May 4, 2022 • 53 mins
It’s 2022, and journalist Jesse Hyde arrives in Colonia LeBaron. It’s a strange but thriving Mormon town, deep in the Mexican desert. While investigating a cartel massacre, Jesse uncovers the story of the LeBarons – a family whose dreams of founding a utopian community swiftly turned into a dystopian nightmare, as a faction of their town transformed into a murderous cult. Jesse traces the origins of this place, from the 1940s to the present day, its founding family and the feud between Joel LeBaron and his fanatic brother Ervil that started it all.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Novel. A listener note this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing, including references to child abuse.
(00:54):
If you drive down Mexico's Highway to you pass through
a wide open desert, roll the windows down. You smell
the sage, the soil, see the pink wildflowers, the Sierra
Madre mountains looming in the distance. My name is Jesse Hyde,
and I'm a journalist. The first time I drove down
(01:18):
the stretch of highway, I was working on a story
and editor had asked me to check out something about
a massacre thought to be carried out by a Mexican
drug cartel. They had opened fire on women and children
from a town near here. When I arrived in that town,
I expected to find it under siege. It's people living
(01:40):
in fear. But instead I found something more interesting than
that crime I had originally been sent to cover, and
something more complicated both for me and the town. And
so now I've come back. Yeah, come and say hi
to Jesse to try to understand more about this strange,
(02:03):
fascinating place. Welcome to Colonial Colonial Labaron. That's the name
of the town. It's August. When I arrived back here,
and they're holding something called the Friendship Fair. I can't
say it in Spanish, it sounds stupid when you say
in English. There's a rodeo, a big dance, and the
(02:25):
demolition derby, which not gonna lie. I've been looking forward
to for weeks since i first started planning this trip.
There's this huge crowd of cheering spectators sitting on haybells
around a deep dirt pit under all the choking dust.
Cars are smashing each other up. It's glorious. Did they
(02:54):
already start? The point of this friendship Fair isn't just fun.
It's to build rust because this is cartel country, which
means Narco's control almost every town around here, so building
goodwill with the neighbors can literally keep you alive. But
the Friendship Fair is also a big family reunion. People
(03:16):
who grew up here but have since left They return
come home and for a week or so they're reunited
with cousins and aunts, uncle's, moms and Dat's standing in
the middle of these crowds, everyone's saying hi, hugging, laughing, reconnecting.
(03:40):
You feel this energy, this happiness, but something more than that.
It's a feeling of belonging. You know that feeling when
you're safe, when you feel like your home. Yeah, have
you ever heard of the Little Baron's? Yeah, I figured
(04:04):
you guys are le Baron. Walk through the town and
you hear that name over and over. My name is
Marto LeBaron. My name is Josiah Liberton Leberon. Like, yes,
I am le Baron. Is almost like a race, you
know what. I Almost everyone who lives in this town
is related in some way to its founding LeBaron family.
(04:25):
But believe me when I say that's actually far from
the most extraordinary thing about this place. Because in this
town a religion was born from the same roots as
my own Mormon upbringing. But this religion quickly mutated, became
a murderous cult, then a deadly organized crime family as
(04:48):
ruthless as any I've heard of, Yet for so many years,
their identities were hidden from view. How did this happen,
this descent into terror which spun out from colonial LeBaron
through Mexico and across the border into America. I had
to find out, and in doing so I met a
(05:10):
group of extraordinary people, former cult followers, cops, victims, journalists, prosecutors,
and survivors, people who somehow lived through it all. This
podcast is their story. Thirteen episodes and a collection of
lives all linked together, a tale of resistance. Many of
(05:34):
the people speaking about it for the first time, how
they were pulled into this incredible saga, how they survived,
and how it could still be playing out today. We
have survived something horrific in which you're both the victim
and the criminal. Narcotics trafficking, gun running, murder, We're talking
(05:57):
about murder, multiple homicide. Key to this, but nothing like this.
Please is not enough on this. We are in a fight.
They were shooting cows by house. The gun was pointing
at me day, the kids and heights. They are killing
people out there. These guys want to dominate the world.
(06:19):
The guy's handed us our guns and send us all away.
Need to go kill all these people the ways God's
can curse us forever. Where did you share chess? I
don't know. I so now finally coming to a point
where we can speak about this so people know what
really happened in the cold. We can say the truth here.
(06:44):
It is from the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio.
You're listening to deliver us from Herbale and I'm Jesse Hyde.
(07:10):
This is Episode one, the One Mighty and Strong. The
myth of a promised land or a new world. It's
a fixation for the devoutly religious. But the settlement of
colonial le Baron hardly looked like an Eden. When the
LeBaron clan first arrived in the parched Mexican desert in
(07:31):
nineteen there were just a few sheds in the barren,
little dobie houses with little dobe rooms and plastic on
the windows. These homes were scattered across a vast expanse
of desert. Residents washed close by hand, had no electricity
kerosene lamps to light up the town. At night. You
(07:51):
slept on the floors, floors with blankets. I'm sitting with
someone who has lived here from near the beginning. Yeah,
everybody knows who I am. I just want to tell
you that I'm Larie Stubbs, and I love my life
here and I love experiences. I've been through, even the
difficult ones, because I did learn a lot. Larie Stubbs
(08:14):
is a sort of guardian of the town, or at
least its story. She knows it better than anyone. I
like Larive the minute I meet her. She's a kind
of regal looking woman with alert blue eyes and a
rollicking sense of humor just below the surface. But I
can tell she views me with a slight suspicion. It's
taken a lot of people vouching for me to get
(08:36):
her to agree to this meeting. She probably wouldn't meet
with me at all if not for one thing. We're
both Mormon, well kind of. It's complicated. I grew up Mormon,
no longer practice or believe, and Larive practices a kind
of pure primitive version of Mormonism. But we have enough
(08:57):
of a shared background that, despite being a couple gen
narrations apart, there is a sort of common language between us,
a common experience, and I hope some sort of trust. Anyway,
when Loiev arrived, she was fifteen, and as harsh as
life back then sounds to me, Larive didn't seem to
mind the work and the scrubbing clothes and all the
(09:19):
hardships that people talk way too much about. It wasn't
that hard. You grew up with me a good attitude, work,
good spirit. We never were lazy, and we weren't complainers,
so that I suffered be that I would lie to
say I did. It was fun for you. For us,
it was like totally accepted. And then as years passed,
(09:43):
the town started to resemble well, an actual town. The
adobe huts now alongside neat houses. My dad found a
four room house and fixed enough that we could stand
up and eat in the kitchen because we didn't fit
sitting down, we're too many. And little by little they
put electricity in the town, and little by little the
(10:05):
roads got graveled and no, no more mud. And that's
just how that town started and how it is now.
This was the beginning of Colonial LeBaron as it exists today.
Big barns on the edge of town, a church at
its center, and homes that become more grand up in
the hills that surround the town. And I'll tell you
(10:27):
one thing about our people. Everybody in our people know
how to build their top of the line builders and
everybody's workers. Around this time in Colonial le Baron, I'm
talking about the late fifties. Here, the settlement was run
by a man named Joel LeBaron. The mantle of leadership
(10:49):
had been passed down from his father. Joel had a
lot of brothers and some of them were regarded as
a bit well out there. To give you an example,
bowl one brother started building spaceships to take people to Jesus.
Another called himself the elephant Strangler or the bull catcher,
(11:11):
or the Lion of Judah. He'd even roar like a lion.
The Lebarons were Mormon fundamentalists, which basically means they accept
a lot of the teachings of the regular Mormon faith,
things like Joseph Smith being the prophet who saw God
in Jesus in the Spring of eighteen. But they had
(11:33):
their own ideas too. For instance, Joel, this guy now
in charge of colonial LeBaron, he had declared himself to
be something called the One Mighty and Strong. This mighty
and Strong is a figure predicted in an obscure early
Mormon prophecy, essentially a man who would rise up after
(11:53):
the church had lost its way and set it in order.
Joel claimed that he was this person angels had appeared
to him, and that might sound strange, but angels talking
to Mormons is a pretty mainstream idea in the faith,
at least it was in the beginning. It was introduced
by Joseph Smith, and what he taught is that God
(12:15):
could talk to anyone. This idea was powerful, radical, revolutionary,
and dangerous, because if God could talk to anyone, who
knows what he might say. According to the Lebarons, one
of the first things God said to them was that
(12:37):
they should build the next Kingdom of God on earth,
and eventually all God's chosen people would flock to it.
When they arrived, they would see the town of the Labarons,
dreams brought to life through their hard work. They'd see
neatly hode rows of chili and beans, the herds of
(12:57):
cattle and sheep, deep orderly canals of water flowing to
verdant pasture, kids cleaning wheat, picking watermelon, a communal kitchen,
and then at night, townspeople gathering under the moonlight to
sing old Mormon hymns before kneeling in a circle to
pray and thank God for all their blessings. A communal society,
(13:21):
everyone engaged together in a grand, righteous project, the way
God intended, all led by the One Mighty and Strong Joel.
Joel had a younger brother named Herbol and his kids.
Growing up in Mexico. They had done everything together. Tied
(13:42):
tin cans, two dogs, tails, snuck into crowds to ride cows,
hunted deer and wild pigs in the mountains, and during
flooding season they would ride waves down the river. They
were wild, unruly boys, but best friends, and as they
grew up, in some ways they became opposites because where
(14:04):
Joel was quiet and hung back, Hervill could be loud
and brash. Physically, they were both tall. Joel was about
six ft two and really broad shouldered, and in this
remote part of Mexico, he couldn't find clothes that fit,
so Joel's pants were always six inches too short, his
sleeves ended a little below his elbow. Hervil was even taller,
(14:27):
six ft four, and in pictures I've seen of him
during this period he looked well. Some might describe it
as old Hollywood handsome, I think James Cagney or Gary Cooper,
with that classic square jawline, Roman nos and piercing blue eyes.
But where Joel and Hervil's differences were most pronounced was
(14:49):
in their approach to religion. Because after Joel inherited the
title the One Mighty and Strong from their father, it
turned out his approach to faith was well, surprisingly chill
for a fundamentalist. They didn't even make him go to church.
If they didn't want to go, you leave him alone.
They're doing the best they can. They live under difficult circumstances,
(15:11):
and he was that way with all of us. Joel
didn't say a lot, and so some people in the
surrounding towns they thought he was slow, But that was
just his way. He was the type of guy who
listened more than he talked. Joel was just tender and
kind and polite, and you could listen to him or
not listen to him. He didn't push people around, and
(15:34):
he wasn't narrow minded, and he wasn't fanatic, and he
didn't butt into your business. All I can tell you
is a humble top of the line. Later, Hervil's approached
to religion, well, it was a bit fanatical and a
little bit um. Talked too long always, and talked too much,
(15:56):
and of course we had our little opinions. But let
me tell you something, because I'm a real good witness
of it. He wanted to tell Joel what to do,
because he wanted Joel to do everything more perfect and
more professional and more all these things. And Joel wasn't
like that. Joel had no pretenses initially. Despite those differences,
(16:25):
these two brothers, Joel and Herbal, they ran the town
together almost a partnership, Joel in charge but relying on
Hervil's assistance to build utopia, after all, a communal society
where everyone works for the common good that takes a
lot of organizing, but a small price to pay to
(16:45):
create God's Kingdom, or, as the Labeyons called it, Zion.
I believe Zion is a place where people can have
their respect and live in peace and have their rights.
And I do know that it's referred to as a
church subject, but I believe that it's a lot more
than that. Anybody can be in that society that's willing
(17:09):
to be respectful and honorable. And as a journalist who
often writes about religion, this term Zion comes up a lot.
It's not just the utopia the la Barons were building
out here in the Mexican desert. It is something at
the center of a lot of faiths, the promise of
this big coming together of people to live in peace.
(17:33):
As a Mormon, the idea was part of my upbringing,
and even though I'm no longer practicing that faith, I
can still understand on a really visceral level, just how
exciting it would be to think that Zion isn't some
far off hope, but it's here now. The Gathering is
about to happen. Listening to Larive and others in colonial
(17:56):
LeBaron speak about this early period of the town, you
can still sense it just how exciting this all was. Plus,
new people were now arriving in the desert, the town growing,
this big coming together. Joel literally called it the Gathering.
He had bought a printing press and a big barrel
(18:17):
of ink, and he and hervill were using it to
publish pamphlets to get the word out. They often made
trips to the States to spread this message. The Gathering
was happening, something once prophesied now actually coming true in
the Chihuahua desert. There was one crucial reason for this
(18:39):
feeling of anticipation, the arrival of a very specific group
of outsiders into the town. They came just before dawn
on a chilly morning in October. A villager who had
gone outside to light a fire under hawashtub noticed them
two strangers standing by the tub warming Themsel was by
(19:00):
the fire, and over the coming days many more arrived.
The French missionary showed up, so we knew him. Like
when they got here, they're all excited, talking, visiting Joel,
visiting everybody. They were so excited, you don't even know.
(19:21):
The French Missionaries was the name given to this group
of outsiders, but they weren't French at all. They were Americans,
mostly from California and Utah. They had heard about Colonial
le Baron while serving as Mormon missionaries in France a
year earlier, and they too had become convinced Colonial Abaron
(19:43):
was the next kingdom of God on Earth. This was
a pivotal moment in the history of the town. The
first group of disciples of this scion who weren't in
some way related to the Labarons or local converts. In
in fact, they had no prior connection to fundamentalism whatsoever.
(20:04):
And of of course, educated in college students, we were the
young punks, you see. And it was a big deal.
One French missionary named Dan Jordan's would go on to
become a particularly big deal in Colonial le Baron. In fact,
his actions would change the lives of the people here forever.
(20:28):
That's coming up after the break. There's a certain time
(20:48):
in the Chihuahua desert, when the pale light of day
suddenly becomes something else. Shadows slowly appear. They're just hints
at first, clinging to the edges of buildings, but before
you've really noticed them, they've grown into these long, arching fingers,
(21:09):
all pointing in one direction, toward the dark night that's
about to arrive. Around this time, the warm desert air
carries this feeling, almost like a chill that's coming in
the desert where I grew up. Sometimes I would dread
the night because it seemed to take me away from
(21:31):
the safety and security around me. When I closed my
eyes and try to go back to colonial LeBaron at
this point in its history, the nineteen fifties giving way
to the nineteen sixties. Joel in charge, hervil at his side.
That's the time of day I picture it to be
for these people, these dreamers who had traveled here in
(21:54):
the white light of hope with ideals of love and salvation.
But um had started to notice those first lingering signs
of darkness that would cast shadows across the land. Around
the same time as Larie's family arrived in the Mexican desert,
a teenage girl named Stephanie Spencer moved with her family
(22:17):
to Colonial LeBaron. Joel and Herbyl were Stephanie's uncles on
her mom's side. I remember my uncle Joel preaching to
my mother and my mother lying there on the couch
while she was pregnant with her feet up, trying to
keep from having a miscarriage. In the end, they joined
Joel's cult, and I was eleven years old when I
got baptized into it cult. That's how Stephanie Spencer came
(22:41):
to understand Joel and Ervil's church when her family joined
in the fifties. Right from the start, Stephanie could see
life in Colonial LeBaron was going to be tough. This
bright kid who loved books and school suddenly transported to
this desert town. My parents had sprained that we were
going to zi In. I was all prepared to see
(23:04):
a beautiful, wonderful place, and it was like falling into
an abyss. It was really hot, windy. The wind was
often blowing, but it cools off at night. We didn't
have any air condition. We didn't have much of anything.
The mud hut maybe had one or two windows, and
they were covered with wax paper. They couldn't afford glass
(23:29):
for window planes. I mean, these people were extremely poor.
All the water was gotten from wells they dug, and
I spent my years they're drawing up pills of water
and hauling them to the house for everything from bathing
and washing clothes to cooking. The cognitive dissonance stayed in
my mind. It kept telling me, Oh, this is heaven,
(23:51):
but in my heart I felt it was hell on.
Stephanie did her best to settle into town life, despite
their being hardly any other kids her age, and as
other families arrived, fellow Mormons from Utah and Arizona and Idaho.
That excitement you heard Larivee Stubbs describe the anticipation spreading
(24:12):
across the town, Well, Stephanie noticed it, too, noticed the
community's feeling that something momentous was happening here in colonial LeBaron.
She was interested in one new arrival, in particular, this
tall and dashing guy by the name of Bill Tucker.
He had grown up in Los Angeles and had gone
to college. He was one of the French missionaries that
(24:35):
had arrived in October of how a certain cosmopolitan sophistication,
kind of the opposite of everything Stephanie saw around her.
And then one day he invited Stephanie out on a date,
a picnic. I was sixteen, I was love sick. I
was in my lovely yellow heels and Sunday best clothes.
(24:59):
Was just what your will on a picnic, And back
in those days, this was a chance for Stephanie to escape,
even if it was just for one afternoon. But despite
her obvious excitement, Stephanie's parents at the very last minute
forbid her from going, just as this guy, Bill Tucker,
had arrived in his Cadillac to pick her up. Devastated,
(25:21):
Stephanie fled the house. I couldn't stand to live there anymore.
But there was no way to run away. There was
absolutely no way. There was no transportation, was just a
little tiny town in this Mesquite desert. She hit out
in an old, broken down station wagon in their backyard,
tucked herself under the steering well, sat there for nine hours.
(25:44):
The whole settlement turned out to look for her. At dusk,
Stephanie's dad came in the backyard to milk the cow,
and for some reason he looked inside the car and
saw Stephanie hiding there. He just opened that card or
he drugged me out of there. He grabbed me by
the hair of the head. He started kicking me. He
(26:05):
picked up a two by four and he beat me
until he'd have enough, And he said to me that
ought to fix you, you in your pretty face. I'm
sick and tired of all these men that keep coming
to me and asking for your hand in marriage, all
because you just smile at them all the time, your
damned smile. You're making me lose all my friends because
(26:25):
I have to tell them that they can't court you.
What happened to Stephanie that day was the first glimpse
at a dark undercurrent of violence in the Labyrian community,
and she was seeing some other signs too, perhaps before
anyone else. Around the same time Stephanie's father beat her,
she headed out of her house on another escape, this
(26:48):
time not a physical departure, but a mental one. I
wanted to read so badly, because we weren't supposed to
be reading anything at all, especially the women, unless it
was the scriptures. And all I ever found was such
violence in the scriptures. So self confessed bookworm, Stephanie searched
her neighbor's houses for new reading material. She wasn't going
(27:10):
to be picky anything to put her mind anywhere but here,
and she started her search with a small dwelling on
the edge of her family's plot. It belonged to Herville LeBaron.
I found a chance to go into Arvill's little met
(27:32):
adobe with a door on it and one little window
covered by wax paper, and I wanted to look through
his books. There was no lock on the door. Actually,
nobody had locks on their doors when they lived down there.
That's not trusting they were. And I had a slight
guilt feeling that, oh God, what if he comes by?
(27:54):
But I knew he almost never did. I didn't stand
there too long, and I kept any on any noises
creeping around In the half light, Stephanie started to get
her bearings. He had a little caught literally made out
of wood, with maybe a cow hide or something on it,
(28:15):
and that's where he would lie with a cow hide
pillow he had made to raise his head upwards lean
his back against their Next Hervil's bed was a collection
of books. Stephanie might have expected the small library to
contain religious tracts, but the books were on something entirely different.
(28:36):
I came across the pocket size book of the Mafia.
There were different sections in it, and the one section
I remember best because it really caught my eye, was
the section for how to get rid of people and
make it look like it was an accident, how to
kill so that nobody could ever pin the murder on you.
(28:57):
He had that underline in his really penciling, and I
know it was his underlying because his pencil was there
and he had underlined it well and good this area.
What did you feel in that moment, Well, it's stuck
in my mind. This is interesting. And whenever you don't
have answers for things, you just leave it there till
gradually gain information. It was many years later, twenty thirty
(29:21):
forty years later, before it all kicked in. From the
vantage point of a teenager in nineteen sixties Colonial Baron,
all Stephanie could see an Herville was an extremely devout man,
a man using any means necessary to draw people into
the church, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes by sheer endurance.
(29:46):
If you want to convert somebody to something, this is
how the mind works. You talk loud and hard and
fast and soft and smooth as velvet, which Ervil was
good at changing to she wanted to further nesmerize you.
You do that for hours, you keep talking a steady
stream to where they can't even take a toilet break.
(30:09):
After six hours, get a drink of water. Let alone,
let alone, get some sleep. Stephanie remembers Hervill would sometimes
preach to the people of colonial a Baron in sermons
that could go on all night, literally, And if you
do this long enough, their brain will suddenly snap and
(30:29):
they'll see a vision. They'll see what they think in
their mind is God, or that this is telling them
the truth. And this relentless approach was proving successful. Herville
was pulling in the followers, gaining his own loyalists. And
once they believe they've been converted to the truth, their
family of memories and friends and church leaders, nobody can
(30:53):
convince them. It's like pulling teeth to get them to
come back to the the reality. Throughout the nineteen sixties,
Joel continued to leave more leadership responsibilities to Irville, and
he may have felt he had to because his schedule
was getting busier. His fledgling church was now establishing outposts
(31:17):
in other parts of Mexico, and Joel was often gone
from town for weeks months even trying to set these up.
And in his absence, some strange things had started to happen.
There was the death of someone called Morrow gautierres He
was close to Joel, and one day he was gunned
down near a bar in a neighboring town. Then, not
(31:40):
long after, another member of Joel's church met a similar fate,
John Booch Ride, shot to death outside of town. Butchright
had a reputation for running his mouth off against turbul
Residents wondered who were the faceless attackers behind these murders.
Why was this happening on the edge of Zion. No
(32:02):
one seemed to have any answers. And then Herville was
you could say, promoted by Joel, or at least given
a new grand sounding title. He was the Patriarch and
second Grand Head of the Church of the Firstborn of
the Fullness of Times, and he took this role seriously.
(32:23):
He began to transform the town through his distinct style
of leadership. He instituted a strict militaristic order. Kids were
required to assemble in front of the schoolhouse at seven
in the morning and then marched to their classes in
a tight formation. He also started this secret cabal called
the United Women of Zion with nighttime meetings. He used
(32:46):
the women basically as spies. Now it wasn't just Stephanie
who was seeing shadows creep across colonial le Baron. Larive
was too. Irva wanted you to dress eyes, and he
wanted people to get up and pushing you a little bit,
and even me, you're coming, Well, you don't need to
(33:07):
say it that way. No, go in the other room
and just think, well, I can say it however I want.
It seemed like the more control Irville gained, the more
power he wanted. He became very greedy, top more doctrine,
a little bit like fundamentalists how to live their religion.
He became imposing and fanatic. I want to quickly back
(33:30):
up here and give some context to what Lariva is
saying about hervil and his control of women. In fact,
this is a really important aspect of this whole podcast.
The la Barons and their followers were, and many still are,
polygamous plural marriage, one man, multiple wives. This was once
(33:55):
a defining feature of the Mormon Church, but under pressure
from the US federal government, the church banned the practice
in eighteen nine went from preaching plural marriage to excommunicating
anyone who lived it. This was essentially the beginning of
the Mormon fundamentalist movement, because there were some men and
(34:16):
women who were not going to stop practicing polygamy, and
so polygamy is one of the main reasons why the
Labarons set up their town in Mexico in the first place.
Two Mormon fundamentalists, like the Labarons, polygamy was serious business,
a commandment of God, and as they saw it, the
(34:36):
Church had simply sold out for mainstream acceptance. So the
Labarons moved to Mexico to keep living polygamy and to
avoid prosecution in the US. These idealistic dreamers were in
a way also refugees, and as men took more wives
and those wives had more children, the population quickly multiplied,
(34:59):
with men sitting atop a vast family structure. And so
what Herville understood intuitively was that controlling women was the
key to controlling these vast structures. It was the key
to power. Herville started to barter women, he'd marry off daughters,
(35:22):
arranged marriages to those most loyal to him, and colonial
le Baron became a community where child marriage was normalized.
Irville himself went on to groom girls as young as twelve.
His youngest wife was sixteen. Irville wanted to marry Larive,
and the fact that she wouldn't go along with it
(35:44):
seemed to make him want her even more. One time
he put his hand on my knee and I picked
it up and like, don't be touching me unless I
tell you you can. Let's playing the piano, and he
put his hand on my hand and I slapped him,
and I said, don't you ever touch me without permission.
(36:06):
As the sixties progressed, everyone could see a role was changing.
The man who once used baling wire for shoelaces and
a rope to hold up his pants was now wearing
tailored suits and driving around in a gold and Paula.
The townspeople jokingly called it the Golden Calf. He seemed
(36:27):
to be spending the church's cash on himself. He would
con his brothers older and younger, to do all the
dirt work while he sat there and told him how
to dig the well, how to make the cheese, and
Stephanie Spencer remembers how he'd stand apart from towns focus
they worked like he was too good to get his
hands dirty. He would be talking the scriptures and reading
(36:49):
from the scriptures and discussing the scriptures with them while
they worked. And why they let him get away with it,
I don't know. He also seemed to be splitting from reality.
He'd swipe it imaginary flies, go to three days without sleeping.
He'd write and preach until he collapsed with exhaustion, and
(37:14):
people would see him kind of shambling around town. He
walked with his shoulders down and leaning forward, But part
of that was he was in his mind thinking and
probably hearing voices and so on, and to concentrate better,
he would be leaning forward and often looking down on
the ground watch a step while his mind was up there,
(37:36):
so at least he wouldn't trip on all those rocks
and the dirt paths of Colonia LeBaron. Stephanie Spencer was
now living under her uncle Hervil's tyranny to someone who
would lash out unpredictably and scold her and the other townsfolk.
We weren't getting off our butts and doing what he
and Joel were telling them to do. And if the
(38:00):
women didn't get behind him and his work and consider
their children as not their children, but the children of
the work. And therefore the work of God wasn't getting
off the ground. It was us to blame. While she
did finally manage to leave the tyranny of her family home,
Stephanie remained stuck in Colonial a Baron. She had become
(38:23):
the third wife of Bill Tucker, that guy from Los
Angeles who had picked her up in his cadillac for
a picnic, Well tried to. When Stephanie married him in
sixty two. She was sixteen and he was twenty six.
And then one day he just up and left her.
He'd become disillusioned with Herville Joel two, so he'd fled
(38:47):
town less, Stephanie behind. Now Irvill wanted to know where
he was. I was warned that he was going to
come up to my little yellow house on the hill
talk with me. And Rvil did show up at my house,
and this guy was in a rage. It was showing
(39:09):
in his eyes. He was livid. He was furious. How
dare Bill? He looked me directly in the eyes with
these blazing angry and murder in his eyes. You could
say crazy. It was a crazy look. He was crazed.
It scared me, and when I look back on it now,
I think, well, I'm lucky he didn't kill me. When
(39:31):
Stephanie says murder in his eyes, she's not exaggerating. Because
Hervil had started to add his own little flourishes to
Choll's religion, and one of them was something he called
civil law. Sounds quite simple, has a mundane, bureaucratic ring
to it, but civil law is the death penalty, and
(39:53):
Ervill wanted to use it for anyone not falling in line.
Bill knew that he would be killed because one of
the dictims of that cult was that if you ever left,
you would be killed. There were no ends of some
butts about it. None of this is what Joel, the
Chill fundamentalist who didn't even care if people went to church,
(40:16):
wanted to create. In his eyes, the civil law. The
death penalty was all wrong, terribly wrong. Joel's confidence told
him he had to do something because Hervil's speeches in
public had become increasingly blood soaked. He was saying that
colonial le Baron would be the gathering place for the
(40:38):
Lord's army before a final showdown, and then Herville said
something even more shocking. The civil law or the death
penalty could apply to anyone, even Joel. I was in
the meeting the first day. I left the class. An
(40:59):
Earl's tried to stop me, but I I was upset,
and I ran across the street over to Magdalena's house.
Magdalene was one of Joel's seven wives. And instead of
Joel's there and they said, he said he was. And
I went in there and I said, I just want
you to know that today in church, Rvill was preaching
(41:19):
the civil law, as was her style. Larive told her
prophet straight up she was worried. He should be worried too, Joel.
I don't like this talking about the law force, Joel said.
We're not talking about the law force. We're talking about
the law of liberty. The law of liberty, Joel said,
(41:40):
people were free to make their own choices in their
relationship with God. Ervill was planning on preaching again later
that day, and so Joel decided to attend. When he
got there, Hervil took the podium again and began to
make his case for civil law death penalties. The law force.
Joel comes to the second class, and this is exactly
(42:02):
what he said. Some people call it a law of force,
and I would like to call it a law of liberty.
All right there, Boil and Madagon walk out. Not long
after this confrontation, there was another major standoff between the
two brothers. Herville stood before the congregation arguing for the
death penalty and was again rebuked by Joel. Herville came
(42:27):
right back at him, retorted that his vision was the
only vision, and that and this is a quote, blood
will run to solve our problems. Everyone was in shock,
and then Dan Jordan's stood up. Dan Jordan's, that French
missionary now operating side by side with Herville. He had
(42:52):
Hervil's back and announced the shock congregation, we will break
the dry wood in this church into old pieces and
burn it more after the break. I have one sister
(43:24):
and five brothers, and like Joel and Herville, we were
raised far from the nearest town out in the desert,
and we mostly just had each other, especially when we
were little. We caught bull frogs in the river behind
our house. We shot each other with bb guns. We
raced our horses up by the canal, and I kept
thinking of this when I thought about what happened with
(43:46):
Joel and Hervill. How no matter what kind of warnings
Joel got. He always gave his brother the benefit of
the doubt. It was almost like he thought or knew
the things he was hearing just had to be wrong. Me.
I don't know. That's the thing with brothers. You feel
like you know them better than anyone because you do,
(44:09):
and I guess sometimes you don't. In nineteen sixty nine,
things had reached a breaking point in colonial A Baron
Herville seemed completely out of control. Larive told Joel everyone
in town could see it. He had to act. People
(44:31):
thought that Joel should take away his authority, his office.
And I went to Joel and I said, Joel, people
are complaining because Rvil's saying way too much stuff, and
why don't you do something about it? You're the leader.
(44:53):
In November of nineteen Joel finally made a decision. They
released Dan, Jordan's and IRV of all the authority. They
had Herville put his head in his hands, and he
wept to leave. He actually seemed relieved, but this wasn't
some return to peace between the brothers. After this, the
(45:16):
threats against Joel didn't just resume. They built to a crescendo,
kick up more all the time, and Nervill did say things,
and I would go tell Joel and he said, Larry,
don't talk about him and don't be rude to him.
And you know why, I believe that. Joel said that
he already had premonitions that he might do what he did,
(45:37):
and he was broken hearted about it. He couldn't figure
out how to get Rvil to pull back, calm down,
and be willing to work with him. In one Joel
kicked Hervill out of his church, excommunicated him. So the
(45:58):
following year, Hervill set up his own own and he
called it the Church of the Lamb of God, and
he started publishing his own pamphlets. The texts were both
pitches to new followers and threats to anyone who resisted.
Now they were rivals, he Enjoel. The shadows were getting
longer over colonial a Baron. We're on Mexico's Highway one,
(46:39):
which wines right down the coast, kind of the Serpentine Road.
We are outside of Encinata. There are palm trees in
the median. There's some graffiti on the walls, and it
just sort of looks like a quaint little seaside town.
(46:59):
It's like seven five am, and there seemed to be
just kind of this little cloud or pall of dust
hanging over the whole city. All right, it looks like
we're pulling up. There are bars on the windows of
a cement building with a paint peeling off. Okay, this
(47:24):
is the house. I'm with one of Joel's sons, Adrian.
Back in August two, his dad was an Incinata, Mexico.
He was on his way to an outpost of his
church on the Baja Peninsula, over a thousand kilometers to
the west of Colonial Barn. Joel may have felt safe
in this coastal town, but he wasn't. Arriving in Incinata,
(47:48):
Joel stopped by a little house where one of his
followers lived. He planned to just pick up a car key. Today,
the house sits next to an open sewer running parallel
to a busy road that leads up to a bridge
where we're standing. You just imagine that that bridge wasn't there.
It was kind of dirt road fifty years ago. So
(48:10):
the building Adrian and I have pulled up in front
of is a single frame box house. It's made of
cinder block. It's white. The paint is chipping there's an
iron gate out front. Very very simple, maybe two three
rooms with the wood roof, shingle roof. The way the
little houses is the same. Then it just to be
that they didn't reminder of these when Adrian's dad got
(48:39):
here on August two, the key to the car he
was picking up wasn't here. Then these two men appeared.
They were Hervil's followers. They came out of the house
that we're standing in front of Joe Way. They'd both
(49:01):
once belonged to his church. One told Joel that he'd
go pick up the car keys, he'd be right back.
The other invited Joel inside this house to discuss their
religious differences. Joel followed the men inside. After about twenty minutes,
(49:24):
he saw another Herville follower. It was Dan Jordan's. Dan
approached the house, walked inside. We know these details because
another one of Joel's sons, his name is Ivan, was
in a car outside waiting. He watched the scene unfold.
(49:46):
Dan Jordon came in and then Ivan, my brother says
that he heard noise. Says then discussions and then all
of the sudden some shots. Yeah, they kill him. If
the actual killing of my that in rural cold blood.
(50:09):
Joel le Baron was dead. They kill him right here
on the twentie Fagas of Things seventy two salmost fifty years.
Up until this point, Hervil's threats towards his brother had
just been words. But now, in ordering Joel's death, there
(50:29):
would be no turning back. The murder of Joel was
a line in the sand, and there could be no
doubt that darkness had arrived in Colonial le Baron the
legacy of the unfolding events would scar everyone who experienced them.
(50:50):
For Stephanie Spencer, she would go on to escape Colonial
le Baron, but she's lived her life trying to make
sense of what she endured. Adrian LeBaron, he was just
a child when this all happened, but these events became
a defining moment. The murdered man was not just his father,
(51:11):
he was his prophet. Adrian has dedicated his life to
keeping his father's dream alive, and so have the people
of Colonial LeBaron, who remained committed to building that utopia
Joe LeBaron envisioned. But for those who would go on
to follow Ervio LeBaron, what happened in that small house
(51:31):
in Ensnata was more than just the killing of a
rival prophet. It was a killing in Ervil's name. And
from this point Erville must have known he could order
further attacks. If he could order the killing of his
own brother, why not those outside the family who wouldn't
(51:52):
fall in line, Not just individuals. Next on his hit
list was a whole town. Yeah, my brother went and
looked through the window, he went towards the window and
at the moment he opened the curtain and Luke he
(52:12):
got shot in the head. And then a mot of
bomb was thrown through the same window by the same week,
A Man That's Coming Up an episode two deliver Us
(52:40):
from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written
and reported by me Leona Hamad 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
(53:04):
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
(53:26):
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
Ann Macaluso or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the team.
(53:51):
A U T A. For more from novel, visit novel
dot Audio
Novel. A listener note this episode contains violence and content
that some listeners might find distressing, including references to child abuse.
(00:54):
If you drive down Mexico's Highway to you pass through
a wide open desert, roll the windows down. You smell
the sage, the soil, see the pink wildflowers, the Sierra
Madre mountains looming in the distance. My name is Jesse Hyde,
and I'm a journalist. The first time I drove down
(01:18):
the stretch of highway, I was working on a story
and editor had asked me to check out something about
a massacre thought to be carried out by a Mexican
drug cartel. They had opened fire on women and children
from a town near here. When I arrived in that town,
I expected to find it under siege. It's people living
(01:40):
in fear. But instead I found something more interesting than
that crime I had originally been sent to cover, and
something more complicated both for me and the town. And
so now I've come back. Yeah, come and say hi
to Jesse to try to understand more about this strange,
(02:03):
fascinating place. Welcome to Colonial Colonial Labaron. That's the name
of the town. It's August. When I arrived back here,
and they're holding something called the Friendship Fair. I can't
say it in Spanish, it sounds stupid when you say
in English. There's a rodeo, a big dance, and the
(02:25):
demolition derby, which not gonna lie. I've been looking forward
to for weeks since i first started planning this trip.
There's this huge crowd of cheering spectators sitting on haybells
around a deep dirt pit under all the choking dust.
Cars are smashing each other up. It's glorious. Did they
(02:54):
already start? The point of this friendship Fair isn't just fun.
It's to build rust because this is cartel country, which
means Narco's control almost every town around here, so building
goodwill with the neighbors can literally keep you alive. But
the Friendship Fair is also a big family reunion. People
(03:16):
who grew up here but have since left They return
come home and for a week or so they're reunited
with cousins and aunts, uncle's, moms and Dat's standing in
the middle of these crowds, everyone's saying hi, hugging, laughing, reconnecting.
(03:40):
You feel this energy, this happiness, but something more than that.
It's a feeling of belonging. You know that feeling when
you're safe, when you feel like your home. Yeah, have
you ever heard of the Little Baron's? Yeah, I figured
(04:04):
you guys are le Baron. Walk through the town and
you hear that name over and over. My name is
Marto LeBaron. My name is Josiah Liberton Leberon. Like, yes,
I am le Baron. Is almost like a race, you
know what. I Almost everyone who lives in this town
is related in some way to its founding LeBaron family.
(04:25):
But believe me when I say that's actually far from
the most extraordinary thing about this place. Because in this
town a religion was born from the same roots as
my own Mormon upbringing. But this religion quickly mutated, became
a murderous cult, then a deadly organized crime family as
(04:48):
ruthless as any I've heard of, Yet for so many years,
their identities were hidden from view. How did this happen,
this descent into terror which spun out from colonial LeBaron
through Mexico and across the border into America. I had
to find out, and in doing so I met a
(05:10):
group of extraordinary people, former cult followers, cops, victims, journalists, prosecutors,
and survivors, people who somehow lived through it all. This
podcast is their story. Thirteen episodes and a collection of
lives all linked together, a tale of resistance. Many of
(05:34):
the people speaking about it for the first time, how
they were pulled into this incredible saga, how they survived,
and how it could still be playing out today. We
have survived something horrific in which you're both the victim
and the criminal. Narcotics trafficking, gun running, murder, We're talking
(05:57):
about murder, multiple homicide. Key to this, but nothing like this.
Please is not enough on this. We are in a fight.
They were shooting cows by house. The gun was pointing
at me day, the kids and heights. They are killing
people out there. These guys want to dominate the world.
(06:19):
The guy's handed us our guns and send us all away.
Need to go kill all these people the ways God's
can curse us forever. Where did you share chess? I
don't know. I so now finally coming to a point
where we can speak about this so people know what
really happened in the cold. We can say the truth here.
(06:44):
It is from the teams at Novel and I Heart Radio.
You're listening to deliver us from Herbale and I'm Jesse Hyde.
(07:10):
This is Episode one, the One Mighty and Strong. The
myth of a promised land or a new world. It's
a fixation for the devoutly religious. But the settlement of
colonial le Baron hardly looked like an Eden. When the
LeBaron clan first arrived in the parched Mexican desert in
(07:31):
nineteen there were just a few sheds in the barren,
little dobie houses with little dobe rooms and plastic on
the windows. These homes were scattered across a vast expanse
of desert. Residents washed close by hand, had no electricity
kerosene lamps to light up the town. At night. You
(07:51):
slept on the floors, floors with blankets. I'm sitting with
someone who has lived here from near the beginning. Yeah,
everybody knows who I am. I just want to tell
you that I'm Larie Stubbs, and I love my life
here and I love experiences. I've been through, even the
difficult ones, because I did learn a lot. Larie Stubbs
(08:14):
is a sort of guardian of the town, or at
least its story. She knows it better than anyone. I
like Larive the minute I meet her. She's a kind
of regal looking woman with alert blue eyes and a
rollicking sense of humor just below the surface. But I
can tell she views me with a slight suspicion. It's
taken a lot of people vouching for me to get
(08:36):
her to agree to this meeting. She probably wouldn't meet
with me at all if not for one thing. We're
both Mormon, well kind of. It's complicated. I grew up Mormon,
no longer practice or believe, and Larive practices a kind
of pure primitive version of Mormonism. But we have enough
(08:57):
of a shared background that, despite being a couple gen
narrations apart, there is a sort of common language between us,
a common experience, and I hope some sort of trust. Anyway,
when Loiev arrived, she was fifteen, and as harsh as
life back then sounds to me, Larive didn't seem to
mind the work and the scrubbing clothes and all the
(09:19):
hardships that people talk way too much about. It wasn't
that hard. You grew up with me a good attitude, work,
good spirit. We never were lazy, and we weren't complainers,
so that I suffered be that I would lie to
say I did. It was fun for you. For us,
it was like totally accepted. And then as years passed,
(09:43):
the town started to resemble well, an actual town. The
adobe huts now alongside neat houses. My dad found a
four room house and fixed enough that we could stand
up and eat in the kitchen because we didn't fit
sitting down, we're too many. And little by little they
put electricity in the town, and little by little the
(10:05):
roads got graveled and no, no more mud. And that's
just how that town started and how it is now.
This was the beginning of Colonial LeBaron as it exists today.
Big barns on the edge of town, a church at
its center, and homes that become more grand up in
the hills that surround the town. And I'll tell you
(10:27):
one thing about our people. Everybody in our people know
how to build their top of the line builders and
everybody's workers. Around this time in Colonial le Baron, I'm
talking about the late fifties. Here, the settlement was run
by a man named Joel LeBaron. The mantle of leadership
(10:49):
had been passed down from his father. Joel had a
lot of brothers and some of them were regarded as
a bit well out there. To give you an example,
bowl one brother started building spaceships to take people to Jesus.
Another called himself the elephant Strangler or the bull catcher,
(11:11):
or the Lion of Judah. He'd even roar like a lion.
The Lebarons were Mormon fundamentalists, which basically means they accept
a lot of the teachings of the regular Mormon faith,
things like Joseph Smith being the prophet who saw God
in Jesus in the Spring of eighteen. But they had
(11:33):
their own ideas too. For instance, Joel, this guy now
in charge of colonial LeBaron, he had declared himself to
be something called the One Mighty and Strong. This mighty
and Strong is a figure predicted in an obscure early
Mormon prophecy, essentially a man who would rise up after
(11:53):
the church had lost its way and set it in order.
Joel claimed that he was this person angels had appeared
to him, and that might sound strange, but angels talking
to Mormons is a pretty mainstream idea in the faith,
at least it was in the beginning. It was introduced
by Joseph Smith, and what he taught is that God
(12:15):
could talk to anyone. This idea was powerful, radical, revolutionary,
and dangerous, because if God could talk to anyone, who
knows what he might say. According to the Lebarons, one
of the first things God said to them was that
(12:37):
they should build the next Kingdom of God on earth,
and eventually all God's chosen people would flock to it.
When they arrived, they would see the town of the Labarons,
dreams brought to life through their hard work. They'd see
neatly hode rows of chili and beans, the herds of
(12:57):
cattle and sheep, deep orderly canals of water flowing to
verdant pasture, kids cleaning wheat, picking watermelon, a communal kitchen,
and then at night, townspeople gathering under the moonlight to
sing old Mormon hymns before kneeling in a circle to
pray and thank God for all their blessings. A communal society,
(13:21):
everyone engaged together in a grand, righteous project, the way
God intended, all led by the One Mighty and Strong Joel.
Joel had a younger brother named Herbol and his kids.
Growing up in Mexico. They had done everything together. Tied
(13:42):
tin cans, two dogs, tails, snuck into crowds to ride cows,
hunted deer and wild pigs in the mountains, and during
flooding season they would ride waves down the river. They
were wild, unruly boys, but best friends, and as they
grew up, in some ways they became opposites because where
(14:04):
Joel was quiet and hung back, Hervill could be loud
and brash. Physically, they were both tall. Joel was about
six ft two and really broad shouldered, and in this
remote part of Mexico, he couldn't find clothes that fit,
so Joel's pants were always six inches too short, his
sleeves ended a little below his elbow. Hervil was even taller,
(14:27):
six ft four, and in pictures I've seen of him
during this period he looked well. Some might describe it
as old Hollywood handsome, I think James Cagney or Gary Cooper,
with that classic square jawline, Roman nos and piercing blue eyes.
But where Joel and Hervil's differences were most pronounced was
(14:49):
in their approach to religion. Because after Joel inherited the
title the One Mighty and Strong from their father, it
turned out his approach to faith was well, surprisingly chill
for a fundamentalist. They didn't even make him go to church.
If they didn't want to go, you leave him alone.
They're doing the best they can. They live under difficult circumstances,
(15:11):
and he was that way with all of us. Joel
didn't say a lot, and so some people in the
surrounding towns they thought he was slow, But that was
just his way. He was the type of guy who
listened more than he talked. Joel was just tender and
kind and polite, and you could listen to him or
not listen to him. He didn't push people around, and
(15:34):
he wasn't narrow minded, and he wasn't fanatic, and he
didn't butt into your business. All I can tell you
is a humble top of the line. Later, Hervil's approached
to religion, well, it was a bit fanatical and a
little bit um. Talked too long always, and talked too much,
(15:56):
and of course we had our little opinions. But let
me tell you something, because I'm a real good witness
of it. He wanted to tell Joel what to do,
because he wanted Joel to do everything more perfect and
more professional and more all these things. And Joel wasn't
like that. Joel had no pretenses initially. Despite those differences,
(16:25):
these two brothers, Joel and Herbal, they ran the town
together almost a partnership, Joel in charge but relying on
Hervil's assistance to build utopia, after all, a communal society
where everyone works for the common good that takes a
lot of organizing, but a small price to pay to
(16:45):
create God's Kingdom, or, as the Labeyons called it, Zion.
I believe Zion is a place where people can have
their respect and live in peace and have their rights.
And I do know that it's referred to as a
church subject, but I believe that it's a lot more
than that. Anybody can be in that society that's willing
(17:09):
to be respectful and honorable. And as a journalist who
often writes about religion, this term Zion comes up a lot.
It's not just the utopia the la Barons were building
out here in the Mexican desert. It is something at
the center of a lot of faiths, the promise of
this big coming together of people to live in peace.
(17:33):
As a Mormon, the idea was part of my upbringing,
and even though I'm no longer practicing that faith, I
can still understand on a really visceral level, just how
exciting it would be to think that Zion isn't some
far off hope, but it's here now. The Gathering is
about to happen. Listening to Larive and others in colonial
(17:56):
LeBaron speak about this early period of the town, you
can still sense it just how exciting this all was. Plus,
new people were now arriving in the desert, the town growing,
this big coming together. Joel literally called it the Gathering.
He had bought a printing press and a big barrel
(18:17):
of ink, and he and hervill were using it to
publish pamphlets to get the word out. They often made
trips to the States to spread this message. The Gathering
was happening, something once prophesied now actually coming true in
the Chihuahua desert. There was one crucial reason for this
(18:39):
feeling of anticipation, the arrival of a very specific group
of outsiders into the town. They came just before dawn
on a chilly morning in October. A villager who had
gone outside to light a fire under hawashtub noticed them
two strangers standing by the tub warming Themsel was by
(19:00):
the fire, and over the coming days many more arrived.
The French missionary showed up, so we knew him. Like
when they got here, they're all excited, talking, visiting Joel,
visiting everybody. They were so excited, you don't even know.
(19:21):
The French Missionaries was the name given to this group
of outsiders, but they weren't French at all. They were Americans,
mostly from California and Utah. They had heard about Colonial
le Baron while serving as Mormon missionaries in France a
year earlier, and they too had become convinced Colonial Abaron
(19:43):
was the next kingdom of God on Earth. This was
a pivotal moment in the history of the town. The
first group of disciples of this scion who weren't in
some way related to the Labarons or local converts. In
in fact, they had no prior connection to fundamentalism whatsoever.
(20:04):
And of of course, educated in college students, we were the
young punks, you see. And it was a big deal.
One French missionary named Dan Jordan's would go on to
become a particularly big deal in Colonial le Baron. In fact,
his actions would change the lives of the people here forever.
(20:28):
That's coming up after the break. There's a certain time
(20:48):
in the Chihuahua desert, when the pale light of day
suddenly becomes something else. Shadows slowly appear. They're just hints
at first, clinging to the edges of buildings, but before
you've really noticed them, they've grown into these long, arching fingers,
(21:09):
all pointing in one direction, toward the dark night that's
about to arrive. Around this time, the warm desert air
carries this feeling, almost like a chill that's coming in
the desert where I grew up. Sometimes I would dread
the night because it seemed to take me away from
(21:31):
the safety and security around me. When I closed my
eyes and try to go back to colonial LeBaron at
this point in its history, the nineteen fifties giving way
to the nineteen sixties. Joel in charge, hervil at his side.
That's the time of day I picture it to be
for these people, these dreamers who had traveled here in
(21:54):
the white light of hope with ideals of love and salvation.
But um had started to notice those first lingering signs
of darkness that would cast shadows across the land. Around
the same time as Larie's family arrived in the Mexican desert,
a teenage girl named Stephanie Spencer moved with her family
(22:17):
to Colonial LeBaron. Joel and Herbyl were Stephanie's uncles on
her mom's side. I remember my uncle Joel preaching to
my mother and my mother lying there on the couch
while she was pregnant with her feet up, trying to
keep from having a miscarriage. In the end, they joined
Joel's cult, and I was eleven years old when I
got baptized into it cult. That's how Stephanie Spencer came
(22:41):
to understand Joel and Ervil's church when her family joined
in the fifties. Right from the start, Stephanie could see
life in Colonial LeBaron was going to be tough. This
bright kid who loved books and school suddenly transported to
this desert town. My parents had sprained that we were
going to zi In. I was all prepared to see
(23:04):
a beautiful, wonderful place, and it was like falling into
an abyss. It was really hot, windy. The wind was
often blowing, but it cools off at night. We didn't
have any air condition. We didn't have much of anything.
The mud hut maybe had one or two windows, and
they were covered with wax paper. They couldn't afford glass
(23:29):
for window planes. I mean, these people were extremely poor.
All the water was gotten from wells they dug, and
I spent my years they're drawing up pills of water
and hauling them to the house for everything from bathing
and washing clothes to cooking. The cognitive dissonance stayed in
my mind. It kept telling me, Oh, this is heaven,
(23:51):
but in my heart I felt it was hell on.
Stephanie did her best to settle into town life, despite
their being hardly any other kids her age, and as
other families arrived, fellow Mormons from Utah and Arizona and Idaho.
That excitement you heard Larivee Stubbs describe the anticipation spreading
(24:12):
across the town, Well, Stephanie noticed it, too, noticed the
community's feeling that something momentous was happening here in colonial LeBaron.
She was interested in one new arrival, in particular, this
tall and dashing guy by the name of Bill Tucker.
He had grown up in Los Angeles and had gone
to college. He was one of the French missionaries that
(24:35):
had arrived in October of how a certain cosmopolitan sophistication,
kind of the opposite of everything Stephanie saw around her.
And then one day he invited Stephanie out on a date,
a picnic. I was sixteen, I was love sick. I
was in my lovely yellow heels and Sunday best clothes.
(24:59):
Was just what your will on a picnic, And back
in those days, this was a chance for Stephanie to escape,
even if it was just for one afternoon. But despite
her obvious excitement, Stephanie's parents at the very last minute
forbid her from going, just as this guy, Bill Tucker,
had arrived in his Cadillac to pick her up. Devastated,
(25:21):
Stephanie fled the house. I couldn't stand to live there anymore.
But there was no way to run away. There was
absolutely no way. There was no transportation, was just a
little tiny town in this Mesquite desert. She hit out
in an old, broken down station wagon in their backyard,
tucked herself under the steering well, sat there for nine hours.
(25:44):
The whole settlement turned out to look for her. At dusk,
Stephanie's dad came in the backyard to milk the cow,
and for some reason he looked inside the car and
saw Stephanie hiding there. He just opened that card or
he drugged me out of there. He grabbed me by
the hair of the head. He started kicking me. He
(26:05):
picked up a two by four and he beat me
until he'd have enough, And he said to me that
ought to fix you, you in your pretty face. I'm
sick and tired of all these men that keep coming
to me and asking for your hand in marriage, all
because you just smile at them all the time, your
damned smile. You're making me lose all my friends because
(26:25):
I have to tell them that they can't court you.
What happened to Stephanie that day was the first glimpse
at a dark undercurrent of violence in the Labyrian community,
and she was seeing some other signs too, perhaps before
anyone else. Around the same time Stephanie's father beat her,
she headed out of her house on another escape, this
(26:48):
time not a physical departure, but a mental one. I
wanted to read so badly, because we weren't supposed to
be reading anything at all, especially the women, unless it
was the scriptures. And all I ever found was such
violence in the scriptures. So self confessed bookworm, Stephanie searched
her neighbor's houses for new reading material. She wasn't going
(27:10):
to be picky anything to put her mind anywhere but here,
and she started her search with a small dwelling on
the edge of her family's plot. It belonged to Herville LeBaron.
I found a chance to go into Arvill's little met
(27:32):
adobe with a door on it and one little window
covered by wax paper, and I wanted to look through
his books. There was no lock on the door. Actually,
nobody had locks on their doors when they lived down there.
That's not trusting they were. And I had a slight
guilt feeling that, oh God, what if he comes by?
(27:54):
But I knew he almost never did. I didn't stand
there too long, and I kept any on any noises
creeping around In the half light, Stephanie started to get
her bearings. He had a little caught literally made out
of wood, with maybe a cow hide or something on it,
(28:15):
and that's where he would lie with a cow hide
pillow he had made to raise his head upwards lean
his back against their Next Hervil's bed was a collection
of books. Stephanie might have expected the small library to
contain religious tracts, but the books were on something entirely different.
(28:36):
I came across the pocket size book of the Mafia.
There were different sections in it, and the one section
I remember best because it really caught my eye, was
the section for how to get rid of people and
make it look like it was an accident, how to
kill so that nobody could ever pin the murder on you.
(28:57):
He had that underline in his really penciling, and I
know it was his underlying because his pencil was there
and he had underlined it well and good this area.
What did you feel in that moment, Well, it's stuck
in my mind. This is interesting. And whenever you don't
have answers for things, you just leave it there till
gradually gain information. It was many years later, twenty thirty
(29:21):
forty years later, before it all kicked in. From the
vantage point of a teenager in nineteen sixties Colonial Baron,
all Stephanie could see an Herville was an extremely devout man,
a man using any means necessary to draw people into
the church, sometimes by persuasion and sometimes by sheer endurance.
(29:46):
If you want to convert somebody to something, this is
how the mind works. You talk loud and hard and
fast and soft and smooth as velvet, which Ervil was
good at changing to she wanted to further nesmerize you.
You do that for hours, you keep talking a steady
stream to where they can't even take a toilet break.
(30:09):
After six hours, get a drink of water. Let alone,
let alone, get some sleep. Stephanie remembers Hervill would sometimes
preach to the people of colonial a Baron in sermons
that could go on all night, literally, And if you
do this long enough, their brain will suddenly snap and
(30:29):
they'll see a vision. They'll see what they think in
their mind is God, or that this is telling them
the truth. And this relentless approach was proving successful. Herville
was pulling in the followers, gaining his own loyalists. And
once they believe they've been converted to the truth, their
family of memories and friends and church leaders, nobody can
(30:53):
convince them. It's like pulling teeth to get them to
come back to the the reality. Throughout the nineteen sixties,
Joel continued to leave more leadership responsibilities to Irville, and
he may have felt he had to because his schedule
was getting busier. His fledgling church was now establishing outposts
(31:17):
in other parts of Mexico, and Joel was often gone
from town for weeks months even trying to set these up.
And in his absence, some strange things had started to happen.
There was the death of someone called Morrow gautierres He
was close to Joel, and one day he was gunned
down near a bar in a neighboring town. Then, not
(31:40):
long after, another member of Joel's church met a similar fate,
John Booch Ride, shot to death outside of town. Butchright
had a reputation for running his mouth off against turbul
Residents wondered who were the faceless attackers behind these murders.
Why was this happening on the edge of Zion. No
(32:02):
one seemed to have any answers. And then Herville was
you could say, promoted by Joel, or at least given
a new grand sounding title. He was the Patriarch and
second Grand Head of the Church of the Firstborn of
the Fullness of Times, and he took this role seriously.
(32:23):
He began to transform the town through his distinct style
of leadership. He instituted a strict militaristic order. Kids were
required to assemble in front of the schoolhouse at seven
in the morning and then marched to their classes in
a tight formation. He also started this secret cabal called
the United Women of Zion with nighttime meetings. He used
(32:46):
the women basically as spies. Now it wasn't just Stephanie
who was seeing shadows creep across colonial le Baron. Larive
was too. Irva wanted you to dress eyes, and he
wanted people to get up and pushing you a little bit,
and even me, you're coming, Well, you don't need to
(33:07):
say it that way. No, go in the other room
and just think, well, I can say it however I want.
It seemed like the more control Irville gained, the more
power he wanted. He became very greedy, top more doctrine,
a little bit like fundamentalists how to live their religion.
He became imposing and fanatic. I want to quickly back
(33:30):
up here and give some context to what Lariva is
saying about hervil and his control of women. In fact,
this is a really important aspect of this whole podcast.
The la Barons and their followers were, and many still are,
polygamous plural marriage, one man, multiple wives. This was once
(33:55):
a defining feature of the Mormon Church, but under pressure
from the US federal government, the church banned the practice
in eighteen nine went from preaching plural marriage to excommunicating
anyone who lived it. This was essentially the beginning of
the Mormon fundamentalist movement, because there were some men and
(34:16):
women who were not going to stop practicing polygamy, and
so polygamy is one of the main reasons why the
Labarons set up their town in Mexico in the first place.
Two Mormon fundamentalists, like the Labarons, polygamy was serious business,
a commandment of God, and as they saw it, the
(34:36):
Church had simply sold out for mainstream acceptance. So the
Labarons moved to Mexico to keep living polygamy and to
avoid prosecution in the US. These idealistic dreamers were in
a way also refugees, and as men took more wives
and those wives had more children, the population quickly multiplied,
(34:59):
with men sitting atop a vast family structure. And so
what Herville understood intuitively was that controlling women was the
key to controlling these vast structures. It was the key
to power. Herville started to barter women, he'd marry off daughters,
(35:22):
arranged marriages to those most loyal to him, and colonial
le Baron became a community where child marriage was normalized.
Irville himself went on to groom girls as young as twelve.
His youngest wife was sixteen. Irville wanted to marry Larive,
and the fact that she wouldn't go along with it
(35:44):
seemed to make him want her even more. One time
he put his hand on my knee and I picked
it up and like, don't be touching me unless I
tell you you can. Let's playing the piano, and he
put his hand on my hand and I slapped him,
and I said, don't you ever touch me without permission.
(36:06):
As the sixties progressed, everyone could see a role was changing.
The man who once used baling wire for shoelaces and
a rope to hold up his pants was now wearing
tailored suits and driving around in a gold and Paula.
The townspeople jokingly called it the Golden Calf. He seemed
(36:27):
to be spending the church's cash on himself. He would
con his brothers older and younger, to do all the
dirt work while he sat there and told him how
to dig the well, how to make the cheese, and
Stephanie Spencer remembers how he'd stand apart from towns focus
they worked like he was too good to get his
hands dirty. He would be talking the scriptures and reading
(36:49):
from the scriptures and discussing the scriptures with them while
they worked. And why they let him get away with it,
I don't know. He also seemed to be splitting from reality.
He'd swipe it imaginary flies, go to three days without sleeping.
He'd write and preach until he collapsed with exhaustion, and
(37:14):
people would see him kind of shambling around town. He
walked with his shoulders down and leaning forward, But part
of that was he was in his mind thinking and
probably hearing voices and so on, and to concentrate better,
he would be leaning forward and often looking down on
the ground watch a step while his mind was up there,
(37:36):
so at least he wouldn't trip on all those rocks
and the dirt paths of Colonia LeBaron. Stephanie Spencer was
now living under her uncle Hervil's tyranny to someone who
would lash out unpredictably and scold her and the other townsfolk.
We weren't getting off our butts and doing what he
and Joel were telling them to do. And if the
(38:00):
women didn't get behind him and his work and consider
their children as not their children, but the children of
the work. And therefore the work of God wasn't getting
off the ground. It was us to blame. While she
did finally manage to leave the tyranny of her family home,
Stephanie remained stuck in Colonial a Baron. She had become
(38:23):
the third wife of Bill Tucker, that guy from Los
Angeles who had picked her up in his cadillac for
a picnic, Well tried to. When Stephanie married him in
sixty two. She was sixteen and he was twenty six.
And then one day he just up and left her.
He'd become disillusioned with Herville Joel two, so he'd fled
(38:47):
town less, Stephanie behind. Now Irvill wanted to know where
he was. I was warned that he was going to
come up to my little yellow house on the hill
talk with me. And Rvil did show up at my house,
and this guy was in a rage. It was showing
(39:09):
in his eyes. He was livid. He was furious. How
dare Bill? He looked me directly in the eyes with
these blazing angry and murder in his eyes. You could
say crazy. It was a crazy look. He was crazed.
It scared me, and when I look back on it now,
I think, well, I'm lucky he didn't kill me. When
(39:31):
Stephanie says murder in his eyes, she's not exaggerating. Because
Hervil had started to add his own little flourishes to
Choll's religion, and one of them was something he called
civil law. Sounds quite simple, has a mundane, bureaucratic ring
to it, but civil law is the death penalty, and
(39:53):
Ervill wanted to use it for anyone not falling in line.
Bill knew that he would be killed because one of
the dictims of that cult was that if you ever left,
you would be killed. There were no ends of some
butts about it. None of this is what Joel, the
Chill fundamentalist who didn't even care if people went to church,
(40:16):
wanted to create. In his eyes, the civil law. The
death penalty was all wrong, terribly wrong. Joel's confidence told
him he had to do something because Hervil's speeches in
public had become increasingly blood soaked. He was saying that
colonial le Baron would be the gathering place for the
(40:38):
Lord's army before a final showdown, and then Herville said
something even more shocking. The civil law or the death
penalty could apply to anyone, even Joel. I was in
the meeting the first day. I left the class. An
(40:59):
Earl's tried to stop me, but I I was upset,
and I ran across the street over to Magdalena's house.
Magdalene was one of Joel's seven wives. And instead of
Joel's there and they said, he said he was. And
I went in there and I said, I just want
you to know that today in church, Rvill was preaching
(41:19):
the civil law, as was her style. Larive told her
prophet straight up she was worried. He should be worried too, Joel.
I don't like this talking about the law force, Joel said.
We're not talking about the law force. We're talking about
the law of liberty. The law of liberty, Joel said,
(41:40):
people were free to make their own choices in their
relationship with God. Ervill was planning on preaching again later
that day, and so Joel decided to attend. When he
got there, Hervil took the podium again and began to
make his case for civil law death penalties. The law force.
Joel comes to the second class, and this is exactly
(42:02):
what he said. Some people call it a law of force,
and I would like to call it a law of liberty.
All right there, Boil and Madagon walk out. Not long
after this confrontation, there was another major standoff between the
two brothers. Herville stood before the congregation arguing for the
death penalty and was again rebuked by Joel. Herville came
(42:27):
right back at him, retorted that his vision was the
only vision, and that and this is a quote, blood
will run to solve our problems. Everyone was in shock,
and then Dan Jordan's stood up. Dan Jordan's, that French
missionary now operating side by side with Herville. He had
(42:52):
Hervil's back and announced the shock congregation, we will break
the dry wood in this church into old pieces and
burn it more after the break. I have one sister
(43:24):
and five brothers, and like Joel and Herville, we were
raised far from the nearest town out in the desert,
and we mostly just had each other, especially when we
were little. We caught bull frogs in the river behind
our house. We shot each other with bb guns. We
raced our horses up by the canal, and I kept
thinking of this when I thought about what happened with
(43:46):
Joel and Hervill. How no matter what kind of warnings
Joel got. He always gave his brother the benefit of
the doubt. It was almost like he thought or knew
the things he was hearing just had to be wrong. Me.
I don't know. That's the thing with brothers. You feel
like you know them better than anyone because you do,
(44:09):
and I guess sometimes you don't. In nineteen sixty nine,
things had reached a breaking point in colonial A Baron
Herville seemed completely out of control. Larive told Joel everyone
in town could see it. He had to act. People
(44:31):
thought that Joel should take away his authority, his office.
And I went to Joel and I said, Joel, people
are complaining because Rvil's saying way too much stuff, and
why don't you do something about it? You're the leader.
(44:53):
In November of nineteen Joel finally made a decision. They
released Dan, Jordan's and IRV of all the authority. They
had Herville put his head in his hands, and he
wept to leave. He actually seemed relieved, but this wasn't
some return to peace between the brothers. After this, the
(45:16):
threats against Joel didn't just resume. They built to a crescendo,
kick up more all the time, and Nervill did say things,
and I would go tell Joel and he said, Larry,
don't talk about him and don't be rude to him.
And you know why, I believe that. Joel said that
he already had premonitions that he might do what he did,
(45:37):
and he was broken hearted about it. He couldn't figure
out how to get Rvil to pull back, calm down,
and be willing to work with him. In one Joel
kicked Hervill out of his church, excommunicated him. So the
(45:58):
following year, Hervill set up his own own and he
called it the Church of the Lamb of God, and
he started publishing his own pamphlets. The texts were both
pitches to new followers and threats to anyone who resisted.
Now they were rivals, he Enjoel. The shadows were getting
longer over colonial a Baron. We're on Mexico's Highway one,
(46:39):
which wines right down the coast, kind of the Serpentine Road.
We are outside of Encinata. There are palm trees in
the median. There's some graffiti on the walls, and it
just sort of looks like a quaint little seaside town.
(46:59):
It's like seven five am, and there seemed to be
just kind of this little cloud or pall of dust
hanging over the whole city. All right, it looks like
we're pulling up. There are bars on the windows of
a cement building with a paint peeling off. Okay, this
(47:24):
is the house. I'm with one of Joel's sons, Adrian.
Back in August two, his dad was an Incinata, Mexico.
He was on his way to an outpost of his
church on the Baja Peninsula, over a thousand kilometers to
the west of Colonial Barn. Joel may have felt safe
in this coastal town, but he wasn't. Arriving in Incinata,
(47:48):
Joel stopped by a little house where one of his
followers lived. He planned to just pick up a car key. Today,
the house sits next to an open sewer running parallel
to a busy road that leads up to a bridge
where we're standing. You just imagine that that bridge wasn't there.
It was kind of dirt road fifty years ago. So
(48:10):
the building Adrian and I have pulled up in front
of is a single frame box house. It's made of
cinder block. It's white. The paint is chipping there's an
iron gate out front. Very very simple, maybe two three
rooms with the wood roof, shingle roof. The way the
little houses is the same. Then it just to be
that they didn't reminder of these when Adrian's dad got
(48:39):
here on August two, the key to the car he
was picking up wasn't here. Then these two men appeared.
They were Hervil's followers. They came out of the house
that we're standing in front of Joe Way. They'd both
(49:01):
once belonged to his church. One told Joel that he'd
go pick up the car keys, he'd be right back.
The other invited Joel inside this house to discuss their
religious differences. Joel followed the men inside. After about twenty minutes,
(49:24):
he saw another Herville follower. It was Dan Jordan's. Dan
approached the house, walked inside. We know these details because
another one of Joel's sons, his name is Ivan, was
in a car outside waiting. He watched the scene unfold.
(49:46):
Dan Jordon came in and then Ivan, my brother says
that he heard noise. Says then discussions and then all
of the sudden some shots. Yeah, they kill him. If
the actual killing of my that in rural cold blood.
(50:09):
Joel le Baron was dead. They kill him right here
on the twentie Fagas of Things seventy two salmost fifty years.
Up until this point, Hervil's threats towards his brother had
just been words. But now, in ordering Joel's death, there
(50:29):
would be no turning back. The murder of Joel was
a line in the sand, and there could be no
doubt that darkness had arrived in Colonial le Baron the
legacy of the unfolding events would scar everyone who experienced them.
(50:50):
For Stephanie Spencer, she would go on to escape Colonial
le Baron, but she's lived her life trying to make
sense of what she endured. Adrian LeBaron, he was just
a child when this all happened, but these events became
a defining moment. The murdered man was not just his father,
(51:11):
he was his prophet. Adrian has dedicated his life to
keeping his father's dream alive, and so have the people
of Colonial LeBaron, who remained committed to building that utopia
Joe LeBaron envisioned. But for those who would go on
to follow Ervio LeBaron, what happened in that small house
(51:31):
in Ensnata was more than just the killing of a
rival prophet. It was a killing in Ervil's name. And
from this point Erville must have known he could order
further attacks. If he could order the killing of his
own brother, why not those outside the family who wouldn't
(51:52):
fall in line, Not just individuals. Next on his hit
list was a whole town. Yeah, my brother went and
looked through the window, he went towards the window and
at the moment he opened the curtain and Luke he
(52:12):
got shot in the head. And then a mot of
bomb was thrown through the same window by the same week,
A Man That's Coming Up an episode two deliver Us
(52:40):
from Herville is hosted by me jesse Hyde and written
and reported by me Leona Hamad 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
(53:04):
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
(53:26):
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
Ann Macaluso or In Rosenbaum, Shelby Shankman and all the team.
(53:51):
A U T A. For more from novel, visit novel
dot Audio
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