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Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. Mary Nelson, 23, tells "Whistleblower" host Alex Ferrer about how she escaped the Kingston clan, also known as The Order, with the help of her boyfriend Bryan. 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. 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. Many children have had birth defects due to this inbreeding. Now, two years later, Stephen still sleeps with a gun near his bed. These men are living freely in the Cane Beds area. If you find a grave up there that's not marked, that's the way Fred wanted it.". David was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the incest, but served only four before being paroled. It's the kids who are disproportionately handicapped as compared to the demographics of any other comparably small town. But we paid it all back.. Mormons, however, take care to denounce the FLDS "polygs" as having absolutely no relation to their Latter Day Saints. 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. From the outside it seemed like a typical suburban home, offering few clues of the secrets that were contained inside. I Escaped a Polygamist Cult | Marie Claire . Paul was upset any of this had been reported at all, says a former member close to the boys. Elden had predicted that he would be resurrected from the dead, so clan members kept his body on ice for three days, to no avail. Over the years, state law enforcement and the courts have sporadically addressed the incest in the Kingston ranks. 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. Others say they buried it out in the desert and are slowly cashing it out. They both have the same high cheekbones, the same pale skin, the same wide-set eyes. Sex. Blacks were the less valiant people in heaven who sat on the sidelines while others took sides, according to The Order. Fumarase deficiency, however sensationalized, is not the only genetic disorder found here. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. The quick answer for why this polygamous community has buried so many of its children is inbreeding, according to community members. Because that one is going to be genius-level purity, and thats what The Order is looking for., Photo Credit: AP Images / Leah Hogsten, Pool (John Daniel Kingston); AP Images / Jeffrey D. Allred / Pool (Jeremy Kingston), SPLC is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization (EIN: 63-0598743). When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. 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. LGBT people fare little better in the Kingston clan. His brother, John Ortell Kingston, took over the leadership of The Order incorporated in the 1970s as the Latter Day Church of Christ. A lawyer and an accountant by trade, Stephens father hardly looked like the sort of man who could command the unquestioned loyalty of thousands of followers. I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. You could be such an asset to the Order., Trending These specialty firearms can cost anywhere from $2,500 to $8,000 each. She called her sister-in-law Patty Kingston, who lived across town. His followers erected a crude stone cross nearby in his honor, covered with inscriptions of the letter K (for Kingdom or Kingston). At the lot's northwest corner, a metal gatethe kind you might find on a cattle ranchhangs open on its hinge. Until the 1990s, there were only 13 known cases of FD in the world. Three of his wives are his half-sisters. Come back, his dad will say. But by 2006, Dr. Theodore Tarby, of Arizona, had discovered at least 20 more children living with the condition in Short Creek, all within just blocks of each other. 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. Terrified, he went out and bought a stash of guns to arm himself, just in case his family tried to gun him down. 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. When he was three, his mother led him into a building controlled by the clan and pointed out an intense man lifting weights in the gym. The familys dedication to the principle of polygamy already had been established by Kingstons father, who had three wives. More recently, the Kingston-owned Washakie Renewable Energy (WRE) agreed to pay a $3 million fine after it was sued by the federal government for raking in tax credits for biofuels it never produced. But it is likely that Kingston could recognize some of himself in Stephen. The teacher added a drop of dye to the water, and the children watched as the blackness slowly spread. materials or even attempted to focus team and society have a kingston clan member was charged with birth defects increase becomes apparent similarities than. And then there are the more livable genetic conditions. 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. The Order can rightly claim discrimination by mainstream Mormonism, but this is due to its embrace of polygamy, which the LDS church officially abandoned in 1890 in order for Utah to become a state. 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. They steer clear of banks,. He was angry and confused, says a former member of the cult. All of the gay people would definitely be the first to go, he said. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. Like other teenagers who leave fundamentalist Mormon communities, Stephen was not prepared to enter the world at large. There are baby graves year that date back as earlier as the 1950s, potentially even earlier: many are unmarked. They had sped off in a Honda sedan. And, because this cult is so tight-knit and averse to strangers, the gene pool is rather limited. 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. 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. Suddenly, Stephens brother David lost control of the truck and it rolled over, killing David instantly. SALT LAKE CITY A local non-profit with ties to the polygamous Kingston group is facing multiple questions and accusations regarding its taxes. 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. If the Order doesnt have it, the clan teaches, we dont need it., Editors picks Is Jasper always unspirited and stony-broke when outvalue some Heisenberg very . In its place, someone had left a note. 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. 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. (Paul Kingston and other leaders of the family ignored repeated requests for comment for this story. They got married and contacted the . She knows that they're. "My father and her grandmother were full brother and sister," she explains, recognizing the bloom of confusion on my face. Ron Tucker went so far as to call his former brethren white supremacists, and ten times more racist than your run-of-the-mill skinhead. NBA 'Investigating,' Team Suspends Ja Morant After Allegedly Flashing Gun on Social Media A stern disciplinarian, who in later years looked and dressed like a mortician, Ortell made incest a tenet of the clans faith, informed by his work breeding Holstein cows on the Kingstons dairy farm. Carolyn Yvonne Kingston was born in 1938 in Elmo, Utah, to Charles Elden Kingston, and his first wife Ethel Gustafson, so she was the daughter of the first prophet of the Kingston Clan. Wed sleep on the chicken coop in the summer and shoot raccoons. One day, not long after the gold disappeared, Knight got an anonymous phone call. There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends. 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. (KUTV) Weeks after a Kingston polygamist clan member was charged in the death of her child, former members of that group are speaking out about what they say is a much bigger problem. Some would say that is because it takes generations for certain inbred recessive genetic traits to manifest. As part of a plea bargain, Jeremy spent just one year in prison. presided, while Richauns father officiated the wedding, promising the bride that if she obeyed her husband, she would be guaranteed a spot in the Celestial Kingdom, the highest level of heaven. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time What were taught is to love our neighbor, that all people, all races no matter who they are deserve to be loved, he explained. According to church lore, Charles "Elden" Kingston founded The Order after seeing Jesus in a cave. In the months after the robbery, Stephen couldnt shake the feeling he was being watched. 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. Daniel was arrested and eventually spent 28 weeks in a county jail for felony child abuse. Ex-order members interviewed by the Intelligence Report generally agreed with the characterization of the Kingston clan as a hate group.. It was all fun, Stephen recalls. His father stood on the stage and called out the names of the men who were to receive one of the clans highest honors. That's still gross." Similarly, his older brother John Daniel Kingston has had 14 wives, four of them his half-sisters. Theyll do what they need to do to defend whats theirs.. 3 bd 2 ba 1.6k sqft. 17226 Horsetooth Canyon Dr, Houston, TX 77095. I was scared to death when I left. From a clan ranch in Nevada, Stephen called his brother Ben, who had left the Order a few years before. She is guiding me all around town, following my route, turn by turn, on Google maps. "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. "It's like any inbred disorder," Tarby says. They belonged to the Order and had toiled in the cult for years. One ex-Order member, who asked to be referred to as Scott, instead of his real name for fear of retribution by clan members, said hatred of gays was big in the Kingston clan, with the word f----- in frequent use. Dont the infant deaths and tales of horrific deformities belie Ortells homespun eugenics? 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. One of them approached the front door while the other kept a lookout. "It's doesn't stop anybody," Dawna says. 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. 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. His seven sons and two daughters by LaDonna Peterson, the second of his 13 wives, are reputed to be the inner circle that runs the cult. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. Every now and then, as hes driving around the ranch, his phone will ring. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill FLDS incest causes horrible birth defects - Google Groups Instead, he had walked away from the family three years earlier to make a life of his own. But the constant fear has subsided. We havent gotten any big U.S. contracts, Young explained. It was time. As the first of Paul Kingstons many wives, Patty enjoyed a privileged role in the Order including access to vast wealth. The Order was founded by Elden Kingston, Stephens grand-uncle, at the height of the Great Depression. In the meantime, the police were closing in on the missing silver. Then their father said something they never expected. "They were called the Second Warders and we were called the First Warders; we weren't supposed to hang out with kids from the Centennial group because they were wicked for having left," she says. Later that afternoon, in another house across town belonging to the Order, a woman named Patty Kingston opened her closet to discover that a chest of gold coins worth as much as $5 million had vanished. They sat there for a moment, warming their hands against the sputtering heater. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. FOX 13 . 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. Sometimes he parked his immaculately buffed burgundy Ford Thunderbird on the curb, but it was rare to see the man himself. 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. When he noticed that the boys had stopped working, he became enraged. Years of inbreeding have resulted in children born with serious birth defects. Modern interpretations of this passage vary, but The Order apparently takes quite literally this idea of blackness being a sign of iniquity. Utah woman reveals what life was like growing up in a polygamist CULT He is not ready to forgive his father. 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. As he grew older, Stephen turned out to be as rebellious as his own father had been as a boy. They did it, says Christian Kingston. Double murder in Utah: Tragedy Strikes the Cast of A&E's - Reddit 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. It was all just innocent teenage stuff, recalls Ron, who has since left the clan. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 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. Rather than submit to DNA tests, which could have revealed the incest in his brood, he coughed up a more than $200,000 settlement. Over 75 years, the Kingstons have amassed a fortune worth an estimated $300 million, but the operation skirts the edges of the law. October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. During a recent interview with the Intelligence Report, Jessica Kingston, a former member of the secretive, Salt Lake City-based cult and a star of the A&E reality series "Escaping Polygamy," remembered, when she was 12, her Sunday school teacher coming into class with a . Its a quiet, haunting place, with massive hayfields that stretch to the horizon. As time passed, his dogma became even stranger. In 2003, Order member Jeremy Kingston pleaded guilty to incest for taking his first cousin, 15-year-old Lu Ann Kingston, as his fourth wife. What are the types of birth defects? - NICHD The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Anns day. Accounts of clan babies being born with congenital defects and other problems abound, including dwarfism, albinism and children born minus fingernails or without genitals. The Brown boys, charged with felony counts of burglary, wrote a letter to their aunt apologizing for stealing the silver in her house. His most bizarre beliefs, though, concerned the occult. 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. 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. Then one night, a clan member called and told him that the Order planned to kill him. Blood Cult | Southern Poverty Law Center The family gathered in the living room. "Many of the parents did not want to have to deal with some of those children. 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). By the time the teenagers sped away, they had made off with more than $80,000 in silver. The FLDS split off from the mainline Mormon (LDS) church in 1890 after the church denounced the principal of plural marriage. Before the call ended, Young insisted that he didnt admit to any kind of incest or anything. When Intelligence Report inquired if Young thought there was anything wrong with first cousins getting married, Young opined that such issues were between the individuals involved and God. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is a polygamous sect straddling the Utah and Arizona state lines; the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, are known collectively as Short Creek (pronounced "crick"). He was. It wasnt like we thought about it a lot. According to former Order members, they worked long shifts sorting coal and operating heavy machinery in unsafe conditions. 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. 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. She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her . Thanks, it read. 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. girl, born to John Ortell and Isabell Johnson, was not the product of an incestuous marriage. Brother Elden died of penile cancer in 1948, despite the best efforts of some family members to burn away the cancer using acid. took great pains to never show his wealth and taught his followers to do the same. A scrappy white wooden fence runs the length of it along Canyon Street. Julie left the cult at age 19. ), Related Young declined to comment when asked if he practices polygamy. 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. They seemed happy, Ron says. Snow also remembered being taught end-time prophecies, with a cleansing wherein the streets of Salt Lake City would run red with blood. 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. In summer, the kids swam in the reservoir as their mother, Richaun, watched, the boys doing back flips off the rope swing into the water; at night, as the sun set behind the mountains, they all sat together to watch the clans buffalo herd grazing in the pastures. There are also accounts of dead babies being buried at the Holy Spot, a tree-shrouded patch of land across the street from a grade school in Bountiful, just north of Salt Lake City. To deaden his feelings of isolation, he started smoking a lot of pot and sitting around the house all day listening to country music. "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. There are also graves lacking any dates whatsoever. Jacob Kingston Allegedly Scammed the U.S. Out of $500 Million - Bloomberg "How do you keep track of that?" Family members attribute the defects to the advanced Polygamy-linked charter school pays hundreds of thousands of - KUTV Do you think if I took $5 million in gold, Id be working out here?. Polygamist Mafia: Escaping The Kingston Clan - YouTube Chinese people were called stupid, and Mexicans were dirty, said Lu Ann, adding, because of their skin.. There were so many young children who were born with abnormalitiesharelips, club feet, heart valvesthat were they were going to die within a year. 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. Daniels ultimatum: Stay in The Order, date no one, and have no contact with family. eu . Scott remembered that Ortell had an answer for that question. Like Stephen, the boys were considered troublemakers by the Order and like Stephen, they knew a lot about how the clan handled its money. The polygamous town facing genetic disaster - BBC Future. Eventually, Stephen was sent back to Washakie and was placed under the supervision of his uncle, one of the familys most feared enforcers. UFC 285 Live Stream: How to Watch Jones vs. Gane Online 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 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. See the Beths Deliver Refreshing 'Expert in a Dying Field' Mini-Set on 'CBS Mornings', Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time, I could boil down what theyre about in three words, says a member who broke with the Order. The Kingston clan is also known as the Davis County . Dawna's eldest son is now dating a Centennial woman whom he recently found out is a distant cousin. In 2011, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison, plus 20 years. Another of the cults teachings was that soy can make you gay, an anti-government conspiracy theory popular in some right-wing circles. Matt Browning seems less sure. We want to hear it. They were finally getting even. Youd show up for a welfare call, or a domestic-abuse call, and it was just real run-down.. He no longer believed in the Order, but he knew that leaving would mean being shunned by his own family, and because he had been forbidden from making friends outside the clan, there would be few people in the world he could turn to. 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. His arms are sunburned and his hands calloused from long days moving the irrigation pipes that water the fields.