Ron Lafferty's attempt to strangle Dan

Ron Lafferty’s attempt to strangle Dan was a failed killing inside the Utah County Jail, where the brothers were awaiting trial for the murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. Its immediate premise was a revelation Ron said commanded Dan to let him kill him; Dan prayed, accepted the instruction, and prepared to submit. The attempt ended when Ron interpreted Dan’s next breath as a divine sign to spare him.

From revelation to imprisonment

The jail episode followed a pattern established months earlier, when Ron received a revelation directing the removal of people he considered obstacles to God’s work. He first showed it to Dan, who urged him to make certain it came from God, while warning that refusing divine work could also be dangerous. After praying, the brothers concluded that those named in the revelation were wicked and that they should act on its instructions. Dan’s acceptance deepened when another revelation compared him to Nephi and promised blessings for obedience; Mark Lafferty later said Dan was then willing to do anything the Lord commanded.

Ron’s removal revelation was not openly presented to the School of the Prophets for evaluation. When Ron showed it privately to Bernard Brady before a meeting, Brady rejected it as wrong and frightening, but neither man raised it with the group. Ron and Dan later killed Brenda and Erica. Five months afterward, in December 1984, they were sharing a jail cell as they awaited trial, and Ron’s claimed revelation now placed Dan, rather than someone outside the family, in the role of the person commanded to die.

The Attempt and Its Reversal

After jailers moved Ron and Dan Lafferty into adjoining cells, Ron passed a written revelation through the bars. It said that Dan should allow Ron to kill him. Dan prayed, decided to submit, and discussed with Ron how he might be strangled using a towel through the bars. He interpreted an unexpected bodily urge to use the toilet as part of the plan, believing it would prevent a mess if he died. Once he had finished, he said goodbye to Ron and took his position at the bars.

Ron braced himself against the bars and pulled the towel tight around Dan’s throat until Dan lost consciousness. As Dan went limp, Ron believed God was telling him to stop if Dan took another breath. When he saw Dan’s chest rise, he released him. Dan regained consciousness, and Ron tried to explain why he had not completed the killing. The revelation’s command had been accepted as binding by both brothers, but its outcome turned on Ron’s interpretation of a single breath as permission to spare Dan.

The next day, Ron paced and spoke of receiving another chance to carry out the act. A few days later he gave Dan a second revelation commanding the same submission. This time Dan prayed and decided not to comply. Ron appeared increasingly tormented, and on December 29, while Dan was away from the cell for questioning, Ron attempted suicide by hanging himself from a towel rack. He was found without a pulse or breathing and survived after being taken to hospital. The failed strangling thus preceded a further revelation, Dan’s refusal, and Ron’s own near-death crisis.

The End-Time Framework

Dan later placed the killings of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty within an apocalyptic account of a coming harvest: he understood the Great and Dreadful Day as a time when Christ’s angels would remove those outside God’s kingdom, and imagined those agents as earthly men doing divine work. He also believed he had been designated as Elijah to identify Christ at his return and help usher in the thousand-year reign of God. This later explanation does not establish that he understood Ron’s attempted killing of him through the same specific prophecy, but it shows the larger religious framework in which commands to kill could be cast as service to a divine plan.

The jail incident turned that logic inward. Dan had earlier accepted a revelation that made other people targets; when Ron’s later revelation made Dan the intended victim, he initially treated submission as obedience too. His eventual refusal to comply with the second command marked a limit to that submission, though it did not immediately end Ron’s crisis. The reversal exposes how a claim of revelation could move between roles—assigning one brother the authority to act and the other the duty to accept—without any independent means of establishing that the command was divine.

The Earlier Revelation's Particulars

In February and March, Ron received approximately twenty revelations. He sometimes recorded them as they came on Bernard Brady’s computer; more often, he held them in memory before putting them into print. The most disturbing came in late March, handwritten on yellow legal paper. It ordered the rapid removal of Brenda Lafferty and her baby, followed by Chloe Low and Richard Stowe, and called for their deaths to serve as an example to others. It also named an instrument called Todd and compared him to Porter Rockwell. The document’s specific sequence and promised example make clear that the command was framed not as an isolated act but as a campaign against designated people.