But mostly he talked about the history of the Order and his ancestors, the men who had started the clan. The Kingstons operate in a self-contained universe, completely cut off from the outside world. "Outside, people don't die that often, and usually they're really old.". The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time Towards Net Zero. In order to maintain his familys superior bloodlines, Ortell married and had children with two of his half-sisters and two nieces. 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. And another one of her sisters married one of my half-brothers, but we have the same blood and genetics because our moms are full sisters." She explained that they weren't supposed to know who their dad was, only her . Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Anns day. It was a grimy, derelict-looking place. One is a first cousin. The son of Pauls sister Rachel herself a daughter of Ortell and LaDonna Kingston Young was the only current member of the Kingston clan, out of the many contacted for this story, who consented to a live, on-the-record interview. And the graveyard grew exponentially.". Ethnic jokes and stereotypes were commonly repeated. "And my oldest daughter, she's 18 and she's dated a couple of my cousins, which makes them her second cousins, and we're like, Eww, that's gross.". 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. greatly increases, medical experts say. 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. ), Related For fun he and other Order men would go to a park frequented by gay males, looking for victims. Vandoliers Play Tennessee Concert in Dresses to Protest State's New Drag Bill The Tuckers think this is all hogwash now, though they were programmed to believe it at the time. Supposedly, LaDonna had a dream wherein it was revealed that anyone who left The Order would be tainted by black blood. He shares a last name and a not-too-distant relation with the polygamous LeBaron group in Chihuahua, Mexico. 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. They steer clear of banks, fearing theyll steal their money. 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 FLDS split off from the mainline Mormon (LDS) church in 1890 after the church denounced the principal of plural marriage. 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. Kingston forebears were among those who suffered this fate. But given that the Kingstons command an estimated 6,000 adherents, boast a business empire reportedly worth as much as $1 billion and have outlasted myriad bouts with law enforcement and the press, these dreams of world domination may be less delusional than they first seem. Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Youngs claims. It was also around then that Stephen, at the age of 14, began to see the clan for what it really was. Ron says the cults justification for its racism goes back to early Mormon teachings about a war in heaven between the forces of Satan and those of Jesus. Yeah, I believe in it, he said. The clan kids from there would come to school not properly dressed for the cold, and they were always getting in fights. Nevertheless, former members of The Order say that incest and racism are inextricably linked in The Orders teachings. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. The 200 Greatest Singers of All Time ", "They took their lives," Ron says. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features 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. . Over the years, state law enforcement and the courts have sporadically addressed the incest in the Kingston ranks. (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.) Just under eight miles southeast of Short Creek is an area called Cane Beds, Arizona. Were fucked, they told their cousin. Intelligence Report then read the names of women believed to be his wives four in all. 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). Which brings us back to the baby cemetery. Or leave. We would cause harm, he confessed. 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. 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. There are baby graves year that date back as earlier as the 1950s, potentially even earlier: many are unmarked. They predict the scale of the problem will increase dramatically in the future. 3 bd 2 ba 1.6k sqft. There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends. As lore has it, Elden was the one mighty and strong predicted by Scripture, who holding the scepter of power in his hand would set in order the House of God. With thick white hair, a lantern jaw and a commanding presence, he had no problem attracting followers. But the Kingstons have remained in Salt Lake, operating virtually undetected in a city of more than 1 million people. 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. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. In it, black people come close to killing off the white race until they are countered by Native Americans, symbolized by a Red Horse, which gallops to the White Horses rescue. Immune Response. There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece. "And she's not the only one; three of her sisters married three of my brothers. Stephens father seemed to marry a new girl every year, each one younger and prettier than the last. 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. The two were playmates when they were boys. "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. (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. While some despised Ben for his apostasy and refused to speak with him, Stephen had remained in touch with his brother. 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. "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. The Brown boys, charged with felony counts of burglary, wrote a letter to their aunt apologizing for stealing the silver in her house. 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. Dawna Black Bistline (Alyssa Bistline's father's brother's wife) has seen firsthand how the children of cousins suffer. He asked him if he was being obedient, then excused himself to talk to Stephens mother. Some read simply, "Baby Keate," or "Baby Bateman," or "Baby Cooke," with holes where numeric date tiles might otherwise be placed. I pass the dairy, the zoo, the park, the former birthing clinic, the condemned high school built on a foundation of adobe bricks, and so on. 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. When people hear organized crime, they think of mobsters. 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 threw away their possessions, donned matching blue overalls, and pitched canvas tents on a patch of land north of Salt Lake that would come to be known as the Home Place.. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. 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. 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. But I do have children with other women., Asked if two women named were in fact his first cousins, Young paused, finally replying, I guess Im curious as to what youre trying to get at here.. I guess I just had too much soy, Snow smiled. This is your fault, he thundered, glaring at them. Obsessed with the purity of their bloodline and empowered by a sense of entitlement on par with the divine right of kings, the Kingstons have made incest the cornerstone of a self-serving theology that loathes non whites, fosters homophobia and abhors government authority. 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. Boys began to show interest in Julie as she matured, but Paul, as the clans leader, warned them away, because of Julies black blood. 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. If they are money-laundering or making money in support of polygamy and incest, then they probably meet the statute.. The two boys pulled into the driveway and shifted the green Honda into park. Three of his wives are his half-sisters. Luke and Scott often visited the home of one of their aunts, Rachel Young. Snow began dating men when he was 22. Future Planet. She is guiding me all around town, following my route, turn by turn, on Google maps. A simple urine test will reveal. They sat there for a moment, warming their hands against the sputtering heater. 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. Scott remembered that Ortell had an answer for that question. They are paid not in cash but in scrip, an arcane form of credit used by the Mormon pioneers that can only be redeemed at company stores. Ex-order members interviewed by the Intelligence Report generally agreed with the characterization of the Kingston clan as a hate group.. Ross LeBaron Jr. recently took to the Internet to express his support for the Bundy family in Oregon, as well as for LaVoy Finicum, the lone fatality in that ordeal. David Lindley, Multi-Instrumentalist Who Shaped the Sound of Soft Rock, Dead at 78 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. Recordings of church testimony given by various Kingstons serve as further evidence of the cults bigoted teachings. 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. In the months after the robbery, Stephen couldnt shake the feeling he was being watched. And they are growing. Theyre basically the Utah Mafioso of the white power world, Browning told Intelligence Report. Paul would rather have the wealth and the money than the isolation and the conflict, he said. Suddenly, Stephens brother David lost control of the truck and it rolled over, killing David instantly. One man, who asks to remain nameless to protect his and his family's privacy, describes a lifetime of round-the-clock care and too-frequent hospital visits for his five sons. The boys also bought cigarettes wholesale through a small clan-owned market run by their older brother and sold them at school. 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. I am in love with old cars and horses. It would be several more years before Stephen learned that Paul Kingston was his father, and that his mother was just one of his dads many wives. "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. Browning sees similarities between The Order and the religion-minded racists of the World Church of the Creator and the Christian Identity movement. 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). This racist display was no one-off. There was also testimony, during one hearing, that someone in the Kingston clan wanted to blow up the courthouse. If they kill me, they kill me, he says. 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. David was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the incest, but served only four before being paroled. According to many of the individuals interviewed for this story, these children are seen as special angels sent from God to the FLDS community. While his dad was running the order from Salt Lake City, Stephen grew up on a cattle ranch called Washakie, near the Idaho border. I t is often used to treat severe acne.