Under the Banner of Heaven (Excerpt)

8/8/2019 Under the Banner of Heaven (Excerpt)

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U n d e r t h eU n d e r t h e

J O N K R A K A U E R

A N C H O R B O O K S


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B a n n e r o f

H e a v e n

B a n n e r o f

H e a v e n

A S T O R Y O F V I O L E N T F A I T H

A D I V I S I O N O F R A N D O M H O U S E , I N C . N E W Y O R K


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FIRST ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, JUNE 2004

Copyright 2003, 2004 by Jon Krakauer

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.Originally published in slightly different form in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday, adivision of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2003.

Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously publishedmaterial:

KENNETH ANDERSON: Excerpts from the articles The Magic of the Great Salt Lake by KennethAnderson, published in the Times Literary Supplement,March 24, 1995; and A Peculiar People: TheMystical and Pragmatic Appeal of Mormonism by Kenneth Anderson, published in the Los AngelesTimes,November 28, 1999. Reprinted by permission of Kenneth Anderson.

BRANDT & HOCHMAN LITERARY AGENTS, INC.: Excerpts from Mormon Countryby WallaceStegner (New York: Penguin, 1992). Copyright 1942, 1970 by Wallace Stegner. Reprinted bypermission of Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents, Inc.

THE FREE PRESS: Excerpts from Feet of Clay: Saints, Sinners, and Madmen: A Study of Gurusby Anthony Storr. Reprinted with the permission of The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.Copyright 1996 by Anthony Storr..Permissions acknowledgments continued on page 399.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday edition as follows:Krakauer, Jon.Under the banner of heaven : a story of violent faith / Jon Krakauer.1st ed.p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. Mormon fundamentalism. I. Title.BX8680.M54K73 2003289.3'3dc21 2003043824

Anchor ISBN 1-4000-3280-6

Book design by Caroline Cunningham Mormon Country map by Katsura & Co.Other interior maps by Jeffrey L. Ward

www.anchorbooks.com

Printed in the United States of America

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F o r L i n d a


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We believe in honesty, morality, and purity; but when they enact tyrannical laws, forbidding us the free exercise of our religion, we

cannot submit. God is greater than the United States, and when theGovernment conicts with heaven, we will be ranged under the banner of heaven and against the Government. Polygamy is a divine insti-tution. It has been handed down direct from God. The United Statescannot abolish it. No nation on earth can prevent it, nor all the na-tions of the earth combined, . . . I defy the United States; I will obeyGod.

John Taylor (on January 4, 1880),

president, prophet, seer, and revelator,

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

No Western nation is as religion-soaked as ours, where nine out of tenof us love God and are loved by him in return. That mutual passioncenters our society and demands some understanding, if our doom-eager

society is to be understood at all.

Harold Bloom,

The American Religion


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Almost everyone in Utah County has heard of the Lafferty boys. Thatsmostly a function of the lurid murders, of course, but the Lafferty sur-

name had a certain prominence in the county even before Brenda and Er-ica Lafferty were killed. Watson Lafferty, the patriarch of the clan, was achiropractor who ran a thriving practice out of his home in downtownProvos historic quarter. He and his wife, Claudine, had six boys and twogirls, in whom they instilled an unusually strong work ethic and intensedevotion to the Mormon Church. The entire family was admired for itsindustriousness and probity.

Allenthe youngest of the Lafferty children, now in his mid-fortiesworks as a tile setter, a trade he has plied since he was ateenager. In the summer of 1984 he was living with his twenty-four-year-old wife and baby daughter in American Fork, a sleepy, white-breadsuburb alongside the freeway that runs from Provo to Salt Lake City.Brenda, his spouse, was a onetime beauty queen recognized around town

from her tenure as the anchor of a newsmagazine program on channel11, the local PBS afliate. Although she had abandoned her nascentbroadcasting career to marry Allen and start a family, Brenda had lostnone of the exuberance that had endeared her to television viewers.Warm and outgoing, shed made a lasting impression.

On the morning of July 24, 1984, Allen left their small duplex

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apartment before the sun was up and drove eighty miles up the inter-state to work at a construction site east of Ogden. During his lunchbreak he phoned Brenda, who chatted with him for a minute before put-ting their fteen-month-old daughter, Erica, on the line. Erica gurgleda few words of baby talk; then Brenda told her husband everything wasne and said good-bye.

Allen arrived home around eight that evening, tired from the longworkday. He walked up to the front door and was surprised to nd itlocked; they almost never locked their doors. He used his key to enter,

and then was surprised again by the baseball game blaring from the tele-vision in the living room. Neither he nor Brenda liked baseballtheynever watched it. After hed turned off the TV, the apartment seemedpreternaturally quiet to him, as though nobody was home. Allen guredBrenda had taken the baby and gone out. I turned to go and see if maybe she was at the neighbors, he explained later, and I noticedsome blood near the door on a light switch. And then he saw Brenda inthe kitchen, sprawled on the oor in a lake of blood.

Upon calling Brendas name and getting no reply, he knelt besideher and put his hand on her shoulder. I touched her, he said, and herbody felt cool. . . . There was blood on her face and pretty much every-where. Allen reached for the kitchen phone, which was resting on theoor next to his wife, and dialed 911 before he realized there was no dial

tone. The cord had been yanked from the wall. As he walked to theirbedroom to try the extension in there, he glanced into the babys roomand saw Erica slumped over in her crib in an odd position, motionless.She was wearing nothing but a diaper, which was soaked with blood, aswere the blankets surrounding her.

Allen hurried to the master bedroom only to nd the phone in thereout of order, as well, so he went next door to a neighbors apartment,

where he was nally able to call for help. He described the carnage to the911 dispatcher, then called his mother.

While he waited for the police to show up, Allen returned to hisapartment. I went to Brenda and I prayed, he said. And then as Istood, I surveyed the situation a little more, and realized that there hadbeen a grim struggle. For the rst time he noticed that the blood wasnt

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conned to the kitchen: it smeared the living room walls, the oor, thedoors, the curtains. It was obvious to him who was responsible. Hedknown the moment hed rst seen Brenda on the kitchen oor.

The cops took Allen down to the American Fork police station andgrilled him throughout the night. They assumed he was the murderer;the husband usually is. By and by, however, Allen convinced them thatthe prime suspect was actually the oldest of his ve brothers, Ron Laf-ferty. Ron had just returned to Utah County after spending most of theprevious three months traveling around the West with another Lafferty

brother, Dan. An APB went out for Rons car, a pale green 1974 Impalastation wagon with Utah plates.

The slayings appeared to be ritualistic, which drew uncommon at-tention from the news media and put the public on edge. By the nextevening the Lafferty killings led news broadcasts across the state. OnThursday, July 26, a headline on the front page of the Salt Lake Tribuneannounced,

WIDESPREAD SEARCH UNDER WAY

FOR AMERICAN FORK MURDER SUSPECT

By Mike Gorrell, Tribune Staff Writer

And Ann Shields, Tribune Correspondent

AMERICAN FORKLawmen in Utah and surrounding states searched

Wednesday for a former Highland, Utah County, city councilman and

religious fundamentalist charged with the Tuesday murders of his

sister-in-law and her 15-month-old baby.

Ronald Watson Lafferty, 42, no address available, was charged

with two counts of capital homicide in the deaths of Brenda Wright

Lafferty, 24, and her daughter, Erica Lane. . . .

American Fork police have not established a motive for thekillings and have refused to comment on rumors that the suspect, an

excommunicated member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints, was involved with either polygamist or fundamentalist reli-

gious sects and that those ties may have contributed to the

killings. . . .

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Neighbors expressed disbelief that this sort of thing could hap-

pen in their area.

The whole towns in shock that such a thing could happen in a

nice quiet community like American Fork. People who said they had

never locked their doors said they were going to now, said one neigh-

bor who asked not to be identied.

Ken Beck, a bishop in the American Fork LDS ward which Allen

and Brenda Lafferty attended, said they were a nice ordinary couple,

active in church affairs.

Immediately below this story, also on the front page, was an accompa-nying piece:

NEIGHBORS RECALL CHANGES IN MURDER SUSPECT, 42

Special to The Tribune

AMERICAN FORK A determined man who evolved from an activeMormon and conservative Republican to a strict constitutionalist and

excommunicated fundamentalist is how neighbors remember Ronald

Watson Lafferty. . . .

Mr. Lafferty served on Highlands rst City Council when the

small northern Utah County town was incorporated in 1977. At the

time, Mr. Lafferty successfully led a drive to outlaw beer sales in

the towns only grocery storewhere travelers to American Fork

Canyon still cant buy beer.

Two years ago, he looked clean, all-American, even in the morn-

ings after milking the family cow, said a neighbor who resides in an

acre-lot subdivision lled with children, horses, goats, chickens and

large garden plots where Mr. Lafferty once lived.

Last year he and his wife of several years divorced. Mr. Lafferty hasnot been seen in the neighborhood for a year.

Shortly after Christmas, Mrs. Diana Lafferty, described as a pillar

of the Mormon ward, took the couples six children out of state.

Neighbors said the divorce stemmed from differences of opinion

on religion and politics.

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He talked about standing up for what was rightno matter the

consequences, said a neighbor.

Friends said Mr. Laffertys political beliefs changed as wellor

perhaps evolvedfrom conservative Republican to strict fundamen-

talism. During the 12 years he lived in Highland, he came to believe

in a return to the gold standard, strict constitutionalism and obedi-

ence only to righteous laws, said a neighbor.

He had a fervent desire to save the Constitutionand the coun-

try, said a long-time friend. It became a religious obsession.

Detectives interviewed as many of Allens siblings as they could locate,as well as his mother and various friends. As the front page of SaturdaysTribune revealed, the cops were beginning to piece together a motive forthe brutal acts:

TWO MURDERS A RELIGIOUS REVELATION?

3 CHARGED IN SLASHING OF MOTHER AND INFANT

By Ann Shields

Tribune Correspondent

AMERICAN FORK Two more men Friday were charged with rst-

degree murder in connection with the July 24 slaying of an American

Fork woman and her 15-month-old daughter as police disclosed that

the killings may have been part of a religious revelation.

Charged Friday with capital homicide were Dan Lafferty, age un-

available, Salem, a former candidate for Utah County sheriff and the

victims brother-in-law, and Richard M. Knapp, 24, formerly of Wi-

chita, Kan.

Dan Laffertys brother, Ronald Lafferty, 42, Highland, Utah

County, was charged Wednesday with two counts of rst-degree mur-der. . . .

Police Chief Randy Johnson . . . revealed Friday that the investi-

gation into the murders has caused police to believe . . . that Ron had

a handwritten revelation which told him to commit this crime. If this

document does exist it is a vital piece of evidence and we would like to

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see it. He asked anyone with information regarding the document to

contact the American Fork Police Department or the FBI. . . .

Chief Johnson said the men are believed to be armed and should

be considered dangerous, particularly to law enforcement ofcials. . . .

Neighbors and friends of the suspects and victims noted that Ron

Lafferty apparently was afliated or had founded a polygamist or fun-

damentalist religious sect, causing speculation that the crimes may

have resulted from a religious argument in the family.

On July 30, Rons run-down Impala was spotted parked in front of ahouse in Cheyenne, Wyoming. When they raided the home, policedidnt nd the Lafferty brothers, but they did arrest Richard RickyKnapp and Chip Carnes, two drifters who had been traveling around theWest with the Laffertys since early summer. Information provided byKnapp and Carnes led authorities to Reno, Nevada, where, on August 7,the police arrested Ron and Dan as they stood in line for the buffet at theCircus Circus casino.

From jail, before their trial, the brothers launched an unpersuasivemedia campaign protesting their innocence. Ron insisted that thecharges against them were false and that the Mormon Church, whichcontrolled everything in Utah, would prevent his brother and himfrom receiving a fair trial. Although he confessed to believing in therighteousness of plural marriage, Ron said he had never practicedpolygamy or belonged to an extremist sect. He then professed to love theMormon Church, while at the same time warning that the current LDSleadership had strayed from the sacred doctrines of the religions found-ing prophet, Joseph Smith.

Four days later Dan Lafferty issued a written statement to the mediain which he declared that he and Ron were not guilty of any of the

crimes for which we have been accused, adding that the time is athand when the true criminals will be made known.

On December 29, ve days before their trial was scheduled to beginin Provo, Lieutenant Jerry Scott, the commander of the Utah County

Jail, took Dan from his cell to ask him some questions. When Dan re-turned, he found his older brother suspended by his neck from a towel

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rack in an adjacent cell, unconscious and no longer breathing; Ron hadused a T-shirt to hang himself. I pushed the intercom button and toldthem they better get down there, Dan says. Lieutenant Scott arrivedimmediately but could detect no pulse in Ron. Although Scott and twoother deputies administered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and CPR,they were unable to revive him. By the time paramedics showed up, saidScott, the inmate appeared dead.

Despite the fact that Ron had stopped breathing for an estimated f-teen minutes, the paramedics eventually managed to get his heart beat-

ing again, and he was placed on a respirator in the intensive care unit of the Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. After remaining comatose fortwo days, he regained consciousnessan astonishing recovery that Danattributes to divine intervention. Although the brothers were slated tobe tried together three days after Ron emerged from his coma, Judge J.Robert Bullock ordered that Dan should be tried alone, as scheduled, al-lowing Ron time to recover and undergo extensive psychiatric evalua-tion to determine if hed suffered brain damage.

The court appointed two attorneys to represent Dan, but he insistedon defending himself, relegating them to advisory roles. Five days afterthe trial began, the jury went into deliberation, and nine hours laterfound Dan guilty of two counts of rst-degree murder. During the sub-sequent session to determine whether Dan should be put to death for his

crimes, Dan assured the jurors, If I was in your situation, I would im-pose the death penalty, and promised not to appeal if they arrived atsuch a sentence.

The judge freaked out when I said that, Dan later explained. Hethought I was expressing a death wish, and warned the jury that theycouldnt vote to execute me just because I had a death wish. But I justwanted them to feel free to follow their conscience. I didnt want them

to worry or feel guilty about giving me a death sentence, if thats whatthey thought I deserved. I was willing to take a life for God, so it seemedto me that I should also be willing to give my own life for God. If Godwanted me to be executed, I was ne with that.

Ten jurors voted for death, but two others refused to go along withthe majority. Because unanimity was required to impose a capital sen-

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tence, Dans life was spared. According to the jury foreman, one of thejurors who balked at executing Dan was a woman whom he had manip-ulated through eye-contact, smiles, and other charismatic, non verbalattachments and psycho-sexual seduction, causing her to ignore boththe evidence and the instructions provided by the judge. The foreman,aghast that Dan had thereby avoided a death sentence, was furious.

Dan says that he, too, was a little disappointed that I wasnt exe-cuted, in a strange sense.

Addressing the convicted prisoner with undisguised scorn, Judge

Bullock reminded Dan that it was mans law, which you disdain, thatsaved your life. Then, his disgust getting the better of him, he added,In my twelve years as a judge, I have never presided over a trial of sucha cruel, heinous, pointless and senseless a crime as the murders of Brendaand Erica Lafferty. Nor have I seen an accused who had so little remorseor feeling. This admonishment came from the same hardened judgewho, in 1976, had presided over the notorious, history-making trial of Gary Mark Gilmore for the unprovoked murders of two young Mor-mons. * After telling the 1985 court that the jury had been unable toagree on a sentence of death, Judge Bullock turned to Dan and said, Imean to see that every minute of [your] life is spent behind the bars of the Utah State Prison and I so order. He sentenced Dan to two lifeterms.

Rons trial began almost four months later, in April 1985, after abattery of psychiatrists and psychologists had determined that he wasmentally competent. His court-appointed attorneys hoped to get themurder charges reduced to manslaughter by arguing that Ron was suf-fering from mental illness when he and Dan murdered Brenda Laffertyand her baby, but Ron refused to allow them to mount such a defense.

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* The rst convict to be executed in the United States in more than a decade, Gary Gilmorecame to symbolize Americas renewed embracing of capital punishment in the 1970s. Hisstory has been memorably told by his brother, Mikal Gilmore, in Shot in the Heart, and byNorman Mailer in his Pulitzer Prizewinning work The Executioners Song.The Gilmore andLafferty trials happened to share a number of protagonists in addition to Judge J. RobertBullock: one of Gary Gilmores court-appointed lawyers was Mike Esplin, who was later as-signed to represent Ron and Dan Lafferty in their murder trials. And Utah County AttorneyNoall T. Wootton prosecuted Gilmore as well as both Lafferty brothers.


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It seems it would be an admission of guilt, he told Judge Bullock.Im not prepared to do that.

Ron was convicted of rst-degree murder, and on this occasion thejury did not balk at imposing capital punishment. They sentenced himto die, either by lethal injection or four bullets through the heart at closerange. Ron chose the latter.

On January 15, 1985, immediately after Judge Bullock decreed that the

remainder of Dan Laffertys life would unfold in captivity, he was taken tothe state prison at Point of the Mountain, near Draper, Utah, where a cor-rections ofcer cut his hair and sheared off his whiskers. That was nearlyseventeen years ago, and Dan hasnt shaved or cut his hair since. His beard,wrapped with rubber bands into a stiff gray cable, now descends to hisbelly. His hair has gone white and fans across the back of his orange prisonjumpsuit. Although he is fty-four years old and crows-feet furrow thecorners of his eyes, there is something unmistakably boyish about hiscountenance. His skin is so pale it seems translucent.

A crude tattoo of a spider web radiates from Dans left elbow, wrap-ping the crook of his arm in a jagged indigo lattice. His wrists are boundin handcuffs, and his shackled ankles are chained to a steel ring embed-ded in the concrete oor. On his otherwise bare feet are cheap rubber

ip-ops. A large man, he cheerfully refers to the prisons maximum-security unit as my monastery.Every morning a wake-up alarm echoes through the halls of the unit

at 6:30, followed by a head count. The door to his cell remains lockedtwenty hours a day. Even when it isnt locked, Dan says, Im almost al-ways in my cell. The only time I leave is to shower or serve foodI havea job serving meals. But I dont really associate with people that much.

I try not to leave my cell more often than I absolutely have to. There areso many assholes in here. They get you caught up in their little dramas,and you end up having to fuck somebody up. And the next thing youknow your privileges are taken away. Ive got too much to lose. Im in areally comfortable situation right now. Ive got a really good cellie, andI dont want to lose him.

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That cellie, or cell mate, is Mark Hofmann, a once-devout Mor-mon who lost his faith while serving as a missionary in England and se-cretly became an atheist, although he continued to present himself as anexemplary Latter-day Saint when he returned to Utah. Soon thereafter,Hofmann discovered that he had a special talent for forgery. He beganto churn out bogus historical documents, brilliantly rendered, whichfetched large sums from collectors. In October 1985, upon concludingthat investigators were about to discover that several old Mormon docu-ments hed sold were fakes, he detonated a series of pipe bombs to divert

detectives from his trail, killing two guiltless fellow Saints in theprocess.* Many of Hofmanns forgeries were intended to discredit JosephSmith and the sacred history of Mormonism; more than four hundred of these fraudulent artifacts were purchased by the LDS Church (which be-lieved they were authentic), then squirreled away to keep them from thepublic eye.

Although Hofmann now expresses contempt for religion in generaland Mormonism in particular, his atheism doesnt seem to be an issue inhis friendship with Dan Laffertydespite the fact that Dan remains, byhis own proud characterization, a religious zealot. My beliefs are irrele-vant to my cellie, Dan conrms. Were special brothers all the same.Were bound by the heart.

Prior to Dans conviction, and for more than a decade afterward, he

steadfastly maintained that he was innocent of the murders of Brendaand Erica Lafferty. When he was arrested in Reno in August 1984, hetold the arresting ofcers, You think I have committed a crime of homi-cide, but I have not. He still insists that he is innocent of any crime but,paradoxically, does not deny that he killed Brenda and Erica. Whenasked to explain how both these apparently contradictory statements canbe true, he says, I was doing Gods will, which is not a crime.

Lafferty isnt reticent about describing exactly what happened on July 24, 1984. He says that shortly after noon, he, Ron, and the twodrifters who had been traveling with them, Ricky Knapp and ChipCarnes, drove to the apartment of his youngest brother, Allen, in Amer-

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* Mark Hofmanns criminal activities have been deftly recounted in A Gathering of Saints,by Robert Lindsey, and Salamander, by Linda Sillitoe and Allen Roberts.


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ican Fork, twenty minutes down the interstate from where he is now im-prisoned. Inside the brick duplex he found his fteen-month-old niece,Erica, standing in her crib, smiling up at him. I spoke to her for aminute, Lafferty recalls. I told her, Im not sure what this is all about,but apparently its Gods will that you leave this world; perhaps we cantalk about it later. And then he ended her life with a ten-inch boningknife.

After dispatching Erica, he calmly walked into the kitchen and usedthe same knife to kill the babys mother. Now, seventeen years after com-

mitting these two murders, he insists, very convincingly, that he hasnever felt any regret for the deed, or shame.

Like his older brother, Ron, Dan Lafferty was brought up as a piousMormon. Ive always been interested in God and the Kingdom of God, he says. Its been the center of my focus since I was a youngchild. And he is certain God intended for him to kill Brenda and EricaLafferty: It was like someone had taken me by the hand that day and ledme comfortably through everything that happened. Ron had received arevelation from God that these lives were to be taken. I was the one whowas supposed to do it. And if God wants something to be done, it willbe done. You dont want to offend Him by refusing to do His work.

These murders are shocking for a host of reasons, but no aspect of the crimes is more disturbing than Laffertys complete and determined

absence of remorse. How could an apparently sane, avowedly pious mankill a blameless woman and her baby so viciously, without the baresticker of emotion? Whence did he derive the moral justication? Whatlled him with such certitude? Any attempt to answer such questionsmust plumb those murky sectors of the heart and head that prompt mostof us to believe in Godand compel an impassioned few, predictably, tocarry that irrational belief to its logical end.

There is a dark side to religious devotion that is too often ignored ordenied. As a means of motivating people to be cruel or inhumaneas ameans of inciting evil, to borrow the vocabulary of the devouttheremay be no more potent force than religion. When the subject of reli-giously inspired bloodshed comes up, many Americans immediatelythink of Islamic fundamentalism, which is to be expected in the wake of

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the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. But men havebeen committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankindbegan believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions.Muhammad is not the only prophet whose words have been used to sanc-tion barbarism; history has not lacked for Christians, Jews, Hindus,Sikhs, and even Buddhists who have been motivated by scripture tobutcher innocents. Plenty of these religious extremists have been home-grown, corn-fed Americans.

Faith-based violence was present long before Osama bin Laden, and

it will be with us long after his demise. Religious zealots like bin Laden,David Koresh, Jim Jones, Shoko Asahara, * and Dan Lafferty are commonto every age, just as zealots of other stripes are. In any human endeavor,some fraction of its practitioners will be motivated to pursue that activ-ity with such concentrated focus and unalloyed passion that it will con-sume them utterly. One has to look no further than individuals who feelcompelled to devote their lives to becoming concert pianists, say, orclimbing Mount Everest. For some, the province of the extreme holds anallure thats irresistible. And a certain percentage of such fanatics willinevitably xate on matters of the spirit.

The zealot may be outwardly motivated by the anticipation of agreat reward at the other endwealth, fame, eternal salvationbut thereal recompense is probably the obsession itself. This is no less true for

the religious fanatic than for the fanatical pianist or fanatical mountainclimber. As a result of his (or her) infatuation, existence overows withpurpose. Ambiguity vanishes from the fanatics worldview; a narcissisticsense of self-assurance displaces all doubt. A delicious rage quickens hispulse, fueled by the sins and shortcomings of lesser mortals, who are

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* Asahara is the charismatic Holy Pope and Venerated Master of Aum Shinrikyo, the Japanese sect that carried out a deadly 1995 attack in the Tokyo subways using sarin nervegas. The theological tenets of Aum Shinrikyo (which means Supreme Truth) are drawnfrom Buddhism, Christianity, and Hinduism. At the time of the subway attack, the sectsworldwide membership was estimated to be as high as forty thousand, although it has nowdropped to perhaps one thousand. According to terrorism expert Kyle B. Olson, Asaharasfollowers can still be seen in Aum-owned houses wearing bizarre electric headsets, suppos-edly designed to synchronize their brain waves with the cults leader, who is currently in-carcerated in Japan.


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soiling the world wherever he looks. His perspective narrows until thelast remnants of proportion are shed from his life. Through immodera-tion, he experiences something akin to rapture.

Although the far territory of the extreme can exert an intoxicatingpull on susceptible individuals of all bents, extremism seems to be espe-cially prevalent among those inclined by temperament or upbringingtoward religious pursuits. Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudi-ciousness a crucial component of spiritual devotion. And when religiousfanaticism supplants ratiocination, all bets are suddenly off. Anything

can happen. Absolutely anything. Common sense is no match for thevoice of Godas the actions of Dan Lafferty vividly attest.

It is the aim of this book to cast some light on Lafferty and his ilk.If trying to understand such people is a daunting exercise, it also seemsa useful onefor what it may tell us about the roots of brutality, per-haps, but even more for what might be learned about the nature of faith.

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Under the Banner of Heaven (Excerpt)