more. He had not realized just how rife the discontinued Mormon principle of polygamy was within his congregation.
After six years in California, Dan moved his wife and four children back to Utah where he started an in-depth study into the history and practice of polygamy within the LDS church and the Mormon faith.
After completing high school, Dan’s brother, Ron Lafferty, signed up for the army. After a short while he realized that it was not his calling and instead went on a two-year journey as a missionary, spreading the word of the LDS church and the greatness of what it had to offer around the United States. He wanted other people to experience the pleasure and contentment that he got from being a Mormon.
It was a tough two years for Ron, as being a Mormon missionary means abiding strictly by the rules of the doctrine. Rules include: not drinking alcohol, not smoking, not ingesting caffeine, no sex before marriage, no masturbation, only reading text produced by the LDS church and only listening to religious music and watching religious programmes. He abided by these rules without complaint but now and again a rebellious streak emerged. Did this come from being brought up by such an authoritative father?
Whilst on one of his Mormon missions in Florida, Ron met a student nurse called Dianna and a few months later, at the end of his mission, they were married. The newly weds moved back to Utah so that they could be close to the rest of the Lafferty family and also so that they could be within the epicentre of the Mormon religion.
A LOOK INTO FUNDAMENTALISM
A short time into his research into polygamy, Dan Lafferty came across a text called The Peace Maker. The two-page pamphlet advocated polygamy and dealt mainly with biblical marriage laws. It is a text shrouded in mystery, as who actually wrote it remains ambiguous. Some say that a non LDS member by the name of Udney Hay Jacob was responsible for its production and that LDS founder and prophet Joseph Smith was quick to distance himself from the work, but others believe that Joseph Smith himself composed it.
Dan Lafferty received a message from God telling him that it was Smith who had written it and this was all Dan needed to begin a polygamist lifestyle. A big part of The Peace Maker deals with the need for the woman to be submissive as God had requested, and it wasn’t long before Dan had Matilda abiding by these rules. She wasn’t allowed to drive, handle money or speak to anyone outside of the family without Dan being there. The children were removed from school and there was to be no medical treatment, only natural homeopathic remedies.
By the late ’70s Dan was treating his wife and children in the same way that his father had treated his mother, his siblings and him. According to his new sacred text, his children and his wife were his property to use as he wished.
Dan then chose his first plural wife, Rumanian immigrant called Ann Randak who he lovingly referred to as his ‘gypsy bride’. Suddenly Matilda had been shoved from a happy marriage into what she described as a ‘hellish situation’.
Dan and Ron Lafferty had taken dramatically different paths in their first years as men, but one thing had remained constant in both their lives, and that was the love and need they felt for their faith. Once they were both back in Utah it was Ron who acted as the glue of the family ties. He was the brother that all other siblings would turn to for advice, and he held a similar role for his children and wife. Everyone could rely on Ron to do the right thing and help in times of trouble.
Growing up, Ron had always felt a great love for his mother and it had hurt him to the core when he had witnessed the abuse that his father had inflicted on her. It was her influence and the respect he had upheld for her that had made Ron the person he was in his 20s and 30s.
It wasn’t surprising when Ron was the only brother who did not attend ‘chance meetings’ the Lafferty brothers seemed to be having more and more frequently. Whenever there was a break at the Chiropractic clinic that Dan and Mark ran for their father, Watson Junior, Tim and Allen would arrive and discussions and seminars would take place based on the new knowledge that Dan was in ownership of regarding polygamy and ‘blood atonement’. The four brothers listened to everything that Dan had to say and even though he had not yet assigned himself to a particular Fundamentalist church, his knowledge of polygamy and other abolished Mormon doctrines was vast, he had become a proficient preacher and soon he had his younger brothers mesmerized and within a few weeks they were converted Fundamentalists.
A CHANGE IN IDEAS
By the summer of 1982, Dan and Ron’s four brothers had started to impose their new found ideas onto their families, but their wives were not happy about the situation that was growing and began talking about their fears to Ron’s wife Dianna. Dianna was the lucky one, as she was married to the only Lafferty brother who had not been converted into the throws of polygamy and she felt that it was up to her and Ron to help the other couples out of this horrid situation.
Dianna discussed her sister-in-law’s fears about the personality changes in their husbands with Ron and convinced him that he should go to one of the meetings at the Chiropractic clinic and rationally talk his five younger siblings back to the mainstream Mormon religion.
Ron Lafferty arrived at his first ever gathering held by his brothers, and they welcomed him warmly. All five of Ron’s brothers held a great deal of respect and admiration for their elder brother and were happy that he had taken the time to take part in something that had become so important to them.
Ron immediately started reading an extract from an essay that had been written by the LDS church discussing the evils of fundamentalism and how it should be avoided at all costs. The brothers listened politely until Ron came to a halt and then Dan answered. And so the evening went on, Ron would quote from the Mormon scripture denouncing fundamentalism and Dan would respond with well researched knowledge on why such acts were needed in order to be as virtuous and as close to God as possible.
For the first couple of hours Ron stood his ground and refused to believe what Dan and his other four brothers were doing was in any way right. He tried to plead with Mark, Watson, Tim and Allen, telling them that Dan was brain washing them with ideas that would ruin them forever, but every word that came out of Ron’s mouth was countered with an even better example backing such acts from Dan.
In the book Under the Banner of Heaven by John Krakauer, Dan Lafferty is quoted as saying:
From the moment that Ron returned home he decided it was time to bring his new found ideology into action, and this meant that his loving wife Dianna would also have to make the necessary changes to her life as well.
Ron Lafferty had been under financial pressure and he was relieved now that he had learnt from his brother’s teachings that material goals no longer mattered as a Fundamentalist missionary.
Dianna was shocked with the swift and dramatic change in her husband’s personality. She had sent him out to convert his brothers back to the LDS church and he had returned, in a matter of hours, as a Mormon fundamentalist. Over the weeks that followed Diana tried her hardest to talk sense into her ever changing husband, but it was impossible. He was a convert of the highest measure. Whereas before Dianna and Ron had had an extremely equal and caring relationship, one that many people around them were in envy of, he was now a strict alpha male who believed that a woman’s job was to abide by the demanding rules set out for her in The Peace Maker. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Penelope Weiss, a friend of Dianna’s, remarks:
Dianna soon gave up trying to talk her husband round and surrendered to doing as he said to keep her life as pain free as possible.
A SPANNER IN THE WORKS
Dianna Lafferty had been conditioned into being a Mormon fundamentalist wife and she was not gong to complain when her husband decided it was time to take other wives. Dan, Mark, Watson and Tim had also managed to subdue their wives from their initial anger and were now living by the rules set out in The Peace Maker.
Allen’s wife, Brenda, was a different matter, she had been angry from the moment Allen had discussed his new found views with her.
