Dan Lafferty and Ron Lafferty

Dan Lafferty and Ron Lafferty were brothers whose relationship passed from cooperation in the murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty to a lasting fear of mutual violence. Their alliance had made them jointly responsible for the killings; in jail, Ron attempted to kill Dan, and Dan came to understand his brother as an agent of Satan bent on stopping Dan’s supposed prophetic mission. The relationship became both a family bond and a struggle over competing claims of revelation, responsibility, and survival.

From Alliance to Shared Responsibility

In the spring and summer of 1984, Dan and Ron traveled across the West in Ron’s Impala. Dan later recalled that, during the journey, Ron sometimes seemed mentally absent. In retrospect, Dan interpreted these episodes as signs that Ron was hearing voices, which he believed came from the devil. That later explanation contrasted with the brothers’ practical closeness as they traveled together and prepared to act on religious claims.

Their partnership culminated in the murders of Brenda and Erica. When the brothers were arrested, neither confessed; both remained evasive through their 1985 convictions. Years later, Dan’s account changed the evidentiary picture. He said that he had killed both Brenda and Erica, while Ron had not used the murder weapon. But Dan also placed Ron inside the apartment and described him beating Brenda. His testimony established Ron’s participation and made it impossible for Ron to maintain that he knew nothing about the killings. Dan’s account thus divided the brothers’ roles without separating their culpability.

That shift came alongside a change in Dan himself. By the mid-1990s, he had accepted imprisonment as part of what he believed was God’s plan and became willing to speak openly about the murders. Ron, meanwhile, had resisted an insanity defense at his first trial, insisting that he was not mentally ill and would not let his lawyers use such a claim to negotiate a lesser charge. The Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later overturned his convictions because it found the original competency determination legally inadequate: although Ron understood the charges and possible consequences, the court concluded that his delusional system prevented him from interpreting them realistically. When Ron was retried, Dan’s testimony gave the prosecution a direct account of the brothers’ actions and their shared responsibility.

The Jail Assault and Its Reversal

The brothers’ relationship turned sharply in December 1984, five months after the murders, when they were held together in the Utah County Jail awaiting trial. Dan recalled waking to find Ron approaching him. Ron stopped, returned to his bunk, and asked whether he could kill someone as large as Dan. Dan said he could, and from then on resolved to watch his brother carefully.

The following day, Ron attacked Dan in their cell. Dan said that Ron struck and beat him, while Dan kept his hands at his sides and did not resist. Jailers then separated the brothers into adjoining cells. The separation did not end the threat: Ron passed Dan a written revelation that, according to Dan, commanded Dan to let Ron kill him. Dan prayed and concluded that he should submit. The brothers discussed a plan involving a towel, and Dan prepared himself to die, understanding his compliance as obedience to the revelation.

Ron carried out the attempt, but Dan survived. According to Dan, after he lost consciousness Ron received a further instruction: if Dan breathed again, that would mean he was meant to live. Ron saw Dan breathe and stopped. Dan regained consciousness, and Ron explained why he had not completed the killing. The episode’s reversal depended on the same authority that had initiated the threat: a new revelation transformed Dan’s apparent death sentence into permission to live.

Dan later said Ron continued to show signs of torment and gave him another revelation calling for his death. This time Dan prayed and decided not to comply. He believed Ron worsened after that refusal. On December 29, while Dan had been taken away for questioning, Ron attempted suicide by hanging himself from a towel rack. Dan said that Ron would have died if he had returned only a few minutes later. The brothers’ relationship had become a sequence of revelations, attempted violence, and uncertain reprieves, with neither man able to treat the other as safe.

Reunion and Mutual Suspicion

In August 1995, during proceedings before Ron’s retrial, the brothers were brought together in Judge Steven Hansen’s Provo courtroom. Their first exchange in eleven years was outwardly cordial: Ron greeted Dan as a brother, and Dan responded warmly. The brief friendliness did not signal reconciliation. By then, Dan believed Ron was an agent of Satan who intended to kill him and prevent him from fulfilling a mission given by God.

Dan’s fear was rooted in the jail assault, but his later theology gave it a larger meaning. He believed God had designated him as Elijah, charged with identifying Christ when he returned and announcing the beginning of the thousand-year reign of the Kingdom of God. Dan consequently interpreted Ron’s attempt to kill him as an effort by Satan to prevent that mission. In his account, the devil had learned of Dan’s role before Dan himself understood it and had directed Ron to stop him. What had occurred between two brothers in a cell thus became, in Dan’s interpretation, a conflict with consequences for the return of Christ.

Dan also believed Ron remained a threat. He said he was confident Ron still heard voices telling him to kill Dan, and he took prison rumors about Ron’s physical training as a sign that Ron was preparing for another confrontation. Dan did not interpret this prospect simply as a reason for fear: he believed the devil was preparing Ron for one final attempt because the end times were near. His account made their estrangement inseparable from his expectation of an approaching cosmic struggle.

A Bond Recast as Religious Conflict

The contrast between the brothers’ accounts is central to their relationship. Ron had claimed divine authority for the murders and for the jail revelation that threatened Dan. Dan later accepted his own role in the murders while construing Ron’s violence against him as Satan’s effort to obstruct a prophetic calling. Their explanations differed, but both placed their actions within a religious framework in which revelation could authorize extreme acts and redefine their consequences.

The 1995 courtroom greeting briefly restored the language of brotherhood, but the years of separation and Dan’s belief that Ron remained intent on killing him made that civility fragile. By the account’s end, the brothers were still confined within the consequences of their shared crime, yet their relationship had become one of suspicion and opposed spiritual identities. Dan waited in maximum-security prison for the sign he believed would announce Christ’s return, while imagining Ron as the danger standing between him and that future.