WITH a huge smile on her face, excited nine-year-old Anna LeBaron accompanied her dad to church where she listened intently as he preached to the locals.
But back then little did Anna, now 50, know her sick and twisted father had plotted a brutal killing spree and that she was part of the most murderous polygamous cult in America - the Church of the Lamb of God.
Following the old, long-abandoned Mormon doctrine of ‘blood atonement’ - by which people paid for their sins with their lives - her dad and cult leader Ervil LeBaron convinced his loyal disciples that in order to “save the souls of those that have gone astray” they must be murdered.
The story of Ervil’s dark sect is told in this week’s episode of I Lived With A Killer, and includes a new interview with daughter Anna that sheds more light on the spate of over 20 killings.
Brainwashed by her father and unaware of the cult’s bloody nature, Anna, the daughter of Ervil’s fourth wife Anna-Mae Marston and one of more than 50 LeBaron siblings, proudly cut out pictures of her dad from the newspaper and add them to her photo album.
The children were used as unpaid workers in the domestic appliance repair shops that were the cult's main stream of income, scrubbing grease from filthy ovens and fridges for 12 hours a day during school holidays.
Anyone who resisted was beaten, no matter how young they were.
While they were allowed to go to school, if any outsiders questioned Anna about Ervil she was taught to tell people he was her uncle and that her brothers and sisters were cousins.
Anna, who was born in Mexico in what she would later learn was a cult hideout was moved from one overcrowded safe house to another, sleeping on filthy mattresses and scavenging for food.
Just like followers of notorious cult monster Charles Manson, Anna says her father’s children truly believed everything he told them.
“As a child we were taught that we were celestial children because we were born of the prophet Ervil LeBaron,” Anna recalls.
Ordering execution of rivals
Ervil was one of four brothers and after their father’s death, a power struggle ensued between the siblings.
Determined to eliminate his polygamist rivals, Ervil ordered his brother Joel’s execution in 1972 and founded the Church of the Lamb of God. He attempted to kill brother Verlan too, but was unsuccessful.
In 1977 the cult leader sent two of his followers, including one of his 13 wives, to kill rival Rulon C. Allred, who was the leader of a breakaway polygamous sect.
The two women calmly walked into the doctor’s surgery where Allred worked and shot him to death in front of his waiting patients. That same year he allegedly ordered the death of his pregnant teenage daughter Rebecca.
But with the calculated killings piling up and Ervil’s followers fleeing to different states, the FBI started to close in.
In 1979 Ervil was finally caught and the following year he was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating Allred’s murder.
Despite his conviction and headlines branding Ervil the ‘Mormon Manson’, Anna was completely unaware of her dad’s horrifying history.
“I didn’t care what the newspapers said because we were taught and brainwashed that we were being persecuted,” Anna says.
“You just feel a connection because he’s your father, so when I saw a picture of him in the newspaper I cut it out and put it in my album.”
The Book of the New Covenant and his ‘hit list’
Even behind bars Ervil was able to control the cult. He began writing a 400-page book called The Book of the New Covenant that detailed his beliefs and featured a list of everyone he thought had wronged him.
In August 1981 Ervil died in prison but the killer cult he created lived on - and even more blood was about to be shed.
Following his death the remaining followers of the cult regrouped, but it was unclear who the leader was.
“After my father passed away there were factions of my group all over and nobody knew who was in charge. Everyone thought they were the one,” Anna remembers.
“People [were] killing each other trying to find out who was going to be the last man standing, basically.”
Eventually Anna’s brother Heber emerged as the new leader and under his guidance the cult committed itself to following through on Ervil’s instructions, believing they were avenging him.
One gunshot to the chest and two shots to the head
In 1987 the second generation members of the Church of the Lamb of God began to carry out Ervil’s instructions.
One of the people named in the dead leader’s hit list was his former right-hand man, Dan Jordan.
They brutally killed him with a single gunshot to the chest and two shots to the head. It soon became known as the signature LeBaron execution style.
The following year the cult plotted another series of vicious killings across Texas. Among them was Anna’s half-brother and former disciple Ed Marston.
Marriageable age within the cult was 15, and following her father’s death 13-year-old Anna was worried about being lined up for marriage. She left and went in search for a better life in Texas with two former cult members, Mark and Lillian Chynoweth.
While in their care Anna started to become curious about the life she left behind, and discovered the grim truth after stumbling across a book written about her father and her family.
“I am reading this book and finding out for the first time,” she says. “One, that I grew up in a cult and, two, that there were people I loved and cared about who had murdered others.”
“Because of the circumstances it wasn’t like I could go and talk to anyone about these things. Mark was involved in some of it so how was I going to go and ask him if these things were true or not?”
It was only when the killings began again that Mark sat Anna down and told her the truth. He also told her that Dan Jordan had recently been murdered, and feared he might be next because his name was also on Ervil’s list.
Not long after, Anna was dealt a devastating blow.
Anna’s brother masterminds a bloody killing spree
On June 27 1988 Anna’s brother Heber walked into Mark’s office and murdered him in cold blood. Within 10 minutes of Mark’s death they had also killed former cult member Ed Marston, Duane Chynoweth and Duane’s young daughter Jenny.
The horrific killings became known as the Four O’Clock murders.
“We’re first told that Mark is dead and it’s a relief to me that Lillian is still alive,” a tearful Anna recalls. “The news arrives that my brother Ed had also been killed in Dallas and that Mark’s brother Duane and his daughter Jenny were killed.”
Seven months after Mark’s murder, his wife Lillian took her own life.
“I hold my father responsible for that,” Anna says. “Even though he had been dead and gone for a long time it was his orders in The Book of The New Covenant that my siblings were following. They were brainwashed to believe that they had to do it. They didn’t know another way.”
In the summer of 1988 the police set up a task force to bring an end to the bloodshed and Heber was sentenced to life in prison.
With the violence finally behind them and the last of the murderers captured, Anna decided to meet up with the remaining members of her family.
“You can change and my family has changed. For so long I was so ashamed of my family of origin,” she says.
“Now I am not ashamed to be a LeBaron any more. I am proud of my family, I am proud of the people they’re becoming.”
I Lived With A Killer, The Church of The Lamb of God will air tonight at 9pm on Crime+Investigation.
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