The victims include three women and six children, two of whom were infants. The region where the attack took place Monday is disputed by two criminal groups, the Sinaloa cartel and La Linea, which is linked to the Juarez cartel.9 Mormon Family Members Shot, 'Burned Alive' in Attack on U.S.-Mexico Borderġ:00PM EST Jenny Rose Spaudo Wreckage of a burnt-out vehicle that may have belonged to the LeBaron family ( YouTube/The Telegraph)Īt least nine Mormon family members were horrifically slaughtered Monday in an attack at the U.S.-Mexico border. The extended LeBaron family has spoken out for years against drug cartel violence in Mexico and for looser gun laws, saying its members need to protect themselves. There are more than a million LDS Church members in Mexico, the largest number of adherents to the faith group after those in the United States. He said there are thousands of fundamentalist Mormons in northern Mexico, although a reliable count has not been done. “They tend to speak English and Spanish, live in extended communities with large, often-related families and, for the most part, desire to not get into much trouble,” Mason said. Interracial and interfaith marriages have grown in popularity. The diverse group includes those who practice polygamy and others who don’t, and some even attend LDS services. Mason, who wrote “The Mormon Menace: Violence and Anti-Mormonism in the Postbellum South,” said descendants of fundamentalist Mormon communities in Mexico today often include dual U.S.-Mexican citizens who frequently travel across the U.S.-Mexico border to visit relatives. “The president of the church in 1890 said he had a vision from God that temples would be taken away and it was better to give up polygamy so Mormons could keep the heart of their faith and not be on the run.”
MORMON FAMILY AMBUSHED SERIES
“The government had passed a series of punitive laws and had begun seizing church properties and threatened to seize church temples,” Mason said. government outlawed polygamy and the Mormon Church banned the practice. One expert estimated that members of the group had killed as many as 30 people over the years.įundamentalist Mormons share origins with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints but broke away from it in the early 20th century after the U.S. In 1993, a federal jury in Texas convicted three members of an offshoot of the community of LeBarons in the deaths of three former members and an 8-year-old child.
MORMON FAMILY AMBUSHED TV
In 1993, his story was turned into a TV drama, “ Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story.”
He later was tried and convicted in the 1977 murder of rival polygamist leader Dr. Ervil was convicted of the crime, but the conviction was later overturned. In 1972, two followers of Ervil LeBaron allegedly shot his brother, Joel, to death after the brothers argued over leadership of their religious faction. Daniel LeBaron lives in Colonia LeBaron in Chihuahua state, a community established by fundamentalist Mormons in 1924 that has close ties to the LeBarons of Bavispe. They were related to a prominent fundamentalist Mormon family by the same name, said Daniel LeBaron, a cousin of one of the victims, Rhonita Maria Miller. Some of the victims shared the last name LeBaron. A Mexican official had earlier said the killers might have mistaken the family for members of a rival drug cartel. The three women and 14 children whom assailants ambushed Monday as they drove toward Arizona from the town of Bavispe in Sonora state included descendants of a fundamentalist Mormon community that has lived in the country for decades.Įarly Wednesday, criminal investigators in northern Mexico said a suspect had been arrested and was under investigation for possible connections with the deaths.
citizens in northern Mexico has brought renewed attention to the scattered communities of Mormons who settled in the country more than a century ago to escape persecution.
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