UNDER THE BANNER OF HEAVEN | Reactions from major media outlets related to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Red-Carpet-Under-the-Banner-of-Heaven-598 – powered by Happy Scribe

It’s time for another episode of The Cultural Hall. This entire episode was recorded at the red carpet event under the Banner of Heaven. It’s a series that’s over on FX. You can also watch it on Hulu. It comes out on the 28th of of April and then comes out subsequent weeks. You’ll be able to catch the episodes and ultimately be able to watch it all by the middle of the year 2022. I’m able to speak with several people during this red carpet event. A huge shout out to my friend Lindsay Hanson Park. I don’t know why I just stuttered her name. It got stuck in my mouth. Lindsay Hanson Park, who made it possible for me to be able to be there at the red carpet event because of the work that we do here at the Cultural Hall. If you’ve never heard of the Cultural Hall and you happen to be finding us because of this particular episode, welcome to it. We are the most what’s the word? Prolific. We have produced the most episodes of a show available in podcast form that is affirming, that is positive for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints in the entire world, more than the Church itself.

We have had more episodes. So I encourage you to get into our back catalog, become a Patreon St, if you are interested. Now, in this particular episode, I’m going to queue this up right here and then just roll the interviews back to back to back. The first person that we talked to is Troy Williams from Equality, Utah, a good friend of mine, unable to chat with him, consulting under the Banner of Heaven. Then we visit with Lindsey Hansen Park. She also brought in to consult on some of the historical elements, and we talk about her involvement with it. Then we talk with Tyner Rushing, who plays Emma Smith. Yeah, there’s a historical element under the Banner of Heaven that maybe people don’t recognize. Then we visit with Dustin Lance Black. Academy Award winner Dustin Lance Black. Then we talk with Sam Worthington, who plays Ron Lafferty, and then finally stick around. To the very end, we visit with Andrew Garfield, who plays Jeb Pyree, the fictionalized Detective in this particular series. So check it out. Listen to this episode of The Cultural Hall. It’s from the red carpet under the Banner of Heaven. And I’ll tell you what, if you like this, if you are interested by what was said, please share this episode on your social media.

Tell other people about the Cultural Hall. It is how we’re able to do things like this, be invited to things like this and be able to share things like this episode of The Cultural Hall.

Troy Williams, who are you with these days? The Cultural Hall, which we still haven’t got you in.

Okay.

All right. First of all, to address the gentleman’s question, who is not behind me anymore? How do you look so fabulous.

Well, I needed to show up for you, baby.

All right.

I knew you’re going to be here, and so I wanted to do my best to look at the attractive how did you get involved in this project?

So amazing. Yeah, definitely.

I Slack as an old dear friend of mine, and I was staying with him in London, and I invited me to the writer’s room, actually, and we started talking about Joseph Smith and Mormon fundamentalism. And then what it’s also like to experience with faith crisis? And then after we had that conversation, he said, do you want to come onto the show?

And I’m like, yeah, let’s do it.

I wanted to help him to make sure that the scripts and the actors, everything that’s historically, theologically, culturally accurate, and it’s everything from looking at the history which you’ll talk to Lindsay about, but also making sure that they pronounce it Zion and not Zion.

There’s a quick toll after something like that happens. And we all go.

So we just tweak those little things as well. But then also working with Andrew Carfield and taking him to Sacrament meeting and introducing him to bishops and people that are in the Church, people that have left the Church, looking at the whole spectrum of the Mormon experience.

It’S almost kind of like being a missionary for the Church.

Well, I know all these years later and I’m still sharing the gospel, but I know a lot of these things are innocence about this show.

Sure.

And I would encourage people to be fearless in examining we have to ask ourselves, why did two men who used to be members of the Church in the name of God murder their sister and their niece? I think we have to be willing to examine why that happened so it doesn’t happen again, especially as we become more polarized and we see a rise of militias in Utah and people who are storming the capital dressed in Captain Moroni cosplay. We have to be willing to ask these questions. What leads a person to violence and conspiracy thinking? Because the Laparties began with an anti government rhetoric, got obsessed with conspiracies, and then started receiving revelations, the days that came from God.

Yeah.

So all of these things are linked. And when I came off of my mission and I came to Utah, I had all these questions about your history that I couldn’t get answers to. And I met a lot of people that were obsessed with conspiracies and the New World Order and really went down that kind of rabbit hole. The Black Peas went down. And so we can see that when people believe that they are the voice of God, they can do all kinds of unspeakable things, whether it’s murder or, as with Warren, Jesus abusing children. So we’ve got to be able to be willing to interrogate this, look at ourselves and look at our history and have an honest conversation about this.

I know that a lot of people, I guess, representing we say a lot of people have expressed when they see some of the visual stuff within it, and they just go, come on, if this were any other faith, people would be up in arms. But the Mormons have to take it well.

I grew up in the LDS tradition. My ancestors crossed the Plains, camped in winter quarters, settled in Ogden, fleeing religious persecution. So these are my people, and I love them and I care about them. And I wanted to make sure that they were portrayed accurately and honestly as well, not to give a glossy version of history, but to be honest about things. And the Mormon experience is much larger than the LDS Church. There’s many break off groups, and they all claim that this restoration heritage as well. And so this, I think, will be challenging for some mainstream Latterday Saints who aren’t fully conversant with Mormon fundamentalism and some of their ideas and some of their doctrines. So all I can say is that Dustin Lance Black and Andrew Garfield and the whole team really have a lot of love and compassion for Latter day Saints. This isn’t designed to harm or hurt.

Sure.

This is designed to actually have a really difficult conversation.

I love it.

And I hope that Lady Saints are willing to engage in conversation with us.

Definitely something to gain. All right, get out of here. I’m going to talk to Lindsey. Hello. Lindsay Hansen Park, previous guest of the Cultural Hall.

How are you?

It’s so good to see you.

So I was just busy with Troy for the true believing Mormon, right. The true blue. Certainly they have seen some of the things within, like previews and trailers and even just seeing, like, temple quotes being depicted. To some people, right. People will watch it or they won’t watch it. But to those that are maybe on the fence.

They see that and they go.

Maybe I can get past it because there’s something to learn. What do you think that they can learn if they’re able to push back, push past? Their discomfort.

Is always like a sign that I need to be more curious and look at something and in my own life that led me to incredible pathways. I think if LDS people are strong enough and brave enough to confront the darkness that exists in our culture and it does exist, it’s a gift. That’s a gift. And we can transform into a better people, a better culture, a better community, and we can prevent stuff like this from happening. I really think the show does a good job of portraying Brenda’s family as the good Mormons, the Mormons worth fighting for. There are multiple Mormons interacting, and I think people are going to be so focused on distancing themselves from fundamentalism. But the disappointing thing for me that I’ve heard from the Latterday Saint community and my own friends and family on the show are like, when they watch this or think about this, their first inclination is to distance themselves from fundamentalism, not to be horrified at the horrible murder or the violence. And I think that’s backwards. We should do it the other way around, have the horror make the distinction, and then see what do we do about it in our own backyard?

You’re pretty verse, certainly being one of the consultants for the history of everything. Was there anything that you’ve learned surprised something that came out that he went?

Well, I’ll be.

I didn’t know that there is.

I will say I like to think I’m a pretty dogged researcher when it comes to fundamentals. I might go into the communities. I’ve looked through hundreds of powers of papers, but Lance research and the Laughter family was so good and so thorough that I learned stuff. We would be watching or screening the script or like an episode, and I would see something and I was like, that would never happen. That’s so unrealistic. And he was like, no, actually, it’s a family and it did happen. And that’s just an example of if you’re a mainstream Latter day Saint, every word family is different. Everyone has their own culture and fundamental families are no different. So everyone has their own culture and their own interpretation of doctrines and physiology. And so that definitely shows up in the show. So there were a few things coming up in the episodes that I was like, that would never happen, but it was real.

I know you to be at least I think I guess I know you to be a very soft, very kind hearted person. Certainly the power, too. But this is a hard story to tell, and I’m assuming that you have seen all of them and a hard story to see as media. We were told, hey, just as a heads up, maybe triggering, maybe a little bit difficult to watch. How has that experience been for you?

It’s a triggering experience for every single person that interacts with Mormons. I talked to scholars who are non Mormon that study Mormonism. And this is a complicated, heavy subject, and it’s sort of a dark palette. It’s in the true crime genre, which was very startling for me to see, even though I’d seen the script and been on set and done all these things. When I saw together, I was like, it’s so dark. And it was almost this moment of my first major was to distance myself, like I said. But after I sat with it, I think my discomfort was rooted in. I’m not used to seeing myself portrayed in this landscape. And it wasn’t true. It wasn’t untrue. It was just uncomfortable. So I definitely think that I had that experience. But I would say, of course it’s triggering. This is a hard subject. Of course it’s upsetting to me. It covers a lot of hard things. It asks hard questions it takes sometimes a really hard look at certain topics that we all have a collective historical change. So of course, we would be able to.

One last question. How cool was it?

It’s just us girls. Let’s talk about how just how cool it was to be working on this project.

It is a real story, and it’s the murder of a woman whose family is still around and has to live with the impact of this and people that knew the families. And so I’ve always been conscious of that. But from the more historical nerd in me, to be able to go and recreate Carthage, Joe and the massacre site and all of these things that I have studied for a decade now was an experience of a lifetime. I can’t even explain how remarkable it was to be in Carthage interacting and helping block and stage the actors as they portray some of the biggest events in our history. That was unbelievable.

Is it opened any windows for you, for future stuff that you can talk about?

Not that I can talk about, but yes, I’ve got many projects I’m working on.

Thank you. Tyiner, who plays Emma Smith. I think that it’s a fascinating look at faith just in general, what faith can drive us to do, what faith can drive us to not do, to look beyond playing for many one of the most pivotal characters. We can call it that within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. Coming into that scenario, knowing how it ends for her, for her husband and all of those things, what do you focus on in a project like this to bring that to life?

That’s such an interesting question because we have to do all the research right to feel prepared to do a character in a person like this justice. So it was a lot about consuming as much as I could, as much just historical facts and records and whatnot, like Mormon enigma and talking to the consultants on the show under the banner of heaven, of course. But at some point, you kind of have to let that go and just deal with the emotional journey of the character. So I tried to tap into that when I was on set, and that in preparation. And for me, that was grief. I feel that there were these levels to Emma. There was this wonderful love she had for her husband, for her community that they built for this religion that they had built together. And as it started to get changed and a bit taken away from her, all of it, there was so much grief there, and she had to fight for it. And I think she acted with such integrity. I think that as I was experiencing this, I was just like a puddle. I mean, I was a mess for weeks, just crying and crying because it almost felt like I was tapping into some sort of collective grief.

Perhaps of women who may have suffered like her all around the world and all the time under extremism or oppression. And I don’t want to say anything too controversial, but it felt like that’s what she was going through and fighting against at the time. And it took me just sort of clawing my way out of that grief to find the strength that she actually acted with and just pretend to be her. Right. So I was so inspired by her. I felt like I learned a big lesson that no matter what we’re feeling, we do the right thing. And that feels like such a huge contract to what that’s based on my research.

Sure.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but she really embodied integrity.

A symbol for strength for a lot of LDS women. Right. That she was able to make it through that not only the leaving behind of her parents, not speaking to them after she was married and Joseph and then the loss of Joseph and then everyone within the Church and her family leaving and heading west, and she stuck behind with the main part of our family. It also seems almost to be like a smiling of the modern story of the Lafferty and the strength and everything like that. It almost seems like the same story.

Yeah. And she challenged Joseph and Brickham and then just like Brandt. So she fought back. She used her voice. She stood up to them, and there was a different outcome for her. Brenda? Unfortunately, yeah. I think it’s a beautiful thing to get to hear the female voices have more of them.

One last question. I know that several people within the cast said that they got the opportunity to go into worship with other members of the Church or the fundamentalist members as well. Did you take that opportunity and what did you think?

Yeah, I visited after filming. I actually visited Troy and Lindsay out here, and they took me on a bit of a tour of Utah. We went to the temple. We went down to Colorado City as well. I went to Church and the Ladies Relief Society yesterday and really just I was so struck by these women in the Ladies Released Society and how they supported each other and listened to each other and their vulnerability and sharing. It was really meaningful and so cool that they let me be a part of it yesterday.

Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, baby.

What’s up, BYU?

There’s some really interesting and exciting things going on there. I’m really proud of some of the student body for the ways they’re standing up and asking questions.

Opening up and being able to represent themselves.

This show is about she is my reason. She’s my motivation. She’s my inspiration was courageous enough to be curious in a time when that was very dangerous. She went to BYU. She was on television at BYU.

Her dream was to be able to do the same sorts of things that the boys were doing right.

And a lot of people said no. And she was courageous enough to ask the question why? And sadly, she lost her life in that pursuit of challenging the status quo. And we’re here to honor that.

Something that I’m curious about is obviously Crochouer wrote the book, but you have been such a driving force behind it. I heard someone call it. It was your mission that you were called to do this, to bring this to life, to bring this to the people who don’t know about the leopardies, who don’t know about the underbelly of the SLDs or any of those kind of things. What was it about Brandt, or about this particular story or about the book that made you not let go and keep pushing? Because a decade is a long time.

Because I was raised by a very strong, incredibly faithful Mormon mom. And I think she raised me right. And she was a single parent, paralyzed and raised three boys by herself. And I started to ask questions. At a certain point, why was she being treated as less than whole? Because she was a woman. It didn’t make sense to me. I knew she was smarter than the specific men who are running our Ward stronger, kinder. And when I started asking questions of why, she was treated less than for her differences, I got in trouble for asking questions. And so I decided to do what Brenda did. I said, I’m not going to stop asking questions. I think it’s the questions that serve as light. There is so much good in moment. There’s so much good in the culture of momentum and the families that are created in the communities, in the neighborhoods. But there are still things from the past that have been carried into today that caused harm and limit our ability to become our full, whole selves in this human experience on this planet. Let’s stop limiting. Let’s stop harming our brothers and sisters.

And the way you do that is ask questions. You shed the light. You let it into the dark corners so we can see where the problems live. And once we see it, well, Mormons claims to be an ever changing Church. Then we’ll know what needs to be changed. So I’m here because I was raised by a strong mom who asked questions, who taught me to ask questions. And I was inspired to do this by Brenda Wright Lafferty, who gave her life in the pursuit of asking questions.

Were there questions that were answered for you that hadn’t been answered just from reading the book? It wasn’t answered until we’re able to see it replayed.

I think I didn’t get John Crackhouse book started answering many of my questions, but I’m more curious than to take any one book at face value. So I pursued the criticisms that the Church had in the book to look into those. And then I asked more questions. And I had to do that to build a series. I needed to know more to build the seven and a half hours and have it still fall and light. And in that, yes, I learned things I never knew. There were things that were very inspiring. I’m sorry, but it’s incredibly romantic that this young boy really this team fell in love and created this religion that was born of love. We can talk about where that comes from and his attachments to things like magic, but it felt like magic and there was something quite sweet about it and putting it into the context of the time. It was actually a pretty progressive fake coming out of Calvinism where everybody is predestined to say that we’re all born good. What happened to that? When did all that hope and love get replaced with judgment and fear of the outside and the fear of questions and pressure?

I know the Church went astray here, there in my opinion. I think in a lot of active Mormons today’s opinion, that’s all right, we make mistakes. You say, I’m sorry, you change the rules. If it’s the Holy Spirit.

You listen to listen closer.

Because I don’t think they want. I don’t think Heavenly Father once half the population treated it as inferior because of their gender. Let’s listen closer.

Many different roles with the project from showrunner to you directed one of the episodes and the research and all that. What was the hardest for you in the whole project and why?

Well, I mean, the most challenging thing to do in the process was to shoot July 1984 in Calgary and negative 28 degrees Celsius weather. The production challenges were massive. This is really three stories. One, it’s an investigation story over ten days. It’s 1979 to 84 and the laughedy story and then some of the stories of the early days of the Church in the 19th century. So having to do all that at the same time is a lot for a showrunner.

Also too interesting for a lot of people who I don’t think realize that part of the series will be Joseph Smith and also Emma Smith as well. Those are characters that within Mormons, we know what they look like, whether or not they really look like that. How did you know when you had the right one and the right look and the right feel for those characters?

The good news is we have some photographs of Emma and a Brigam and a few of the later profits that we depict. So we were able to get as close as possible to that. But then I said time and again, I am perfectly happy to match the Mormon narrative, the LDS narrative about who these people were and what they looked like. And so we worked from our own research, but also we’re not afraid to lean into the church’s belief and that sort of stuff.

I appreciate your time.

No problem. Thank you.

Sam Worthington, who plays Ron Lafferty. What I love about this particular project is that you can go to the places and see the people that have been affected. Do you love that or is that intimidating? What kind of respect do you pay to those people that you run into?

Hopefully you’re paying respect with the sensitivity, how you handle the material, because it is a true story. Hopefully we’re honoring the memory of Brenda, her child, and handling this whole situation with a level of Grace because it is intimidating that there are still victims out there in the sense of her family. So hopefully that handled the whole story with some delicacy.

It’s a level of Grace. But from the little bit that I’ve been able to see, like it is so well done and sociopathic and psychopathic unrest, you do an amazing job at that. How do you separate them or trying accurately to who this person was, knowing that the depiction that you are putting forth on the screen could affect those people that were affected by the actual Lafferty brothers?

Yeah, it’s a tough situation because my approach to it has to be one of honesty to try and find a way in. So I’m playing it as a mustache twirling bad guy or man that’s going crazy, then almost sensationalizes the reality and that’s wrong and we’re exploiting the story. So I just try and find the truth of a man that a character that whose faith was dismantling and the touchstones of what he wanted to hang on to. And hopefully by portraying that, then the way it’s written actually helps show the flip side without me having to show that and present evil.

For a lot of people in Utah, this is a story that they already knew about were aware of. When you first heard about the whole story with the Lafferty brothers, what did you think?

I read the book years ago. Cracker. I wrote a book about Everest. I did a movie of that. So I was open to his work years ago, so I’ve read it years ago. So when I got told they were doing it, it was more Caseable. How are you going to condense such a dense nonfiction book into something that is fictional? As I said, without sensationalizing it, I think that’s what Lance handled. It took him ten years to try and piece this thing together. That’s a long time. The long form aspect of it helps you allow you to dig deeper into the truths of what happened rather than it just being a procedural show.

Is there a particular part of faith that is intriguing to you because of this project?

The show is showing how people can turn faith for their own means and manipulate it. And that’s happened throughout religion for hundreds of years. So if anything, it’s a cautionary fail towards that.

How about the cast? It seems like it’s just a Rockstar group of people that put together just a tremendous project.

I’ve worked with Andrew before, so anything that man does is quality. So I just begged him for a job.

That’s awesome. I appreciate your time. Hi, Andrew Garfield.

Richie, how’s it going?

So good. I am fascinated by the journey that you have taken in researching this role, going to Church, and all of the things that has been kind of reported as this has been coming out. What is the thing that has surprised you? The very most kind of being absorbed into the thing that for all intents and purposes, maybe you didn’t know too much about before?

Well, I don’t know about surprising, but I was heartened and excited to meet a lot of people in the LDS community or ex members of the LDS faith. And the kind of the beauty of the people that I met and the kind of warmth and openness and generosity and kindness of the people that I’ve met. I wouldn’t say it’s been surprising, but I would say it’s been very welcomed and kind of heartening and reassuring.

All eyes are on you for sure. After the success of so many other projects before this, what do you think that being a part of this and being able to have such an amazing cast but be able to tell such a difficult story? What did you bring to that?

Oh, I don’t know what I brought to. I always bring my full heart and my passion. I can’t go to work unless I feel very passionate about the story. And this is a book that I loved when it first came out 1012 years ago now. So I felt kind of ripe with it, even though it’s been kind of in my unconscious now, obviously for the last, however long. And then that adaptation that kind of created just really felt very inspiring to me. And he kind of cracked a way of telling it dramatically through a visual medium. So I don’t know about what I bring apart from all of my care and my heart. Why am I so overdressed?

We can try and get you in, I guess, for the way that I would describe it as being able to be the eyes for the way that people are able to experience this story. Yeah. Boy, it is not a comedy. It is not anything that is light at all in such a heavy, tragic, horrible story, a scar not only on the faith communities, but on the state of Utah as well.

How do you delicately handle that pivotal role of being able to show that that’s the character that I’m playing as well is that he’s in that exact position where he has a loyalty to his Church, he has a loyalty to his family. But what starts to emerge as the most powerful kind of pull that he has and the most powerful loyalty that he has is to the truth and is to his duty as a Detective, but mostly his duty to Brenda. Write Lafferty and Erica right, Lafferty, because to honor this horrific loss and this terrible murder feels like the most important thing to do in the cluster of all of these things that are pulling on him. So I think that being the North Star is kind of everything and everything has to follow that and that is going to undermine his ability to be loyal to a Church that in his experiences attempting to sweep things under the rug, he can’t subscribe to that. He can’t go along with that. He just can’t.

At the end of a day of filming, is it hard for you to leave something like this behind or are you with this?

I got very good very quickly just shaking off and just kind of going back to being a person and not in that way. It is a toxic underworld that the character goes into in order to do his duty and to do his job.

I appreciate your time.

Thank you, ma’am. Be neat on the back road we read.

Under the Banner of Heaven: Real Story with Mike Pientka – powered by Happy Scribe

What was your experience like being that close to him? You mentioned before we started filming that you had daily contact with him. You talked with him a lot, right? Are we talking about a mentally stable but misguided person? Person, or are we talking about a sociopath? What’s your take?

Psychopath would pretty much wrap it up. Psychopath? Yeah.

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. Okay, so we’re in between sets right now. We’re making a new set for you. So that’s why it’s just we’ve got some holes in the wall, a little under construction, things like that. But we’re here today with Mike Pinka. There’s a book called under the Banner of Heaven. Okay. That is being turned into a Hulu series with Andrew Garfield and Sam Worthington and some high profile actors by the same name under the Banner of Heaven. And that bookseeries is about a rather high profile murder case that occurred in American Fork, Utah. So we’ve got Mike here. Mike, you were a police Sergeant who worked the case, correct? Yes.

I worked at the Utah County Jail in the Corrections Bureau. And that’s where I first met Ron and Dan.

Yeah. So the Hulu series, it’s about a latter day St Detective that is on this case. And he starts to learn more about latterday Saint Church history and just the terrible things that happen in this case and starts questioning things and whatnot we haven’t seen it yet. It hasn’t come out quite yet. As we’re filming this, we couldn’t find a Detective, but we’ve got Mike here, which is about as authoritative as I think we can get. But maybe for those of us that are not familiar with the Lafferty murders, could you give us a brief overview of what happened and how you’re connected with this?

Sure. So Ron and Dan committed the murders July, I believe, July 24. And shortly after that, right around August, I believe it was August 17 through 18th. He was arrested and transported to the Utah County Jail. And that’s where I met both Ron and Dan. And my first impression of Ron and Dan. Dan was always a quiet one. He was when he first came to jail, he was, I would say, very polite, very cooperative, cordial, follow the rules. But that quickly changed. About a month or two after he was incarcerated, we started to notice a change in Ron. He became increasingly agitated and violent. Let me give you an example. The one I was thinking about was the time when Ron was being escorted back to his sale by three deputies. And Ron decided that he didn’t want to go back to his cell. He stopped in the middle of the hall, and the three deputies were standing right behind him. He turned around and attacked those three deputies just out of there was no warning. He attacked them and seriously injuring one. One had to go to the hospital, but we determined after that that we’re dealing with somebody now that has changed.

They’re violent now. And so we started to take extra security precautions because of that.

So was he always violent? And like, the first two months were just a facade that he put up. Do you think?

We believe so he would do what he was told, would give him orders and stuff. He would follow everything. He’d follow the Joe rules. But soon after, for some reason, we don’t know why. He just started being uncooperative. Another incident that I was aware of is that and I wasn’t working that day, but he asked to see the jail commander. So that was arranged. He met the jail commander up in the interview room, and the jail commander was talking just like just across from each other. Ron was on one side of the table and jail commander was on the other side. And just out of the blue, he just stood up and started to attack the jail commander. So now here we have the jail commander and Ron Lafferty fighting in a small interview room. The staff heard the commotion, came running down and had to separate the two. And then they esquoted Ron back to his sale.

Did they not have guards in there?

No, not at that time, because it was a small room. The guards were probably I don’t know, maybe 50ft from them. But I definitely heard what happened. They ran down and separated them.

So maybe let’s go back a little bit because I think there are a lot of people that are wondering how they ended up in jail. What did they do that got them there? So we know they murdered a couple of people. Can you give us a little bit of background on that scenario? What led up to this double murder? I suppose. And can you tell us a little bit about the circumstances surrounding this?

Yeah. I mean, because the trailer implies that there’s a lot of Church history somehow related to the case. And so I think especially viewers are probably interested in how that relates or how it doesn’t relate. How much applicable is it? Yeah. Thank you. How applicable is that?

So Ron, he always vowed to get even with Brenda Lafferty, the victim, because he blamed Brenda for his divorce. He said that she meddled in his affairs, and it was one of the reasons why Ron’s wife divorced him. So he vowed to get even. And so he devised a way to do that. And one of them was they picked up two hitchhikers, and they tried to convince these two hitchhikers to commit the murders for them. But when it came time to do that, the two hitchhikers backed out of the deal, and Ron and Dan ended up committing the murders. And they killed Brenda Laffody and the baby. And then afterwards, after they committed the murders, my understanding, they had a hit list, and they went to another residence to kill that family. It was a Bishop. And for some reason, Ron didn’t like this Bishop for a reason. I don’t know what it was. But fortunately, the Bishop wasn’t home. He and his family had left for a vacation. So they broke into the house, and I believe they took some weapons, some guns, and then they went out to window and they celebrated and they drank beer and ate hot dogs, celebrated had a good old time.

And then they were arrested a short time later. I believe it was August 17, 1984. And then they were brought to our Department and our Correctional facility, Utah County Jail.

So one thing that I find interesting about this background you’re giving us is that you’re not really talking much about religion or faith. And I find that interesting because when you read the newspapers or when you look at the trailer for the series coming out, it’s very heavily like.

Hey, they make it almost the center focus point. This was the motivation.

When I first met Ron, Ron made it very clear to me. He said there’s two topics that are off limits here. One of them is religion and the other one is the crime. Of course, we don’t talk about crime to any of the inmates about their crime because they’re pre sentenced inmates. But religion. I tried to talk to Ron about some of it. What was your involvement in the Church? I understand you were a Bishop.

He refused.

A matter of fact, he kind of got angry that I was asking questions like that. So I just let it go.

My understanding is that he and his brother were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. But then they were excommunicated.

Correct.

And then they joined a split off, kind of a more fundamentalist group of school. I think it was called School of the Profits.

Correct.

And Interestingly, from what I’ve read, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, is that one of these Lafferty brothers presented a revelation that he had received, supposedly from God to his sect, the School of the Prophets, which he was not the leader of, is my understanding. And he said, hey, according to this revelation, we need to remove Brenda Lafferty and her child. Right. And the School of the Prophets rejected that, which I find interesting because I think the case that is being made by John Krakauer, who is the author of this book that the series is based on is that religion leads people to do wacky things, and not just the Church of Jesus Christ, the letter, they Saints, but all religion is just irrational. And he uses these Lafferty murders as his example of that. But I find it interesting that, well, they were excommunicated from our faith. And even this more fundamentalist polygamist sect rejected this extremist revelation that he supposedly received.

Well, I think they kicked him out of the School of Province. I think I read that where the School of Provinces, we don’t see eye to eye here and they kicked them out.

Well, I would hope that anybody who comes forward like, hey, we should kill this person, the majority should reject that.

Yeah, that should be a clue. Yeah.

Let’s get this guy out of here.

Right. So what’s your take on that? Did religion really just have nothing to do with that? Did his upbringing in our faith have anything to do with how he turned out?

Yes, at the trial it was brought up at the trial, yes. Both the offense and prosecution raised that issue. And so it was brought up that his background, Ron’s background. He was a Bishop in the LDS Church and his upbringing and so forth. But the whole time that I interacted with Ron ever talked about it, about religion.

So was it determined in the trial that it had an influence on his behavior?

Did it have any sway or was it just like it possibly could from the defense side that it was a mitigating circumstance here? He is an outstanding member of the community. He was a Bishop and so forth. So, yeah, I was brought up.

But that has more to do with kind of the bad blood he had with the Church, not necessarily the theology of his Church and his personal motivations. Has it affected at all your personal faith, your Latter Day right?

No, not at all. No, it’s it hasn’t. And again, it was brought up that in the trial that according to Ron, that God came down and told Ron to commit these murders. And so he used that as a justification for his actions for the murder.

So how do you reconcile that? Because as a Latter day Saint, I mean, all three of us, we do believe in revelation from God and from the outside looking in, I think a lot of people think that that’s irrational. And then you’ve got this guy saying, hey, I also received revelation from God, and God told me to kill these people.

What do we do with that?

Well, you have to look at Ron and his background of why. You have to ask the question, why? Why did Ron believe that? What led him to those beliefs and those values? Obviously, he was misguided and it led to his downfall. But again, it was brought up during the trial, and as a matter of fact, one of the members of the jury actually believed him, that maybe God did come down and tell Ron to do that. So I think from a defense standpoint.

Ron tried to use that as a defense stands as a testimony to his ability to persuade and manipulate his audience.

Sure. What was your experience like being that close to him? You mentioned before we started filming that you had daily contact with him. You talked with him a lot, right? Are we talking about a mentally stable but misguided person or are we talking about? A sociopath. What’s your take?

Psychopath would pretty much wrap it up.

Psychopath?

Yeah.

On the one hand.

You could talk to my name. He was a nice guy. You can talk about any topic, works of religion, but you could talk to him. We spoke at length about sports and about the outdoors and things. But keep in mind, my conversation with Ron was between a four inch steel door and there was a couple of cupboards. That’s how I spoke with Ron. He never want to let your guard down. With Ron, he was extremely dangerous and obviously not never trusted. But when Ron was out of his cell, he’d be shackled. And we’d take every security precaution we could to make sure that the deputies were safe. Another inmates were safe after he attacks the jail commander. I mean, who does that? Well, and also too. And that’s another incident I’m thinking about regarding his aggressiveness was when he was I also took place. I also participated in the trial as far as security, but that was one incident when Ron tried to escape, when he was in the courtroom and the courtroom was over at University Center in Provo, and he tried to break away from the security detail and jump over the balcony.

And he was caught and they restrained him, but he was very determined to escape and to hurt the deputies.

Did he ever express remorse? Did he ever admit that what he did was wrong?

Never.

Really?

He never did? No. Even after he was convicted and sentenced, he still wouldn’t. I tried to get him to talk about it. Ron, look, it’s over now. You’ve been sentenced. Can you tell me about the incident, the murders?

Did he maintain that he was innocent?

No, he just wouldn’t talk about it.

He admitted to doing it, but just.

He never admitted to doing it.

Really?

Yeah, never? No.

He either cloud the issue or he would change the topic or simply say, I’m not going to discuss that.

Okay, so you’ve got Dan and Ron Lafferty. You spent a lot of time with Ron. Were both of them. What was their sentence? Were they both sentenced to death?

No, Ron was. Ron was sentenced to death. So by firing squad. But Dan was given life without possibly approval.

But you mentioned that before we were on the show, we were having a conversation, but Ron actually ended up dying before he was executed, correct? Right.

I think he ran out of appeals where he was running out of appeals, but before he was executed, obviously, he passed away. I’m not sure what the exact cause was.

So Ron is gone, Dan is still around, correct. And you haven’t had much contact with him? No. I feel like we’re seeing the true crime shows on television, and you’re like, they’re interviewing this guy who spent so much time with this person that gets in their head. And that’s what I feel like we’re doing right now. So it’s very exciting, but in a terrible way, because what they did was absolutely awful. Why wouldn’t he talk about religion? Do you have any idea?

I don’t, no. And I tried to approach it from different angles, but he just wouldn’t have anything to do with it. No, that was one topic. As a matter of fact, I didn’t press it because when I did bring up religion, it would anger him, and I just stayed away from it.

You don’t want to make a guy like that.

No.

But was it your job to try to casually get information from him, or were you just making small talk?

Just small talk. When he was at the state hospital, our job was, as deputies were, to guard him 24/7. And so I spent a twelve hour shift with Ron sitting right across from me. He was shackled and handcuffed, but at the state hospital. So we had an opportunity to discuss all sorts of topics. Religion wasn’t one of them.

Wow. Are there any things you want to talk about that we haven’t talked about yet?

Well, I can understand Ron’s aggressiveness, given the fact that he was an athlete in high school. He was on the wrestling team for four years. And when Ron became violent, he was at times very difficult to control physically. And so we had to take extra security precautions to make sure we have enough manpower and equipment to deal with them. Wow.

It’s really interesting to hear your take on it, especially after seeing the trailers for this show, which completely speaking as someone who’s never heard of this, no exposure at all, the trailer being my only exposure, it really seems to set it up as if the Church is at the center of all of this. And it’s really interesting to hear it all from you that it really didn’t seem to have played that big of a role, even much in the trial. It sounds like. It sounds like it was just like. Well, yeah, this is who he was. This is the background information on who we’re dealing with. But it doesn’t sound like it had much to do with the murder or much of any of those events.

Well, keep in mind also that’s Chip Corns and Ricky Nap, who were the hitchhikers, they testified against Ron and Dan. So that was really damaging. And so the way it turned out, I was surprised that, well, not Ron got the death penalty, but that Dan got life instead of the death penalty because he was ever been involved with the guy, the murders.

Well, because it was Ron’s idea in the first place, and he just got Dan.

Yeah.

So does religion lead people to do horrible, horrible, crazy?

You never know. It’s not the first time.

Is that what happened here?

Do you think religion played a part in it? But whether or not it was the sole reason I think the whole thing boiled down, as I mentioned before, was Ron’s hatred towards Brenda, the victim he vowed to always again.

I haven’t read under the banner of heaven and we haven’t seen the show yet, but based on what we have seen, it almost sounds like it’s a bit of a stretch. It’s a classic contribute taking a really horrible situation and kind of weaponizing it to make an entire worldwide faith. Well, all actuality religion in general look like the villain when really you’ve just got a couple of sociopaths you’re dealing with that could have been part of any religion or non religion, it sounds like. But anyway, Mike, thank you for being here. Do you have any final thoughts on this?

No, I want to thank you for inviting me. It was an interesting discussion and please contact me if you have any further questions.

Yeah, well, I think it would be great if we could get you back on after the show comes out. Maybe we could watch it and talk about it.

Yeah, I’ll give you my take on the facts and the accuracy of the show.

That would be awesome. That’d be great.

Yeah.

Sounds good.

Well, everyone, thank you for watching. Hopefully we’ll have Mike on again and let us know what you think about all this. Let us know if we’ve missed any details or if you have any questions for Mike that we can ask him next time round and we’ll see you guys next time. Am.

Under the Banner of Heaven: Dustin Lance Black Details ‘Deeply Disturbing’ Experience – powered by Happy Scribe

Even today, Dan Lafferty believes what he did was just and holy. It was chilling, it was haunting, and it’ll live with me forever.

It’s so good to talk to you. I’m such a fan of this book. I’m such a fan of John Krakowa. He changed my life with into the Wild, adapting this has to be a speed. There’s so much in here. What was the biggest challenge for you?

The biggest challenge, hands down, was recreating that feeling when you read it. It’s not every book that does it. It’s certainly not every television that does it, but that sense that the reader reviewer has to be actively engaged, that the reader in that book had to be looking at the history of the Mormon Church in order to figure out this crime. And I wanted that for the television series. Well, frankly, let’s be honest. I set it up as a movie at first, and it was a mistake. There wasn’t room to do that. There wasn’t room to tell the Lafferty story and the detail it needed to be told in to understand all the characters involved, and then to also include the history of the Mormon Church, which would act as the clues to understanding the Lafferty and solving the crime. But then I would come to understand, over the ten years of trying to crack it, I also needed that investigative story because it’s not in the book. I don’t know what your experience was, but it felt like that to me. It felt like an investigation.

Yeah.

I think that’s what bothers the Mormon Church is that it felt like an investigation, but I needed that. And that meant in addition to having the Lafferty story and the Mormon history story, I had to create an investigation story, and I created fictionalized those characters in order to hopefully create that same sense of I need to, as the viewers, stay engaged. I’m living inside of an investigator’s mind who is learning new things about the past, the near past and the distant past in order to figure out who did this, why they did it and where they are, because he knows there’s a list of other people to be killed. There’s that urgency, there is that heartbeat. And that stuff is not a fictionalization that is based on the bonus of the case. And in doing that and having all of those pieces, I hope the quite different in the book that it’s a similar experience. I want the audience to be engaged. And that took about ten years to figure out. But here we are.

Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s like the essence of the book is the story of the murder is the prologue, and then the rest of it is this investigative piece into everything. And I feel like what you’ve kind of done, too, is you’ve taken Andrew Garfield and he’s become the author. He’s John. He’s the one that’s investigating getting those pieces for us. And I really loved that.

Yeah. You nailed it. Wow. Good. Yes. Because John is your partner in that investigation, isn’t he? You’re walking shoulder to shoulder with him through that history, through the story. And so we needed that. And I provide two. I provide one point of view that’s from inside the mainstream Church and one point of view that’s from outside the Church completely. And I hope by providing those people, no matter if you’re inside out or outside of the Church, no matter how much you know or think you know about the Church, you can identify with one of those fresh perspectives that was weighs in. John seeing it now, it meant a whole lot to me how much he liked it and appreciated it meant the world, frankly.

You’ve been working on this for ten years. Were you guys collaborating over the years, or. I’m going to work on this and then I’m going to show you at the end.

No. There was an ebb and flow to it, because I did put it away for a significant portion of that time. I was not working on it for ten years straight. I did a lot of research in the beginning, and John was very close to me in that John was incredibly generous, sharing his context, helping me meet the right family, helping me get into Draper Prison to meet with Dan Lafferty, sharing his actual research. And then I had to find out more. I needed more detail if I was going to share it, not in a book, but hearing and seeing everything. I needed to know what they sounded like. I needed to know what they did in their free time. I needed to know why they were falling in love with each other. I needed all of that. And it was really gratifying to be able to learn new things and bring them back to John and to see him light up. There was that kind of collaboration. And then I would go away for some time and write and share drafts with him. And when you’re lucky enough to get a property like under the Banner of Heaven and that written by John Krakhower, you’d be a fool not to take advantage of that relationship, of course.

Yeah.

And you said you met Dan.

Yes.

What was that like? Because it’s very clear in the book that all these years later, still just zero remorse for what he’s done. Just tell me about that experience.

I met with more than a few Lafferty’s. Okay. But certainly the Dan Lafferty hours were illuminating, deeply disturbing. It felt like a high stakes game of chess with him. I walk into Draper Prison, which is all these Gray painted cinder blocks, and behind this very thick plexiglass window is this man with the brightest size you’ve ever seen. Beautiful, charming, well read, very smart, and frankly, did not check the boxes of most depictions of the kind of murderous sociopaths we’ve seen depicted. And that’s why I wanted to meet him. I thought, well, what use is if we just depict these brothers as these monstrous freaks? What’s most disturbing is that they were successful, beloved members of this community and they turned to this they stepped out of the mainstream culture into a fundamentalist constitutionalist world and then into a fundamentalist religious world. Why did they do that? And why is it that even today Dan Lafferty believes what he did was just and Holy? And the most chilling answer of all to that is because he followed the letter of the law. He followed the rules from these originalist texts. In his mind, he’s done no wrong.

And if you believe in fundamentalist Christianity, not just Mormonism he’s got a point that should disturb people, that should make people start to ask questions about what they believe without question from their own faith. And I wouldn’t have been able to get to that place in authentic fashion if I hadn’t sat with him and met him and got to know who he was and why he thinks he was justified. But it was chilling. It was haunting. And it will live with me forever.

Wow. I wish we had so much more time. Time. I’m out of time. Unfortunately, no. Such a joy to talk with you, though. Congratulations. I really think it’s a wonderful adaptation.

Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

Thank you. Take care.

Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones on True Crime Series “Under the Banner of Heaven” | The View – powered by Happy Scribe

Please welcome Andrew Garfield and Daisy Edgar Jones.

Andrew, before we get into the series.

I gotta put to bed a rumor that’s going around that you’re quitting acting.

Yeah, I’m retired officially.

No, but you’re not.

No, I’m done. I have no desire. I have enough money to live in a camper van for the rest of my life, and I’m done. No, I don’t know where that came from. I’m just having a holiday. That’s what I’m aiming for.

What did you say that started?

I literally said, I’m going to rest. I’m going to have, like, a holiday.

And I think people just make a story out of nothing. But no, it’s been working hard, and I’ve been loving the work I’ve been doing. But also, I need to take a month or so. A month of a break, maybe.

Famously quick, didn’t he?

He did. And I think we’re all terribly sad about that. So, Daniel, if you’re watching, which we know you are. Yeah. Come back to us.

You’re not quitting, are you?

No.

Sandra, I’m a big fan of True Crime. Like, huge the podcast following Armchair Detective thing. But this show is based on the best selling John Cracker book about these real life murders that appeared to be tied to a version of Mormon fundamentalism. Tell us about it. And did you do? I’m really fascinated by the research, because in the same year as you were Jim Baker, you’re doing another religious figure. How deep do you go into that?

Yeah, I think the responsibility is to go as deep as possible because this is a story based on true events. And Daisy plays the anchor, the emotional anchor, the kind of North Star of the series, Brenda Wright Lafferty, who was a real person, fictionalized version of the real person who was just a victim of this most heinous crime. Her and her daughter. Daisy really plays the North Star. So in order to honor Daisy’s character and her daughter, it was really important that we all dived as deeply as we could. And I play a fictionalized Detective that’s trying to solve the case. And he happens to be a Mormon himself. And in order to pursue the truth of this case and to honor this kind of terrible loss, he has to start unpicking the foundations of his own faith, of his own Church and in pursuit of the truth. It puts him at odds with you.

Though, in that dynamic. And that’s why I’m always curious when you play in religious roles, especially you’re kind of like Tammy Faye in the woman empowerment part of your character. I won’t go too deep into that, but I’m always curious because you guys walk that line of seeing yourselves as you question some of the most fundamental beliefs you’ve been taught.

And it’s a dark series.

Right.

And as Andrew mentioned, you play Brenda Lafferty. She’s a young woman who marries into a family known in their corner of Utah. As the Mormon Kennedys, and she is murdered brutally alongside her 15 month old daughter. And we get to know her, really in the series through these flashbacks. And as Andrew mentioned, she’s sort of the anchor, I think, of the series. How was it playing this character for you?

Yes, I think Andrew put it so well. I think throughout the series, I guess her death is sort of the anchor, but I think the series does a really good job of honoring her life. And I think so often with true crime, the victim becomes sort of defined by the worst thing that happened to them, their death. And I think this was an opportunity to also show all the amazing things she did in her life. She really gifted so much good to the other women, which I think we see as the series continues. And I really felt it was important to sort of honor her in that way.

The subject matter is very heavy. You can see the feeling in the room. I’ve been talking about it. When you murder a woman and her child, it’s a terrible thing. So let’s find out. Was there any fun at all in filming it, or was it always kind of a draw.

In order to honor the story? We had to have as much fun as possible when we weren’t filming so that we could arrive the next day and really kind of dive in. We were out in Calgary for six months and we made sure that we had a good time in order to go into the.

Fun facts about Andrew that would surprise us, perhaps.

Be careful.

No. One thing that surprised me is Andrew loves a cold plunge pool.

Really?

Yeah. We had a lot of free time because it’s a big ensemble. Gas, too.

You have polar bears that goes into water in the winter.

Yeah. No, I enjoy it. I enjoy a nice bath. Yeah. Why? There’s research. There is so much research done.

There is research about it.

It’s good for the immune system. There’s Wim hop, but it’s ancient. It’s like an ancient technique of kind of I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s lots of people in Canada who can explain this far better than I can.

Now, what about so you wouldn’t know to look at her.

Or maybe you would, but she is an amateur DJ. She travels everywhere with mixing decks, with like CD mixing deck.

We’ve not had the opportunity to Boogie very much. And I felt like she said.

I’m in my early friend.

I just missed out of dancing. And I think because we were isolated, we couldn’t go out. We were in a bubble. I thought, why not bring the party to the next level.

Though, because I have one of these and you can just jam.

What those songs are your favorite myths.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, my goodness. Well, I love Peggy Goo. I don’t know how Peggy Goo is really and then I, like, kind of mixing, like house, like progressive houses, like disco.

But then the first night we were hanging out, we watched this very heavy Mormon Fundamentalist documentary in one of our apartments with a group of us and Daisy was like, right, hold on 1 second and she pulls up Soul Train On YouTube and we just had a Soul Train, like, kind of dance party for like, 3 hours. It was a really nice balance.

Well, Andrew, I hear that Congratulations are in order Because You were Nominated For Your Second Oscar Earlier this Year, Which Was Also Lin Manuel’s Directorial Debut. But I have to ask you this Because we’ve all seen the Oscars now and There Was a photo of You From The Oscars That Went Viral Where you Were texting on your Phone in the Middle Of the ceremony When Things Were Going On At the Oscars.

He’s literally typing.

I’m not hoping. What about you?

Yeah, the Oscars that we all now know about. So what perhaps were you texting about that’s none of your business.

Is that before or after the Slap?

I don’t know what you’re talking about. No comment on the slap gate. I feel so bad because Kevin Costner’s introducing the Director Nominees In The Most Beautiful And elegant way and I’m like, there’s no way I’m going to be on camera during this. And everyone’s texting me, asking me what they’re asking me like what the vibe in the room is. And at that moment, my friends took priority over Kevin. But I feel really bad about that. You can rewatch the order of the Oscars if you really.

I want to ask you, what Was Your Response To that Slab?

But also, everything has Been said. Everything has Been said. There’s no need for me to weigh in on that. It’s every possible version of the discussion has happened and I have no interest in adding my voice to Something That’s already been said.

It makes go after you the minute you open your mouth like they did with this. Quitting the business. Be careful.

Thank you for the advice, Joy.

And now I’m going to really let you off the hook.

We’ll be right back with more.

Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones Talk New True Crime Series – powered by Happy Scribe

This morning, we are joined by two incredibly talented actors who are teaming up in a new series. We, of course, all know Andrew Garfield for playing the webslinger Spiderman, also nominated for an Academy Award this year for his role in Tick, Tick Boom.

Yes. And Daisy Edgar Jones first caught our eye, and I love it so much. The romantic drama series Normal People. Now they both saw in a grizzly new true crime show. It’s called under the Banner of Heaven.

Andrew plays a fictional Detective named Jeb Pyer, a Mormon who has his faith challenged after the real life murder of the Easy’s character Brandt Lafferty.

You turned your back on Heavenly Father. I’m confident that forensics will have proved your guilt by tomorrow morning. I knelt with her in the temple. I brought her to Church with my family. You look at these signs of innocence, but they aren’t. Did you break your company? So she threatened to leave you? Is that what happened? I can imagine the fights. Is that why you killed her?

Very rarely.

True crime is a huge genre right now. Have you always been fans of the drama of the genre?

I love true crime.

I do, too.

It’s a really compelling thing. It’s become weirdly, a kind of comfort genre for people, I think, during the pandemic. Weirdly. I don’t know what that is. Maybe because I have no idea, but I find it kind of fascinating. But this story particularly is quite a vital one because it is a true crime story. And the character that Daisy plays, it’s a horrible thing that she goes through with her daughter. And the intention with this was really to tell a story that’s really compelling, but also to honor Brenda Lafferty and her and her daughter Erica.

It’s interesting because crime aside, the show takes place across two separate timelines, right. If you will. So you have no scenes together, but you have such chemistry. How did you guys build that connection?

How do we find a thing to do together? That’s my question.

Yeah, it was interesting because obviously we were filming in Calgary for about five months, but we never had any scenes together. And it’s always fun when you’re in something and there’s so much of it that you’re not involved in that you can watch it with fresh eyes as a viewer. So I’m, like, so excited to see the scenes that we heard.

There were dance parties involved really days.

He gets it going.

Yeah.

I’m dressed for disco.

Right.

The content can be, I’m sure, heavy to have a dance party. I’m sure it was probably helpful.

Yeah. You do need to find balance.

Yeah.

It was a strange thing. I’ve never had that on a show before. Usually I’m very kind of immersed in the thing, and I like taking my work home in a way, because it enhances my life. But with this, I think all of us, we were in the trenches together. And we had to have a lot of gallows humor. We had to dance a lot. We had to play board games. We had to go on hikes. We had to remind ourselves in order to be able to dive back into the material the next day.

I think I mean, your character again, it’s a fictional one, but it’s based on this true story, a book 2003 by John Crack Hour. As you know, at the time, there was some controversy surrounding how the Church was portrayed in this particular book. Did that affect how you prepared for the role at all or. No.

I think we wanted to be really sensitive. And luckily, the person who adapted the book from the Great Crack Hour book is Dustin Lance Black, who was an ex Mormon himself. And he was our showrunner and our director and our writer. And he has a real affinity with the Church still, even though he left the Church a bunch of years ago. So he has a real kind of kindness and a warmth and a connection to the Mormon Church while also doing that really hard and important work of shedding light into the nooks and crannies of an organization that maybe hasn’t seen light in a while. And to tell the truth about this organization. And I think the truth can only be a good thing to bring to light. And the truth will always out. And I think dust in Lance Black has done a kind of amazing job here.

Speaking of truths, Andrew, you were here recently just before the Spider Man movie, the latest Spider Man movie came out. And Derek, it was so wonderful seeing you and Tony.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

You talked with here’s what you had to say.

We do have to ask you about Spiderman. Everybody’s saying that you may be in it.

I listen, I’m not in the film. It is kind of shocking to witness how good I am.

You’re such a good actor. You just talked about truth. So I asked this next question, knowing after just watching this video, would there be any scenario where Andrew Garfield is in another Spider suit or in some part of the Marvel Universe?

See, my arms just crossed. I’m a really bad poker player.

Believe it or not.

But no matter what I say at this point, I am a known liar. There’s nothing I can say that I’m not going to satisfy you.

I’m always satisfied.

Before you guys leave it this morning, Daisy, I don’t know if you saw our show earlier this morning, we talked about the fact that The Crown is looking for an actress to play Duchess Kate Middleton. And so I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but all over Twitter, people are weighing in, and so many people think that you should be Kate Middleton in The Crown.

Oh, my gosh.

That’s the first I’ve heard of that.

Really?

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

People love you. Sounds cool.

Okay.

What do you think?

I wouldn’t say no.

Oh dear.

Would it help if Andrew wore a kind of a Baldish wig? Has Prince William?

Hey, it’s an affinity thing.

Where the card is saying what can you tell us?

Yes. So it’s coming out in July and yeah, I really hope that fans of the book will be happy with it and our adaptation. I think we’ve done a really good job of honoring it. So yeah, I’m really excited for people to see it.

Okay. Are you going to be in the next Spiderman though?

You guys are a delight.

You guys too.

Thanks for having us, Andrew Daisy. Thanks to both of you. Fx is under the banner of heaven. Premieres tomorrow April 28.

Exclusively on Hulu.

Hey, thanks for watching our YouTube channel. Find your favorite recipes, celebrity interviews, uplifting stories, shop, our favorite deals and so much more with the today app download.

It now.

Andrew Garfield talks about new limited series, ‘Under the Banner of Heaven’ l GMA – powered by Happy Scribe

Now with an actor on a role in the Oscar nomination for Tick, Tick Boom, a return to Spiderman, then critical acclaim for playing Jim Baker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye.

Now, Andrew Garfield staring the FX limited series under the Banner of Heaven. Welcome back to GMA.

Thank you for coming in. Thanks for having me.

Nice to see you guys.

This book was a book about the 1980s murder. It was tied to Mormon fundamentalist. I know you were a fan of the books. It must have been great to get the call.

You’re a fan of Mormon fundamentalism?

Yeah. So it’s a John Crackhower book who also wrote into the Wild, among many other amazing nonfiction books. But under the Banner of Heaven is an incredible kind of deep dive into the history of Mormonism. And, yeah, these horrific murders that happened in the 80s and Mormon community. And Dustin Lance Black is our writer and showrunner who has been adapting this book for the last ten years. And he’s an ex Mormon himself. He has a very personal connection to the material. And I’ve been waiting for ten years to hear what was going to happen with this material and with this story. And when I got the call, it was I have to go back to work, I guess, because I just finished doing a whole host of things. And I was like, oh, God, no. This isn’t a really important story. A really important story about fundamentalism and extremes and how we’re drawn to extremes in times of crisis and in times of uncertainty and fear. And it feels unfortunately, very precious and kind of important for the culture that we’re living in right now.

Take a look at a clip.

In a few instances, we’ve had an innocent man, an actual innocent man sat where you are.

They’ve been jumping up and down.

They’ve been naming people. Instead, you sit there, you tell us that you’re concerned about your brothers who couldn’t keep their eyes off of her. And your father thought she was no good. And you know what? If I were you, I would rather find that kind of family dead rather than safe and sound. You harm your brothers tonight, too, Alan.

Andrew, you did a deep dive research wise. You spent some time in Utah. But somebody who this in particular is police investigator that you turned to for some of your research.

Yeah.

I was lucky enough to be connected with someone in Utah who spoke to me under anonymity because it’s a sensitive subject. But he had been through the exact thing that my character goes through as a police Detective of Mormon faith who is having a crisis of faith because of the investigation that he was currently doing. That was kind of an unpicking of his own faith, a horrific case that he was on that was tied to Mormons fundamentalism. So as he was having to pursue the truth of this very disturbing case, he was also having to kind of reckon with the history of his own Church, and it was affecting his family life. It was affecting his life with his Church. And he was kind of faced with this dilemma of do I go for the truth or do I go for illusion and staying close to my family? And that’s the kind of the dynamic that my character has to go through. And it’s all based on factual events, this story. But my character is a fictionalized character, and it really helped to meet someone who had been through that exact struggle so that I felt like I could represent that person as well as I could.

We’re so delighted that you’ve taken on such a powerful role in such a powerful project with all that you have going on and had gone. I mean, as soon as you sat down, you’re taking a picture. What I’m trying to say. Do you feel it’s the year of Andrew Garfield?

Listen, it is just my year. This year it’s my time. Can you imagine if that was my legitimate answer? The actor should really just start going, you know what? It is my time. I’m just so honestly.

I started out in this job and I didn’t. But the first job I did was a Doritos commercial in Spain, and I got paid two grand for two days of work. And I thought, that’s it. I’ve made it, I’m done. And to be sat here with you, to be a part of projects like under the Banner of Heaven and TickTick Boom, and to be able to continue the Spiderman legacy, I’m so grateful that I get to act first and foremost, and then on top of that, to make things that I love and feel passionate about, and then to have people responding to them in a passion. It’s not the Year of Andrew Garfield is just more great storytelling that I got to be a small part of. And so that’s my humble answer.

I did love seeing the reunion in Spiderman. How hard was it to keep that secret?

Have you ever played a game called Werewolf or Mafia?

No, it’s a game you play in a group.

And basically some people will know this game, but you will get given a card at the beginning and you don’t show it.

You’re either a werewolf or you’re a villager.

And the villagers have to decide who the werewolves are and make sure that they don’t eat the rest of the villages.

And the werewolves have to it’s not literal. We don’t become werewolf.

And then the werewolves have to lie about being werewolves and convince the villagers that other people are werewolves.

So anyone who’s played this game.

When they turn over their card and they see they’re a werewolf, they immediately start sweating because they know they’re going to have to lie to their friends for the next three or 4 hours.

So I had that extended for six months and it wasn’t just my friends.

It was the entire internet.

But I’m a very competitive person. So when I’m going to play a game, I’m going to play to win.

So I wanted everyone to have a small scintilla of doubt because I know there were leaks and there was all this stuff but I was just very excited to be kind of preparing a surprise party for people.

The bottom line is you’re a very good liar.

I would say no comment on that.

It was great having you in today. Andrew Garfield, thanks very much. Fx is under the banner of heaven premieres tomorrow.

That’s exclusive on Hulu.

Well, hey there, GMA fans. Robin Roberts here. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Lots of great stuff stuff here so go on, click the subscribe button right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from GMA every day. Anytime. We thank you for watching and we’ll see you in the morning on GMA.

Revelation | The Brenda and Erica Lafferty Story – powered by Happy Scribe

American Fork, Utah has been described as a sleepy town. It is located in Northern Utah, approximately 30 miles miles south of the capital of Utah Salt Lake City, and it is part of the Provo, Orum Metropolitan area. The population was around 14,019, 84. Its rapid growth has brought that number to over twice that as of 2019. Settled in 1850 by Mormon pioneers, the predominant religion is the Church of Jesus Christ, with the First Ward being formed in 1051.

A little bit of trivia Daniel Wayne sermon and Andrew Tolman, members of the group Imagined Dragons are both from American Fork. The neighborhoods were dotted with homes and condominiums of well maintained yards and the neighbors were a close knit bunch back in 1984. It remains that way to this day. American Fork is the city where Allen, Brenda and their 15 month old baby Erika lived in a small red duplex. Allen left for work early on the morning of July 24, 1984.

This day happens to be a Utah holiday called Pioneer Day. It commemorates the arrival of Brigham Young and his followers into the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. It was to be a long day for Allen as his work as a tile setter was taking him to the city of Ogden, approximately 70 miles away. He phoned Brenda on his lunch break and they spoke briefly before Brenda put baby Erica on the phone. She made the cute sounds that babies make at 15 months of age.

He did not know that this would be the last time he ever spoke to Brenda and Erica.

Welcome to Criminatorium episode One. I’m your host, Madeline. Today’s episode deals with the topic of a religious sect called the Church of Jesus Christ. Those outside of the religion may still know them as the Mormons, LDS or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. They now prefer to be known by the Church of Jesus Christ.

The term Mormon is considered a nickname by members of the Church. Throughout this episode, however, I will be using the term Mormon as well as LDS as it was common for everyone to use these back in 1984 and still is today. I was born and raised in Utah and lived in the area and time where this event took place. I respect many of the Church teachings. It emphasizes the importance of families, morals and values.

Mormons are a happy, resourceful, friendly people. If you have an LDS neighbor, you can be sure that you will receive funeral potatoes and other delicious food delivered to your door at a time of need.

This episode took me down many rabbit holes. Just when I thought I had the story wrapped up, something else would surface. This case starts long before 1984. It began in the 1830s by a young man named Joseph Smith who lived in Palmyra, New York. There is quite an interesting history that would need to be covered in order to get a full understanding of the Lafferty story.

One book that was helpful in my research is called under the Banner of Heaven by John Crackauer. I’ve covered the parts of this case that I believe will be of most interest to the listeners, but I suggest reading the book if you would like to take a deeper dive. This episode includes the death of a mother and her child. There are also discussions of her religious nature. Listener discretion is advised.

Watson Leroy Lafferty and Claudine Jones were married on June 6 in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. An LDS temple is considered Holy amongst the members as it is a place where sacred ordinances are performed and couples are joined in marriage for what the Mormons call time and all eternity. Together they raised eight children, two girls and six boys, with Ron being the oldest, Alan the youngest, and Dan six years younger than Ron. By all outside appearances, the Lafferty family was tight knit, obedient, disciplined and happy. They lived in Provo, the home of Brigham Young University, which is also located in Utah County.

They were well known as Watson. Lafferty was a chiropractor. He had a thriving practice that he ran out of his home. It is said that Watson was strict and a disciplinarian who instilled in his children’s self sufficiency and the value of hard work. It is also said that Watson planted the seeds of paranoia, rebellion and fanaticism in his children.

He taught them to distrust modern medicine and the federal government. He also took his religious beliefs to the extreme. When one son accidentally shot himself in the stomach with an arrow. He told him he would have to suffer until morning for breaking the Sabbath.

Together, the Leopardes will cultivate the family garden, growing fruits and vegetables for the family to eat and preserve. In the LDS faith, boys are encouraged but not required to go on missions at the age of 19, and most do. It is voluntary and self funded. The leopardy boys were no exception. In 1960, Ron was called to serve a mission to Florida.

After serving faithfully for two years, he came home and married Diana and soon had their first child. Caroly Dan was called to serve a mission six years later to Scotland. He was the first person in his family to travel outside of the country. While there, he met his future wife, Matilda, who had two daughters from a previous relationship.

After spending two years on his Church mission, Dan and Matilda married and in 1977 had a daughter they named Rebecca. Ron was said to be a doting father and a good provider for his family. Dan was also attentive to the three girls and they adored him. Dan went to school to become a chiropractor like his dad, and it was around that time his behavior and belief started to change. This was partly spurred on by a set of events that occurred while he was attending College.

He and Matilda ran a sandwich shop out of their home. They, along with the girls, prepared the sandwiches and Dan would sell them to students on campus. It was quite profitable and they made enough for the family to live on while Dan was attending school. It wasn’t long before the health Department and the IRS caught wind of this endeavor and shut the business down and demanded that taxes to be paid on the proceeds from the sales of the sandwiches. This infuriated Dan.

It was shortly after this that he became anti government, revoked his driver’s license and quit paying taxes. He even tried to refuse to pay sales tax, which he wasn’t usually successful at. Dan had always strived to be Christlike, but this desire started to evolve into something else altogether. He was veering away from his religious roots as he felt that the Mormon Church has strayed from the original teachings of the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the practice of polygamy. He began holding meetings in his home, preaching his disdain for the control he perceived the government had over people, while also speaking out against the Mormon Church for its modern day teachings.

This weekly meeting included only men, mostly the leopardy brothers, and was a Church of sorts. One person that attended these meetings was youngest brother Alan. He seemed to agree with Dan? S new philosophies and ideas, so much so that he began trying to implement these beliefs within his own family. Ron started attending the School of Profit meetings as well, and he became a believer too.

One of the ideologies discussed was that women are to stay home with the children and be open to the practice of polygamy. Brenda, Allen’s wife, was a strong willed and educated young woman, and she wasn’t open to this proposed lifestyle change.

She and Allen met while Brenda attended Brigham Young University and Allen attended Utah Technical College. She was a journalism student and a broadcasting anchor for the University run channel Kbyutv. Brenda was born on July 19, 1962. Parents Lorraine and James Wright. She grew up in Kimberly, Idaho with five sisters and one brother.

They were a close and happy LDS family. Brenda has been described as fun, energetic, bubbly, smart, and driven. She was formerly a beauty scholarship contender where she was crowned second runner up to Miss Idaho. She was tall, slender and pretty, and in some of her pictures you can see that she had freckles. She had just recently aspired to write children’s books.

Allen and Brenda married in the LDS temple in on April 28, 1983. They welcomed Erica Lane Lafferty into their family. Alan and Brenda decided it would be best for Brenda to stay at home and be a full time house wife and mother. Grandparents James and Lorraine said of Erica, quote, oh, we loved her. She was a joy, a petite little girl, very active.

She was learning to speak quickly and would have been walking soon.

Ron was considered to be one of the leaders of the School of Prophets group and claimed to receive revelations from God. One revelation claimed that his wife Diana had been the wife of the devil in a previous life. Another revelation he had was revealed to the School of Prophecy and it caused a stir amongst the members. Ron called it the Revelation of Removal. It reads as follows, Thus saith the Lord unto my servants, the prophets, it is my will and commandment that Ye remove the following individuals in order that my work might go forward, for they have truly become obstacles in my path and I will not allow my work to be stopped.

First thy brother’s wife Brenda and her baby, then Chloe Lowe, and then Robert Stowe. And it is my will that they be removed in rapid succession and that an example be made of them in order that others might see the fate of those who fight against the true Saints of God. And it is my will that this matter be taken care of as soon as possible, and I will prepare a way for my instrument to be delivered and instruction be given unto my servant. And it is my will that they show great care and his duties, for I have raised him up and prepared him for this important work, and is he not likened to my servant? Porter Rockwell and great blessings await him, for I am the Lord thy God and have control over all things.

Be still and know that I am with thee. Even so Amen. Chloe Lowell and Robert Stowe were neighbors and friends of Ron’s and Diana and he saw them as traitors for providing support to his wife. At the time she was questioning Ron’s changing beliefs. Robert Stowe also provided over Ron’s excommunication from the Church.

Porter Rockwell, who was mentioned in the revelation, was a bodyguard to Mormon Church founder and Prophet Joseph Smith and a good friend of his from childhood.

This revelation was rejected by all of the members of this School of Prophecy except two of the Lafferty brothers, Watson Jr. And Dan Allen. Brenda’s husband had some involvement in the School of Prophecy at certain times, but it is not clear if he was present at the time this revelation was revealed. However, he did concede to knowing about it at a later time. Dan believed his brother did indeed have a revelation and felt it was God’s will and would not let anything get in the way of fulfilling it.

Ron and Dan broke off with the School of Prophecy due to their lack of support for this Revelation of removal. Ron made a veiled threat to the others before leaving the group, causing concern and fear amongst the members.

Ron’s wife Diana and Dan’s wife Matilda were not in favor of the changes they were seeing in their husbands. The final straw came for Matilda when Dan announced that he wanted to take his stepdaughter, who was 14 at the time as his second wife, Matilda’s daughter also reported that Dan had sexually abused her on several occasions. For these reasons, Dan was excommunicated from the Mormon Church. Dan eventually discarded the idea of marrying his stepdaughter and instead married a Romanian immigrant woman named Anna Randak, who took care of Robert Redford’s horses on a Ranch he owned in Spanish Fork, Utah. He was technically practicing polygamy even though Dan and Matilda’s marriage was about to end.

What eventually became of this marriage is not clear. Matilda and Diana frequently called upon Brenda for advice as to how to handle the changes they were seeing in their husbands, as she seemed to be the one that wasn’t afraid to stand up to her husband. She advised the women that they did not have to accept this new belief system, and this is part of what caused Ron the angst he had for Brenda. Ron also blamed Brenda for keeping Alan from being fully engaged in the ideologies that Ron and Dan had adopted. Diana ended up divorcing Ron and moving with their six kids to Florida.

Dan moved out of the home he shared with Matilda and the three girls, and they divorced as well. Dan and Ron went on an extended trip together in Ron’s green Impala wagon, at times practically living in it. On July 24, 1984, Dan, Ron, Ricky, Nap, and Chip cards. Two men that the brothers had picked up hitchhiking in their travels loaded up knives, a Sawd off shotgun and ammunition and headed to Alan and Erica’s duplex. They arrived at around 130 and pulled into the driveway.

It was noted that Brenda’s car was there. Ron got out and went up to the door alone. He was carrying the sod off shotgun up his right hand sleeve and the knife in his boot. Ron opened the screen door and knocked several times. There was no answer.

Dan was relieved, thinking this was a test of faith from God and that they didn’t really have to go through with it. They had passed the test, much like Abraham of the Old Testament. Ron shrugged and got back into the car. Dan drove about a block and a half away. When he claimed he was overcome by a weird feeling that he should go back to Alan and Brendez.

He surmised that perhaps he was the one that was supposed to fulfill this revelation from God.

Dan turned the car towards Allen and Brenda’s and pulled into the driveway. Once again, Dan stepped out of the car and knocked on the door. This time Brenda answered. He began by asking her where Allen was, and she stated that he was at work. Dan recalled that he was silently talking to God and wondering what to do next.

After a few seconds, he pushed past Brenda and entered the duplex. Brenda must have known that whatever was going to happen was going to end badly, as her words to Dan were quote, I knew you were going to do something that nobody could stop. Ron eventually made his way into the duplex and saw what was going on. Dan had Brenda pinned to the floor. She tried to reason with both of them, saying she would do anything they wanted and beg them not to hurt her baby.

Ron began punching Brenda in the face, trying to knock her out to subdue her, all the while calling her a bitch and a liar. She managed to get up and run into the kitchen, where the sheer terror and blows to the face caused her to faint. Dan asked Ron to cut the cord from the vacuum. He then took that cord and wrapped it around Brenda’s neck twice and tied it in a knot, and with the knife that Ron had handed to him, he slit Brenda’s throat.

While this struggle in mayhem was going on, nap and Carnes were waiting in the car. They were able to hear some of the commotion. Then it suddenly quieted down. They became nervous about being involved in this crime and contemplated leaving with the car, but after some reasoning decided against it, Dan walked down the hall. He had never been to Brendan Allen’s home before and claimed the spirit led him into baby Erica’s room.

Dan guessed that Erica must have thought he was her Daddy, as they both had beards and their voices sounded similar. How dreadful is that if she did think this was her Daddy?

Dan talked to Erica saying, quote, I’m not sure what this is all about, but apparently it is God’s will that you leave the world. Perhaps we can talk about it later.

Dan held onto Erika’s little head and placed the knife on her neck and sliced it with enough force that it nearly decapitated her.

Ron and Dan left the duplex and, with their clothes covered in blood, got into the car and drove away.

The brothers arrived at Chloe Stowe’s house intending to murder her, and knocked on the door. Finding nobody home. Ron and Dan broke in, stealing some items, malingering for a while, then leaving, feeling like they had done enough for the Lord. That day, they decided against going to Robert Stowe’s home.

Alan arrived home from work at around 08:00 p.m. That night. He walked up to the door and noted that it was locked, which was unusual because Alan and Brenda never locked their doors. When they were at home, he entered the duplex and called her name. He saw the blood and then he spotted Brandt lying lifeless, face down on the kitchen floor, surrounded in blood.

She had sustained a severe beating and had obviously been strangled as the vacuum cord was still wrapped around her neck. According to the medical examiner, her throat was cut. A six inch long incision sliced through her trachea, both jugular veins and both carotid arteries, and left a cut on her spinal column. Blood was smeared everywhere. The drapes, the walls light switches.

It was obvious there had been a major struggle. He went down the hallway towards baby Erika’s room and found the little one propped against the back of her crib head slumped over her neck had been gashed from ear to ear.

The medical examiner determined that both Brenda and Erica were alive at the time. Dan, viciously and without mercy, slit their throats.

Allen ran to the neighbor’s house and called the police. Once they arrived, Allen was taken to the police Department and sat down for an interview with Sergeant Fox of the American Fort Police Department. Alan appeared to be visibly shaken. As expected, he being the husband of Brenda, he had to be questioned as to his possible involvement. During this interview, Allen had some information that needed to be shared.

Allen suspected his brothers, Ron and Dan were the perpetrators. He also indicated that he had heard them speak about this revelation for removal, but he never thought they would go through with it.

The police were also able to ascertain that a neighbor saw a green station wagon parked in Allen and Brenda’s Duplex driveway on the morning of July 24.

The FBI put out an all points bulletin for Ron station wagon and were able to locate it in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The police entered into the home where it was parked with guns drawn and found that there were two men at the residence, but it wasn’t the Leopards, it was Nap and Carnes, the hitchhikers that were waiting in the car while the murders took place. They had stolen the car and parted ways with the brothers. They claimed to not know where Ron and Dan were, but they did lead the police to a bloody knife. Lab results showed that the blood on the knife was Brenda’s.

The FBI received a tip that Ron and Dan had been spotted in Reno, Nevada at the Circus Circus Casino and when they arrived, the brothers were standing in the buffet line. They were arrested without incident. Ron and Dan Lafferty were transported to the American Fort Court and were arraigned together for aggravated burglary, two counts of first degree murder, and conspiracy to commit murder.

Dan chose to represent himself. With the help of standby counsel, the jury returned with a guilty verdict on all counts. Dan was given two life sentences without the possibility of parole. Ron was given the death penalty as he was seen as the instigator. Criminals back then were given the choice of how they wanted to be executed and he chose the firing squad.

The two hitchhikers, Chip Karns and Ricky Napp, originally faced the same murder charges in this case, but agreed to testify for the state and pled guilty to reduce charges. Prior to his trial, Ron attempted to commit suicide in the Utah County Jail. It is claimed that this caused mental damage and as a result, he spent several months in the Utah State Hospital for evaluation. Attorneys have tried throughout the years to appeal his conviction based on his mental status, ineffective counsel, and the fact that it was a high profile case preventing him from getting a fair trial. Each appeal, except one, was denied.

He did receive a retrial in 1996 and was again convicted on all counts and sentenced to death.

In 2008, a woman named Christ Strach began writing to Dan Lafferty in prison. She was only eight when he committed his crimes, but after she read about the case, she became enamored with him and his teachings. In 2008, she contacted his daughter Rebecca to arrange for a meeting with him. Soon, she and her husband, Benjamin, began visiting Dan in prison. They would talk about the end of the world life, families, and religious philosophies.

Dan claims that he and Christie fell in love with Benjamin’s knowledge, and Benjamin was okay with it. The last time Dan saw them, in 2014, he had cut off his hair and beard and had given it to Christ. He had even indicated that he wanted his Ashes to go to Christ when he died.

Christ had often expressed her thoughts about taking her life and that of her kids in order to leave the evil world behind, and due to her fear of the pending apocalypse, Dan encouraged her to do it. On September 27, 2014, Christ and Ben gave three of their children a lethal mixture of methadone, prescription medication and cough syrup before ingesting it themselves.

Their bodies were later found by Christie’s oldest son by a previous marriage who wasn’t in the home at the time the deaths occurred. Dan proudly takes credit for this family’s demise.

Alan Lafferty is remarried. I was unable to find any further details regarding this. Watson Lafferty passed away in 1983, the year before the crimes occurred. He died from complications due to his diabetes. Claudine Lafferty, Ron and Dan’s mother died in 2016 at the age of 96.

The burden of what her sons did always weighed heavily on her. Lorraine Wright, Brenda’s mom, also died in 2016 at the age of 82. It was thought that 2020 would be the year that Ron would be executed, but Ronald Watson Lafferty died in prison on November 11, 2019 of natural causes.

He spent 34 years on death row, one of the longest days on death row ever at the state prison.

Dan leopardy is 72 and is serving out his life sentence at the Utah State Prison in Draper, Utah. He doesn’t get many visits from his family, if any. He stated in an interview that the killing of Brenda and Erica has never haunted or bothered him. As for nap and Carnes, I was not able to find any updated information on them.

Brenda’s dad is still alive, and he is thankful that Ron died of natural causes so that the family wouldn’t have to face dealing with his execution. In a recent interview, he spoke of giving little Erica her first ice cream and stirring it up to make it soft like dairy Queen and Brenda’s love of scrapbooking and his pride was especially apparent when talking about her job as a broadcasting anchor at Kbyutv. He spoke of the never ending sorrow that the loss of Brenda and Erica has caused to the family. He said of the sentence of execution quote, from the very beginning, we as a family turn that over to the Lord and the law unquote. He also added that the family has moved forward instead of getting caught up in hate quote and things like that.

Jim visits the grave site weekly and has done so since their deaths.

Brenda and Erica’s headstone reads, the life spent in doing good and accomplishing goals will be remembered beyond that span of life itself. Brenda and Erica were laid together in a peaceful resting place in a Cemetery located in twin Falls County, Idaho. Erica is resting forever upon her mother’s chest in an eternal embrace.

Thank you for listening to this episode. I finished writing up on the 36th anniversary of Brandt and Erika’s death in the show notes below. I have added a link to donate to the Charlie project. If you spend any time on that site, it isn’t hard to believe how much work goes into it. Please consider donating $5 or more so that this important work can continue to expand.

It provides an invaluable service to all who have been affected by a missing loved one. If you’re interested in connecting Crimea Torium can be found on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Please subscribe via your favorite platform to the podcast. Support in any form means so much to those of us that have podcasts episodes will drop biweekly and I will focus on lesser known crimes. When possible, pictures from today’s episode can be found on Criminatorium.com.

I would love to hear about any cases you would like covered. There is a case submission form on the Criminatorium website or Direct message me through Social media. I’d like to take this time to say A Big Thank You To My Wonderful Friend Tony For suggesting this case. This show is researched, Written And narrated By Me. Madeline.