Claudine Lafferty

Claudine Lafferty was the mother of the Lafferty brothers and the wife of Watson Lafferty Sr. Her Provo, Utah, home was both a family residence and a gathering place for the School of the Prophets, meeting upstairs from the family chiropractic clinic. That domestic setting acquired a grave significance when her sons used it to discuss a revelation directing them to kill members of their own family. The account places Claudine within earshot of that discussion, listening but saying nothing; it does not establish what she thought or why she remained silent.

Family and Home

During Dan Lafferty’s dispute with the state over property taxes on his father’s home and business, his four younger brothers supported his resistance. Watson Lafferty Sr., still abroad on an LDS mission, learned that the home and office equipment could be auctioned for unpaid taxes. He called Dan to express his anger and accused him of influencing his brothers; he also feared that Dan was trying to influence him and Claudine over the telephone. Watson Sr. cut his mission short and returned to Provo, Utah, with Claudine. Their return saved the home from auction, though it did not end Watson Sr.’s anger at Dan. The episode situates Claudine within a family already strained by Dan’s increasingly confrontational religious and political crusade. By late 1982 and early 1983, Dan’s four younger brothers were drawn further into fundamentalist teachings. The brothers met regularly to discuss plural marriage and principles advocated in The Peace Maker. When some tried to introduce those principles into their own households, their wives resisted and turned to Dianna Lafferty, Ron’s wife, with concerns about changes in their husbands. The family’s arguments over belief and authority therefore extended beyond the brothers themselves, affecting their marriages and making Claudine’s home a setting for a widening family and religious conflict.

The School of the Prophets

By early 1984, the School of the Prophets met weekly, usually at Claudine’s home, above the family chiropractic clinic. The five brothers’ energy helped the school establish itself, and Onias regarded their work as central to its successful start. They had previously helped print and mail more than fifteen thousand of Onias’s pamphlets to LDS Church leaders. The home thus served not only as a place where relatives gathered but also as a base for an organized campaign to challenge church leadership and promote Onias’s claims to religious authority. Onias appointed Ron Lafferty bishop of the school’s Provo chapter after receiving a revelation. The appointment was welcomed by the other members, including Dan, who had long looked up to Ron. In the months that followed, Ron received numerous revelations, including one that named people to be killed. Dan cautioned him to ensure that the command came from God, but later revelations affirming Dan’s righteousness helped strengthen Dan’s readiness to obey. Ron and Dan ultimately treated their intended victims as wicked and accepted the command as a reason to act. Their shared certainty transformed religious discussion into preparation for violence.

The July Discussion

On the evening before the killings, Dan and Ron sat at Claudine’s dining-room table with Ricky Knapp and Chip Carnes. Claudine sat on a nearby sofa, knitting, and listened as Ron discussed a revelation that called for the removal of several people. Carnes later testified that he heard Brenda’s name and a reference to a baby. Dan and Ron also discussed the manner in which the people named in the revelation were to be killed. Claudine made no comment during the conversation, according to Carnes’s account. The preceding days brought the men to the house for practical as well as religious preparations. Dan had visited his wife Matilda and his children, including his youngest child on the boy’s first birthday, before returning to Claudine’s home. There, the men did laundry and worked on the Impala’s engine while discussing what they would do the next day. On the morning of July 24, Dan used a hacksaw in the garage to shorten a shotgun, while Ron, Knapp, and Carnes loaded the car with belongings and firearms. These details place Claudine’s home and its adjoining garage within the preparations, although the account does not say that she witnessed the work in the garage.

Silence and Its Aftermath

Twelve years later, Betty Wright McEntire heard Carnes describe the dining-room conversation in court. She was shocked to learn that Claudine had been present while her sons discussed killing Brenda and the baby, Erica. Betty’s account brings the consequences of Claudine’s silence into view from the perspective of Brenda’s family. The book reports that Claudine did not warn Brenda; it does not supply an explanation for that omission, and it does not describe Claudine’s response after the killings. Claudine’s role is therefore defined by a sharply bounded but consequential presence. Her house, ordinarily a family home and meeting place, became the location where the brothers’ religious justification for murder was discussed within hearing of their mother. The contrast is not between a documented decision and a documented motive, but between the ordinary activity of knitting and the extraordinary conversation unfolding nearby. By preserving that contrast—and by later returning to it through courtroom testimony—the narrative makes Claudine a witness to the passage from revelation to intended action while leaving her silence unresolved.