Ron Lafferty and Dan Lafferty

Ron Lafferty and Dan Lafferty were brothers whose relationship became the channel through which Ron’s private revelations acquired practical force. Dan had long admired his older brother but said they had not been close while growing up. A later journey across the West brought them together; a religious bond formed around Ron’s claims of divine instruction, and their alliance culminated in the murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. Their story turns on more than shared belief: it shows how one brother’s claimed revelation and the other’s understanding of obedience combined to make violence seem, to them, religiously required.

From Admiration to Partnership

Ron was six years older than Dan. Dan recalled wanting closeness with him as a child and looking up to him, but said they had not had the opportunity to know each other well. Their relationship changed during a long trip in Ron’s Chevrolet Impala wagon, after the brothers had left Provo and Utah County. They traveled through Canada, the western United States, and the Midwest, sometimes driving for hours in silence and often talking intensely. Dan later described the journey as the first time he really got to know Ron.

The trip was not simply a reunion. Its central subject was the revelation Ron had received, which named people he believed were obstacles to God’s work. As the journey stretched from weeks into months, Dan observed Ron becoming more agitated and increasingly focused on when the people named in the revelation should be killed. Dan found this change frightening. He prayed about whether to remain with Ron or separate from him, but believed the answer was to stay. That decision turned their renewed closeness into a commitment with grave consequences.

Revelation and Shared Authority

Ron had received about twenty revelations during February and March after instruction from Onias. The most disturbing, written on yellow legal paper, ordered the removal of Brenda and her baby, Chloe Low, and Richard Stowe, and called for the killings to happen in rapid succession. Before presenting it to the School of the Prophets, Ron showed it to Dan. Dan recognized grounds for concern but cautioned Ron to be certain the command came from God. His warning did not become a break with his brother; instead, both men spent the following days considering whether the revelation was genuine.

Ron then received another revelation assigning the brothers complementary religious roles: he was the mouth of God, and Dan was the arm. They understood this to mean that Dan was to carry out the killing. An earlier revelation had compared Dan to Nephi, the obedient figure in the Book of Mormon who is commanded to kill Laban. Mark Lafferty later described the effect of that comparison: Dan became willing to do whatever he believed the Lord commanded. In the brothers’ reasoning, the comparison did not merely offer a scriptural parallel; it framed obedience as proof of faith and violence as a test of that obedience.

The brothers also classified the people named in Ron’s revelation as wicked and therefore deserving of death. This judgment closed off the possibility that those people’s lives could outweigh the brothers’ claimed religious duty. Their language of removal displaced the ordinary description of murder, while their appeal to revelation transferred authority for the decision from themselves to God. That interpretation was not shared by everyone around them, and the disagreement made the pair’s growing isolation visible.

The School Rejects the Revelation

The School of the Prophets had a customary process for evaluating revelations. On April 5, Ron presented his removal revelation to the nine men attending and asked them to confirm it. Ron, Dan, and Watson Lafferty supported accepting it as divine instruction; the other members rejected it. Ron, Dan, and Watson became angry and walked out, ending their association with the school. The vote exposed a conflict at the heart of their religious alliance: Ron’s authority as a prophet could be challenged when other members judged his revelation, but he and Dan treated the command as higher than the school’s collective decision.

Bernard Brady was alarmed enough to file a notarized affidavit identifying people he feared were in danger and naming Ron, Dan, Watson, and an unidentified Todd as potential sources of that danger. Yet Brady did not alert the police; he put the affidavit in a desk drawer, hoping it would establish his own innocence if a killing occurred. Other school members likewise did not warn the people named in the revelation. Dan, however, later told his youngest brother, Allen Lafferty, that Ron and Dan intended to carry out the command against Brenda and Erica. Allen objected in particular to the inclusion of the child. His reaction marked a boundary that Ron and Dan had crossed but that another brother could still recognize.

The Murders and Their Roles

During the journey, Ron increasingly settled on July 24 as the date for the removals. Dan’s anxiety did not lead him to leave; he continued to believe that he should remain with Ron. Ricky Knapp joined the brothers after meeting Dan while they were both working on a demolition crew in Wichita, and Chip Carnes was also with them when they went to Brenda’s home. The presence of these companions did not alter the brothers’ purpose. In the apartment, Dan said he was fulfilling the revelation, while Ron helped restrain and attack Brenda and supplied the butcher knife that Dan used. Dan killed Brenda and Erica; the two brothers then left together.

The scene makes their partnership concrete without making their responsibilities interchangeable. Ron’s revelation established the targets and gave the act its claimed divine rationale. Dan interpreted that rationale as a personal obligation and carried out the killings. Ron was not merely the source of an idea: he took part in the assault and facilitated Dan’s use of the knife. Their separate roles were bound by a shared decision, and their language of religious duty did not erase their agency or the deaths of Brenda and Erica.

Aftermath and Meaning

The brothers’ partnership did not end with the killings in the narrative’s account of their beliefs. Years later, Dan continued to interpret his actions through an apocalyptic religious framework. He described the murders as foreshadowing the coming harvest, when, in his view, divine agents would remove those judged to be outside God’s kingdom. He also imagined himself as a future herald of Christ’s return. This later account shows how the old division between the obedient and the wicked continued to organize his understanding of what he and Ron had done; it does not establish that Ron shared every detail of Dan’s later interpretation.

The legal aftermath also demonstrates that the brothers’ religious alliance had consequences beyond their immediate circle. After Ron’s 1985 convictions, the Tenth Circuit vacated them in 1991, finding that the trial court had used a faulty standard when assessing his competence to stand trial. The court concluded that, although Ron understood the charges and possible consequences, his delusional system prevented him from interpreting them realistically. The ruling raised a broader question about how courts should address violent acts committed under religious delusion. It did not undo the murders or settle the moral meaning of the brothers’ choices. Their relationship remains significant because it joined prophetic certainty to fraternal loyalty, while showing how a shared religious vocabulary could recast the lives of others as obstacles to be removed.