The son of the clans prophet, Knight, then 18, had once seemed destined for a leadership role within the Order. They were the type of kids you didnt mess with, says Robert Owen, a former member of the clan. Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. When youre three years old, they start training you what to say if people talk to you, recalls Jeremy Tucker, a 32-year-old former member of the cult, who now works in construction. Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Anns day. While some despised Ben for his apostasy and refused to speak with him, Stephen had remained in touch with his brother. The incest came to light after the girl tried to escape the arranged celestial marriage an illegal marriage, sans license. As the first of Paul Kingstons many wives, Patty enjoyed a privileged role in the Order including access to vast wealth. Do you think if I took $5 million in gold, Id be working out here?. Now let me just simply state: He took care of them. By the time he was 30, he would have more than 10. Over the years, state law enforcement and the courts have sporadically addressed the incest in the Kingston ranks. Geri and I ask the same question at the same time: "What exactly do you mean by took care of them? These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. Im done with this shit.. As he talked to the woman who lived there, Luke Brown came out of the house, and his brother Scott soon joined him. We pass the house she grew up in with her mother, three eldest brothers, and father before he was kicked out of the cult. October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. One day, for laughs, he and his half brother Ron Tucker stole some napalm from an Order army-supply store, drew lines of it in the street and lit it on fire as cars drove by. Those affected by the genetic disorder suffer grand mal seizures and often have facial feature deformities and severe mental retardation, with IQs as low as 25. I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. In 2003, Order member Jeremy Kingston pleaded guilty to incest for taking his first cousin, 15-year-old Lu Ann Kingston, as his fourth wife. This racist display was no one-off. Polygamist Mafia: Escaping The Kingston Clan - YouTube Johnson also acknowledged hearing family lore dating to the Depression era of Order families burying fetuses from late-term miscarriages on their respective properties.. Up to this point, Julie had treated the rumor like a joke. They seemed happy, Ron says. It was all just innocent teenage stuff, recalls Ron, who has since left the clan. ", "They took their lives," Ron says. She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her . She was definitely the pick of the litter, and thats why Paul got her, Ron recalls. 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. One is a first cousin. Structural Birth Defects. What were taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are deserve to be loved, he explained. In secret videotapes of Order church meetings aired on Escaping Polygamy, Pauls nephew Nick Young, speaking from a church lectern, identifies himself as a numbered man, number 72, to be precise. Ortell is credited with expanding The Orders business empire and making the family immensely wealthy. A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article mapped the Kingstons incestuous family tree, quoting one of Ortells 65 kids, ex-Order member Connie Rugg as saying, My father experimented [with] inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.. If you were more obedient, this wouldnt have happened., After that, everything changed, Stephen says. Because of the clans distrust of banks, the Order had cash hidden all over the place, a poorly kept secret within the family. 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. Structural birth defects are related to a problem with the structure of body parts. Stephen moved in with his brother. The boys were sentenced to two years of probation and taken back into the Order. 3 bd 2 ba 1.6k sqft. Concentrated in Salt Lake City, its 10,000 members control more. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. Health Gap. 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. "A rare, severe birth defect is on the rise in an inbred polygamous community on the Arizona-Utah border, according to a doctor who has treated many of the children. But for their part, The Order and other fundamentalist sects believe the LDS church exists in a state of apostasy for abandoning what they see as a bedrock principle of their faith. 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. "Outside, people don't die that often, and usually they're really old.". In addition, Vanguard had paid nearly $2 million to a private school linked to the Kingstons called . He snapped the padlock on the first crate and began stuffing the silver ingots into duffel bags, lugging them back out to the waiting Honda. Like Stephen, the boys were considered troublemakers by the Order and like Stephen, they knew a lot about how the clan handled its money. Paul would rather have the wealth and the money than the isolation and the conflict, he said. All I like to do is work on cars and hang out with friends and ride my ponies, he wrote one night on his MySpace page. 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. His father stood on the stage and called out the names of the men who were to receive one of the clans highest honors. Jessica said she and other children of the Kingston clan a group also known as The Order, the Davis County Cooperative Society, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ dropped the N-bomb all the time, as did their parents. At the lot's northwest corner, a metal gatethe kind you might find on a cattle ranchhangs open on its hinge. "There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece," she continues. "How do you keep track of that?" She knows that they're. If both parents carry the gene, the likelihood that their. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 "Fred was in charge of the cemeteries, the gravediggers, all of that. The Brown boys, charged with felony counts of burglary, wrote a letter to their aunt apologizing for stealing the silver in her house. These conditions are disproportionately common, relative to the size of the general population, in Short Creek. Pulling up, he noticed the getaway car parked in front of the house. He had yet to lose his hair, and thanks to his fanatical devotion to healthy food and alternative medicine, he had the ropy build of a well-toned athlete. (Like most kids in the clan, Stephen wasnt told who his father was until he was old enough to be trusted to lie to protect the Order.) Young declined to comment when asked if he practices polygamy. The Knight brothers were driving new trucks, and so were their friends, says Levi Kingston. Some outside the church have referred to the group as "the Kingston Clan" or the "Kingston Cult," although leaders believe that these terms are "inaccurate and derogatory." . 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. The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time Ron says the cults justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. Back then, Paul Kingston stood around five feet ten and weighed close to 200 pounds. I think it scared them.. There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble. On the surface, the operation is legit: From Salt Lake, the Order controls some 100 businesses spread out over the Western states, from a casino in California to a cattle ranch in Nevada to a factory that makes lifelike dolls in Utah. And another one of her sisters married one of my half-brothers, but we have the same blood and genetics because our moms are full sisters." 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. Or wed set traps and raise them as pets., In many ways it was an idyllic childhood, except for the fact that the ranch also doubled as a work camp for disobedient clan wives and rebellious kids. His arms are sunburned and his hands calloused from long days moving the irrigation pipes that water the fields. I felt for his pulse, but he was already gone., That night, Paul Kingston arrived at the ranch. One day, not long after the gold disappeared, Knight got an anonymous phone call. LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. The clan avoids hospitals, believing government-backed doctors might inject them with a mysterious disease or demand birth records exposing the Order's lifestyle. The roof sagged, the carpet was worn, and the place reeked of cheap cologne. Years of inbreeding have resulted in children born with serious birth defects. Former Order members remain convinced the Knights stole the gold. Fumarase deficiency (FD) is an autosomal metabolic recessive disorder, meaning it is necessary for an individual with the condition to receive the mutant allele from both parents. FLDS incest causes horrible birth defects - Google Groups It empowered Stephen before that, no one had ever stood up to Daniel Kingston or any of them, says a former member. Supposedly, LaDonna had a dream wherein it was revealed that anyone who left The Order would be tainted by black blood. deficiency. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. "Have you ever heard of the term The Turkey Baster?" Asked about these legends, Kingston spokesman Kent Johnson, explained via email that on occasion Order families have asked to spread the ashes of a child lost before or after birth at the Holy Spot. 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 bucket of water and a vial of black food coloring. Once free of the cult, Lu Ann, Allison and other ex-Order members have had to unlearn the hatred that was drilled into their heads. 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. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. "They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' Instead, he had walked away from the family three years earlier to make a life of his own. Pentecostal Snow also remembered being taught end-time prophecies, with a cleansing wherein the streets of Salt Lake City would run red with blood. materials or even attempted to focus team and society have a kingston clan member was charged with birth defects increase becomes apparent similarities than. Given such incidents, could Order members be a threat to law enforcement? When Rachel Young, a stern and humorless woman, got home, she discovered that several crates of silver in her basement had been pried open whoever had robbed the place had clearly been in a hurry and had left with only a small fraction of her silver. I could see that the leaders of The Order really did believe we had black ancestors, Ron explained, with Christy next to him, and his adult daughters Emily and Julie nearby. The polygamous town facing genetic disaster - BBC Future. There was also testimony, during one hearing, that someone in the Kingston clan wanted to blow up the courthouse. Theyd keep it in basements, in filing cabinets, in a big safe in one of Pauls offices, says Levi Kingston, a former clan member. According to historian Brian Hales Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto, Brother Elden, as he was also known, had five wives and 17 children. 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. As lore has it, Elden was the one mighty and strong predicted by Scripture, who holding the scepter of power in his hand would set in order the House of God. With thick white hair, a lantern jaw and a commanding presence, he had no problem attracting followers. Another of Ortells teachings: Adolf Hitler had the right idea about creating a master race, but didnt have the Lords help, so he failed. The teenagers sitting in the driveway on South Bonner Circle that afternoon in 2009 knew the operation well. She is guiding me all around town, following my route, turn by turn, on Google maps. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time Matt Browning seems less sure. That Stephens father sat atop a mafialike organization was a secret kept from him for most of his childhood. Is it a requirement to gain the highest levels of heaven? Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because in our organization people have freedom of choice.. In the kitchen, he opened a closet and popped a hatch in the floor that led down to a dark, musty basement. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features 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 . "There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble because he was having children with these young girls, so he said, 'Well, I never had sex with themI used a turkey baster.'" Her disobedience incurred the wrath of her father Daniel, who took her to a family ranch near the Idaho border and savagely beat her. Another is a first cousin. Andrea grew up in a small two-bedroom home in a Kingston-owned coal Some feature more expensive-looking gravestones, and include, beyond names and dates, terms of endearment such as: "Sweet baby girl," "Our son," and "Heaven's very special child." The two boys pulled into the driveway and shifted the green Honda into park. They both have the same high cheekbones, the same pale skin, the same wide-set eyes. Indeed, the group was founded during the Great Depression as a communal religious organization where members dedicated their earnings and possessions to building the Kingdom of God on Earth, as one church document attests. Eventually, I pull up to the corner of Canyon Street and Jessop Avenue, where I find the baby cemetery. 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 theft of the silver bars from Rachel Youngs basement, they concluded, had been a copycat crime.