Avenging angels

Avenging angels are human agents cast as instruments of divine judgment. In Dan Lafferty’s interpretation, the phrase does not describe winged beings arriving from heaven; it describes men already on earth who believe they have been instructed to carry out God’s work. The concept gives religious language to violence by recasting a human decision as sacred duty, and connects the Lafferty brothers’ acts to older Mormon stories about defenders of the faith.

Historical Precedent

The phrase had a historical model in Porter Rockwell, remembered as the Destroying Angel. Rockwell served as personal bodyguard to Joseph Smith and Brigham Young and, in 1842, attempted to assassinate Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs, Joseph Smith’s political adversary. Nineteenth-century Mormons celebrated Rockwell for killing men considered enemies of the Church; the account identifies his .44-caliber Colt revolver as part of that reputation. A Utah County restaurant, Porter’s Place, was later named after him, evidence that the figure persisted in local memory beyond the episodes that made him notorious.

The surrounding history presents religious authority not simply as private belief but as a rival source of public power. In Nauvoo, a charter gave Joseph Smith unusual sovereign authority, and he commanded the Nauvoo Legion. Under Brigham Young, the Saints’ legal arrangements were designed so that God’s law would prevail when it clashed with human law; locally controlled probate courts further displaced federal jurisdiction. That history helps explain how violent enforcement could be imagined within a broader struggle over who had the authority to define and uphold the law.

The Removal Revelation

The Lafferty brothers’ immediate framework took shape within the School of the Prophets, where members discussed religious and political claims. Dan Lafferty argued that government had exceeded its constitutional reach, using scripture to support his objections to licenses, taxes, and Social Security numbers. His opposition to state authority formed part of the setting in which a claimed divine command could be treated as more binding than civil law.

In a late-March revelation written on yellow legal paper, Ron Lafferty named his brother’s wife Brenda and her baby, followed by Chloe Low and Richard Stowe, as people who should be removed. The revelation called for the acts to occur rapidly and described Todd as an instrument prepared for the work, comparing him to Porter Rockwell. Todd had been taken in by Watson Lafferty, introduced to the School of the Prophets, and then left the group after a quarrel and the disappearance of Watson’s belongings. He was therefore gone before he could be called upon to act on the revelation.

Ron showed the document to Dan before presenting it to the school. Dan cautioned him to make sure the command came from God, but the brothers ultimately accepted it as true. Their reasoning turned on a categorical division between good and evil: they decided that the named people must be wicked and deserved death. Religious classification thus did more than condemn the targets; it allowed the brothers to describe acting against them as obedience. At a school meeting, Bernard Brady read the revelation, became frightened, and told Ron he believed it was wrong. Neither man raised it with the other members during the meeting, and the command was not collectively endorsed there.

From Religious Language to Action

The revelation’s religious framing entered the physical sequence of the murders. Dan later described entering Brenda’s apartment after privately asking God what to do. He said that Brenda apologized for her role in influencing Ron’s wife, and he then restrained her. Afterward, he went looking for the baby, whom he said he did not know was in which room; his account described approaching Erica as if she might mistake him for her father. These details show how the declared category of divine command governed the brothers’ actions while the victims remained members of a family and household.

Dan’s later explanation made the connection to avenging angels explicit. He interpreted the biblical harvest as a time when Christ’s angels would remove and kill those judged not to belong to his kingdom. He said he had foreshadowed that harvest by killing Brenda and Erica, and interpreted the angels not as supernatural beings but as earthly men carrying out their Father’s business after receiving instruction. In that account, the term turns the brothers’ violence into a preview of an anticipated judgment, rather than an isolated act detached from their religious worldview.

Apocalyptic Meaning and Consequences

For Dan, the violence belonged to a larger end-times scenario. He described the present world as governed by the devil’s children and looked toward a future harvest that would clear the way for the Kingdom of God and a thousand-year reign. He also believed he had been designated as Elijah, responsible for identifying Christ when he returned. A voice he said he heard in his prison cell gave him a sign to interpret: the moon would shine from noon until nine. He later concluded that this would mark Christ’s return, though he did not know how it would happen.

The phrase Avenging angels therefore carries two linked meanings in the book: it recalls a historical model of religiously celebrated violence, and it names Dan’s attempt to place murder within an imminent cosmic judgment. Its force lies in that conversion of scale. Individual victims become, in the perpetrators’ scheme, representatives of evil to be cleared away; the killers become agents of a future divine order. The contrast between those claims and the acts carried out under them exposes how religious language can shift responsibility away from human choice and make violence appear to its authors as obedience.