The Colony: Faith and Blood in a Promised Land

by Sally Denton

Overview

“In The Colony, Sally Denton tracks the convoluted path of the LeBarons, who created a generational context for murder culminating in the deaths of three plural wives (one of them my cousin) and six children in Sonora, Mexico. This slice of modern history—November 2019—simulates a Wild West that should have ended with the nineteenth century, yet was resuscitated by a cadre of fundamentalists who make being right a matter of life and death . . . Denton’s no-nonsense voice and transparent prose render a profound sense of this drought-ridden, machismo-infested land where terrified children and overworked women are slaughtered.”
—Dorothy Allred Solomon, author of In My Father's House: A Memoir of Polygamy

“The Colony is one of the most gripping and disturbing true stories I’ve ever come across. It opens with the horrific massacre of Fundamentalist Mormon women and children in 2019 in northern Mexico, initially thought to be the work of cartel gunmen who mistook their SUVs for those of a rival gang. But the true story is far more complex . . . This is far more than the usual true crime book; it is a deep historical exploration of evil. I could not put The Colony down.”
—Douglas Preston, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Lost City of the Monkey God

“The story told in The Colony, of the murder of the Mormon Fundamentalist women and children in Mexico in 2019, is as disturbing as it is riveting. Reading this mesmerizing account of a tragedy that has never been fully explained, I felt I was in the hands of a master storyteller. Sally Denton’s deep knowledge of her subject, whether it be the complexities of polygamy or the power of the Mexican cartels, allows her to approach the horrifying crimes with a singular historical understanding and empathy. An important book, and a deeply satisfying one.”
—Judith Freeman, author of MacArthur Park

“Sally Denton brings all her skills as an investigative journalist and American historian to this tale of murder, religion, guns, water rights, drugs and deviant cults. A great read and an important piece of U.S.-Mexico border literature.”
—Nina Burleigh, author of The Trump Women: Part of the Deal

“Every once in a while, there comes a shocking event that briefly makes international headlines and then vanishes, only to be picked up by a dogged sleuth who finds and tells the real story—a much more bizarre and fascinating one—buried beneath. In The Colony, Sally Denton burrows into a big, complicated tragedy that crosses borders and cultural divides, and she does so with imagination, resourcefulness, and investigative zeal.”
—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of Blood and Thunder: An Epic of the American West

“In a story as American as it is Mexican, as riveting as it is horrifying, intrepid investigator Sally Denton explores the deeper history of a spectacular and terrible moment. Opening with the shocking murders of three Fundamentalist Mormon housewives and their children on a dirt road in Sonora, Denton reveals a tangled web of cult murder, sex trafficking, water wars and blood feuds, bound by political corruption and calculation on both sides of the border. Spellbinding and bone-chilling.”
—Virginia Scharff, Distinguished Professor, University of New Mexico and Chair of Western History, Autry Museum

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631498077
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	06/28/2022
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	31,842
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sally Denton is the author of eight books, including bestseller The Bluegrass Conspiracy, and the coauthor of a classic account of Las Vegas, The Money and the Power. She lives in Nevada.

Table of Contents

Prologue She Was the Whitest 1

Chapter 1 "We're Not Radical Cultists" 19

Chapter 2 The Englishman and the Danish Girl 43

Chapter 3 Mountain Meadows Dogs 61

Chapter 4 Zion in a Dry Place 75

Chapter 5 "Am I About to Have a Cain in My Family?" 93

Chapter 6 Saint Benji and the Vanguard 116

Chapter 7 NXIVM: Ignite the Heart 134

Chapter 8 "Water Flows Uphill to Money" 154

Chapter 9 "Innocence Is Shattered" 166

Chapter 10 "An Eden in Contention" 185

Epilogue Sisterhood 203

Acknowledgments 207

Notes 211

Works Cited 241

Index 257

Editorial Reviews

03/14/2022

This intriguing portrait of fundamentalist Mormons in Mexico focuses on the 2019 massacre of three women and six children traveling by caravan on a desolate stretch of road between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Investigative journalist Denton (American Massacre), who is a descendant of polygamist Mormons, describes the military-style attack in stark detail and shares evidence from the resulting investigation pointing to a local drug cartel. But the focus is on the history of the LeBaron family, from its 19th-century split with the Mormon church in Salt Lake City and establishment of Colonia LeBaron in northern Mexico, to the brotherly feud that gripped the clan from the 1970s into the 1990s, resulting in dozens of “blood atonement” murders meant to “provide the victim with eternal salvation when his or her blood was spilled into the earth,” and the family’s recent efforts to stop cartel-organized kidnappings in the region. The LeBarons, owners of pecan farms and other resource-heavy enterprises, also engaged in long-standing water rights disputes with their neighbors. Drawing on interviews with former “sister wives,” Denton brings nuance and sensitivity to her discussion of the LeBarons’ polygamist practices and the status of women in the community. The result is a fascinating tale of religion, violence, and family secrets. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"Meticulously researched…. The author couldn’t have found a more bizarro clan to profile than the LeBarons, whose history of murdering family members, mental illness and incest rivals that of the Hapsburgs…. Denton provides an excellent history of a polygamist subculture… [her] book is a testament to what happens when male power, under the guise of religious conviction, goes unchecked."

New York Times Book Review - Julia Scheeres

"A mesmerizing deep dive into Mormon fanaticism, violence, deceit, mental illness, and misogyny, dating back to the religion’s mid-19th century founding by Joseph Smith."

The Daily Beast - Lewis Beale

"Reminiscent of Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, this is exhaustively researched and riveting."

Booklist - Karen Clements

"The Colony is one of the most gripping and disturbing true stories I’ve ever come across. It opens with the horrific massacre of Fundamentalist Mormon women and children in 2019 in northern Mexico, initially thought to be the work of cartel gunmen who mistook their SUVs for those of a rival gang. But the true story is far more complex. In exploring what really happened, Denton, a superb researcher and historian, delves deep into the history of polygamous Mormon splinter sects in Mexico, blood feuds, rivalries, and conflicts over land and water rights, as well as issues of drug smuggling. This is far more than the usual true crime book; it is a deep historical exploration of evil. I could not put The Colony down."

Douglas Preston

04/01/2022

Investigative journalist Denton (The Bluegrass Conspiracy) probes the 2019 massacre of nine women and children as part of a larger study of fundamentalist Mormon sects in Mexico. Dual US-Mexican citizens, the victims of the presumed drug cartel ambush were members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practices polygamy—more than a century after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abolished the practice. Denton ventures back to the establishment of the Mormon church in the 1830s, its bitter internecine conflicts over polygamy and heirship, and the emergence of breakaway sects that emigrated to Mexico. Denton pays closest attention to the troubled LeBaron family, whose cross-border blood feud had claimed dozens of lives in the 1970s. By 2019, Colonia LeBaron had been gobbling up precious Mexican water and land for years, outraging the settlement's poorer Mexican neighbors. Leaders also allegedly consorted with NXIVM, a U.S. cult whose founder was convicted of sex trafficking in 2019. As Denton reveals, the massacre's circumstances are much thornier than official accounts suggest. VERDICT Riveting, insightful, ripped from the headlines, this should appeal to fans of true crime and of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.—Michael Rodriguez

Library Journal

★ 2022-03-24
A multifaceted exploration of the Mormon communities that moved to Mexico to escape persecution in the 1880s and their increasingly bizarre connections to contemporary Mexican drug cartels.

Denton, the author of The Bluegrass Conspiracy and other acclaimed books, employs the 2019 murder of several young wives and mothers from the sister Mormon communities of La Mora and LeBaron as a point of departure to examine the tumultuous history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. and along the border. (The author mostly uses the term Mormon throughout the text.) While driving in a caravan along an empty stretch of highway between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, the young mothers were ambushed by members of rival cartels, executed, and burned in their cars. Clearly, they were targeted because they belonged to Mormon fundamentalist breakaway communities in northern Mexico, many of which consisted of wealthy, landowning families in a very poor region, and there had been animosity over excessive water use for their prosperous farms. But this is more than a modern true-crime story, as Denton reaches back into the history of Mormonism and finds a deep well of violence, including the Cain-and-Abel rivalry and “blood atonement” murders involving Joel and Ervil LeBaron from the 1970s to the 1990s and the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1847, when a Mormon militant group murdered a traveling party of 140 innocent immigrants and then tried to cover it up, “the worst butchery of white people by other whites in the entire colonization of America.” The author examines the messianic beginnings of Mormonism with Joseph Smith in the 1830s followed by Brigham Young and later highly flawed leaders, many suffering mental illnesses. Denton also dissects other elements of the Mormon practice, including legacies of male superiority, female servitude, and forced polygamy.

Thorough research and balanced reporting combine in a riveting investigation.

Kirkus Reviews