This article appears in the June 23, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The fact that most of the people in the Kingston clan were born into the lifestyle is very key to group think because this is all they know, and some may never question the beliefs even when they age because it has been their whole world all their life. 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. It's also still rape with a foreign object, I remind us both unnecessarily. According to former members of the Order, decades of inbreeding have resulted in rampant birth defects throughout the family. Daniel was arrested and eventually spent 28 weeks in a county jail for felony child abuse. Thats your Uncle Paul, she said. During an interview with this reporter, Lu Ann Kingston, whose defiance of the cult led to the conviction of her former spiritual husband Jeremy, recalled that Order members saw intermarriage as a way to keep the bloodline pure., All outsiders are considered to be beneath Order members, she explained. I strongly believe they are an organized-crime family, Shurtleff says. She was definitely the pick of the litter, and thats why Paul got her, Ron recalls. 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. The clan believed he had their treasure, and they were sending someone to kill him. 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. Johnson maintained that The Orders vast array of businesses which includes a grocery store, pawn shops, a garbage disposal business, an insurance company, a politically-influential biofuels plant, and a high-end firearms manufacturer employs individuals of various racial and ethnic minorities. 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 . Mormons, however, take care to denounce the FLDS "polygs" as having absolutely no relation to their Latter Day Saints. We figured it was ours anyway, says Stephen, explaining that the clan hadnt paid the boys for bagging coal. Tucker is another of Ortells many sons, though not from the favored wife, LaDonna. Two of her sisters married their first cousinsmen with whom they share the same grandfather; the sons of their father's second wife, who is their mother's full sister. Pentecostal But in a 2News . 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. Another is a first cousin. 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. Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. 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. In 2006, Warren Jeffs, then the president and prophet of the FLDS, was arrested and charged with accomplice rape, for just two of the underage marriages he had arranged. So they would hand them over to Aunt Martha, who was the midwife," he says. Through his brother LyleBishop of the FLDS and mouthpiece for his imprisoned brotherJeffs enacted a Judgment wherein FLDS members were asked a series of bizarre personal questions; their answers were judged, and the most righteous were welcomed into the United Order of FLDS elite. Allison, a 17 year-old ex-Kingston member says not much has changed since Lu Anns day. Kollene's father, John Daniel Kingston has 14 wives, and she is the fifth of her mother Shirley Hansen's 12 children. When people hear organized crime, they think of mobsters. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. According to experts and former Jeffs followers, the cause of the birth defect is clear: Intermarriage among close relatives is producing children who have two copies of a recessive gene for a debilitating condition called Fumarase Deficiency. Theyd keep it in basements, in filing cabinets, in a big safe in one of Pauls offices, says Levi Kingston, a former clan member. Jacob Kingston Allegedly Scammed the U.S. Out of $500 Million - Bloomberg His most bizarre beliefs, though, concerned the occult. was just as frugal as his brother he lived in a dilapidated shack with planks missing from the porch but he had a better head for business. Kingston clan: Unlikely whistleblower helps uncover alleged half It was a wild place, says Scott Cosgrove, a former detective with the Box Elder County Sheriffs Office, who remembers the ranch as a broken-down spread, guarded by a feral pack of boys who patrolled the fence line from the back of a pickup armed with shotguns. Dawna asks me. Utahs polygamous Kingston clan mixes incest and white supremacy with old-fashioned capitalism. Or Aunt Martha did, or somebody did. Due to the Kingstons convoluted genealogy, Lu Ann was both his first cousin and his aunt. One is a first cousin. 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. Recordings of church testimony given by various Kingstons serve as further evidence of the cults bigoted teachings. Ortell is credited with expanding The Orders business empire and making the family immensely wealthy. Like polygamy, incest is a third-degree felony in Utah, and as with polygamy, convictions are rare. From a young age, Snow worked for Order companies to help feed his siblings, a responsibility some Kingston men are known to shirk. Kingston is a member of the Order, the largest Mormon polygamist clan in the U.S. Terrified, he went out and bought a stash of guns to arm himself, just in case his family tried to gun him down. Everyone knows it's happening, few talk about it unprompted, it just sort of..is. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. 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. His father stood on the stage and called out the names of the men who were to receive one of the clans highest honors. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. They also knew that much of the clans wealth was stashed inside the unassuming suburban house on the corner. Barlow/Jessop descendants carry the recessive gene that causes fumarase. 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). They predict the scale of the problem will increase dramatically in the future. Some would say that is because it takes generations for certain inbred recessive genetic traits to manifest. They did it, says Christian Kingston. Hospital harm., While part of The Order, Val Snow, a twenty-something gay man with a wry sense of humor, believed being gay was like spitting in the eye of God. Snow is the son of Daniel Kingston, whom he paints as a little man with a lot of power.. The lot is unmarked and unremarkable. And, because this cult is so tight-knit and averse to strangers, the gene pool is rather limited. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. All I like to do is work on cars and hang out with friends and ride my ponies, he wrote one night on his MySpace page. The FLDS split off from the mainline Mormon (LDS) church in 1890 after the church denounced the principal of plural marriage. 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Family members attribute the defects to the advanced There is also some overlap with Sovereign citizens, he contends. . The lawyers words call to mind another heavenly curse, described in 2 Nephi, Chapter 5 of the Book of Mormon, where God caused a skin of blackness to come upon a group called the Lamanites, supposedly ancestors of Native Americans. Inside the Kingston Kingdom: Former employee reveals clan's secrets The teenagers sitting in the driveway on South Bonner Circle that afternoon in 2009 knew the operation well. It was a grimy, derelict-looking place. And then there are the more livable genetic conditions. materials or even attempted to focus team and society have a kingston clan member was charged with birth defects increase becomes apparent similarities than. 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. The FLDS started out as a few fringe families in the late 1890s; as more seeking to follow the principal of plural marriage moved to the polygamous towns in the early-to-mid 20th century, the gene pool grew, but by the 90s, under the stricter control of prophet Rulon Jeffs (Warren's father), they were tightening up and selectively marrying and breeding in a sort of misfired eugenics experiment that ultimately yielded its own genetic disorder: fumarase deficiency (FD), otherwise known as Polygamist Down's. In the 1980s, the state of Utah sued John Ortell Kingston over welfare fraud related to his many wives. The polygamous town facing genetic disaster - BBC Future. 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. Spokesmen for both the U.S. State Department and for Picatinny Arsenal could neither verify nor deny Youngs claims. All of this is to say that incest and inbreeding have been going on for so longand so prevalentlyin the polygamous sects along the Utah/Arizona border that these stories have been woven into the fiber of the communities. They maintain a secretive but powerful presence in Utah's Salt Lake Valley, and their estimated 7,500. There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece. Among the polygamous Kingstons, a number of children have been born with birth defects, among them one born with two vaginas and two uteruses but no Outwardly, she appeared to have no sex organs. A rare neurological disorder characterized by water on the brain, muscular stiffness, adducted thumbs and aphasia, x-linked hydrocephalus is expressed only in men and carried by women. That sister, too, dealt with a lot of respiratory problems with her kids, "because of the relation," Dawna explains. The Idol: How HBOs Next Euphoria Became Twisted Torture Porn. Kingston forebears were among those who suffered this fate. If I had done it, the Order probably would have killed me. "You had a fairly diverse pool to start with, so only if that went on for a long time within this same population would you see real effects," he told ABC. 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. 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. Lost Index. This didnt belong to you anyway., As big as the heist was, it attracted almost no attention in Salt Lake. NBA 'Investigating,' Team Suspends Ja Morant After Allegedly Flashing Gun on Social Media Theyre basically the Utah Mafioso of the white power world, Browning told Intelligence Report. 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.'. "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 family gathered in the living room. Bad harm. Black blood was the worst thing you can have, Jessica said, particularly since the Kingstons consider themselves to be the whitest of the white, descended directly from Jesus Christ and King David, the Middle Eastern origins of both men notwithstanding. Structural Birth Defects. 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. Health Gap. These days Stephen works on a cattle ranch near the Idaho border, just down the road from where he grew up. The Order was founded by Elden Kingston, Stephens grand-uncle, at the height of the Great Depression. Now, two years later, Stephen still sleeps with a gun near his bed. But the more the deputy pressed, the more their stories didnt add up. The two groups split when Dawna was growing up. Fumarase deficiency, however sensationalized, is not the only genetic disorder found here. These can include: Cleft lip or cleft palate; Heart defects, such as missing or misshaped valves; Abnormal limbs, such as a clubfoot; Neural tube defects, such as spina bifida, and problems related to the growth and development of the . It was a total spur of the moment thing, Brown says. The quick answer for why this polygamous community has buried so many of its children is inbreeding, according to community members. When it comes to racist Sunday school lessons, the polygamous Kingston clan could teach the Ku Klux Klan a thing or two. Ex-order members interviewed by the Intelligence Report generally agreed with the characterization of the Kingston clan as a hate group.. Obviously, we would love to.. 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. Tiny Tombstones: Inside the FLDS Graveyard for Babies Born from - Vice FOX 13 . had some 80 children by 13 wives, but his favorite was Paul, an excellent student who made friends easily. 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. Andrea grew up in a small two-bedroom home in a Kingston-owned coal A passerby might catch a glimpse of children in the windows, but for the most part, the Young family kept to themselves.
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