service is interested in his whereabouts, since some of his followers sent a threatening letter to the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in September 1976. LeBaron's alleged crime: inducing several of his 40-odd disciples, including a number of women, to murder between 13 and 20 people who failed to abide by what he decreed to be the "constitutional law of the Kingdom of God."

The killing spree—reminiscent of Charles Manson and his "family"—began five years ago in the Baja California community of Los Molinos, 169 miles down the coast from San Diego. There, Ervil's older brother, Joel, patriarch of the Church of the First Born, established a settlement in 1963 as a haven for polygamous Mormons. With Ervil as second in command, the community attracted more than 200 followers, nearly half of whom were excommunicated Mormons (the church banned polygamy in 1890).

But the brothers eventually quarreled. Ervil wanted to turn Los Molinos into a beach resort, while Joel envisioned a simple, self-sustaining community. Moreover, Joel, unlike Ervil, thought that a separation of church and civil law was essential. Kicked out of the First Born Church in 1970, Ervil started his own sect, the Church of the Lamb of God, in San Diego. He also began writing tracts claiming the authority to execute anyone who refused to accept him as God's representative. Less than two years later, Joel was shot dead in nearby Ensenada, Mexico.

Ervil claimed credit for the death of the "impostor and false prophet," but he failed to lure any followers from the community that his brother had founded. From San Diego, Ervil issued warnings to the townsfolk of Los Molinos to repent, but few listened. Then, on the night after Christmas in 1974, Ervil's disciples roared through the community in two trucks, tossing Molotov cocktails into the adobe huts and shooting people as they fled into the dusty street. Two were killed and a dozen wounded.

Within 30 months of the raid, at least ten other opponents of Ervil's new church had either disappeared or were found dead. Among those missing are an Ensenada woman who sided with Joel LeBaron's sect rather than Ervil's, and Utah Polygamist Robert Hunt Simons, whose disappearance came after his wife and a daughter refused to move in with LeBaron. Shot and killed in National City, Calif., was 7-ft. Dean Grover Vest, a follower of Ervil LeBaron's who had begun saying he could do without him.

The latest of the suspected LeBaron victims was Rulon C. Allred, leader of 2,000 polygamists in Utah, Montana and Mexico. On May 10, two young people, who appeared to be women, rushed into Allred's suburban Salt Lake City office and shot him six times. Allred's transgression: he had failed to submit to the disciplines of LeBaron's church.