Gwendolyn Stubbs LeBaron

Gwendolyn Stubbs LeBaron, daughter of Lavina Stubbs and Joel LeBaron, became part of a widening family crisis when she married Kenyon Blackmore in 1983. The marriage linked her to the consequences of Kenyon’s existing marriage, his flight from legal trouble, and the increasingly isolated life he built with his family in Central America.

Identity and Marriage

Gwendolyn was twenty-two when she married Kenyon during one of his sales trips to Mexico. He was already married to Annie Vandeveer Blackmore, to whom he had not disclosed the new marriage. Gwendolyn was therefore not simply entering a new household: her marriage exposed a concealed relationship and placed her at the center of a painful conflict between Kenyon’s families. Her mother, Lavina, had already lost money in Kenyon’s investment program; she later described the loss as less devastating than what followed when Kenyon took Gwendolyn and the children away to Central America.

The Marriage Enters a Legal Crisis

Kenyon’s flight to Mexico followed a federal indictment tied to his business partnership with Bernard Brady. Prosecutors accused the partners and nineteen others of defrauding 3,800 investors of more than $32 million. After Brady was arrested and later imprisoned, Kenyon went into hiding rather than surrendering; Gwendolyn and her mother sheltered him in Colonia LeBaron.

Annie eventually traveled to Mexico to persuade Kenyon to return to Utah. The visit exposed the concealed marriage and revealed that Gwendolyn had recently given birth to a daughter, Evangeline. The child was born three days before Dan Lafferty murdered Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty in American Fork. Annie went home without Kenyon, but returned in January 1985 and persuaded him to accompany her. Once he crossed the border into El Paso, FBI agents arrested him. Kenyon later entered a plea bargain and was imprisoned in Florida, leaving Gwendolyn and their infant daughter in Mexico.

Return, Flight, and Increasing Isolation

After Kenyon Blackmore’s release from prison in late 1991, he returned to Cardston, Alberta, with Gwendolyn and their children. His first wife, Annie Vandeveer Blackmore, had by then filed for divorce. Kenyon tried to reconnect with his oldest daughter, Lena, but she was uneasy around Gwendolyn and the two children they had together. Lena objected to the family’s restrictive natural-food practices and the children’s poor condition, a glimpse of the household Kenyon had formed with Gwendolyn after prison.

The family’s return to Canada did not last. Kenyon took Lena’s truck after promising to make its payments and cover the insurance, but failed to do so. When Lena contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Kenyon learned that a warrant had been issued and fled south with Gwendolyn and their children to Colonia LeBaron, the Mexican community where he had previously found refuge. The move renewed the separation between Gwendolyn’s household and Kenyon’s first family and set the course for years of travel in Central America.

Back in Mexico, Kenyon married Gwendolyn’s half sister. He then left Colonia LeBaron with both women and their children, moving around Central America. The account describes Gwendolyn as part of this traveling household, which grew as Kenyon had four more children with each wife. Its precarious life depended on a succession of odd jobs and small businesses, alongside scams; their daughter Evangeline later recalled that her father was adept at conning people.

Kenyon’s religious claims also grew more extreme during this period. He said revelations identified him as the last prophet before Jesus Christ’s return and claimed that the returning Christ would be born to him and Evangeline. In 1996, when Evangeline was twelve, he made her his wife and began sexually abusing her. The evidence presents this as Kenyon’s purported religious justification for his actions, not as a belief attributed to Gwendolyn. It does not establish what she knew of the abuse or how she responded. Her later life and the eventual outcome for her are not given in these passages.

Family History and Narrative Position

Gwendolyn’s history is set against an earlier break in her mother’s life: Lavina Stubbs had spent her first fifteen years in Short Creek before her father’s falling-out with LeRoy Johnson led the family to join the LeBaron group in Mexico. At sixteen, Lavina became a plural wife of Joel LeBaron, who was later killed on Ervil LeBaron’s orders. This history places Gwendolyn within a family shaped by movement between fundamentalist communities, competing religious authorities, and violence. Yet the account reaches her chiefly through what happened to her relatives; it does not provide her own account of her father’s death or her later circumstances.