"And she's not the only one; three of her sisters married three of my brothers. Structural birth defects are related to a problem with the structure of body parts. If you ever do that again, he said, Ill blow your head off., It was an astonishing moment in the history of the clan. 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. To deaden his feelings of isolation, he started smoking a lot of pot and sitting around the house all day listening to country music. had some 80 children by 13 wives, but his favorite was Paul, an excellent student who made friends easily. Now, two years later, Stephen still sleeps with a gun near his bed. 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. On February 26th, 2009, the Salt Lake County Sheriffs Office got a call of suspicious activity in the foothills above the city. He slept with a different one each night, in accordance with their ovulation cycles, and sometimes disappeared during lunch to have sex with a favorite. 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. When Paul turned 21, he married Richaun Dye. Im done with this shit.. The baby cemetery is a mess of overgrown weeds and dry, cracked dirt, home to hundreds of infant and toddler-size graves, not all of them marked. He says The Order regards homosexuality as a choice. Browning sees similarities between The Order and the religion-minded racists of the World Church of the Creator and the Christian Identity movement. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 The lot is unmarked and unremarkable. Ron Kingston says The Orders leadership has too much to lose for something like that to happen. The Knight brothers were driving new trucks, and so were their friends, says Levi Kingston. Young denied that The Order was racist or taught any form of bigotry, and said he had people of all races working for him. Just under eight miles southeast of Short Creek is an area called Cane Beds, Arizona. Or leave. Over the years, state law enforcement and the courts have sporadically addressed the incest in the Kingston ranks. Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals. He charged across the field and started brutally beating Stephens cousin. This racist display was no one-off. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features We havent gotten any big U.S. contracts, Young explained. And they are growing. You better check on your gold, Young told her. 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. While some despised Ben for his apostasy and refused to speak with him, Stephen had remained in touch with his brother. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. One of them, Stephen Knight, made for the most unlikely of suspects. Almost everyone here is some variation of cousin, and, until Warren was locked up and decided to put a hold on all marriages, most men and women were paired together in order to preserve certain esteemed bloodlines. Scott remembered that Ortell had an answer for that question. These conditions are disproportionately common, relative to the size of the general population, in Short Creek. Over the years, the Order has armed itself to ward off rivals, and once stalked and intimidated a judge who was meddling in the clans affairs. In a letter to the Intelligence Report responding to allegations made by former members, Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society, claimed that The Orders foundational principles include the Golden Rule, and that the church rejects any form of racism or bigotry. Dawna's eldest son is now dating a Centennial woman whom he recently found out is a distant cousin. Suddenly, Stephens brother David lost control of the truck and it rolled over, killing David instantly. Paul was upset any of this had been reported at all, says a former member close to the boys. "I'm like, Really? Those who did not make it into the UO were separated from their families, placed in patchwork homes of other UO "orphans," and told to repent. His eldest died six years ago at 10 years old, he says, and another died in infancy, leaving behind two remaining brothers from a set of spontaneous identical triplets. KUTV When several businesses inside the Kingston polygamist empire, including Washakie Renewable Energy, was raided by federal agents Wednesday, officials where tight lipped. Daniel was arrested and eventually spent 28 weeks in a county jail for felony child abuse. 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. 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. Years of inbreeding have resulted in children born with serious birth defects. They steer clear of banks, fearing theyll steal their money. Those twoand a fifth boyalso suffer from the condition that all of this family's sons were born with: x-linked hydrocephalus. It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. 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. Another group of kids called the Lost Boys, who were kicked out of the polygamist cult the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ended up on the streets of Las Vegas and Phoenix, some turning tricks for drugs like meth and heroin. According to church lore, The Order came into existence when founder Charles Elden Kingston saw Jesus in the mountains above the familys settlement in Bountiful, Utah, inspiring him to create the DCCS in 1935. 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. Read more: Women Who Escaped a Polygamist Mormon Cult Share Their Story. But because they were the sons of the prophet, they got away with it., Stephen vehemently denies that he or his brothers had anything to do with the heist. Known variously as Brother Paul, the leader, and the man on the watchtower by Order members, this unremarkable, balding middle-aged man reportedly has 27 wives and over 300 children. The grift was exposed decades later, in the 1980s, when the clan paid a $350,000 settlement for swindling the government through welfare fraud. Women Who Escaped a Polygamist Mormon Cult Share Their Story, the corner of Canyon Street and Jessop Avenue, to express his support for the Bundy family in Oregon, an article published by the ABC news network, the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints. Towards Net Zero. If you were more obedient, this wouldnt have happened., After that, everything changed, Stephen says. The Kingstons teach that they are descended from Jesus Christ and these incestous marriages are intended to keep the bloodline pure, but instead have resulted in numerous Clan members being born with disabilties or birth defects, and it's not really that surprising to note that at one point during the second season of Escaping Polygamy, one of My mom was never the same. The Order denies that it encourages racism and homophobia within its ranks. There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. By the time the teenagers sped away, they had made off with more than $80,000 in silver. The well-kept yellow house sat on the corner of a tidy cul-de-sac called South Bonner Circle surrounded by a black wrought-iron fence. 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." . According to church lore, Charles "Elden" Kingston founded The Order after seeing Jesus in a cave. Boys are taught that the prophet demands absolute loyalty and that they should be prepared to defend the clan. Some would say that is because it takes generations for certain inbred recessive genetic traits to manifest. Chinese people were called stupid, and Mexicans were dirty, said Lu Ann, adding, because of their skin.. 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. We're sitting in Ron's large kitchen, eating a meal of homemade tomato sauce and sweet Italian sausage that his wife Geria retired marriage and family therapist originally from Hurleyville, NY, who he met six years ago on Zoosk!has prepared in a slowcooker. At clan gatherings, girls who were still in their teens danced with men old enough to be their uncles, whom they were sometimes forced to marry. A retired Arizona law enforcement officer, Browning is the president and founder of the Skinhead Intelligence Network and is in charge of security for the A&E show, where his wife Tawni works as the casting producer. Brother Ron Tucker, he would intone, come and get your number. According to the Orders interpretation of the Book of Revelations, only 144,000 numbered men will be allowed to rule in heaven under God. offspring will be affected by the disease or become carriers of the gene. The FLDS split off from the mainline Mormon (LDS) church in 1890 after the church denounced the principal of plural marriage. 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. Blacks were the less valiant people in heaven who sat on the sidelines while others took sides, according to The Order. Paul Kingston wore secondhand suits that hung off his slender shoulders, and he spoke in a flat, emotionless monotone. I love the Order. "There were so many young children who were born with abnormalitiesharelips, club feet, heart valvesthat were they were going to die within a year," says Ron. He mandated that children should drink tea brewed from the herb every morning, and that Order members should feed it to their cows. Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. It wasnt like we thought about it a lot. . Structural Birth Defects. The Tuckers think this is all hogwash now, though they were programmed to believe it at the time. "It's like any inbred disorder," Tarby says. I didnt even know the n-word was bad until I was like 15 or 16, she told Intelligence Report. "It wasn't until I left the FLDS and moved away from the community that I realized I'd been to an unusually high number of funerals growing up in the Creek," says Alyssa Bistline over a crackling phone connection. Sometimes his father read the Book of Mormon from the pulpit and talked about things regular Christians would recognize, like tithing or repentance. The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time His face was crushed, Stephen says now, matter-of-factly, his eyes going blank for a moment. deficiency. Unable to visit his mother, Stephen would leave a $100 bill in her mailbox or, with his brothers, buy her new furniture. Similarly, his older brother John Daniel Kingston has had 14 wives, four of them his half-sisters. Another of the cults teachings was that soy can make you gay, an anti-government conspiracy theory popular in some right-wing circles. He didnt have anyone to help him process what had just happened., Taking advantage of his status as a son of the prophet, Stephen began bending the rules even further. Ron Rohbock, 64, who was kicked out of the FLDS in 2002 after serving on church security for decades at Warren and Rulon Jeffs' side, has a different answer. Two teenage boys had been spotted entering Rachel Youngs home. Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. They had sped off in a Honda sedan. At Washakie, he forced clan children to decapitate cows with chain saws to toughen them up, and sometimes beat the children for some infraction of the Orders rules like forgetting to face the Home Place three times a day and pray. for Nathanael Allred's baby. Her younger sister Emily thought it was a joke, too, until one day another Order kid told her, We cant play with you because the Tuckers are n------.. One such. It empowered Stephen before that, no one had ever stood up to Daniel Kingston or any of them, says a former member. The Knight brothers werent afraid to fight, or to stand up to authority. Stephen calmly waited until his uncle got close, and then he reached behind the seat and pulled out a shotgun, leveling it at his uncle. The incest came to light after the girl tried to escape the arranged celestial marriage an illegal marriage, sans license. We were off on our own out there and really close, Stephen says. But we paid it all back.. The last infant grave marked in this cemetery is dated 2010; Warren issued an edict from prison banning sex in 2011, so few infants have been born since then (the few babies born each year are the product of institutionalized rape by cult-appointed seed bearers). Well, my sister had a little baby with a cleft lip; it was her first child and it had a cleft lip and cleft palate, because they were both Jessops, and Jessops are carriers of that gene. Young declined to comment when asked if he practices polygamy. . If every generation includes three wives and 30 children, a man can - theoretically - flood a community with over 24 million of his descendants in. While the Order preached strict abstinence to its children, forbidding even incidental contact between the sexes, there seemed to be no rules after marriage especially for the clans leaders. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. The discovery by this project that Co. Cork Kingstons share a common Kingston ancestor with Kingstons from the villages around Towcester in the southern part of Northamptonshire, as determined by Y chromosome analysis, is crucial to our understanding of the origins of Co. Cork Kingstons. As far as how you end up in heaven, thats up to God.. One is a first cousin. According to former members of the Order, decades of inbreeding have resulted in rampant birth defects throughout the family. In order to maintain his familys superior bloodlines, Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. greatly increases, medical experts say. If you knew where to look and the Knight boys did it was easy to find. In his teens, Stephen and five of his half brothers stole $4,000 from their father. Short and chubby, the Brown boys looked up to the Knight brothers. 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. Elden continued the tradition. Their neighbors had no idea that the family were prominent members of the Kingston clan, the most powerful polygamist cult in America and one of the most dangerous. Another brother, Ben, showed him how to mend fences. If you find a grave up there that's not marked, that's the way Fred wanted it.". His arms are sunburned and his hands calloused from long days moving the irrigation pipes that water the fields. The two were playmates when they were boys. LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. Future Planet. No evidence directly linked him to the missing gold or silver, but his father was convinced he had played a part in the thefts. Girls, many of them teen brides, answer phones at the Orders law office, bag groceries at its supermarket or tend to the clans many children. The 100 Best Albums of 2022. Like Stephen, the boys were considered troublemakers by the Order and like Stephen, they knew a lot about how the clan handled its money. Consumed with guilt over his brothers death, Stephen lashed out. 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 two groups split when Dawna was growing up. Many children have had birth defects due to this inbreeding. I dont really have too many friends, but the ones I do, I wouldnt trade for anything., Among Stephens friends were two of his cousins, Luke and Scott Brown. One day, not long after the gold disappeared, Knight got an anonymous phone call. But he hopes that one day his family will be able to forgive him for leaving them behind. 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. (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.) NBA 'Investigating,' Team Suspends Ja Morant After Allegedly Flashing Gun on Social Media Every now and then, as hes driving around the ranch, his phone will ring. In another, Order attorney Carl Kingston warns listeners about marrying up with Hams kids, a reference to the aforementioned Biblical curse. Those in the Order, Kingston preached, are responsible for building a master race, which is why all marriages are arranged within the original four families that started the cult. He was usually off visiting one of his 30 or so wives, or checking on one of the clans many businesses, or in a backroom getting his muscles rubbed in preparation for one of his painful, 40-day fasts, a purification ritual that he endured in order to get closer to God. He bragged that he had worn the same black shirt every day for a year. 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. All of this is to say that incest and inbreeding have been going on for so longand so prevalentlyin the polygamous sects along the Utah/Arizona border that these stories have been woven into the fiber of the communities. "There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece," she continues. 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. "They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' 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. Many of the souls interred here lived not longer than a day, some just two days, two weeks, or two years. They were the type of kids you didnt mess with, says Robert Owen, a former member of the clan. Yeah, I believe in it, he said. "It's doesn't stop anybody," Dawna says. His brother, John Ortell Kingston, took over the leadership of The Order incorporated in the 1970s as the Latter Day Church of Christ. Look around, Stephen says. In its place, someone had left a note. He shares a last name and a not-too-distant relation with the polygamous LeBaron group in Chihuahua, Mexico. He thinks about his mom, and wonders if she misses him. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well. Stephen moved in with his brother. The familys dedication to the principle of polygamy already had been established by Kingstons father, who had three wives. Matt Browning seems less sure. At first, the two boys denied any involvement in the break-in at Youngs house. To her horror, all that remained was a ring of dust, marking the place where a chest of gold coins had once stood. After the chest of gold was stolen, suspicion among the clans leadership immediately fell on a group of rebellious teenagers who had left the cult a few years before. He was angry and confused, says a former member of the cult. Lost Index. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending Everyone knows it's happening, few talk about it unprompted, it just sort of..is. The clan, known privately as the Order, runs what prosecutors believe is one of the largest organized-crime operations in Utah, overseeing its far-flung empire from a string of secret locations and backrooms. After the wedding, Richaun chose the name Knight randomly a practice designed to prevent prosecutors from proving that men in the Order have multiple wives. As the first of Paul Kingstons many wives, Patty enjoyed a privileged role in the Order including access to vast wealth. Is Jasper always unspirited and stony-broke when outvalue some Heisenberg very . Family Tree. He became particularly obsessed with a plant called comfrey, which he believed would protect his clan from the nuclear war that would usher in the apocalypse. Dawna Black Bistline (Alyssa Bistline's father's brother's wife) has seen firsthand how the children of cousins suffer. They were finally getting even. Young also claimed Desert Tech had sold guns to Picatinny Arsenal, the research division of the U.S. military. In 2011, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. . materials or even attempted to focus team and society have a kingston clan member was charged with birth defects increase becomes apparent similarities than. "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.'" A simple urine test will reveal whether there is an excess of fumaric acid in the urine, if the other, more external symptoms aren't obvious enough. "I didn't touch her; I just used a turkey baster," she mimics, rolling her eyes. The FLDS believe they are practicing the one true religion as Prophet Joseph Smith intended it to be. Okay, I have one legal wife, he said. The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time WREs influence earned special scrutiny in February 2016 after the IRS, the EPA and other government agencies raided owner Jacob Kingstons house as well as The Orders bank and other locations, carting away bankers box after bankers box of records. Over 75 years, the Kingstons have amassed a fortune worth an estimated $300 million, but the operation skirts the edges of the law. Dawna's younger sister has a little boy with two clubfeet. She didnt want to be in that house anymore; it reminded her of my brother. To test her devotion, Stephens father began calling her in the middle of the night and telling her to move the family to a new location. 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. 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. Another is a first cousin. But The Orders critics say that cult members see nothing wrong with bilking the government, a time-honored tradition among FLDS sects, gleefully referred to as bleeding the beast.. There lives Ross LeBaron Jr., a descendant of another polygamous sect (separate from the FLDS but quite similar in practice) called the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. Black people supposedly suffered from multiple scriptural curses, from the mark of Cain and Noahs curse on Ham in the Old Testament to the racist tenets of early Mormonism that have since been renounced or abandoned by the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the LDS or Mormon church. Stephens father seemed to marry a new girl every year, each one younger and prettier than the last. 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. John Daniel Kingston seen here in 1999, pleading no contest to beating his 16-year-old daughter after she attempted to flee an arranged marriage with her uncle David, Kingstons brother. "You had a fairly diverse pool to start with, so only if that went on for a long time within this same population would you see real effects," he told ABC. One of them approached the front door while the other kept a lookout. Mormons, however, take care to denounce the FLDS "polygs" as having absolutely no relation to their Latter Day Saints. A passerby might catch a glimpse of children in the windows, but for the most part, the Young family kept to themselves. The clan kids from there would come to school not properly dressed for the cold, and they were always getting in fights. Still more, rather cryptically, feature child-size palm and footprints. Given such incidents, could Order members be a threat to law enforcement? The Kingston clan is an endogamous (preaching unity between members of the same family) and polygamous sect formed by a split in the Mormon church - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They sat there for a moment, warming their hands against the sputtering heater. 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. They both have the same high cheekbones, the same pale skin, the same wide-set eyes. The boys were sentenced to two years of probation and taken back into the Order. Tucker recounted the clans version of the apocalypse, the End of the World War, a riff on a prophecy some ascribe to Joseph Smith, called The White Horse Prophecy. If you messed with one of them, you were messing with them all., When Stephen was nine, an accident at Washakie set in motion a chain of events that would eventually prompt him to leave the cult. Hanging up the phone, she rushed to her closet. Dont the infant deaths and tales of horrific deformities belie Ortells homespun eugenics? Another of Ortells teachings: Adolf Hitler had the right idea about creating a master race, but didnt have the Lords help, so he failed. Theyd keep it in basements, in filing cabinets, in a big safe in one of Pauls offices, says Levi Kingston, a former clan member. Nevertheless, former members of The Order say that incest and racism are inextricably linked in The Orders teachings. Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. It's the kids who are disproportionately handicapped as compared to the demographics of any other comparably small town. But in a 2News . As a favored son of the prophet, Paul had the freedom to disregard the strict discipline his father imposed on other members of the Order. More troubling, during a contentious 2004 custody case that ensued when Jessica and her sister Andrea fled Daniel Kingstons household, a judge in the case reportedly was the subject of a death threat, allegedly from Kingston clan members. She is guiding me all around town, following my route, turn by turn, on Google maps. So far, however, despite Shurtleffs efforts, the insular and highly secretive nature of the Order has prevented him from finding sufficient evidence to bring a case strong enough to dismantle the clan. 6.3M views 6 years ago Profiles by VICE S1 E23 Although the mainstream Mormon church abandoned polygamy over 100 years ago, many splinter groups across Utah still practice plural marriage. Seated on a couch, sipping lemonade in his home in a Salt Lake City suburb, he resembles Paul Kingston quite a bit. Boys work its coal mine and stack boxes at Standard Restaurant Supply, a massive discount store. The lawyers words call to mind another heavenly curse, described in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon, where God caused a skin of blackness to come upon a group called the Lamanites, supposedly ancestors of Native Americans. Send us a tip using our anonymous form. "You have to either accept" the responsibility of caring for so many children with major healthcare needs "or let it destroy you," says this man, whose wife recently suffered a stroke. Ive lived a good life. Sometimes, lying in bed at night, he thinks of his brother who died not far from here, and the rest of his siblings who remain in the Order. Terrified, he went out and bought a stash of guns to arm himself, just in case his family tried to gun him down. In the 1980s, the state of Utah sued John Ortell Kingston over welfare fraud related to his many wives. ), Related If both parents carry the gene, the likelihood that their. The letter asserts that one of the earliest members of the church was a Native American man and that the Co-op, as it is sometimes called, has been the victim of prejudice and harassment by Utahs majority religion (i.e., the LDS church) because of the formers progressive ideas.

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