Watson Lafferty

Watson Lafferty is one of the six Lafferty brothers whose family discussions and involvement with Onias’s School of the Prophets form part of the book’s account of the religious ideas surrounding the brothers’ later violence. The evidence gives him a consequential but bounded role: he usually attended discussions led by Dan, challenged the school’s refusal to consecrate a weapon, supported Ron’s sacramental and leadership challenges, and voted with Ron and Dan to accept the removal revelation. The book does not, in the cited episodes, attribute the killings of Brenda and Erica to Watson.

Family and Religious Discussions

When Dan Lafferty and Mark Lafferty began working together in their father’s office, their childhood closeness returned in the form of extended conversations during breaks between patients. They discussed religious doctrine and what they saw as government abuses. Dan generally led these talks, arguing from scripture that government requirements such as licenses, taxes, and Social Security numbers intruded on citizens’ rights. Watson was one of the brothers who usually joined these impromptu gatherings, along with Dan, Mark, Tim, and Allen.

Ron Lafferty, the eldest brother, was six years older than Dan and had often acted less like a sibling than a father figure to the younger men. He was notably absent from the office conferences described in the account. This detail marks an early division between the brothers’ settings: the discussions Dan led commonly involved five brothers, while Ron later became a central force in the School of the Prophets disputes in which Watson joined him. The evidence establishes Watson’s recurring presence at the family conversations, but does not give him Dan’s role as their usual leader or assign him a specific argument of his own.

Conflict at the School of the Prophets

By the time Ron had been appointed bishop of the School of the Prophets, tensions had developed between Onias and several Lafferty brothers, principally Watson, Ron, and Dan. Onias described Ron as having changed from a kind man into someone angry and dictatorial, and said Ron challenged his authority. One point of conflict was how the school should finance a planned City of Refuge below the Dream Mine. Onias urged members to seek employment; Ron maintained that God would provide the necessary wealth miraculously. After a horse-race wager made at Ron’s direction failed to raise funds, Onias told the brothers that he had been right, further worsening relations with Ron.

A separate dispute concerned the sacrament. After encountering wine at John W. Bryant’s commune in Oregon, Ron returned to Utah wanting the school to use wine rather than its customary juice or water. At a March 9 meeting, he continued drinking after the sacrament had been offered, mocked Onias for taking water, and suggested that Onias was too old and slow to lead and that the Lafferty brothers should take over. Dan and Watson supported Ron in this confrontation. The episode places Watson on the side of a challenge to Onias’s authority, though the account attributes the drinking and the taunting to Ron rather than to Watson.

The Razor and the Revelation

At the school meeting on March 29, Watson brought a pearl-handled straight razor and asked the members to dedicate it as a religious instrument for destroying the wicked, invoking the sword of Laban as a comparison. Onias and the others refused. Watson, who was angered by the rejection, left the meeting. At this point Onias did not know about Ron’s removal revelation, so the request was not discussed as part of a shared evaluation of that document. Its significance in the narrative lies in the direct collision between a proposed act of religious authorization and the school’s refusal to grant it.

The revelation itself was brought to the school for evaluation at the April 5 meeting. Ron asked the members to confirm it as a divine command. Of the nine men present, Ron, Dan, and Watson voted to accept it; the others rejected it. Ron, Dan, and Watson became angry and walked out, ending their association with the school. Watson’s vote places him among the three men who accepted the document as valid, while the response of the other members shows that the school did not reach a collective agreement. The episode also exposes a conflict within the group’s own practice: members were expected to evaluate revelations, yet a revelation could be understood to demand action that the school’s leadership and majority would not endorse.

The Limits of the Record

The book later presents conflicting accounts of what Ron and Dan said during their drive toward Nevada after the murders of Brenda Lafferty and Erica Lafferty. Dan said that he told Ricky Knapp and Chip Carnes that he had used the knife; Carnes testified that Ron had described the killings and said that he handed the knife to Dan. Dan disputed much of Carnes’s account, although he did not dispute its essential claim that Ron handed the knife to him. The narrative treats the brothers’ responsibility as shared while acknowledging the disagreement over particular actions.

Those accounts name Ron and Dan, not Watson. His documented part in the cited sequence is instead his presence in the brothers’ ideological discussions and his alignment with Ron and Dan at the school’s decisive vote. Keeping that distinction matters: Watson’s participation in the school conflict places him within the brothers’ developing religious alliance, but the available evidence does not establish that he took part in the murders or in the drive afterward.