Original subtitles

With Ervil's death in 1981...

I think everyone assumes this story is going to end.

The guy who ordered the blood atonements is gone,

so now the story's over.

But they were wrong.

After Ervil's death,

there were multiple people

who claimed that they were the next one in charge.

- The church splinters, and it splinters into three groups.

One group headed by Daniel Jordan,

one group headed by Mark Chynoweth,

and then the third group

headed by Ervil's oldest son, Arturo LeBaron.

- At the same time, "The Book of the New Covenant"

is out there being circulated.

This is a dangerous book

to give to some of Ervil's most zealous followers

because these are still men and women

that are willing to kill for their prophet.

If Ervil's insane writings fell into the wrong hands,

it could start a deadly war between his followers.

You've put the lunatics in charge

of the asylum,

and it's going to have a bad result.

- Ervil chose his oldest son,

Arturo, as his successor.

Arturo has been kind of off the radar down in Mexico.

He has this ranch, Rancho La Jolla.

It's this kind of very ramshackle ranch.

And he kind of runs it as a criminal enterprise.

Arturo might call himself a religious prophet,

but he functions more like a Mafia don.

And so he turns the Church of the Lamb of God

to a sort of Mafia-esque shorthand

called the Kingdom of God, or the KOG.

Arthur built his group with the younger generation

of Ervil's followers.

- Most of them were the boys that became

the grown sons of Ervil.

They had separated themselves and isolated themselves.

We didn't have contact with them at all.

- They were young kids

that'd been brainwashed all their life.

This mantle of priesthood BS that had been passed down

to them and all this responsibility for leading

this family and the supposed church organization

just fell on just children.

Arturo and his group start making their money

running a pretty adept auto-theft ring.

- One thing that the cult was very good at always

was stealing cars.

And so they're stealing cars in the United States...

running them across the border to Mexico...

reselling them, or chop-blocking them.

But also, there's reports that Arturo is working

with some of the local narcos.

Arturo creates this culture of chaos and violence.

And he rules with an iron fist.

In December of 1983,

tensions are building between Arturo

and one of his followers.

And this follower wanted power for himself

and control over the criminal operations.

Arturo is ultimately betrayed.

He's shot right in the back.

But the KOG didn't die with Arthur.

It only got worse.

- There were these revelations,

and, of course, they were bizarre.

And dad was saying people need to be blood atoned.

But it became clear to all the adults

who had had a life outside of the cult--

they could see the deterioration

of what he was saying. Oh.

You're right.

- Our siblings, the teenage boys

who had been raised in it their whole lives,

still were embracing it,

and it was on them to continue to carry it out,

because the older people--

- And they were in that ranch in Mexico.

You're talking about the people

that were in the ranch in Mexico?

Is it possible that "The Book of the New Covenant"

is the only writings of Ervil they'd ever read?

- I mean, it's possible. - That's actually possible.

They didn't have any idea that this

was actual utter nonsense.

- They had nothing but brainwashing and abuse

and isolation their whole entire lives.

That's all they had, so... Mm-hmm.

So they clung to it. - Yeah.

- They clung to it because... That's all they knew.

- I think it's tremendously hard for people who grow up

with a different mindset

to understand what it's like to inherit a worldview

that is so rigid and violent.

These children were groomed at a very, very young age

to be killers.

They have generations now of violence and trauma

from Ervil LeBaron,

and you've introduced cartel

and money and crime into the mix.

It's just a complete recipe for poison and disaster.

So who steps in after Arturo's murder?

The next in line...

in "The Book of New Covenants" is another son.

- So this is a copy of "The Book of the New Covenant."

"If you will acknowledge William Heber LeBaron

"as your successor, if you do not do this,

"Heber will kill you by my spirit,

"for he is more of a prophet, seer, and revelator

right now than you ever have been or ever will be."

In that passage, he was appointing my brother, Heber,

as the prophet.

Heber is our full brother.

Two and a half years older than me,

but never once picked on me or hit me.

- Heber had always been the sweetest kid.

When we were in the colony, he was the best-behaved child.

- When he was ten years old,

he was moved away from my mother

and taken to Denver

to become a worker of Michael's Appliance

under Dan Jordan.

There was a lot of torment.

And then at some point, like most of my siblings,

Heber was one of the ones that got shuffled around.

And Ervil sent his sons out away from Denver,

and they eventually ended up in Mexico.

We had no idea what was going on in Mexico.

We had lost contact

with everyone that was down there,

including our brother Heber and our other siblings

that were part of the KOG.

- That environment was not a healthy environment

to raise children in.

And what happened there really changed Heber.

- I don't think he felt, like, very spiritual.

He was partying a lot.

He had more in common with the drug-cartel people

that he was doing business with.

- And so, when he's in his 20s and Arturo dies,

Heber's now placed with this mantle of prophet.

You give the mantle of prophet

to a supposed drug-fueled partier.

What could go wrong?

- When our father died, I was 13 years old,

and we were living in Houston at the time.

We lived in our own house with our mom, Anna Mae,

and all of our brothers and sisters.

- Mark was in charge in Houston.

He was married to our sister Lillian.

Mark never claimed to have a priesthood

and continued to somewhat be a believer

but started gradually to edge his way out.

People forget Mark Chynoweth supposedly

is really one of the principal triggermen for the cult.

He's been linked to several murders.

- Even though Mark has a complicated past

and he's allegedly connected to all of these murders,

he's really trying hard to put it behind him.

He was a benevolent leader.

Mark wanted us to have full, wonderful lives.

- As much as was possible

under those circumstances... - Right.

- Because we were still... In a cult.

Even though things

are going pretty well in Houston,

Mark and his crew know that "The Book of the New Covenant"

is out there still making its rounds.

This threat of the hit list is still out there

looming over all of them.

- At this point, I don't know

that I've ever heard about this hit list.

I had heard some talk in whispers.

Mark and Lillian would sometimes whisper

about things.

There was something out there that felt ominous.

With all the rumblings and the rumors

and the secret meetings,

it just felt like something was going to ruin the life

that we had with Mark.

We were so happy in Houston.

Things had been shifting and changing for the better

for so long.

And then one day, I come home,

and there's Dan Jordan at our house

talking to my mom.

That was the last thing I wanted to see.

I knew things were not going well.

Dan lived in Denver,

and he claimed he was the next prophet,

which made sense to my mother

because he had always been the second in command.

Dan was telling my mother

that Mark was leading Ervil's children on a path to hell.

This was the last thing my mom wanted.

- And it's definitely not what Mark was doing.

He was kind. - Mm-hmm.

- He was way more celestial

than Dan Jordan ever dreamed of being.

And my mother did not have

any kind of mental capacity to stand up to Dan

or to stand up for her children.

And eventually she began to be swayed by Dan.

You have to understand, too,

Dan Jordan's backbone of employees was gone.

- We were all in Houston.

Michael's Appliance had collapsed

because they had no slave labor.

- He wanted that support

so that his family could live in the lap of luxury.

After Dan talked to my mom,

I tried to talk to her, and I pleaded with her,

but I could tell she was under Dan's spell.

In my mom's eyes, he had an enormous amount of control

based on his position as the prophet.

I knew my mom was planning to take us back to Denver,

and there was no talking her out of it.

This was the first time in 13 years of my life

that I felt like I had the freedom to make a choice

and make it happen, and so I did.

There was a little phone in the hallway,

and my hands are swe--

My hands are sweating now just talking about it.

I took the phone, and I quietly called Lillian.

And I said, Lillian, I don't want to go back to Denver.

The last thing I heard her say was, start walking.

I felt like I had one chance-- one chance to get out of there.

So I started walking.

I am absolutely certain

that somebody is going to come and find me.

It was very frightening,

because I knew if somebody saw me, that was the end.

I finally am getting closer to Lillian's house,

and I...

I see her car.

And I was so relieved.

She was like, quick, get in.

I had to go immediately into hiding,

and I was terrified.

Lillian takes me to a motel,

pays for my room in cash.

She's like, here's some money

so that you can buy snacks from the snack machine outside.

Do not open the door unless you hear my voice.

You stay right here.

I'm on pins and needles.

I'm looking around trying to make sure

that my mom isn't after us.

If they came looking for me and found me,

I would miss my one chance to escape.

- My mother came and said, we're leaving back to Denver.

Get a garbage bag, put your belongings in it...

- Oh... - And get in the car.

And I'm like, well, where's Anna?

Why isn't Anna with us?

My mother was searching for her.

She didn't want to leave

without her 13-year-old daughter.

After we had searched for her in all the places

that we could think of, we left.

I was very upset,

but I was fully convinced that we were God's chosen people,

and even losing my sister could not shake my faith.

I didn't see Anna for three years.

When Lillian came,

she said, so your mom and all the other kids

have gone back to Denver,

and the coast is clear.

And she goes, we can go to my house now.

And it was such a relief to me.

This is where I ran away from home.

That was the door I walked out of.

And what I didn't know at the time

was that I was leaving a cult.

I didn't know I was in a cult,

and I didn't know that me running away from home

to go live with Mark and Lillian

was my escape from a cult.

That was the pivotal turning point of my life.

I didn't feel like I was being rebellious.

It never occurred to me that I was going to be isolated

from my mom and my siblings.

All I knew was that I was not going back to Denver.

I can't believe I just started walking.

Like, walked out of the house and--

- Taking nothing with you... - Taking nothing with me.

- Just whatever you were wearing.

This was your one chance, and you're out the door.

Yeah.

Look at how busy this road is,

and you walked it by yourself.

- I was afraid that somebody was going to see me

and drag me back. Right.

And my story would have been a lot different.

This really was my only chance to get away.

- Yeah.

- I wish you had come with me that day.

Come with me this time.

When mom said, okay, well, we have to go back,

so we'll leave without her. Ay-yi-yi.

Any religion that expects you

to abandon your children, please question your god.

Yeah.

I wish I had gotten out sooner.

- This was the first of many, many more steps

before I could finally feel like I was free.

Meanwhile, in Mexico,

Heber LeBaron is settling into his role

as the new leader and prophet of the KOG.

Where Heber didn't understand God,

he did understand the language of violence,

and his leadership really ushers in this new era

of violence for the KOG.

And one of his first roles as this new leader

was to avenge Arturo's death.

He starts arming everybody,

running drills, training a militia.

Training not just teenagers, like his father,

but children as young as six

to use automatic weapons.

- They take revenge on--

first, on people within the ranch

who they suspect helped set Arturo up for murder.

So, again, the body count goes up even just on the ranch.

Several people are murdered, disappeared.

Their bodies never found.

Once Heber gets a taste of blood and power,

all of Heber's worst instincts rise to the surface,

and the KOG spirals into complete lawlessness.

So the women now allegedly become trafficked.

They become prostituted and molested and raped.

All the familial lines completely blur.

You have brothers sleeping with their half-sisters,

murdering their half-sisters.

Almost any kind of really deviant sexual

or violent thing you can think of.

- It really is like "Mad Max" in Mexico

meets "Lord of the Flies."

You've kind of reached a point now with Heber

where you've really kind of groomed

potentially a psychopath...

a guy without any moral compass.

Just kind of a killer.

So I'm about 15 years old.

I'm living with Mark and Lillian.

Of course this was a very emotional time

for both Lillian and Mark.

They were definitely edging away

to the fringes of my dad's religion,

but they couldn't announce that

because doing that would put a target on their back.

They had five kids. They were all much younger.

They were in elementary school.

So I was one of the ones that helped take care of them,

including Emily and Lisa.

- I'm Lisa Chynoweth Davis.

- And I'm Emily Chynoweth-Davis.

And we are sisters, not sister wives.

I knew that my parents had run away from this bad thing.

They were so desperate to start a new life,

not just for the kids they were raising but for everyone.

They were chasing the American Dream.

Anna lived with us

for at least five years.

She was like an older sister to us--

just, like, sweet and fun. Yeah, and smart.

Anna was smart. - Yeah.

- She was really brave, and she escaped the cult.

- They were precious to me.

I loved taking care of them,

and I loved being a little mama's helper to their mom

so that, you know, she could do the things

that she needed to do.

Anna was somebody that my parents loved very much.

They wanted to see her have a wonderful, you know,

chance at life after she had run away from the cult.

- I mean, the way that Mark and Lillian lived

was so different than what I experienced growing up.

Watching them as a monogamous married couple

raising their children

and me getting to just feel like I was part of it.

So it just felt like home to me.

While I was living with Mark and Lillian,

I was putting away some clothes in Lillian's room,

and I found a book.

The book was called the "Prophet of Blood," I think,

"The Untold Story of the Ervil LeBaron Family."

I was like...

what is this?

I knew that the book was not intended for my eyes.

I'm upstairs in my room with the door locked,

reading this book as fast as I could

because I didn't want to get caught.

My blood ran cold.

I found out all the trials and my father going to prison

and all these people that had gone to jail--

people that I loved, people that I cared about

that left and then never came back.

Some just disappeared into the woodwork.

Some of them had been killed and blood atoned.

I cannot believe

that my dad had ordered these murders.

It was unimaginable.

Everything about how we were raised

and the things that we endured

and all the moving, all the running,

all the raids, all of it--

all of a sudden, my eyes are opened,

and I realize the truth.

This is when I found out

that I was born and raised in a cult.

Everything that we had been told

about, we were being persecuted

because we were God's chosen people,

all of that was utter bullshit.

I'm about 15 years old trying to take all of this in.

It was a very traumatizing moment for me.

It's not like I can go to Mark and Lillian

and say, help me understand this.

Just like I did my whole rest of my life,

you compartmentalize it, you put it aside,

and then you just keep on going.

Even after reading the book,

it would have never occurred to me to leave Mark and Lillian.

That was in the past for me.

And I believe it was in the past for them, too.

They were good people.

Like, they are the heroes of my story.

Why would I leave that?

- For many of Ervil's offspring,

the realization that they had grown up in a cult

would not come easy,

and, sadly, for some, it would not come at all.

Much like his father Ervil,

Heber starts killing anyone who has an inkling of dissent

or has any thoughts about leaving the group.

Nobody is safe around Heber,

including his most devout followers.

- Heber would kill family members,

family members who were maybe wandering

too far off the reservation, need to be taken care of.

- Heber LeBaron supposedly kills his own brother Andrew.

- Andrew's disappearance becomes a problem for Heber

because Andrew was the KOG's best mechanic.

All of a sudden, their auto-theft ring is crippled,

and with it goes their main source of income.

They're not making money.

They're running out of places to steal from.

His networks are closing in.

The KOG is starting to lose complete faith in Heber,

and they demand that if he doesn't step down,

they're going to make him.

And in his place,

another teenager steps in to fill the void--

Heber's half-brother Aaron.

- He was basically left in charge.

He was 19.

He was, like, a teenager.

He was, like, 19 maybe. - 17, 18--I don't even know.

- He was just a kid... - With a third-grade education.

- Right.

- Aaron's a piece of work in a very different way from Heber.

Aaron is very serious, very quiet.

- Aaron, I think most people liked.

He's more intellectual than Heber

and not as rough on the edges.

I think he's smoother,

and I think Aaron was also more attuned

to the religious aspect of the Lamb of God teachings.

Aaron is very devout.

He forces the kids to pray often and repetitively.

- He was taking the cult back to its religious roots,

to the church that Ervil had created.

So this new teenage prophet

takes the mad ramblings of his father, Ervil,

and makes it the centerpiece of the KOG's mission,

focusing on the deadly hit list hidden within.

This hit list that has

the people who betrayed Ervil LeBaron,

betrayed the church,

that Ervil had marked for blood atonement.

I think that Aaron believed

that he needed to carry out the book

'cause that's what Daddy wrote.

You got to kill all the sons and daughters of perdition.

And if you really want to bring on the Kingdom of God,

if you really believe that, this is what you have to do.

For the first time since Ervil's death,

a true successor finally emerges

to carry the mantle of prophet.

Aaron is smart like Ervil.

He knows how to use scripture to get his siblings

to do his bidding.

Aaron hatches an incredible plan

to hunt down the apostates,

and it's even more evil and ruthless

than anything that Ervil would have orchestrated.

With Aaron as the new prophet

and Heber as his right-hand man,

they set their sights outside of the KOG,

marking their number-one target,

Ervil's second-in-command, Dan Jordan.

- Things had always been hard in Denver and abusive.

When we got back this time, things were even worse.

I am 16.

Unlike Anna, I have no rebellious bone in my body.

I am very committed to following God's plan,

which was to follow Dan.

We just figured

that Dan basically was supposed to run things now

because we totally believed

that he was God's prophet here on Earth.

- Dan Jordan basically used us and abused us

for our slave labor.

Living under his rule was terrible.

I didn't really have any father figures,

so...

I also wanted his approval,

very, very strongly wanted his approval.

Dan Jordan did not have enough money.

He did not have enough workers.

He did not have enough followers.

So he started a mission field in Utah

in order to convert Latter-day Saints

to his fundamentalist beliefs.

And he would elect

different teenagers to go serve.

When Dan approached me and said,

I think it's time for you to go in the mission field,

the big drawback was,

I wouldn't be able to finish going to school.

But I had the commitment that when I finished my mission,

I would be able to go to my senior year,

which is all I was missing.

I was in the mission field.

I went door-to-door with my companion,

preaching what we considered was the true Gospel.

Not everybody allowed us in, but when we did get allowed in,

we put our whole heart

into teaching our bullshit religion to them.

At one point, we're not getting the converts

that Dan thinks that we should.

So Dan brought my mom and one of his wives

to the mission field.

We spent some time sitting around a table,

talked about how we're going about speaking,

what success we had during that day.

And at one point,

he made some kind of a little off-color joke.

He said something like, don't make love on a squeaky bed

or something like that.

So I just kind of rolled my eyes and said, oh, very funny,

as though I really understood what that meant.

That night, after the meeting broke up,

I was awakened by one of Dan's wives.

And she said to me, roll over.

I did as I was told.

My mother had Dan's belt in her hand...

and she began beating me.

My mother whipped me 20 lashes.

It was painful,

but I was crying more out of humiliation.

And the other wife said to me,

you are receiving this beating

because you were disrespectful to the prophet.

Then my mom handed her the belt,

and then Dan's wife proceeded to beat me with 19 lashes,

and they were very, very painful

and left me blistered

and sore and bruised.

The next day, they took me aside

and told me that I might not be celestial material.

And that, to me,

was, like, the worst thing.

I was so, so devastated.

And that was everything I had worked for.

And they informed me

that I was going to work full-time,

that I was not going to go to school.

I was emotionally in devastation.

If they were saying that I wasn't celestial,

then I at least wanted to have my education.

I'll work double.

I'll work as late as they want me to.

Just let me go back to school

and finish my senior year.

But my mom had no power.

One day my mom took me aside,

and very, very quietly

she said...

I guess you better go.

And that was it for me.

I was still a true believer,

and so I knew I was choosing hell,

and I preferred that

to the hell that I was living in.

I have a sister that had gotten out of the cult

several years before me,

and when I called her and said I wanted out,

she was ready and waiting to help me,

and she bought me a plane ticket.

Before I left, I had to say goodbye to my mom

and to Adine and Hyrum.

I wrote all three of them letters

and left them a little gift

because I wanted them to remember me.

The letters said,

I know you're not going to be able to talk to me.

I want you to know that I'm not mad about that,

but just always know that I love you dearly.

I wasn't sure if I would ever see them again.

- I came home, and at the top of the stairs

was just, like, some notes.

And she was gone.

Celia left me a T-shirt.

That shirt was all I had to really remember her by.

I landed in Houston

and walked down the runway,

and there was my sister and her husband.

And I knew in that moment that I was safe.

I moved in with my sister,

and I got reunited with Anna.

It had been three years since we had seen each other,

so we were kind of strangers...

- A little bit, yeah. - To each other.

And we had to get reacquainted.

- I'd been living with Mark and Lillian for several years.

She was a teenager,

and I was, like, close to 20 now.

And she was a little bit worldly...

- I had a boyfriend. - In my mind.

I was halfway through my senior year

in this little tiny school where I was the only senior.

I was going to graduate by myself,

and along comes Celia,

and they let her enroll, and... - And we graduated together.

- We got to graduate together. - Yes.

We have pictures with Lillian behind a little cake

that someone made to celebrate that graduation.

- She's two and a half years younger than me,

but I finally did it.

I finally got a real high-school education.

- May of 1987, and we have the entire senior class

of two of Spring Branch Church of God Academy.

I was still married to Dan Jordan.

We lived in Colorado at our house

out in the country.

I had heard that Ervil had a hit list

of people that wouldn't do what Ervil said.

But we weren't really worried

'cause we thought God would protect us.

So what ends up happening is Dan Jordan

gets a knock on his door one night,

and he opens the door, and there's seven kids

from Rancho La Jolla, led by Aaron LeBaron.

- What they basically say is, Dan, we need your help.

Our brother Heber's gone power mad.

He's abusive. It's violent.

- They said, hey, we don't believe

in what we were doing anymore.

We don't believe that's the true church.

We believe you are.

- They say to Jordan, if you'll take us in,

we'll work for free in your repair shop.

- So now Dan is faced with this choice.

Does he trust these seven teenagers

standing on his porch?

But his business isn't doing so well.

And you know what? He could use some LeBaron laborers again.

This is probably, in my mind,

motivated more by greed than altruism.

And so he takes them in,

and he puts them to work in his repair shop.

But now he starts carrying a 9-millimeter pistol

on him at all times because he doesn't trust these kids.

I was probably 16 years old at the time.

I knew them.

I knew they were my siblings,

but I didn't have a really good relationship with them.

Aaron-- he just seemed weird to me.

His mannerisms were odd.

I do remember him talking one time

about training they had received growing up

about how to kill people.

When you were sent to do an assassination,

you had to present an outward appearance of kindness

and smile so they were off guard.

And then you would walk up to them

and shoot them in the chest twice.

And then you shoot them in the head once

to make sure they were dead.

It's now fall of 1987,

and Dan Jordan prepares his family

for the great deer hunt.

The only time he really spent with the children

was when he'd take them camping

and he would take them hunting--

deer hunting.

Hunting was also a pretty regular thing we did.

We needed to be good at hunting for several reasons.

One of them-- when the end times came

and we had to run to the mountains,

we'd have to survive off the land for a while,

so you had to know how to hunt.

And you also had to be psychologically tough enough

to be able to kill something,

so that if you ever had to kill someone,

you would already be kind of inured to that.

- Dan Jordan-- he still doesn't quite know

what to do with these KOG members.

Does he take them camping as part of the family?

Does he leave them home?

He sort of settles on a compromise.

He's going to bring some of the kids,

including Aaron LeBaron.

- I stayed in Colorado to take care of all the babies,

and he took all the older kids with him.

We got to the main camping area.

Dan and the women and younger children

set up camp.

We built a fire, and we were there for a few hours

just having a pretty grand old time.

There are a few people out in the woods.

They're hunting.

And Dan Jordan is back at camp,

and nature calls.

Dan Jordan was known

for always carrying a gun at his side,

but for some reason, he lets his guard down

and leaves his gun back at camp.

So he walks away to go to the bathroom.

He goes and starts to do his business.

And the sound of gunshots echo through the canyon.

- It was a little bit before dusk.

We heard one of Dan's other sons yelling to us,

trying to get our attention.

And he was moving in our direction,

and he seemed, like, distressed.

He walks right into the camp out of the woods.

He just went down to a knee and said, dad's dead.

And it was just, like, a shock.

Like, what do you mean?

He's like, dad's dead. We got to go.

So the police show up,

and, of course, the group circles the wagons.

- I was a prosecutor

both at the Utah Attorney General's Office

and in the U.S. Attorney's Office

specializing in murders and violent crime.

The law enforcement, the response--

they realized fairly quickly

that a group of these people

aren't Jordans but are LeBarons.

I mean, they're dangerous people.

They had proven to be dangerous in the past.

- All the LeBaron kids are questioned, including Aaron,

and the police are suspicious of Aaron right away,

but they couldn't find any evidence

that he or any of his siblings had killed Dan.

- I mean, Aaron and all the kids were accounted for

at the time of the homicide.

I mean, somebody was with them, so they had alibis.

At that time, they didn't know for sure who shot him.

I'm sure they had suspicions.

- No eyewitnesses to the murder

other than the person who did the shooting

and Dan Jordan, who's dead.

After the police interrogate the group,

they leave with nobody in custody

but a lot of questions and suspicions.

I received a call in, like, the middle of the night,

and they told me that Dan had been murdered.

I was...

petrified.

I'm like, if they could get to him--

and he was the prophet, mind you--

I wouldn't doubt it at all

if they would come and try and kill everybody.

- It just felt...

unreal.

But...

There's a sense of relief.

Like, this is over.

He did things to myself and my family

and my siblings that...

are unconscionable.

- I had just finished a long shift working in the shop,

and I get word that Mark wants to talk to us.

And then Mark proceeds to tell us

that Dan Jordan had been shot and killed.

I knew that this was the work of our family.

- I remember the adults gathering together...

Yeah. - And talking.

And sort of you knew someone had been killed.

I had this ominous feeling.

There was this overarching sense

of, like, people are scared.

- Mark also told us that there was a hit list

and that he and his brother Duane

and my brother Ed were on it.

- When Jordan's murdered,

the fear factor just went through the roof.

Ervil's been dead for six years,

and now all of a sudden,

it seems that somebody is working through the list

of the people he wanted to be killed.

- All the adults that had not followed

my dad's orders had to be taken out.

This was a real threat.

- We knew that if they were going in order of this list,

then our dad would be next.

- It's almost as if Ervil's voice

is coming from beyond the grave

to threaten Mark Chynoweth.

- Mark tells us that we aren't going to run and hide.

We're all going to start carrying weapons.

When somebody would come to the store to buy an appliance,

we had to be ever vigilant.

I just graduated from high school,

just thinking my life is just getting started,

and the family-of-origin horror story

that I was born into

is just pulling me right back into it.

Two days after the killing,

Aaron was conspicuously present at Jordan's funeral.

He was intent on taking on Ervil's mantle.

Right after Dan's funeral,

they all go back to the Jordan home,

and Aaron starts waving his gun around

and declaring himself to be the one mighty and strong.

- The police responded, took Aaron into custody.

He was arrested on the minor charge

of disturbing the peace.

But even on that charge, he managed to get off

because the Jordan wives withdrew their complaints.

They feared further LeBaron vengeance.

- Aaron promptly vanished,

you know, as so many of his predecessors had in the past.

The whole trail went cold,

but we didn't stop investigating.

I don't think there was one person

involved in the investigation

that didn't think that there were going to be more murders.

Even though Mark

has this very complicated past,

he tries to ignore it.

He tries to just live his life boldly and unafraid,

and that was probably a mistake.

It was my parents' solid intentional aim

to raise us in a way that we were not fearful,

that this did not interfere with our lives.

Our parents did have the intent to protect us

from the traumas that they had grown up with,

so I think there was this sort of a beautiful denial of...

that's just not going to be our focus.

- That fear of anything happening

began to dissipate after a few months,

and then the longer it went where nothing happened,

you know, you kind of get back into a sense of normalcy,

if that's even possible.

- Certainly, I think at that point,

the Chynoweths and Eddie Marston were on notice,

but I don't think anybody

really suspected what was about to happen.

June 27th--

I was supposed to be at the shop that day with Mark.

I had been sick for quite some time.

Lillian found me on the couch drowsy,

and she says to me,

why don't you just stay home today?

I was shocked and relieved

that she was giving me the day off.

I did not have to go to work sick,

but I was going to have to stay home

and take care of the kids.

The two Chynoweth brothers, Mark and Duane,

have appliance repair shops

in two different parts of West Houston.

Eddie Marston is doing the same thing up in Irving,

which is a suburb of Dallas.

- Both Duane and Eddie had received calls

about used appliances being for sale.

Both are told to meet their clients at 4:00 p.m.

at different locations.

Eddie gets in his car to meet his client.

Duane gets in his car, with his younger daughter

Jenny tagging along for the ride.

Duane and Jenny pull their truck to the house.

It looks abandoned. No one's home.

But then a Chevy Silverado pulls into the driveway,

blocking them in.

- At almost the exact same moment,

Eddie Marston pulls into this address

he's been given in Irving.

And he's approached

by a man in a blue suit with a beard.

At the same time,

a man wearing a blue suit with a beard

walks into the office of Mark Chynoweth's shop.

- At 4:00 p.m., in three different locations,

the men approach Eddie, Duane, and Mark.

It's the start of the most ruthless assassination plot

the LeBaron group has ever pulled.