"They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' According to church lore, The Order came into existence when founder Charles Elden Kingston saw Jesus in the mountains above the familys settlement in Bountiful, Utah, inspiring him to create the DCCS in 1935. When one of his favorite wives died, he missed her so much that he dug her up from her grave. A lawyer and an accountant by trade, Stephens father hardly looked like the sort of man who could command the unquestioned loyalty of thousands of followers. That Stephens father sat atop a mafialike organization was a secret kept from him for most of his childhood. Hospital harm., While part of The Order, Val Snow, a twenty-something gay man with a wry sense of humor, believed being gay was like spitting in the eye of God. Snow is the son of Daniel Kingston, whom he paints as a little man with a lot of power.. From a young age, Snow worked for Order companies to help feed his siblings, a responsibility some Kingston men are known to shirk. Double murder in Utah: Tragedy Strikes the Cast of A&E's - Reddit Polygamy is outlawed in Utah, both by the states constitution, and in statute, where it is a third-degree felony, with a possible punishment of five years in prison. The 100 Best Albums of 2022. The boys also bought cigarettes wholesale through a small clan-owned market run by their older brother and sold them at school. Up to this point, Julie had treated the rumor like a joke. On the show's pilot, the trio bring a burly security guard along as they help a woman sneak into her own home to grab belongings for herself and her two young daughters. 6.3M views 6 years ago Profiles by VICE S1 E23 Although the mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy over 100 years ago, many splinter groups across Utah still practice plural marriage. The well-kept yellow house sat on the corner of a tidy cul-de-sac called South Bonner Circle surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. Then one of them exhaled slowly, his breath shuddering in the cold air. No evidence directly linked him to the missing gold or silver, but his father was convinced he had played a part in the thefts. Additionally, ex-Order members tell of a reputed church prophecy of an End of the World War, an apocalyptic vision that foresees a bloody race war with the Kingstons as the ultimate victors, chosen by their Heavenly Father to rule the world for a millennium. He was. YouTube They predict the scale of the problem will increase dramatically in the future. By 18, she. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. had some 80 children by 13 wives, but his favorite was Paul, an excellent student who made friends easily. Its his father, the prophet, calling to coax his wayward son back into the fold. Now let me just simply state: He took care of them. It would be several more years before Stephen learned that Paul Kingston was his father, and that his mother was just one of his dads many wives. "Finally exposed in the news, the facts of life inside [the Mormon offshoot Kingston clan's] religious/cult compound are stunning Mormons, Utahans, the nation, and the world. During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series "Escaping Polygamy," remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a . Tom Sizemore, Heat and Saving Private Ryan Actor, Dead at 61 "I'm like, Really? "You have to either accept" the responsibility of caring for so many children with major healthcare needs "or let it destroy you," says this man, whose wife recently suffered a stroke. Those in the Order, Kingston preached, are responsible for building a master race, which is why all marriages are arranged within the original four families that started the cult. Still more, rather cryptically, feature child-size palm and footprints. In it, black people come close to killing off the white race until they are countered by Native Americans, symbolized by a Red Horse, which gallops to the White Horses rescue. The son of Pauls sister Rachel herself a daughter of Ortell and LaDonna Kingston Young was the only current member of the Kingston clan, out of the many contacted for this story, who consented to a live, on-the-record interview. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her . Girls, many of them teen brides, answer phones at the Orders law office, bag groceries at its supermarket or tend to the clans many children. They would trek into state welfare offices, their kids in tow, claiming that they had no idea who the father of their children was, or that he was a truck driver who had left them destitute. Older teenagers were crammed five and six to a room, sleeping on the floors of trailers. He seemed like the most amazing guy, Stephen recalls. I Escaped a Polygamist Cult | Marie Claire They sat there for a moment, warming their hands against the sputtering heater. . Now, two years later, Stephen still sleeps with a gun near his bed. The 43-year-old Kingston took the witness stand for the prosecution about 2:40 p.m. and is expected to answer questions through Thursday. The two groups split when Dawna was growing up. I dont think theyre organized crime in that regard, but the racketeering statute defines it as any conspiracy or pattern of illegal activity done in concert with others. She called her sister-in-law Patty Kingston, who lived across town. Two teenage boys had been spotted entering Rachel Youngs home. One is a first cousin. One of her brothers married a woman whose grandmother is a sister to their father. I love the Order. Luke and Scott often visited the home of one of their aunts, Rachel Young. Young also claimed Desert Tech had sold guns to Picatinny Arsenal, the research division of the U.S. military. Nevertheless, former members of The Order say that incest and racism are inextricably linked in The Orders teachings. More recently, the Kingston-owned Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE) agreed to pay a $3 million fine after it was sued by the federal government for raking in tax credits for biofuels it never produced. Over 75 years, the Kingstons have amassed a fortune worth an estimated $300 million, but the operation skirts the edges of the law. In 2011, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. A scrappy white wooden fence runs the length of it along Canyon Street. Control of The Order then passed to Ortells well-educated son Paul Kingston, one of several lawyers in a cult whose members dress normally and try not to draw attention to themselves. What is BBC Future? Another group of kids called the Lost Boys, who were kicked out of the polygamist cult the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ended up on the streets of Las Vegas and Phoenix, some turning tricks for drugs like meth and heroin. They seemed happy, Ron says. All Rights reserved. Blacks were the less valiant people in heaven who sat on the sidelines while others took sides, according to The Order. To deaden his feelings of isolation, he started smoking a lot of pot and sitting around the house all day listening to country music. Daniels ultimatum: Stay in The Order, date no one, and have no contact with family. The land had once been home to the Washakie Indians, and as children, Stephen and his 15 full brothers and sisters played among the wind-swept ruins of a Native American cemetery. Sometimes he parked his immaculately buffed burgundy Ford Thunderbird on the curb, but it was rare to see the man himself. It empowered Stephen before that, no one had ever stood up to Daniel Kingston or any of them, says a former member. Immune Response. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well. His followers erected a crude stone cross nearby in his honor, covered with inscriptions of the letter K (for Kingdom or Kingston). Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. Paul already had two wives, but he and Richaun were married in a secret ceremony at her parents house. October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. Police raid Utah properties of well-known polygamist Kingston Clan Andrea grew up in a small two-bedroom home in a Kingston-owned coal Snow began dating men when he was 22. Were fucked, they told their cousin. FOX 13 . He also preached a bizarre extrapolation of the Book of Mormon called the White Horse Prophecy, a dreaded prediction of a cataclysmic time when the black race will rise up and attempt to destroy the white man, only to be thwarted by Native Americans riding to the rescue. Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because in our organization people have freedom of choice.. Theyll do what they need to do to defend whats theirs.. Due to the Kingstons convoluted genealogy, Lu Ann was both his first cousin and his aunt. The Knight brothers werent afraid to fight, or to stand up to authority. The company was founded in 2007 with an investment from family members. The family believed that discipline would rein in the boys and that hard labor would make the girls more supplicant to their husbands back in the city. As he grew older, Stephen turned out to be as rebellious as his own father had been as a boy. One ex-Order member, who asked to be referred to as Scott, instead of his real name for fear of retribution by clan members, said hatred of gays was big in the Kingston clan, with the word f----- in frequent use. They were finally getting even. ", "They took their lives," Ron says. Young told Intelligence Report that his company has sold weapons, with the approval of the U.S. State Department, to governments in Europe and the Middle East, Saudi Arabia being one. Look around, Stephen says. According to experts and former Jeffs followers, the cause of the birth defect is clear: Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called Fumarase Deficiency. Kollene's father, John Daniel Kingston has 14 wives, and she is the fifth of her mother Shirley Hansen's 12 children. He slept with a different one each night, in accordance with their ovulation cycles, and sometimes disappeared during lunch to have sex with a favorite. Who Murdered Polygamist Wife and Mother Carolyn Yvonne Kingston? Elden continued the tradition. "My father and her grandmother were full brother and sister," she explains, recognizing the bloom of confusion on my face. The Intelligence Report is the SPLC's award-winning magazine. Thats your Uncle Paul, she said. A simple urine test will reveal whether there is an excess of fumaric acid in the urine, if the other, more external symptoms aren't obvious enough. What were taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are deserve to be loved, he explained. Nothing has come of the raids yet, and the IRS refused comment on the matter when contacted by this publication. The girl, who as an adult would unsuccessfully sue the clan, then walked miles to the nearest gas station, where she called the police. WREs influence earned special scrutiny in February 2016 after the IRS, the EPA and other government agencies raided owner Jacob Kingstons house as well as The Orders bank and other locations, carting away bankers box after bankers box of records. He charged across the field and started brutally beating Stephens cousin. Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played With Fire. According to former Order members, they worked long shifts sorting coal and operating heavy machinery in unsafe conditions. . When he noticed that the boys had stopped working, he became enraged. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. "Fred was in charge of the cemeteries, the gravediggers, all of that. Dawna asks me. Theyre basically the Utah Mafioso of the white power world, Browning told Intelligence Report. If they kill me, they kill me, he says. They steer clear of banks,. Boys work its coal mine and stack boxes at Standard Restaurant Supply, a massive discount store. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jessica Kingston was wed at age 16 in what she says was a marriage she felt pressured into by her parents and others in a polygamous sect. These men are living freely in the Cane Beds area. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. Dawna says that, when people refer to what's going on over in the Cane Beds, they say it's probably another turkey baster situation. "There were so many young children who were born with abnormalitiesharelips, club feet, heart valvesthat were they were going to die within a year," says Ron. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. Family members attribute the defects to the advanced This didnt belong to you anyway., As big as the heist was, it attracted almost no attention in Salt Lake. Do you think if I took $5 million in gold, Id be working out here?. But the more the deputy pressed, the more their stories didnt add up. "I didn't touch her; I just used a turkey baster," she mimics, rolling her eyes. Mark Shurtleff, the Utah attorney general, has spent years investigating the clan, gathering birth certificates and genealogical data, and has come to believe that the cult is guilty of a long list of crimes, including child labor, tax evasion, welfare fraud, polygamy and the sanctioning of underage marriages to blood relatives. But he hopes that one day his family will be able to forgive him for leaving them behind. That sister, too, dealt with a lot of respiratory problems with her kids, "because of the relation," Dawna explains. We would cause harm, he confessed. A passerby might catch a glimpse of children in the windows, but for the most part, the Young family kept to themselves. The last infant grave marked in this cemetery is dated 2010; Warren issued an edict from prison banning sex in 2011, so few infants have been born since then (the few babies born each year are the product of institutionalized rape by cult-appointed seed bearers). "It's like any inbred disorder," Tarby says. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 Towards Net Zero. Obsessed with the purity of their bloodline and empowered by a sense of entitlement on par with the divine right of kings, the Kingstons have made incest the cornerstone of a self-serving theology that loathes non whites, fosters homophobia and abhors government authority. Then their father said something they never expected. The clan kids from there would come to school not properly dressed for the cold, and they were always getting in fights. Martha's husband was "Uncle" Fred Jessop, longtime Bishop to the FLDS people, who died in 2005 at 94, after being dragged from state to state by Warren Jeffs in what many ex-members believe was a transparent scheme of murder-by-stress: Dragging around a physically ailing, elderly man in need of constant medication is one way to kill a person without committing any outright murderous act, they say. ), Related Mormons, however, take care to denounce the FLDS "polygs" as having absolutely no relation to their Latter Day Saints. and last updated 1:46 PM, Feb 24, 2021. I t is often used to treat severe acne. He also had dozens of children a brood that would eventually grow to around 300 and he had a hard time telling them apart. According to people who have left the Order, the cult exploits its 2,000 members as virtual slave labor and hides profits from tax collectors. You better check on your gold, Young told her. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. One man, who asks to remain nameless to protect his and his family's privacy, describes a lifetime of round-the-clock care and too-frequent hospital visits for his five sons. But mostly he talked about the history of the Order and his ancestors, the men who had started the clan. But I do have children with other women., Asked if two women named were in fact his first cousins, Young paused, finally replying, I guess Im curious as to what youre trying to get at here.. The clan believed he had their treasure, and they were sending someone to kill him. Seated on a couch, sipping lemonade in his home in a Salt Lake City suburb, he resembles Paul Kingston quite a bit. While some despised Ben for his apostasy and refused to speak with him, Stephen had remained in touch with his brother. My mom was never the same. Hanging up the phone, she rushed to her closet. . In another, Order attorney Carl Kingston warns listeners about marrying up with Hams kids, a reference to the aforementioned Biblical curse. Children born into the clan make up much of the labor force. This racist display was no one-off. He picked fights at school, shot a teacher in the face with a water gun and refused to do homework or answer questions. So what about polygamy? Dawna's eldest son is now dating a Centennial woman whom he recently found out is a distant cousin. Then one night, a clan member called and told him that the Order planned to kill him. The letter asserts that one of the earliest members of the church was a Native American man and that the Co-op, as it is sometimes called, has been the victim of prejudice and harassment by Utahs majority religion (i.e., the LDS church) because of the formers progressive ideas. She knows that they're. Kingston - Results | FamilyTreeDNA LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. It was all just innocent teenage stuff, recalls Ron, who has since left the clan. Suddenly, Stephens brother David lost control of the truck and it rolled over, killing David instantly. So far, however, despite Shurtleffs efforts, the insular and highly secretive nature of the Order has prevented him from finding sufficient evidence to bring a case strong enough to dismantle the clan. Back then, Paul Kingston stood around five feet ten and weighed close to 200 pounds. He didnt have anyone to help him process what had just happened., Taking advantage of his status as a son of the prophet, Stephen began bending the rules even further. They are paid not in cash but in scrip, an arcane form of credit used by the Mormon pioneers that can only be redeemed at company stores. "Well, needless to say, we had a lot of, uh. Is it a requirement to gain the highest levels of heaven? The FLDS believe they are practicing the one true religion as Prophet Joseph Smith intended it to be. There lives Ross LeBaron Jr., a descendant of another polygamous sect (separate from the FLDS but quite similar in practice) called the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending To her horror, all that remained was a ring of dust, marking the place where a chest of gold coins had once stood. The clan was reportedly brought to justice by 10 victims, including Blaklyn, in early September. Sisters married the same man in polygamous celestial weddings; brothers from one family married sisters from another (meaning their kids are double cousins). One baby deemed to have too many deformities was allegedly put in a shoe box and left to die. The quick answer for why this polygamous community has buried so many of its children is inbreeding, according to community members. There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble. I think it scared them.. All of the gay people would definitely be the first to go, he said. In the polygamist cult of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, cousins were encouraged to marry in order to preserve certain bloodlines. In a portion of Warren Jeffs' Priesthood Record a mostly dry document that details his every move and meeting one entry, a written transcription of an announcement made by Warren at lunch with his late father's family, stands out as particularly creepy. Sex. The Knight brothers were driving new trucks, and so were their friends, says Levi Kingston. Many of these men are also given stewardship of the Orders business holdings sent out to run the clans coal mine or ranches, or to oversee one of its many storefronts. It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. One of the Orders leaders did jail time for severely beating his own daughter after she fled an arranged marriage to his brother. But the constant fear has subsided. I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. Those twoand a fifth boyalso suffer from the condition that all of this family's sons were born with: x-linked hydrocephalus. Young denied that The Order was racist or taught any form of bigotry, and said he had people of all races working for him. In the meantime, the police were closing in on the missing silver. Kingston -- the late enigmatic leader and church prophet who built the 1,500-member Kingston clan into a multimillion-dollar business empire while allowing many of his purported 13 wives and dozens of children to survive on government assistance. Everyone knows it's happening, few talk about it unprompted, it just sort of..is. 3 bd 2 ba 1.6k sqft. The two were playmates when they were boys. He shares a last name and a not-too-distant relation with the polygamous LeBaron group in Chihuahua, Mexico. To hide the scope of his organization, J.O. The Tuckers think this is all hogwash now, though they were programmed to believe it at the time. Another of the cults teachings was that soy can make you gay, an anti-government conspiracy theory popular in some right-wing circles. Kingston clan birth defects - htzjwp.talkwireless.info Kingston taught his followers that they are the literal descendants of Jesus and one of his wives, who had come down to Earth to found a race of chosen people. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. A short, blustery man with a hair-trigger temper, Daniel Kingston had reportedly once kidnapped two boys at gunpoint and led them out to the Great Salt Lake (the charges were later dropped). "It wasn't until I left the FLDS and moved away from the community that I realized I'd been to an unusually high number of funerals growing up in the Creek," says Alyssa Bistline over a crackling phone connection. Ron Kingston says The Orders leadership has too much to lose for something like that to happen. Dawna's younger sister has a little boy with two clubfeet. One of them approached the front door while the other kept a lookout. Pulling up, he noticed the getaway car parked in front of the house. More troubling, during a contentious 2004 custody case that ensued when Jessica and her sister Andrea fled Daniel Kingstons household, a judge in the case reportedly was the subject of a death threat, allegedly from Kingston clan members. As time passed, his dogma became even stranger. Two of her sisters married their first cousinsmen with whom they share the same grandfather; the sons of their father's second wife, who is their mother's full sister. Still stunned at the sudden loss of their brother, Stephen and his siblings were numb with grief. A retired Arizona law enforcement officer, Browning is the president and founder of the Skinhead Intelligence Network and is in charge of security for the A&E show, where his wife Tawni works as the casting producer. Three of his wives are his half-sisters. When Paul turned 21, he married Richaun Dye. Julie left the cult at age 19. Future Planet. He went days at a time without eating, convinced it helped provoke visions, and believed that by the laying on of hands he could heal his followers from sickness and disease. By the time he was 30, he would have more than 10. In order to maintain his familys superior bloodlines, Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. Jeremy was nearly 10 years her senior at the time. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. They're given the utmost attention and care because the FLDS faithful believe everything in this life is a test before entering the celestial kingdom, and caring well for all of Heavenly Father's children is part of that test.