Posted on 07/08/2009 7:26:17 AM PDT by SwinneySwitch
MEXICO CITY — A top member of a breakaway Mormon sect was dragged from his home by marauders and killed early Tuesday in a village founded and named for the American families that settled the remote community in the northern Mexican desert.
Benjamin LeBaron, 31, and Luis Widmar, 29, a brother-in-law who tried to help him, were grabbed by at least 15 commandos shortly after midnight in Colonia LeBaron, which is about 200 miles southeast of El Paso, witnesses said.
The bodies of the men, both naturalized U.S. citizens with five children each, were found nearby shortly afterward, each shot several times in the head, Brent LeBaron, a cousin of Benjamin who lives in the village, said by telephone.
Benjamin LeBaron had led successful protests earlier this year to free his kidnapped brother and demand police protection for their isolated rural community.
“We are fighting a cause that should be heard throughout the world,” said Brent LeBaron, who was helping build the slain men’s coffins Tuesday and prepare for their burials.
“We have two martyrs on our hands, two men who are completely innocent taken out of their houses and killed.
“We don’t know what to do,” he said. “We can’t bear arms. We have no way of legally protecting ourselves.”
Attacked cousin’s house
The attackers struck his cousin’s house as the family slept trying to knock down the front door and smashing its windows, Brent LeBaron said. A panicked Benjamin LeBaron phoned two brothers-in-law for help.
But after the attackers threatened to throw a grenade into the house, LeBaron opened the door.
The gangsters beat Le-Baron and one threatened to rape his wife in front of their children before carrying their victims away, Brent LeBaron said.
As the commandos left they fired assault rifles at the second brother-in-law, who....
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
> “We can’t bear arms. We have no way of legally protecting ourselves.”
The money quote.
I was wondering the same thing.
Not my problem!!!
No more calls, we have a winner!
“We don’t know what to do,” he said. “We can’t bear arms. We have no way of legally protecting ourselves.”
There’s a lesson here, folks.
I am trying to figure out why anyone would go to Mexico....
Open land and nobody to hassle you about being married to several of your 13 year old cousins, maybe?
Why would anyone live in a country that has no rule of law ?
If guns are illegal in Mexico, how come the bad guys have them? Don't they know it's illegal to have guns, kidnap for ransom and kill people?
/sarc
The Mennonites are in Chihuahua, the Mormon nutcase polygamists in Sonora. The Mennonites are productive Mexican citizens who make the best cheese in the world. The “Mormons” are not and do not. Every once in a while they make incursions into the U.S. to murder their enemies.
The answer should be clear to them, the culprits aren’t legal either and the Mexican gov’t doesn’t care. Arm yourselves and go hunting.
Yup.
Same here. The only way we go to Mexico is on a Cruise Ship
For a few days. And I keep that ship in sight at all tines.
Coming soon to your hometown, kiddies. Just keep on voting for ‘Rats and libs.
I was just pointing out the sun story, I could care less about either group!!
so what is the local grudge about down there?
“We can’t bear arms. We have no way of legally protecting ourselves.”
The money quote.”
Indeed! Mexico needs the 2nd amendment.
yes - not only polygamists, but the LeBaron clan is essentially a crime family so noxious and violent that they had to relocate from Utah and Arizona to Mexico. Read Jon Krakauer's book "Under the Banner of Heaven" for more info on this clan.
Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
Why would anyone live in a country that has no rule of law ?
The LeBarons have a long history with "the law".
The more than Mormon Murders — Chihuahua
The town, and the founding family — have a history in Mexico that doesn’t start until 1924, but which suggests this could be much, much more complex than just another good gun v. bad guy scenario.
The community was founded in 1924 by “apostate” Mormon Alma Dayer LeBaron, who supposedly fled Utah with a lynch mob and federal marshals on his trail. Although technically against the law, polygamous communes were tolerated in Chihuahua (often under the protection of Pancho Villa) and one more wouldn’t have upset anyone. Alma, and the LeBaron community were excommunicated by the “official” Mormon Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints) in 1944, the community officially joining the Apostolic United Brethren — a break-away Mexican based Mormon church … the “mainstream polygamous” branch of Mormonism.
When Alma died in 1951, leadership in the community passed to his son, Joel. Joel left the Apostolic United Brethern to found his own church, the “Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times”. At least some of the LeBarons, including second in command, Joel’s younger brother Ervil, later moved to Baja California. Ervil moved to San Diego, California to start a second church.
And, then it gets very, very weird. As Time Magazine reported 29 August 1977:
Ervil LeBaron, 52, polygamous (13 wives, at least 25 children) leader of the tiny Church of the Lamb of God, is the target of investigations by police departments from San Diego and Los Angeles to Salt Lake City and Denver. Even the Secret Service is interested in his whereabouts, since some of his followers sent a threatening letter to the then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter in September 1976. LeBaron’s alleged crime: inducing several of his 40-odd disciples, including a number of women, to murder between 13 and 20 people who failed to abide by what he decreed to be the “constitutional law of the Kingdom of God.”
In 1974, after murdering his brother Joel, Ervil and his followers burned down the Baja California community. He later murdered the head of the Apostolic United Brethren before moving on to the United States, where he and his gang (mostly his wives and numerous children) were indicted for five murders in Houson.
Eventually caught in Mexico, Ervil and his son, William, were sentenced to life without parole in federal prison. The F.B.I. is offering a $20,000 reward for the capture of another child, Jacqueline, who was last seen in Honduras in 2007. William has a jailhouse conversion to Christianity, and his on-line testimonial includes the family history.
Given the isolated geography of northern Chihuahua (meaning you’ll have some inbreeding) and the polygamous history of the Le Baron family, it’s impossible to work out the exact relationship of the various LeBarons and it would be unfair to assume all LeBarons are as crazy as Joel and Ervil. Probably the only reporter in either Mexico or the United States who could keep it straight would be Brooke Adams of the Salt Lake City Tribune, whose “The Plural Life” follows, among others, “The LeBaron Group”.
One thing William LeBaron mentions in his testimonial is the family’s various businesses in Houston, Denver and elsewhere, which employ family members and — he implies — are meant to provide a rationale for U.S. citizenship for the family members. I did find two different LeBarons on myspace.com, both claiming to live in the Chihuahua community, but residing in the United States. One, a 19 year old man, was looking forward to returning home to find a girl.
Le Barón — the community — also made the news last year when the state of Texas investigated the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints for child abuse charges (which turned out to be unfounded) and several members of the sect considered moving to Mexico to escape persecution. Alfredo Corchado, of the Dallas Morning News, found that only some of the community practiced polygamy (and modified the practice to fit the letter of the Mexican legal code) and seemed reluctant to admit troublesome outsiders. “‘The last thing we need here are a bunch of outlaws,’ said Lillian Tucker, 40, a mother of 18 who practices polygamy…”
The note left on Benjamin LeBaron’s body read “You can see the LeBarons are not untouchable.” Was the kidnapping only about a wealthy odd community, or directed specifically at the LeBaron family. Could this have been another turn in the LeBaron family’s bloody religious war? Why was the federal government involved, and so quick to use Benjamin LeBaron as a poster-child for anti-crime activity? And were the alleged kidnappers the whole story? If 25 were arrested, who were the six who attacked Benjamin LeBaron and Luis Widmer? That’s an awful lot of people for an area where a village like Le Barón (pop. about 1500) is the biggest community in the region.
The question in Chihuahua is whether the “bunch of outlaws” were outsiders or not.
Odd that in Mexico, where gun ownership is tightly controlled, that ‘thugs’ are able to obtain grenades.
“Odd that in Mexico, where gun ownership is tightly controlled, that ‘thugs’ are able to obtain grenades.”
Drug money can buy pretty much anything.
Benjamin's younger brother, Eric was kidnapped about a month ago and held for $1 million ransom. He was returned.
The article in Deseret News says the note found with the bodies said, “Are you afraid of us now?
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705315407/Brother-of-kidnap-victim-killed-in-Mexico.html
Also Meredith Romney was kidnapped last month and held for $1 million, but apparently that was paid and he was returned.
I wonder why the west coast cartels are suddenly taking an interest in this particular group? Whatever it is, Brooke Adams would probably be the last to know, she hasn't even mentioned it on her blog. Additionally, if you read 'His Favorite Wife' and 'Shattered Dreams' by two former wives of Verlan LeBaron, both state there were plenty of guns on Colonia LeBaron.
Lots of polygamist Mormons including Mitt Romney's grandfather settled in northern Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries after the Mormon church renounced polygamy. Utah was required to abolish polygamy as a prerequisite for statehood.
It's them damned PROTESTANTS again!!
Killing and lynching poor Mormons!!
I do not know why the SMALL groups are called 'breakaway'.
It's the LARGE group, outta SLC, that refuses to follow their own SCRIPTURE - in D&C 132.
Psst...
Wanna buy a
Government
Mandated
Car?
The LeBarons have been there for generations.
Even Romney's family not very far up the line has members born in Mexico.
What happened in the late 19th century is that the Lds church opened up a polygamy front in Mexico...it allowed a man to take an umpteenth bride there to have their marriage solemnized -- and combine with a honeymoon of sorts. That especially was accelerated...
...in the 1880s when fed marshals were after polygamists --
--and then in the 1890s and early 1900s - when the Lds church secretly solemnized another couple hundred plus plural unions...as they had agreed in 1890 to no longer do so...hence, they were trying to keep it under wraps by performing these in Mexico.
Hence, this was a "base of operations" for the Mormon polygamy industry.
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