Aaron LeBaron

Aaron LeBaron was thirteen when his father, Ervil LeBaron, died in prison in 1981. He went on to lead the Lambs of God, a group that turned Ervil’s posthumous list of supposed betrayers into a campaign of revenge. Aaron’s role connected a father’s written vendettas to a series of murders carried out by his followers; he was later captured in Mexico and sentenced to forty-five years in prison.

Family and Leadership

The Lambs of God were drawn largely from Ervil’s fifty-four children, many of whom remained devoted to him after his death. Aaron, then a boy of thirteen, led this group of children and young adults. Many had been abused by older members of the sect and abandoned, circumstances that form part of the book’s account of the group’s origins without establishing that every member had the same experience.

Ervil’s four-hundred-page The Book of the New Covenants named people he considered disloyal and described their supposed betrayals. The followers resolved to avenge his death by killing those on the list. Aaron’s leadership placed him at the center of this effort, though the account does not say that he personally carried out any of the murders.

The Campaign of Revenge

Two people on the list were assassinated in 1987. On June 27, 1988, three more people named in it and the eight-year-old daughter of one of them were killed in attacks at separate sites in Texas, about three hundred miles apart. The attacks occurred within five minutes of one another and were planned for almost the same hour at which Joseph Smith had been fatally shot 144 years earlier. The Lambs of God later claimed responsibility for seventeen deaths in all, presenting their victims’ deaths as blood atonement. These were the gang’s claims; the account identifies Aaron as its leader and mastermind, not as the individual perpetrator of each killing.

Capture and Sentence

In 1993, two of Ervil’s sons and one of his daughters were sentenced to life in prison for involvement in some of the crimes. Aaron was captured in Mexico in 1995, extradited to Utah, and sentenced in 1997 to forty-five years in prison. Several other LeBaron children who played lesser roles remained unaccounted for.

Aaron’s place in the story is defined by succession and aftermath: at thirteen, he became the leader of a group whose campaign took its warrant from his dead father’s list. The book’s account distinguishes his organizing role from the acts of individual killers, while showing how Ervil’s written accusations continued to direct violence after his death.