In Salt Lake County, for example, there were 45 marriages in which the bride or groom was 17 or younger, according to data from the county clerks office from Feb. 1, 2016, to April 10, 2018. deductible, Report a missed paper by emailingsubscribe@sltrib.comor calling801-237-2900, For e-edition questions or comments, contact customer support801-237-2900or emailsubscribe@sltrib.com. Snow said she was forced to fast, pray and read the Bible. Thats when Nicole Mafi, one of Paul Kingstons daughters, says in the lawsuit she was called into a meeting of recent high school graduates to discuss going to college. It was all just innocent teenage stuff, recalls Ron, who has since left the clan. The land had once been home to the Washakie Indians, and as children, Stephen and his 15 full brothers and sisters played among the wind-swept ruins of a Native American cemetery. Fishing it out of his jeans, hell recognize the number. He was angry and confused, says a former member of the cult. If someone is mature enough, they should be able to do whatever they want.. DeRieux did marry the next year at age 18 to a cousin who was 19. Pulling up, he noticed the getaway car parked in front of the house. Shortly after that meeting, the complaint continues, Mrs. At 15, Snow ran away from home, wound up in a foster home and later was returned to her mother. He is not ready to forgive his father. He then pinned her on a bed, the documents say, and wouldnt let her call for help. By the time he was 30, he would have more than 10. Those families have intermarried to the extent that half brothers and sisters are now marrying one another, as well as uncles. But age alone wont determine her answer. On February 26th, 2009, the Salt Lake County Sheriffs Office got a call of suspicious activity in the foothills above the city. Like other teenagers who leave fundamentalist Mormon communities, Stephen was not prepared to enter the world at large. One woman who was married in 2014 at age 16 said she did so for the same reason most people do: She fell in love. Theyd keep it in basements, in filing cabinets, in a big safe in one of Pauls offices, says Levi Kingston, a former clan member. These days Stephen works on a cattle ranch near the Idaho border, just down the road from where he grew up. It was time. They threw away their possessions, donned matching blue overalls, and pitched canvas tents on a patch of land north of Salt Lake that would come to be known as the Home Place.. After the chest of gold was stolen, suspicion among the clans leadership immediately fell on a group of rebellious teenagers who had left the cult a few years before. One of them approached the front door while the other kept a lookout. With the Orders leaders taking so many wives for themselves, the clans younger men were often unable to find anyone to marry. For, nearly 75 years after they were born, Peter and Paul Kingston are as inseparable now as they were inside their mother's womb. We want to hear it. John Daniel Kingston, who according to court testimony once had 14 wives, was on hand in 2011, when his sons held an open house at the Washakie production plant in Plymouth near Interstate 15 and . The education figures he cited would be a few percentage points higher than the average for Utah as a whole, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. When Jessica Kingston was 15, her father told her she had four choices apparently the number of suitors who had spoken to him about marrying her. Did the Utah Legislature do enough to save the Great Salt Lake? He became particularly obsessed with a plant called comfrey, which he believed would protect his clan from the nuclear war that would usher in the apocalypse. The boys were sentenced to two years of probation and taken back into the Order. She received no sex education or premarital counseling. He also had dozens of children a brood that would eventually grow to around 300 and he had a hard time telling them apart. When people hear organized crime, they think of mobsters. Businesses and individuals have the autonomy to choose and operate as they see fit as evidenced by a huge diversity of industry and management styles among members. According to former Order members, they worked long shifts sorting coal and operating heavy machinery in unsafe conditions. Among those Kingston Group brides who marry as minors and for whom The Tribune was able to find birthdates, the average age was 16 years, 7 months and 12 days. His most bizarre beliefs, though, concerned the occult. That includes the fraud within Washakie Renewable Energy as well as what the plaintiffs allege was a separate scheme by sect members to bilk a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide free lunches to child and adult day cares. Kent Johnson, a spokesman for the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), which also is named as a defendant, said members are strongly encouraged to strictly adhere to every legal guideline when applying for financial aid. If you ever do that again, he said, Ill blow your head off., It was an astonishing moment in the history of the clan. Look around, Stephen says. While some despised Ben for his apostasy and refused to speak with him, Stephen had remained in touch with his brother. Murdaugh is accused of fatally shooting his son, Paul, 22, with a shotgun and his wife, Maggie, 52, with a rifle near the dog kennels at the family's hunting estate known as Moselle. They did it, says Christian Kingston. The lawsuit from Michaels and the Nelsons asserts the defendants are liable for up to $27 million in damages and another $20 million in penalties. The accusers also claim that the group arranged child marriages so that girls would become pregnant and beholden to their husbands and the religious sect. Eventually, there was a meeting between Jessica Kingston, her parents and Paul Kingston. A statement from the only higher education institution mentioned in the lawsuit, Salt Lake Community College, said it has not received any subpoenas or inquiries. Colbert Reimagines Disney Park as 'De-Wokeified' DeSantis World, Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time, I could boil down what theyre about in three words, says a member who broke with the Order. Fortunately, our population has already attained a higher graduation rate for high school and associates degrees for men and women in the DCCS. Girls who reach their mid- and late teens can start to feel the pressure to wed. Jessica Kingston said when word gets out that a boy or young man has asked a girls father for permission to marry her, friends and family are walking up to that girl asking, Did you pray about him?. Paul Vallas' Net Worth In 2023 Explored. Photo Credit: Sullivan County Sheriff's Office. The DCCS reaffirms that each individual has their free agency to choose whom and when they will marry, the statement said. Copyright 2023 Penske Business Media, LLC. The statement also said that of the Kingston Group individuals who married under age 18 in the past 20 years, 95.1 percent remain married, 94.2 percent have earned a high school degree, and a third, most of them women, have graduated from a public college or university. I honestly didnt even know there was any gold until they accused me of taking it, he says. Brothers John Daniel Kingston, the father of the girl now in state custody, is said to have 20 wives; the mother of the "M.N." is half sister. According to former members of the Order, decades of inbreeding have resulted in rampant birth defects throughout the family. While the sect is headquartered in Utah, members will travel to Colorado to wed because cousin marriages are legal there. Alex's wife and son, Maggie and Paul, were shot to death at their home in 2021, and Alex is currently on trial for their murders.. [5][6][7][8] Members generally seek the blessing of parents and religious leaders before choosing to marry. What he told me was, Hansen said, Get her married so we dont have to take care of her anymore.. Members are primarily born into the. Carl Kingston is believed to have fathered 20 children from two wives and another child from a third wife who has left him. My 4-year-old comes to me and says she has to find out her No. Its unclear how much if any investigating has happened in the almost seven months since the lawsuit was filed. Jessica said her husband was on a group text that went around listing girls or women who had not yet married with jokes about how old the females were getting. Members who have left in recent years say that changed after some of Paul Kingston's brothers were convicted of. The accusers describe a patriarchal doctrine known as The Law of One Above Another, which they claim designates everyone a rank in the groups hierarchy. Mary Nelson grew up in the sect and names her father, David Kingston, as a defendant. Luke and Scott often visited the home of one of their aunts, Rachel Young. Later the Order reportedly bought slot machines from mob-controlled companies. The ones they dont think they have to worry about, they dont push them as hard.. It passed a bill adding forced marriage into the states definition of sexual abuse. Her parents placed her in what she called a repentance home, where she wasnt allowed to communicate with anyone without supervision. Paul married Frances G Chez Kingston. Investigators have said 52-year-old Maggie Murdaugh was shot four or five times with a rifle, while 22-year-old Paul Murdaugh was killed by two shotgun blasts near kennels on the family's . That usually means marrying a Kingston descendant. All the families belong to the Davis County Cooperative Society. Some people say they funneled the money through Mexico. Shanell DeRieux was married at 18 to a husband in the Kingston Group. That cousin is also a defendant in the lawsuit. He had arranged for a banner to be placed over a bridge there. sltrib.com 1996-2023 The Salt Lake Tribune. Jessica is hardly the only girl to make such a choice. The other seven are brothers or sons of Paul Kingston. Johnson said neither he nor any other representatives of the cooperative society were aware of the lawsuit until contacted by The Salt Lake Tribune recently for comment. One is a first cousin. But it is likely that Kingston could recognize some of himself in Stephen. But Jessica knew the longer she waited to wed, the more likely she would have to become a polygamist and the more likely her husband would be far older than she was. If you messed with one of them, you were messing with them all., When Stephen was nine, an accident at Washakie set in motion a chain of events that would eventually prompt him to leave the cult. If the case succeeds, the whistleblowers can collect perhaps millions of dollars from the damages or fines paid by the defendants. Boys as young as 14 labored in the workshop. As he talked to the woman who lived there, Luke Brown came out of the house, and his brother Scott soon joined him. But within the Order, where drinking soda pop was against the rules, it was a pretty big deal.. Everyone in the Order knew that she controlled the purse strings for the operation but few were aware that she was sitting on a hidden stash of silver. She wasnt allowed to leave the house until she decided whom to marry. If you were more obedient, this wouldnt have happened., After that, everything changed, Stephen says. Kingston had told gaming regulators in California. 1 choice. Three weeks after Snow married a 21-year-old man in Davis County, Hansens 17-year-old daughter legally married a 24-year-old man in Salt Lake County. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. I was scared to death when I left. From a clan ranch in Nevada, Stephen called his brother Ben, who had left the Order a few years before. Trump Melts Down Over Murdoch Admitting Fox Lied About Election Fraud She's since left the marriage and wants the legal marriage age raised to 18. When they arrived in Grand Junction, all three couples filled out the papers for a marriage license. Its who I am., To keep the police from prying into the matter any further, the clan also hired a private investigator to track down the missing gold. Jessica Kingston said she has heard males talking to one another about a girl and say, If youre going to marry that girl, shes going to have to be a first wife because she wont live polygamy.. On this much, though, mother and daughter agree: Snows father was the primary driver. A Tale of Two Chads: More Drama From Nineties Band Live. 12 Paul J. WILFONG was born on 4-13-1912 in Marlinton. After the boys were taken into custody, one of their first calls was to Stephen. Their legal team includes a Boston law firm with expertise in qui tam lawsuits. Back then, Paul Kingston stood around five feet ten and weighed close to 200 pounds. All of their children who survived the Great Famine emigrated. Snow contends her mother was one of the people who told her she needed to think about whom she was going to wed. Photo by Nate Carlisle, The Salt Lake Tribune | Shirley Hansen, seen here July 21, 2018, stands along 2100 South near State Street in Salt Lake City. It wasnt like we thought about it a lot. Some former sect members, including two stars of the television show Escaping Polygamy," say girls are pressured to marry at the age most kids are learning to drive and reading Wuthering Heights.. If they are money-laundering or making money in support of polygamy and incest, then they probably meet the statute.. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Salt Lake Community College Redwood Road campus is pictured Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. Ed Sheeran Announces Final Mathematical-Themed Album 'Subtract' Their divorce was finalized in July 2012 a little more than three years after they married. Home. For Stephen and the other kids on the ranch, the highlight of each week came on Sundays, when they traveled the hour and a half south to Salt Lake for church. Duringa 2020 trialfor a California businessman accused of carrying out a nearly $500 million biodiesel fraud scheme with a member of the Kingston Group, attorneys for the businessman called the Kingstons an incestuous polygamous group that is always scheming to defraud the US government in what the group calls bleeding the beast., A spokesman for the group, Kent Johnson, called those allegations categorically false.. She and her husband had four children with whom they share custody. Former sect members testified in favor of the measure, but its unclear whether the pressures faced by teens in the Kingston Group constitute forced marriage. Two of Hansen's daughters legally married when they were under the age of 18 to young men in the Kingston Group. In summer, the kids swam in the reservoir as their mother, Richaun, watched, the boys doing back flips off the rope swing into the water; at night, as the sun set behind the mountains, they all sat together to watch the clans buffalo herd grazing in the pastures. You better check on your gold, Young told her. Do you think if I took $5 million in gold, Id be working out here?. The jury in Alex Murdaugh's high-profile murder trial will visit the scene where his wife Maggie and son Paul were brutally murdered, before they decide the disgraced legal scion's fate.. Consumed with guilt over his brothers death, Stephen lashed out. Many children begin working before 10 . The group also teaches its members that only those with so-called pure blood will survive the apocalypse, according to the lawsuit. I could tell she loved him, and it seemed like he loved her too. Within a year, Paul Kingston would take a fourth wife. She also felt a religious call to wed and saw herself as mature enough to undertake such a commitment. One day, for laughs, he and his half brother Ron Tucker stole some napalm from an Order army-supply store, drew lines of it in the street and lit it on fire as cars drove by. His father stood on the stage and called out the names of the men who were to receive one of the clans highest honors. Rates of college attendance that meet or exceed the Utah average have been a point of pride in the Kingston Group, whose members have offered such statistics to counter the stereotype of children from polygamy, especially girls, being uneducated with no opportunity for self-improvement. Directories Newly added. He said the college has controls to ensure compliance with federal aid guidelines. As he grew older, Stephen turned out to be as rebellious as his own father had been. The issue is available now on newsstands and in the digital archive. Paul Kingston is one of eight men named as defendants in the lawsuit. She then met with two women who helped her complete financial aid forms. His face was crushed, Stephen says now, matter-of-factly, his eyes going blank for a moment. The "9" represents his status as a "numbered man" in the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group. He inherited the top leadership position in 1987. He was usually off visiting one of his 30 or so wives, or checking on one of the clans many businesses, or in a backroom getting his muscles rubbed in preparation for one of his painful, 40-day fasts, a purification ritual that he endured in order to get closer to God. Short and chubby, the Brown boys looked up to the Knight brothers. Stephen calmly waited until his uncle got close, and then he reached behind the seat and pulled out a shotgun, leveling it at his uncle. Women and girls, after theyre married, submit to their husbands and men answer to higher-ranked men, the suit alleges. But the more the deputy pressed, the more their stories didnt add up. He told her he believed one did not need to practice polygamy to reach heaven. In 2006, it was estimated that Paul Kingston had up to 27 wives (including three half-sisters of his), [5] some . When he was three, his mother led him into a building controlled by the clan and pointed out an intense man lifting weights in the gym. The two most recent of those marriages, according to wedding certificates, occurred in April. was just as frugal as his brother he lived in a dilapidated shack with planks missing from the porch but he had a better head for business. Jessica Kingston said within a year of getting married, her husband started looking for a plural wife. 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