Ervil LeBaron—Rulon Allred

The relationship between Ervil LeBaron and Rulon Allred turned an earlier connection between fundamentalist groups into a deadly contest over leadership and followers. Allred, a rival prophet with his own congregation, was killed after Ervil sought to bring that congregation into his Church of the Lamb of God.

Connections between rival groups

Before their conflict became fatal, Allred and the LeBarons had a history of association. The LeBaron group had once maintained loose ties with Allred’s community and had given him refuge in Mexico after he was convicted of polygamy in Utah in 1947 and jumped parole. The relationship therefore began within overlapping networks rather than as a simple division between strangers.

Allred later led the Apostolic United Brethren, a separate fundamentalist group. The LeBaron brothers, meanwhile, claimed prophetic authority for themselves; Ervil and his brother Joel each presented himself as the divinely appointed figure who could restore the church to righteousness. Competing claims to religious authority made the groups’ connections a potential source of allegiance as well as a point of rivalry.

From rivalry to murder

Ervil’s conflict with Joel escalated after Joel expelled him from the group in 1969. Ervil then claimed a revelation that Joel had become an obstacle to God’s work, and a follower loyal to Ervil killed Joel in 1972. The episode established the pattern of Ervil treating opposition within the movement as a religious mandate for violence.

After ordering Joel’s death, Ervil initiated a series of further killings. He was arrested in 1976 and jailed in Mexico, but released less than a year later on the official ground of insufficient evidence. Within months, he arranged Allred’s murder. The book identifies his objective as drawing Allred’s followers into Ervil’s own Church of the Lamb of God: the killing was thus both an attack on a rival leader and an attempt to redirect his congregation.

Allred’s killing and its aftermath

On May 10, 1977, Allred was treating patients at his office in Murray when two young women entered and killed him. They left the office afterward. The women were members of the LeBaron clan, linking the murder to the breakaway group Ervil led and to his effort to claim Allred’s following.

The murder did not immediately end Ervil’s campaign. He remained free until his arrest in Mexico in 1979, after which he was extradited to the United States, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison. Allred’s death therefore marks a decisive point in their relationship: the earlier association between their circles had become a direct contest in which Ervil used violence to pursue the loyalty of a rival prophet’s people.

Significance of the relationship

The account presents the conflict as more than a personal feud. Allred’s followers were a community Ervil hoped to convert to his own organization, and the murder occurred within a movement fragmented by rival claims to prophetic succession. In that setting, spiritual authority and organizational control were bound together: eliminating a competing leader became part of an effort to secure his constituency.

The contrast with their earlier connection sharpens the reversal. A group that had once offered Allred refuge became, under Ervil’s leadership, the source of the violence that killed him. The relationship illustrates how shared religious origins and past cooperation did not prevent fundamentalist factions from turning competition over leadership into lethal conflict.