Reno, Nevada

Reno, Nevada, enters the account as the endpoint of a search across the American West: on August 7, police arrested Ron Lafferty and Dan Lafferty while the brothers stood in line for the buffet at the Circus Circus casino. The arrest brought their flight to an abrupt close and shifted the narrative from pursuit to the public and legal disputes that followed.

The Search Reaches Reno

The trail had led to Reno through the brothers’ associates. On July 30, Ron’s run-down Impala was spotted outside a house in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Police raided the house but did not find the brothers; instead, they arrested Ricky Knapp and Chip Carnes, two drifters who had traveled around the West with the Laffertys since early summer. Information from Knapp and Carnes directed authorities to Reno, where the brothers were found together in the casino buffet line.

The sequence links a worn-out car, an unsuccessful raid, and information from two traveling companions to the arrest. Reno is not presented as a place where the brothers had established a new base: the account identifies it specifically as the location where the search caught up with them.

From Arrest to Public Claims

After the arrest, the brothers were jailed and, before trial, mounted a media campaign protesting their innocence. Ron argued that the charges were false and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he claimed controlled everything in Utah, would prevent a fair trial. He expressed belief in plural marriage while denying that he had practiced polygamy or belonged to an extremist sect. He also professed love for the Church while accusing its current leadership of departing from the doctrines of its founding prophet, Joseph Smith.

Dan issued a written statement four days later, denying that he and Ron were guilty of the crimes of which they had been accused and asserting that the true criminals would eventually be identified. These statements belong to the aftermath of the Reno arrest, not to the arrest scene itself; together they show how the brothers sought to frame the coming proceedings in public as well as in court.

Narrative Significance

The arrest scene’s stark ordinariness—the brothers waiting for a casino buffet—contrasts with the danger authorities had associated with the suspects and the severity of the crimes under investigation. Information gathered after the Cheyenne raid transformed a failed attempt to locate them into a lead that ended in Reno. In the book’s account, the city matters as a point of capture and transition: the pursuit ends there, while the brothers’ competing claims about innocence, religious authority, and their own affiliations begin to take center stage.