Under the Banner of Heaven summary

In 1984, Brenda Lafferty and her daughter, Erica, were brutally murdered by Ron and Dan Lafferty. The brothers were part of a fundamentalist Mormon group – when they decided to kill their sister-in-law and niece, they were acting on a revelation they believed to be from God. 

In this Blink to Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, you’ll discover not just a crime story, but also an analysis of religious extremism. 

A content warning before we begin: this Blink contains radical views and graphic violence, so please proceed with caution.

In 1823, the angel Moroni guided 17-year-old Joseph Smith to a hill in Palmyra, New York. Buried under a rock for 14,00 years, the angel said, were golden plates inscribed with Holy Scripture in Egyptian hieroglyphics. The plates would come into Smith’s possession once he was mature and married. 

Smith was in love with a girl called Emma Hale, but Emma’s father wasn’t happy about their union. He didn’t want Smith, a convicted imposter and soothsayer, to marry his beautiful daughter. So the couple eloped.

Smith had visited the hill in Palmyra every September 22, as Moroni had instructed. On his visit in 1827, Smith brought along his bride. Dressed in black, they rode in a black carriage drawn by a black horse. 

Having fulfilled the conditions the angel had laid out, Smith got access to the holy writing. Using spectacles Moroni had given him, he read the ancient text to his neighbor, Martin Harris, who took on the role of scribe. Moroni retrieved the golden plates and spectacles when they’d finished the translation.

And then the worst possible thing happened: Martin Harris borrowed the translated text to show his doubting wife … and it disappeared. It took some effort for Moroni to return the plates. And this time, Moroni didn’t offer any spectacles. 

So Smith relied on his experience. He made use of an old technique he’d picked up in his treasure-hunting days. He put the golden plates near him, placed his peeping stone inside an upturned hat, buried his head in it to shut out the light, and looked through a hole in the pebble. He then read out an English version of the Scripture to Emma and other clerks.

The team finished their translation in June 1829 – but Smith couldn’t cough up the printer’s $3,000 advance for 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon. In another vision, God revealed to Smith that Harris had to pay the printer. Harris had already faced his wife’s wrath due to his involvement with Smith. But even his wife couldn’t stop him from doing God’s work.

Harris sold his farm to finance the printing, and Joseph Smith formally incorporated the religion a week after the book was published. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was born.

Six hundred years before the birth of Christ, a Hebrew tribe left Jerusalem and set sail for America.

They were led by Lehi, who eventually picked his younger son, Nephi, to lead the tribe. Lehi’s decision didn’t go down well with Laman, the older son. Along with his followers, Laman’s skin got darker as he became more evil.

According to Smith’s revelations, the evil faction were ancestors of the Native Americans. The Lamanites killed all the Nephites – all but one, that is. This last Nephite’s name was Mormon.

Mormon’s son, Moroni, was the angel that handed Joseph Smith the golden plates at the holy site Mormons now call Hill Cumorah.

Smith’s story attracted derision from local newspapers and commentators – but it also attracted over a thousand converts in a single year from the area around Palmyra. Smith declared his church the one and only true church.

He also communicated with God on a regular basis – a skill his followers picked up. Smith’s revelations, however, were considered more sacred. They offered guidance for the establishment of his church and were published in an official dogma which he titled The Doctrine and Covenants.

Facing persecution in Palmyra, Smith received a revelation to lead God’s chosen to Zion. The Saints stopped briefly in Kirtland, Ohio, before settling in Jackson County, Missouri.

But tensions started to brew.

To the people of Jackson County, Mormons were an entitled group: they preferred to trade among themselves, voted as one bloc, and bought up a lot of land around the area. The locals also disliked that these Northerners favored the abolition of slavery.

Bloody clashes ensued, leading to the deaths of many men and women on both sides. After one such battle, Smith offered to sacrifice himself to establish peace.

He was ordered to be shot alongside some of his followers. But by this time, Mormons had begun to draw some public sympathy from Americans who thought they were being persecuted for their faith. This deterred local government officials from going on with the execution.

Encouraged by a bribe, prison officials got drunk and dozed off while the prisoners escaped. The Saints crossed over into Illinois and created a new settlement in the city of Nauvoo, Hancock County. 

It wasn’t long before they enraged the locals again. But this time, the president, prophet, seer, and revelator of the church was starting to face some resistance from his home turf too.

Officially, the Mormon church rejects polygamy. But that’s just one side of Joseph Smith’s legacy. Polygamy is practiced by countless Mormon sects. 

This division started under Smith’s own roof.

In Nauvoo, Smith started sleeping with other women. He secretly married some of them, in what he called “celestial marriages.” Men had to marry as many women as they could to create offspring and populate God’s earth, Smith told close friends.

However strongly he felt about it, though, Smith couldn’t find the courage to tell his wife. He dropped a few hints to see the reaction. It was negative. Understanding that the times hadn’t yet caught up with his audacious vision, he secretly canonized polygamy in Section 132 of The Doctrines and Covenants as one of the central principles of Mormonism.

The road to salvation lay in these spiritual marriages. Anyone who ignored this principle, man or woman, would be damned.

In 1844, a church elder named William Law sided with Emma and threatened to expose Smith in a newspaper article. Smith, acting as mayor of Nauvoo, raided Law’s office.

Smith was arrested and locked up in Carthage, Illinois, but his enemies in Hancock County broke into his cell and attacked him. He jumped out of the prison window and crashed to the ground, 20 feet below.

Polygamy’s time came in 1852 when Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, announced Smith’s secret principle to an assembly in Salt Lake City. Saints sympathizers were shocked. But before long, it became the dogma and accepted practice of the mainstream Mormon church – the church in which the Lafferty brothers were raised.

When Ron Lafferty and his brothers came across this revelation, they felt betrayed by the authorities in Salt Lake City. The church had compromised its principles to make peace with the government of the United States. Not only had it renounced polygamy – it had also allowed Black people to join the Mormon church and priesthood. 

The Lafferty wives weren’t happy with their husbands’ revelation. They didn’t like the fact that they were discussing polygamy with old men in distant communes, secretly marrying their stepdaughters, and sexually abusing their kids.

Once the Lafferty brothers adopted Mormon fundamentalism, they started relying on divine provision. Ron left his job and drove around without a license, often exceeding speed limits to defy police officers. In his eyes, the law of God superseded the law of man. He traveled to Colorado City in Utah and Bountiful in Canada, and started experimenting with drugs and alcohol. His first wife had left with their kids, so he started to take other wives.

Everyone who opposed the chosen, Smith had declared, was a child of the Devil. Not able to make their husbands see reason, the Lafferty wives turned to Brenda, the youngest wife. Her interventions angered the Lafferty men.

On July 24, 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty parked their Impala station wagon outside their brother Allen’s home in American Fork. July 24 is Pioneer Day, which Mormons celebrate every year to commemorate the day their ancestors marched into Utah territory back in 1847.

Ron got out and knocked on the front door – no reply. He jumped back into the car to join Dan and two companions they’d been traveling around with.

But as they drove away from Allen’s house, Dan suddenly felt an urge. It was he, Dan, that had been chosen to carry out this assignment. He turned the car around and drove back to Allen’s house.

This time, Brenda opened the door. He forced his way in and closed the door from inside. Then he attacked his sister-in-law. Ron entered the house moments later and helped his brother subdue Brenda, who passed out.

Then Dan walked into his niece Erica’s room. She was standing in her crib, burbling and smiling at her uncle. Her uncle explained to the toddler that he was doing God’s work, closed his eyes, and then slashed the baby's throat with the instrument God had chosen: a boning knife.

Unfazed by what he’d just done, Dan washed the blood off the knife. He walked back to the kitchen, where Brenda lay motionless. He grabbed her by the hair, closed his eyes, and cut her throat too. 

Drenched in blood, the brothers and their crew drove to the home of their next intended victim: Chloe Low. She wasn’t there – she and her family had decided to celebrate Pioneer Day away from American Fork – so they stole some jewelry and money, and destroyed Chloe’s collection of figurines. Chloe had angered the brothers by supporting their wives. 

Richard Stowe, their final target, had done the same. But on their way to execute Richard, they missed a turn. And their companions decided they’d seen enough. They told the brothers it wasn’t God’s will. That’s why they’d missed the turn, their friends pleaded.

When their companions disappeared with their car, the brothers separated and reunited in Reno, Nevada. There, they relied on free casino food and the generosity of strangers. A driver let them sleep in his bus. Other times, free casino chips would win them a meal.

One day, they decided to check out a friend in Circus Circus casino. When they didn’t find her, they lined up to eat at the casino’s buffet. The police were waiting. But Ron and Dan didn’t resist – everything they’d done was the Lord’s work.

When Dan was learning about the early Mormon church, he discovered blood atonement had been encouraged by Joseph Smith and his successor, Brigham Young. Spilling blood was fine, they argued, if an unbeliever committed an unforgivable sin against a Saint. Mormon legends like Porter Rockwell, also known as the Destroying Angel, killed many people on behalf of the church. 

Locked up in prison, Ron had another revelation: God had asked him to kill Dan. He tried to sneak up on his brother while he slept, but retreated when his brother woke up. On another occasion, Ron brutally attacked Dan, who put up no resistance.

The brothers were separated and put in adjoining cells after this incident. Dan let Ron strangle him with a towel through his cell. He suffered injuries but survived. Then it dawned on him: Ron was the child of the Devil. Dan now thought of himself as the prophet Elijah, sent to earth to prepare the way for Christ.

The brothers were convicted in separate trials – Dan to life in prison, Ron to death.