Evangeline Blackmore

Evangeline Blackmore’s story exposes the danger of a family structure in which a father’s claimed religious authority could override the safety and autonomy of his children. Born in Colonia LeBaron, Mexico, she was raised amid concealed marriages and her father Kenyon Blackmore’s increasingly extreme beliefs. After he abused and abandoned her in Guatemala, her grandmother brought her to safety; as an adult, Evangeline remained concerned for younger sisters still in his care.

Identity and Family Background

Evangeline was the oldest child of Kenyon and Gwendolyn Blackmore. Her birth came at a moment when Kenyon’s first wife, Annie, still did not know that he had married again. Annie discovered the marriage only when she traveled to Mexico to persuade him to return to Utah. By then Gwendolyn, who was about the same age as Annie and Kenyon’s oldest daughter, had recently given birth to Evangeline in Colonia LeBaron. The birth occurred three days before Dan Lafferty murdered Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty.

Evangeline’s family ties extended through a sequence of marriages within the LeBaron family. After returning to Mexico, Kenyon married a third wife who was Gwendolyn’s half-sister. He later left Colonia LeBaron with both wives and all their children, moving through Central America. Evangeline grew up as part of this traveling household, whose adult relationships were organized by Kenyon’s decisions and religious claims.

Kenyon’s Revelations and Evangeline’s Abuse

After Kenyon Blackmore returned from prison and took his family through Central America, his religious beliefs grew more extreme. He described himself as the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ and claimed that the Second Coming would take place through a child conceived from his own lineage and his daughter’s. In June 1996, on Evangeline’s twelfth birthday, he invoked these revelations to claim her as a wife. He then sexually abused her over the months that followed, presenting her resistance as religious disobedience and warning that she would go to hell for refusing to submit.

Evangeline was twelve and did not understand what was happening, but knew she did not want it. Kenyon prevented her from having friends or speaking freely with other people; when she resisted, he used intimidation and violence, and she eventually submitted passively to avoid further punishment. His prophetic claims thus turned a child’s dependence on her father into a means of control, while giving his abuse the appearance of religious obligation.

Kenyon’s ideas about purity extended beyond his claimed right to Evangeline. He frequently fasted and made his family fast with him, relying on liquid diets that included orange juice or lemon water. He believed that purifying his body could give him extraordinary powers, and regarded nearly everyone but himself as corrupted or evil. He also spoke of finding an Indigenous community whose women he could impregnate, imagining that his lineage would improve their blood. These beliefs framed his own authority as exceptional and reinforced the isolation and control imposed on the children traveling with him.

Abandonment and Aftermath

After months of abuse, Evangeline became pregnant and miscarried two months later. When she had not conceived again by April 1997, Kenyon abandoned her in Guatemala, just short of her thirteenth birthday. She lived alone for about four months; when she ran out of food, she sought help from acquaintances in Guatemala City. Roughly six months after she was left behind, they managed to reach her grandmother, Lavina Stubbs LeBaron, who drove from Colonia LeBaron to Guatemala and brought her to safety.

As an adult, Evangeline lived in the American Midwest, was married, and had a baby son. The account describes her as doing well, while making clear that the danger posed by Kenyon’s authority remained present in her thoughts. She feared for six younger sisters, all still traveling with their father somewhere in Central or South America, and said he intended to marry each when she turned twelve. Her concern was sharpened by the timetable: the oldest sister had turned twelve in May 2001, the next would do so in February 2003, and another was expected to reach that age in July 2004. Evangeline’s escape therefore brought her to safety without resolving her fear for the girls still under Kenyon’s control.

Narrative Significance

Evangeline’s account makes the gap between Kenyon Blackmore’s claimed spiritual exceptionalism and his material circumstances part of the story’s portrait of power. After prison, he supported a household moving through Central America by taking odd jobs, selling natural foods and leather goods, and running scams; his daughter described him as a skilled con artist. At the same time, he presented himself as uniquely pure and as the last prophet before the return of Jesus Christ. The contrast shows how his authority rested not on stable institutions or public recognition but on claims he made within a family he could isolate and direct.

The account also shifts the consequences of those claims beyond Evangeline’s own escape. The younger sisters’ approaching twelfth birthdays turn her fear into a sequence of dates, each marking a possible repetition of what happened to her. That forward-looking detail prevents her rescue from functioning as a simple resolution: she is safe and building an adult life, yet her sisters remain beyond her reach. Her testimony gives the reader both an account of harm and a continuing measure of the danger she believes the family faces.