Angels

Angels appear both as familiar protectors against evil and as figures through whom religious belief can be recast as a warrant for violence. Noel Gardner treated guardian angels as a point of comparison for Ron Lafferty’s reflector shields; Dan Lafferty, by contrast, described avenging angels as earthly men carrying out divine judgment. The contrast makes the idea of angelic protection a hinge between ordinary religious language and Dan’s apocalyptic interpretation of murder.

Protection and Religious Belief

In testimony about Ron’s beliefs, psychiatrist Noel Gardner connected his reflector shields—which Ron understood as defenses against evil forces—to the familiar idea of guardian angels. Gardner acknowledged that the shields could initially sound like paranoid ideas, but said Ron described the forces in language comparable to that used by ordinary religious believers. Ron’s comparison, in turn, led Gardner to associate the shields with Christian defenses against the temptations or influence of Satan and with ideas Ron had encountered in early Mormon religious teachings.

Gardner also placed belief in spiritual beings entering or influencing people within a broader religious context. He compared the idea of travelers inhabiting different bodies to the Christian belief that the Holy Spirit may fill and control a person’s life, and to beliefs about Satan influencing minds and behavior. He noted that exorcisms remain part of some religious traditions as a means of removing spirits believed to have taken possession of individuals. In this testimony, angels and spirits help mark the boundary Gardner drew between unusual religious language and ideas he regarded as psychotic: unusual labels alone did not make a belief a sign of mental illness.

Avenging Angels and Human Agents

Dan Lafferty gave angels a more violent role in his account of the Great and Dreadful Day of the Lord. He understood the prophecy as describing Jesus Christ sending angels to gather those who did not belong in His kingdom and kill them. Dan said that his murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty had, in part, foreshadowed this future judgment. He did not imagine the prophesied angels as winged beings descending from heaven. Instead, he drew on the idea of avenging angels associated with Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, describing them as men already living on earth who would act on God’s behalf after learning their divine identity and receiving instruction.

Dan placed himself within that expected sequence of events. He believed God had designated him as Elijah to identify the righteous’ Father and prepare for the Kingdom of God; he also expected to identify Jesus Christ when He returned. His account thus transformed angels from supernatural messengers into a model for human action: in his interpretation, instructed men could perform the work he assigned to divine agents. That interpretation did not merely describe the future judgment; Dan connected it to the murders he had already committed.

Protection, Judgment, and Interpretation

The two accounts give angelic imagery sharply different functions. Gardner’s comparison to guardian angels situates Ron’s reflector shields within recognizable religious ideas of protection against evil, without endorsing Ron’s beliefs as fact. Dan’s avenging angels, by contrast, turn the language of divine protection and prophecy toward punishment carried out by human beings. The same broad religious vocabulary can therefore describe both a defense against evil and a claimed mandate to inflict violence.

Dan also linked his expectations to a later sign of Jesus Christ’s return. He recalled hearing a voice while pacing in his cell, a year or two after his incarceration, which told him that the moon would shine from noon until nine. He said he eventually understood this as the sign of Christ’s return. This prediction extends his apocalyptic framework beyond the avenging angels: in his account, the anticipated divine judgment, human agents, and a future celestial sign belong to one prophetic sequence.