Outdoor writer Krakauer examines violence in Mormon history

If you were born and raised in Utah, as I was, then you know the names: Ervil LeBaron and his bloody Church of the Lamb of God. Addam Swapp. Dan and Ron Lafferty.

All polygamists. All killers. All in the name of God.

You also would know that their twisted version of the Mormon faith — despite its roots deep in the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — is light-years removed from the everyday faith practiced by the millions of mainstream Mormons who take care of their neighbors, raise good families and worship in peace.

Author Jon Krakauer sees the difference. But he also sees the connections and draws them starkly in his new book, "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith."

Krakauer professes a deep and abiding respect for those who practice the Mormon faith. He grew up among them in Corvallis, Ore., and marveled then — and marvels still today — at the strength of their convictions in the church, its teachings and its leaders.

But Krakauer doesn't share those convictions, and the recent attacks by the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on him and his book have left no room for circumspection in his assessment of the quorum of men who claim to run it through divine inspiration and modern-day revelation.

"They have portrayed everybody who questions them, including me, as bigots and anti-Mormon. It's preposterous," he said in a recent interview. "I've felt some of their attacks are really unfair and untrue. So, as far as I'm concerned, the gloves are off."

In retrospect, Krakauer says he should have expected a bare-knuckle brawl with the Mormon faithful, given the topic of the tome: an examination of religious extremism and the dangers of untempered faith by examining the violent foundations of Mormonism, juxtaposed with a pair of grisly killings by polygamist brothers in Utah in 1984.

Krakauer is a nonbeliever, not just in Mormon Christianity, but in God or organized religion. He made his name as an author examining those things he can wrap his callused hands around — mountains and ice and rock. For the 17 years he lived here in Seattle and since he moved to Boulder, Colo., five years ago, his mainstay was outdoor writing, mostly for magazines.

Then came his 1997 best seller, "Into Thin Air," an accounting and mea culpa of his involvement in a tragic ascent of Mount Everest that left five climbing companions dead. There was a clear tie between that work and a previous, well-respected book, "Into the Wild," which examined the life and death of a young man who wandered into the Alaska wilderness to live off the land.

Krakauer says the theme that ties those books can be found in "Banner" as well.

"I'm always interested in the nature of extremes," he said. "I'm certainly fascinated by people who take things too far. I can relate to that."

Leap of faith

Krakauer, 49, is a world-class mountaineer and rock climber and looks it. He's bearded, wiry and compact with an intensity that spills into even the most mundane conversation. When he's home in Boulder, he climbs among the rocks and cliffs outside town at least twice a week. Later this year, Krakauer will travel again to Nepal with a group of other climbers to teach ice climbing techniques to the sherpas who accompany expeditions among the Himalayas. So many experienced sherpas have died on the mountains, he said, that there is a dearth of experience among those left.

He's been married 29 years. He and his wife, Linda Moore, have no children.

The idea for a book examining the extremes of faith had been on his plate long before he wrote "Into Thin Air." Pegged as an outdoor writer, though, he didn't have the juice among publishers to push the idea into print.

The runaway success of the Everest book gave Krakauer, who still carries guilt over the mountain tragedy, the needed clout. Still, it wasn't an easy sell.

"I had actually written most of the book before I ever went to a publisher with it," he said. "I knew it was going to be necessary."

Even then, two of his previous publishers, Random House and Simon & Schuster, were less than enthused.

"They were clearly nervous," he recalled. "I think the exact words were, 'But there's not a mountain in sight.' " Both offered advances, but Krakauer said neither was serious.

"I wanted them to go out on the limb with me," he said. "But they clearly didn't want to go too far."

Doubleday was willing, and reaped the windfall. It didn't hurt, Krakauer said, that the Mormon church, with its attack before a single book was even sold, likely did more to stir the pot than anything a publicist could dream to accomplish. Doubleday printed a first run of 350,000 copies, and "Banner" debuted two weeks ago at No. 4 on The New York Times nonfiction best-seller list.

'Blood atonement'

What Krakauer has done is weave a compelling narrative from the strange, colorful and often violent early history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with the lives of tens of thousands of modern-day fundamentalists who adhere to early church doctrines long since abandoned or brushed aside by the mainstream church.

Krakauer writes at length about the twin communities of Hildale-Colorado City, which sit astride the Utah-Arizona border. There, more than 6,000 fundamentalist Mormons, almost all polygamists, live under a theocracy the author describes as the true "American Taliban." There are no televisions, few newspapers, and teenage girls as young as 14 are routinely pulled from school and placed into forced marriages with men four and five times their age.

Central to the story are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who were respected members of their church and community in American Fork, Utah.

Dan Lafferty became obsessed with polygamy and other early teachings of the church — including the doctrine of "blood atonement" that provides that some sins against the church are so vile that they can only be rectified by spilling the blood of the sinner.

Ron and five other brothers drifted to the very fringes of Mormon fundamentalism, where Ron became convinced he was the "one mighty and strong" whose arrival, predicted by church founder Joseph Smith more than 150 years earlier, would herald the second coming of Jesus Christ.

But there was an impediment to God's plan: Brenda Lafferty, the 24-year-old wife of another Lafferty brother, who had fought her husband's indoctrination and was helping Ron's wife with a divorce. In the spring of 1984, Ron Lafferty claimed God's "still, small voice" told him to "remove" Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old child, Erica. Two others, a Mormon bishop and a neighbor, also were ordained to die.

It was Dan who carried out the slayings of Brenda and Erica on July 24, 1984, the 137th anniversary of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley, cutting their throats with a 10-inch boning knife.

The other two would-be victims were, mercifully, not home.

The brothers were arrested in a casino buffet line in Reno. Dan Lafferty is serving life in prison. His brother, Ron, is on Utah's death row.

Chilling encounter

This was not the tale that Krakauer had originally envisioned when he set out to write the book, although he had always intended to focus on Mormonism, which with 12 million members worldwide is perhaps America's fastest growing faith.

It is also a faith with a well-documented, relatively recent history. The LDS church was founded in 1830 in upstate New York by Joseph Smith.

Initially, Krakauer had sought an interview with Mark Hofmann, who murdered two people with pipe bombs in Salt Lake City in 1985 in an effort to cover up an elaborate forgery scheme involving historical Mormon documents. Some of Hofmann's forgeries questioned the very beginnings of Mormonism, and church leaders were paying enormous sums to buy them and squirrel them away in a vault.

What Krakauer wanted to do was compare Hofmann — a Mormon-hating atheist who secretly enjoyed watching church leaders squirm as his forgeries chiseled at the foundation of their faith — with respected Mormon historian D. Michael Quinn, whose writings got him excommunicated but who remains firm in his conviction that Mormonism is the one true faith.

Krakauer wrote Hofmann — who has never given an interview — and got a reply from Dan Lafferty, his cellmate. "He said, 'You really want to talk to me.' "

Krakauer took the bait, and met the unrepentant Lafferty at the Utah State Prison.

"When I walked out of that prison, I had surrendered to the idea. I knew the book had just taken a turn. I was upset and intrigued. It was truly chilling; I'd never met anybody who was that much of a true believer," he said.

"If I was a believer — and I'm not — I would say it was divine intervention," Krakauer said.

The LDS leadership certainly would not agree. Before the book was even published, it sent out a five-page rebuttal intended to discredit the book and its author. Krakauer's efforts to tie the beliefs of "so-called fundamentalists or polygamous groups" in Utah to the church amounts to a "full-frontal assault on the veracity of the modern Church. This book is not history, and Krakauer is no historian," said church spokesman Mike Otterson.

Krakauer, Otterson said, went out of his way to find "sufficient zealots and extremists" in the church's past to tell his tale and, by doing so, "tars every Mormon with the same brush."

"Krakauer unwittingly puts himself in the same camp as those who believe every German is a Nazi, every Japanese a fanatic, and every Arab a terrorist," Otterson wrote.

The response has left Krakauer fuming — although he believes it proves his point that the church simply can't or won't come to grips with the history and doctrines that fuel extremists like the Laffertys and dozens of others over the years. While polygamy was officially banned by the church in 1890, many leaders continued to practice it for years. Mormon doctrine today states plural marriage continues to exist in the hereafter.

"For the church to deny any connection to these fundamentalists is disingenuous," Krakauer said. "They refuse to take responsibility for where these people come from."

Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com