All of the gay people would definitely be the first to go, he said. 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------.. Terrified, he went out and bought a stash of guns to arm himself, just in case his family tried to gun him down. When Stephen was a boy, the clan would gather for the New Year in a warehouse in the city for its annual ritual: the numbering of the men. 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. Seated on a couch, sipping lemonade in his home in a Salt Lake City suburb, he resembles Paul Kingston quite a bit. 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. Its ominous-sounding moniker, The Order, is a reference to the United Order, a quasi-utopian society proposed by LDS-founder Joseph Smith, and practiced in some Mormon communities under the leadership of early church president Brigham Young. "It's not really talked about; I don't think [people here] even research to see how related they are" before getting married or pregnant, she adds. Carolyn. If the Order doesnt have it, the clan teaches, we dont need it., Editors picks The 100 Best Albums of 2022. And then there are the more livable genetic conditions. Elden also instituted the church law of one above the other, requiring members blind obedience to the churchs hierarchy of numbered men, with Elden being Brother Number One. Within the clan, the pieces started to add up. Eventually, I pull up to the corner of Canyon Street and Jessop Avenue, where I find the baby cemetery. There, stacked on the concrete floor, were crates filled with bars of silver. From a young age, Snow worked for Order companies to help feed his siblings, a responsibility some Kingston men are known to shirk. Recordings of church testimony given by various Kingstons serve as further evidence of the cults bigoted teachings. And they are growing. J.O. They got married and contacted the . They steer clear of banks,. 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. . The Kingston clan is also known as the Davis County . It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. "Have you ever heard of the term The Turkey Baster?" At first, the two boys denied any involvement in the break-in at Youngs house. KUTV A large police presence swarmed a well-known polygamous family's property in South Salt Lake Wednesday.A Department of Justice Spokesman Peter Carr confirmed to KUTV that it is involved in . The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time By 18, she. His face was crushed, Stephen says now, matter-of-factly, his eyes going blank for a moment. Control of The Order then passed to Ortells well-educated son Paul Kingston, one of several lawyers in a cult whose members dress normally and try not to draw attention to themselves. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending Ethnic jokes and stereotypes were commonly repeated. Up to this point, Julie had treated the rumor like a joke. 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. One of her brothers married a woman whose grandmother is a sister to their father. Consumed with guilt over his brothers death, Stephen lashed out. The adult residents of Short Creek todayboth those still in the FLDS and those who have left the cultare mostly able-bodied, seemingly healthy individuals. Kingston taught his followers that they are the literal descendants of Jesus and one of his wives, who had come down to Earth to found a race of chosen people. 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. LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. Thanks, it read. 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. When this got around to his dad, his father packed up Snows belongings and left them in the room of a hotel owned by The Order. Youd show up for a welfare call, or a domestic-abuse call, and it was just real run-down.. Like Stephen, the boys were considered troublemakers by the Order and like Stephen, they knew a lot about how the clan handled its money. Ex-order members interviewed by the Intelligence Report generally agreed with the characterization of the Kingston clan as a hate group.. Or Aunt Martha did, or somebody did. One is a first cousin. Everyone in the Order knew that she controlled the purse strings for the operation but few were aware that she was sitting on a hidden stash of silver. Supposedly, LaDonna had a dream wherein it was revealed that anyone who left The Order would be tainted by black blood. There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends. Short and chubby, the Brown boys looked up to the Knight brothers. Some read simply, "Baby Keate," or "Baby Bateman," or "Baby Cooke," with holes where numeric date tiles might otherwise be placed. "They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' "My father and her grandmother were full brother and sister," she explains, recognizing the bloom of confusion on my face. At the lot's northwest corner, a metal gatethe kind you might find on a cattle ranchhangs open on its hinge. 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. 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. 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. A passerby might catch a glimpse of children in the windows, but for the most part, the Young family kept to themselves. Her parents and siblings eventually left as well. Brother Elden died of penile cancer in 1948, despite the best efforts of some family members to burn away the cancer using acid. On February 26th, 2009, the Salt Lake County Sheriffs Office got a call of suspicious activity in the foothills above the city. We were taught to be polite, but to never make friends with outsiders. The clan avoids hospitals, believing government-backed doctors might inject them with a mysterious disease or demand birth records exposing the Orders lifestyle. 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. Some would say that is because it takes generations for certain inbred recessive genetic traits to manifest. Johnson also acknowledged hearing family lore dating to the Depression era of Order families burying fetuses from late-term miscarriages on their respective properties.. J.O. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time But we paid it all back.. Thats what happened with Ron Tuckers family. greatly increases, medical experts say. His brother, John Ortell Kingston, took over the leadership of The Order incorporated in the 1970s as the Latter Day Church of Christ. From the outside it seemed like a typical suburban home, offering few clues of the secrets that were contained inside. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. There is no sign. "It's doesn't stop anybody," Dawna says. It didnt take long for them to break down and confess that they had robbed their aunt. A 1999 Salt Lake Tribune article mapped the Kingstons incestuous family tree, quoting one of Ortells 65 kids, ex-Order member Connie Rugg as saying, My father experimented [with] inbreeding with his cattle and then he turned to his children.. Concentrated in Salt Lake City, its 10,000 members control more. He shares a last name and a not-too-distant relation with the polygamous LeBaron group in Chihuahua, Mexico. In the polygamist cult of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, cousins were encouraged to marry in order to preserve certain bloodlines. They would trek into state welfare offices, their kids in tow, claiming that they had no idea who the father of their children was, or that he was a truck driver who had left them destitute. As far as how you end up in heaven, thats up to God.. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. Rather than submit to DNA tests, which could have revealed the incest in his brood, he coughed up a more than $200,000 settlement. I honestly didnt even know there was any gold until they accused me of taking it, he says. Lost Index. The kingston clan, kingston polygamy order birth defects and turned to yfz children have been taken into consideration, arizona have been under. Until the 1990s, there were only 13 known cases of FD in the world. Somehow LaDonnas curse was transferred to the Tuckers via Christy, Rons wife, because, Christys mom left The Order and married an Irishman, before leaving him and returning to the fold. Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. The lot is unmarked and unremarkable. Daniel was arrested and eventually spent 28 weeks in a county jail for felony child abuse. By the time he was 30, he would have more than 10. And the graveyard grew exponentially.". They did it, says Christian Kingston. Julie left the cult at age 19. A short, blustery man with a hair-trigger temper, Daniel Kingston had reportedly once kidnapped two boys at gunpoint and led them out to the Great Salt Lake (the charges were later dropped). Bad harm. 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. There are also graves lacking any dates whatsoever. One baby deemed to have too many deformities was allegedly put in a shoe box and left to die. They seemed happy, Ron says. Boys are taught that the prophet demands absolute loyalty and that they should be prepared to defend the clan. 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. And during a recent picnic to honor the birthday of patriarch John Ortell Kingston, Order families descended on a Salt Lake Valley park, where hundreds of children of all ages blanketed the parks green expanse. Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals. "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. If every generation includes three wives and 30 children, a man can - theoretically - flood a community with over 24 million of his descendants in. These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. One of them approached the front door while the other kept a lookout. . Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Youngs claims. Future Planet. took great pains to never show his wealth and taught his followers to do the same. The renunciation of polygamy is now church doctrine, and the Mormon church has a policy of excommunicating polygamists. J.O. Incest is endemic in the clan, with uncles marrying much younger female relatives; in 2003, police showed up at an Order barbecue and arrested a clan member for marrying his underage cousin. These men are living freely in the Cane Beds area. Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. Now, two years later, Stephen still sleeps with a gun near his bed. The 43-year-old Kingston took the witness stand for the prosecution about 2:40 p.m. and is expected to answer questions through Thursday. According to former Order members, they worked long shifts sorting coal and operating heavy machinery in unsafe conditions. But the more the deputy pressed, the more their stories didnt add up. I dont think theyre organized crime in that regard, but the racketeering statute defines it as any conspiracy or pattern of illegal activity done in concert with others. Health Gap. According to many of the individuals interviewed for this story, these children are seen as special angels sent from God to the FLDS community. "I'm like, Really? Older teenagers were crammed five and six to a room, sleeping on the floors of trailers. He orchestrated all unions within the cult, which was maintained with classic mind control techniques, corporal punishment, fasting and bizarre dietary practices. There was also testimony, during one hearing, that someone in the Kingston clan wanted to blow up the courthouse. Dawna asks me. They predict the scale of the problem will increase dramatically in the future. 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. 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. Mysterious cars followed his girlfriend, and he once came home to find that someone had rifled through his drawers. . Then one of them exhaled slowly, his breath shuddering in the cold air. When he noticed that the boys had stopped working, he became enraged. Young declined to comment when asked if he practices polygamy. Kingston forebears were among those who suffered this fate. But mostly he talked about the history of the Order and his ancestors, the men who had started the clan. A simple urine test will reveal. In a portion of Warren Jeffs' Priesthood Record a mostly dry document that details his every move and meeting one entry, a written transcription of an announcement made by Warren at lunch with his late father's family, stands out as particularly creepy. Still, he conceded that some Order members may have prejudiced beliefs because in our organization people have freedom of choice.. Back then, Paul Kingston stood around five feet ten and weighed close to 200 pounds. There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece. offspring will be affected by the disease or become carriers of the gene. The Kingstons are a Mormon splinter group, founded in the 1930s by Mary's great-uncle Elden. 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. It is bordered to the north by a well-maintained lot where there sits a stately red brick home with UEP (United Effort Plan, the church trust which is now controlled by the state of Utah in the aftermath of Jeffs' conviction) spelled out in white brick on its south-facing side. This is all compounded by the split between the FLDS and an offshoot group of polygamists that moved to nearby Centennial Park following a disagreement over how the community should be governed, and by whom). . The mere rumor of black blood could condemn someone in the eyes of Order members. When Elden died in 1948, leadership of the Order fell to Stephens grandfather, J.O., a short, miserly man with bony shoulders and thinning hair. Boys as young as 14 labored in the workshop. Utahs polygamous Kingston clan mixes incest and white supremacy with old-fashioned capitalism. "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.'" Its who I am., To keep the police from prying into the matter any further, the clan also hired a private investigator to track down the missing gold. I felt for his pulse, but he was already gone., That night, Paul Kingston arrived at the ranch. But within the Order, where drinking soda pop was against the rules, it was a pretty big deal.. 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. "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. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. David was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the incest, but served only four before being paroled. SALT LAKE CITY A local non-profit with ties to the polygamous Kingston group is facing multiple questions and accusations regarding its taxes. Many of these men are also given stewardship of the Orders business holdings sent out to run the clans coal mine or ranches, or to oversee one of its many storefronts. It's the kids who are disproportionately handicapped as compared to the demographics of any other comparably small town. Thats your Uncle Paul, she said. 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." . Sometimes he parked his immaculately buffed burgundy Ford Thunderbird on the curb, but it was rare to see the man himself. . It was all fun, Stephen recalls. ", "They took their lives," Ron says. October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. In secret videotapes of Order church meetings aired on Escaping Polygamy, Pauls nephew Nick Young, speaking from a church lectern, identifies himself as a numbered man, number 72, to be precise. Were fucked, they told their cousin. He says The Order regards homosexuality as a choice. My mom was never the same. He became obsessed with homeopathic treatments and herbal remedies, teaching followers that through proper diet they could live to the age of a tree. When lightning struck a tree at the Home Place, he taught his followers that the tree had divine powers and was a gateway to heaven. According to church lore, Charles "Elden" Kingston founded The Order after seeing Jesus in a cave. Money, sex and power. Over the next several years, Stephen bounced from the suburbs of Salt Lake to the clans ranch in Nevada. "Finally exposed in the news, the facts of life inside [the Mormon offshoot Kingston clan's] religious/cult compound are stunning Mormons, Utahans, the nation, and the world. Everyone knows it., After the gold disappeared, the Knight brothers suddenly seemed to have a lot of money especially for young men on their own in the world for the first time. Theyd keep it in basements, in filing cabinets, in a big safe in one of Pauls offices, says Levi Kingston, a former clan member. She talked about how you cant associate with black people or anybody of a different race., Based on available evidence, including the accounts of numerous former Order members, the SPLC has designated The Order as a hate group under the category of `general hate.'. LeBaron Jr. has been accused by three of his own sons, who purport to have DNA evidence obtained by saliva samples, of fathering four children with his own biological daughter. The deputy opened the trunk of the Honda, where he found two duffel bags stuffed with silver. Dawna's eldest son is now dating a Centennial woman whom he recently found out is a distant cousin. But the Kingstons have remained in Salt Lake, operating virtually undetected in a city of more than 1 million people. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. We would cause harm, he confessed. As he grew older, Stephen turned out to be as rebellious as his own father had been as a boy. 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. For Stephen and the other kids on the ranch, the highlight of each week came on Sundays, when they traveled the hour and a half south to Salt Lake for church. I tell her I'm not sure, given the context. He also preached a bizarre extrapolation of the Book of Mormon called the White Horse Prophecy, a dreaded prediction of a cataclysmic time when the black race will rise up and attempt to destroy the white man, only to be thwarted by Native Americans riding to the rescue. He then severed her index finger, cleaned off the three bones, and carried them with him the rest of his life, believing that the totem kept her spirit with him. 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. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. One crime had been solved but the chest of gold stolen from Patty Kingstons closet remained a mystery. Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. He also had dozens of children a brood that would eventually grow to around 300 and he had a hard time telling them apart. Like other fundamentalists of that era, he believed the Mormon Church had lost its divine authority when it renounced polygamy in 1890, so he persuaded three other families to join him in establishing their own sect.