Free Republic

Federal agents have arrested Utah oil magnate James Lael Jensen, his wife Kelly Anne Jensen, and two of their sons, Maxwell Sterling Jensen (aka “Max”) and Zachary Golden Jensen, in connection with a sprawling $300 MILLION smuggling and money laundering conspiracy tied to Mexican criminal organizations. Court records reveal that all four members of the Jensen family were arrested on Wednesday, April 23 — with sons Max and Zachary taken into custody in the Rio Grande Valley, while James and Kelly Jensen were apprehended at their 26,893-square-foot mansion in Sandy, Utah, reportedly worth over $9.1 million. The arrest was carried...

Lori Vallow Daybell, who is serving three life sentences for murdering her children and conspiring to kill her husband's former wife, is on trial again, this time in Arizona. Prosecutors accuse Vallow Daybell of conspiring with her late brother, Alex Cox, to murder her husband, Charles Vallow, in 2019 to benefit from a $1 million life insurance policy and marry another man, Chad Daybell. Vallow Daybell has pleaded not guilty. The trial is being livestreamed online after Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Justin Beresky granted a media request for courtroom coverage. Proceedings are set to resume each day at 10:30...

Netflix series American Primeval has come under fire from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-say Saints (LDS), which has branded the show "dangerously misleading." The Mormon church responded to the series in a release on Friday, calling it "dangerously misleading" and the portrayal of Young "egregiously mischaracterized." "A recently released streaming series presents a fictionalized interpretation of events in mid-19th century Utah. While historical fiction can be illuminating, this drama is dangerously misleading," the church wrote. "Brigham Young, a revered prophet and courageous pioneer, is, by any historical standard, egregiously mischaracterized as a villainous, violent fanatic. Other individuals and...

Small, child-like fingers had been spotted poking out of an enclosed wooden trailer being towed in Arizona. When police pulled over the driver, they found three girls aged between 11 and 14 hidden in the back amid squalid conditions. There was no ventilation, and pictures released by the Coconino County Superior Court later revealed a toilet in the corner made of a bucket, trash bag and plastic seat. There was also a dingy brown couch, camping chairs, stroller and other junk crammed inside. The driver was Samuel Bateman - a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day...

(RNS) — Kellianne Clarke doesn’t really have time for an interview. An active member of her Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation in Chester County, Pennsylvania, she spoke to RNS earlier this month while preparing a lesson she planned to lead for her church’s women’s group the following Sunday. A mother of four with a master’s in strategic communication who regularly serves on various nonprofit boards, Clarke also helps lead the local chapter of the Relief Society, the LDS church’s national women’s group. All that, along with her long history with the church, means she is in constant...

The Mormon Church — officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) — is quietly welcoming thousands of migrants sent to Utah from overcrowded Denver, Colorado, despite public protests by state and local elected officials. Utah has suffered under the arrival of thousands of cast-off border crossers sent its way by officials in Denver, but even as the state has no resources for migrants, the Mormon Church is quietly welcoming them, causing the public burden to magnify. Republican Gov. Spencer Cox voiced his outrage in June after he said he just “learned” that Denver had been sending thousands...

A fascinating documentary has lifted the lid on life inside a fundamentalist Mormon community where families still practice 'plural marriage' - but insist they're nothing like the horrific FLDS cult founded by Warren Jeffs. Peter Santenello, 45, a popular YouTuber who is based in the US, recently spoke to a group of people who are part of what's known as the Righteous Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - and they spilled on everything from why the believe in polygamy to how the women combat 'jealousy' over their husbands spending time with his other wives....

Matthew Gooden had not been born when his father, Shawn, began sexually assaulting two young relatives, aged eight and nine. Matthew spent the first twenty years of his life blissfully unaware of the harrowing truth, leading what he thought was a normal upbringing in the Mormon church, in which his father had risen to the rank of bishop. It was not until Gooden's arrest in September 2022 that he was exposed as the monster he was. But to his son's horror, it transpired that church leaders had known of the abuse allegations almost two years earlier, but 'kept it secret'...

A woman who claims she was sexually abused by her bishop father and was paid $300k by the Mormon church is now speaking out to keep others safe. Chelsea Goodrich said when she was a child her father, John Goodrich, a former bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly referred to as the Mormon church, had routinely abused her. She says he climbed into her bed in a state of arousal on multiple occasions during her childhood. She told Mormon church leaders and now says they paid her $300,000 to settle potential claims and to delete...

Peter Jennings, the late anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight, once remarked the following as host of a television investigation of unidentified flying objects: “We have a lot of skeptics—I am very skeptical—but we seriously investigated something a lot of people are serious about,” he said. “And when we come to the end, this is wonderfully interesting. “More than 80 million Americans believe intelligent beings from somewhere else have come here,” he said. “Forty million believe they have seen UFOs, so this is of deep interest to people.” Jennings said further in exploring the wide span of those interviewed who...

A few months before her 18th birthday, Katie Wallace hatched a plan to overdose on heroin. She and a male friend who had her hooked on the drug would do it together, ending years of misery to which the 17-year-old saw no way out. It was not the path the Mormon church, in which Katie had been raised, had ordained for her. But it was one that she holds the religion responsible for, after church leaders allegedly covered up years of rampant sexual abuse and incest within her family. For Katie, now 39, it began when she was four. Unbeknown...

Mormon families who tried to expose cases of sexual abuse within their communities have alleged they were 'silenced' and threatened with disciplinary action by church leaders, DailyMail.com can reveal. In one instance, two Idaho members claim they were warned they could be punished after the pair alerted others in their congregation to the fact that their former bishop faced child sex abuse charges dating back 10 years. In another case in Minnesota, a church member and social worker claims he was stripped of his positions within the church after he spoke out about a registered sex offender who had been...

In a world where boundaries and definitions are stretched to unrecognizable limits, a congregation of ex-Mormons has outdone itself in an unprecedented display of spiritual anarchy. Stepping far away from previously blasphemous Mormon roots, they’ve founded a “church” where their sacrament is not the bread and wine symbolizing Christ’s sacrifice, but psychedelic mushrooms. Yes, you read that correctly. They call themselves the “Divine Assembly,” trading in pews and hymnals for bean bags and trip guides. These spiritual “adventurers” claim they are communing directly with the divine while they’re tripping, but the only thing they are communing with is the surreal...

‘The Chosen’ Director Dallas Jenkins doesn’t understand the gospel or Christianity, and this is no more apparent than his continued efforts to insist Mormons are Christians who love Jesus. We’ve written about Jenkins in the past, with our post ‘Dallas Jenkins Says Mormons are Saved: ‘I’m Going to Die on That Hill,’ the time Dallas Jenkins Doubles Down on Controversial Mormon Comments, Straight up Lies the Dallas Jenkins Affirms Mormons are Christians in ‘Definitive, Final’ Video‘ and ‘The Chosen’ Director Says Jesus Transfiguration Not Important: ‘What Purpose Would it Serve our Story?‘ Case in point, in a recent Facebook post,...

Former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints believe their children have been abducted by the Mormon group in a twisted way to fulfill a prophecy of its disgraced leader. Four mothers, Lorraine Jessop, Miranda Johnson, Elizabeth Roundy and Sarah Johnson, believe their eight missing children did not run away, as court records suggest, but are, in fact, being concealed by their former church. The FLDS is a polygamist offshoot of Mormonism best known for its prophet Warren Jeffs, who is currently serving life in prison for sexually assaulting girls as young as 12. Jeffs remains...

When I opened up my newsfeed this morning, I almost immediately spotted a headline from the AP that made me wonder if I was still asleep and experiencing some sort of dystopian dream from an alternate reality. The title was, “China finds an unlikely friend in Utah.” Huh? At first, I assumed that this was yet another story of the Chinese buying up land in rural portions of the United States, such as they’ve done in North Dakota and Oklahoma. But while there may be some of that happening, what China really seems to be buying in Utah is influence....

Blackstone Group Inc BX.N said on Wednesday it agreed to acquire genealogy provider Ancestry.com Inc from private equity rivals for $4.7 billion, including debt, placing a big bet on family-tree chasing as well as personalized medicine. Ancestry.com is the world’s largest provider of DNA services, allowing customers to trace their genealogy and identify genetic health risks with tests sent to their home. Blackstone is hoping that more consumers staying at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic will turn to Ancestry.com for its services. “We believe Ancestry has significant runway for further growth as people of all ages and backgrounds become increasingly...

The current size of Ensign Peak’s holdings remains a tightly held secret. The firm, based in Salt Lake City, was incorporated in 1997. Under SEC rules, it must disclose some types of investments, like U.S.-listed stocks, that it manages directly, which amounted to roughly $40 billion on Sept. 30. The remainder of the portfolio is made up of investments such as fixed-income securities, private companies or funds. Ensign Peak had an estimated $100 billion of holdings in 2019.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The leader of a small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents show. Samuel Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left to start his own small offshoot group. He was supported financially by male followers who also gave up their own wives and children to be Bateman’s wives, according to an FBI affidavit.

Mormon Church calls radical same-sex ‘marriage’ bill the ‘best way forward’While the church said its doctrine on marriage ‘is well known and will remain unchanged,’ it believes the radical so-called Respect for Marriage Act ‘is the best way forward.’SALT LAKE CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, long seen as a bulwark for conservative family values, sent out shockwaves Tuesday when it gave its support for radical legislation currently before Congress that would enshrine gay “marriage” into federal law. The affirmation comes despite the church’s previous moves to fight LGBT infiltration in the culture.The LDS made...