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MURDER OF A PROPHET– THE DARK SIDE OF UTAH POLYGAMY

Main Page of Murder of Prophet  

Also see first chapter of A Teenager's Tears: When Parents Convert to Polygamy  

FIRST CHAPTER

    Marvin surveyed his kneeling family, their heads and shoulders bowed, not saying a word, waiting to see who first would be permitted to rise. The only sounds came from the whimpering of Carolyn's three-month-old baby girl. With her head still bowed, Carolyn unbuttoned her dress, pulled aside the bra and began nursing the baby.
    Marvin Heywood said, "Amen," and slowly rose to his feet while his five wives and thirty-one children remained kneeling, all facing the direction of the sacred Salt Lake Temple. In the Heywood home, morning family prayer was a daily ritual and at the end of each kneeling prayer, no one was permitted to stand without first getting Marvin's permission.
    It was the Sabbath and the wives and children were clothed in their Sunday best which meant their faces were clean and the ankle length, cotton dresses of the girls and long-sleeved shirts of the boys had been washed but not necessarily ironed. Marvin's family survived only a notch above the necessities of life. When they could, the wives worked at odd jobs, mostly housework, otherwise their time was taken up giving birth to children, changing diapers, repairing the family station wagon, and working at keeping their own home. Marvin Heywood was the exception among polygamists rather than the rule.
    The bulk of the Heywood food came from garbage Dumpsters behind grocery stores. Three times a week two wives with three or four of the oldest children gathered behind the local grocery stores and collected discarded vegetables, out-of-date bread, and damaged can goods. But with advanced technology, large supermarket chains enclosed their Dumpsters, which put the Heywood women out of business.
    Out of desperation, Ramona, the eldest wife, approached the produce manager of a new supermarket and asked if he would save his old produce for her goats and pigs. He was a large man with a bulbous nose and stern face. At first he hesitated, but after scrutinizing Ramona's paltry appearance, surrounded by three poorly dressed but well behaved kids, he agreed to place lettuce, apples, bananas, or whatever, in boxes so she could pick them up on Tuesdays and Fridays of each week.
    During her bedtime prayers, Ramona asked God to bless the produce manager. Eventually, she discovered his name was Mac and routinely instructed her children at bedtime, "Don't forget to ask God to bless Mac."
    Last Christmas, she and the children made Mac a large Christmas card out of colored paper and bits of ribbon. The children drew pictures of Christmas trees, snowmen, and goats. They all chipped in with their nickels, dimes, and quarters to buy a $6.99 brown and yellow tie for Mac and they wrapped it in glossy green paper with a red ribbon. When eight-year-old Judy handed Mac the package, he said it was the finest present he had ever received. Judy beamed with delight.
    Then suddenly Mac was transferred to another store far away, too far for Ramona to drive. His replacement told Ramona he didn't have time to save vegetables for goats, and he wasn't in the welfare business.
  
The family had grown dependent upon Mac. More often than not on Tuesdays and Fridays when Ramona and the kids had picked up the precious boxes, they found apples and oranges in perfect condition, every bit as good as the ones on the shelves. Mac acted disinterested and aloof, but she knew he cared and she didn't think for a minute he believed they raised goats because every once in awhile, hidden in the bottom of the boxes, they found bags of candy.
    It had taken much courage to approach Mac. Now Ramona didn't know if she could do it a second time. Mac's replacement sneered at her in disgust. The guilt she felt from his cold stare was more than she could take. Marvin encouraged her to solicit other grocery stores and guaranteed that God would prepare the way by softening the hearts of the produce managers. This was Marvin's way of placing upon Ramona the burden of providing food for the family. If she could not find another Mac, they would have to make do with charity from the other group members and the meager stipend Marvin received from the priesthood. Reprimanding Ramona, he said, "Public welfare is out of the question," his chief fear being found out a polygamist by the government. What he didn't know is that because of their conspicuousness, the government already knew how they lived and was watching and waiting to see if Marvin's wives and children were being neglected or abused. The Division of Child and Family Services remained poised, eager to pounce once a complaint, no matter how trivial, could be substantiated.

Marvin had taught them obedience. They had been taught it was he, by virtue of his priesthood authority, who would supervise their resurrection on judgment day. Without him, they had no celestial exaltation, no opportunity to live with God one day. Therefore, after each kneeling family prayer, in a habit uniquely adopted by Marvin, he methodically determined who should rise first. It was no mere trivial ritual, but a symbolic exercise of judgment and resurrection. Consequently, Marvin carefully weighed the conduct, obedience, and usefulness of each family member before allowing him or her to rise and be "resurrected" each day.
    As he surveyed the backs and elbows of his family, Marvin finger-brushed his bristly, light brown mustache. It was the same color as the little hair remaining around his ears and on the back of his neck. Standing before the mirror he routinely preened and trimmed for an hour three times a week, thinking that he and his mustache were comparable to Errol Flynn, his favorite movie actor. But Marvin in no way physically resembled Errol Flynn, not even with the help of his beloved mustache; it was out of character with his pink, square balding head that matched his fleshy, rectangular torso. He routinely wore brown baggy pants and a loose fitting, unstarched white dress shirt that never looked quite clean. This morning he sported a brown and yellow striped necktie smudged with dried food stains.
    To others, Marvin looked unkept, but because of his brilliant and articulate knowledge of the scriptures, his shabbiness was passed off as eccentricity. Marvin's research of old church doctrines and their application to modern times was unparalleled by any other member of the group. In fact, he was mentor to the serious students of the mysteries of Mormonism and they gathered around him like groupies to attend his study sessions and fireside chats. Marvin, a "man of words," was a self-made scholar who could always ferret out doctrine to justify any prudent contingency. But when it came to physical labor, he made a dramatic ceremony with gasps, groans, and feigned backaches.
    Marvin could see that kneeling Carolyn was uncomfortable nursing her baby. It tempted him to allow her to rise first, but he did not, because he was afraid it would send to the others the wrong message. He was not ready to forgive her of her impertinence and disobedience. The swelling about her eyes had disappeared, but a black and blue mark could still be detected on her cheek bone. A fortnight ago, she had gotten hysterical and slandered him unmercifully until he smacked the side of her head with the butt of his hand. To hit anyone, let alone a woman, insulted his breeding, since Marvin considered himself a humble man of God. It angered him more that she had provoked him into violence than her scolding, unprecedented verbal attack. But her haranguing was more than he could endure. Suddenly, with clenched fists, he flailed with all his might until she lay bleeding and unconscious at his feet. As he towered over her, glaring down with contempt, he almost shouted, "you filthy bitch," but he would not allow himself to stoop to profanity. He told himself she had it coming. After all, he could not stand there idly and allow her to call him a "no good father who refused to work and feed his children." He had tried to explain in his most ingratiating, academic demeanor that if she had sufficient faith, her children would not be hungry, but she kept shouting and tearing at her clothes like a maniac. It was for her own good that he smote her.

And this is what he told Brother Harold, his priesthood head and prophet, who at first was upset, but later agreed. " Keep her inside until the bruises disappear," he reluctantly advised.
    Marvin gazed down at Cynthia, his youngest wife. He had married her when she was sixteen. Since their marriage, she had mothered four lovely children and at age twenty-five still retained her girlish figure, while his other wives had accumulated ugly pounds. Even now, Cynthia, three months pregnant, didn't show. He thought of her as his geisha wife, one who had been raised, trained and prepared to be an affectionate, obedient plural wife. Cynthia gave him much pleasure.
    Marvin desired at least two more wives. After Cynthia, he concluded that young wives, at the age of puberty or soon thereafter, made the best wives. Between fourteen- and sixteen-years old they were suggestible and malleable and had not yet formed false opinions or sexual inhibitions. At that tender age, he formulated in his deluded mind, he could indoctrinate them with the servilities of womanhood and the idiosyncrasies of service to husband and priesthood. He could teach them that copulation is what bonds a woman to her husband. And he recalled, when teaching these things to Cynthia, how virile and potent he felt in her presence, and the feeling of omnipotence that engulfed him. It was as if he were a God, her God, with the power to give life or take life.
    Marvin did not know of the medical books describing pedophilic behavior and that his thoughts and acts were in classic conformance with those perverse aberrations. Nor did he realize that his demented mind produced lewd thoughts and images of children to cover up his great agony of sexual inadequacy experienced around mature, adult women. Naive combatants of child molest reasoned that prostitution would alleviate and defuse the pedophile. But how could a super sex symbol like a prostitute erase that inability to perform? Marvin sensed that adolescent girls could not detect those feelings of inadequacy and therefore he performed without fear of exposure. He knew that what he was doing was wrong, but because his confidence was uplifted and exhilarated while in the pedophilic mode, he rationalized around his sickness and suppressed his guilt.
    Religion and plural marriage provided the means in which to accomplish his erotic departure from the norms. It was not planned, it just worked out that way. Like thousands before him and thousands that would follow, he found opportunity in religion that could be twisted to conform with his distorted desires. So intense were his aberrations that he believed his own delusions, thinking his acts were sanctioned by God. But where Marvin lusted for little girls, others lusted for power and money, and they used religion like a pointed loaded gun to coerce and manipulate the world around them.

Overwhelmed by satisfaction induced by Cynthia and thinking he could triple his erotic pleasure, Marvin approached the fathers of two sweet lasses and informed them that the Lord had made it known to him that their dainty and charming daughters should be his wives, surmising that his exalted apostleship would be flattering enough to induce the fathers to agree. He was deeply disappointed when his virtuous overtures were rejected by the two spirited young ladies. He couldn't understand why they didn't leap at the chance to share in his elite station or why their fathers did not exhort and cajole their compliance. But the fathers left the decision to the girls who said that if and when the Lord revealed to them that they belonged to Marvin Heywood, and only then, maybe they would consider it.
    Piqued and perturbed by their impertinence, he suggested that Harold might command the fathers and the girls in the name of the Lord to acquiesce to his revelation. But Harold defended the free agency of the girls and that ended the matter.
    Marvin blamed the insolence of the two young girls and the younger generation in general on the liberal climate that had been percolating in the group since Harold had opened the doors to new converts fifteen years ago. At that time, the McCallister group had approached Harold offering to merge, suggesting that Harold be the spiritual leader while Bruce McCallister handled the economic pursuits. But Harold rejected that offer. The McCallisters were suspected of inbreeding with cousins and half-sisters, and Harold wanted no part of it.

The McCallister group, a closed ultra-private society, had reached the point where they had no other place to go for wives, but inside their own families. They told themselves that their McCallister blood was noble and pure, so it would be alright to marry within the fifth consanguinity. And so the anomaly was permitted, but only among the hierarchy. The McCallister boys took for wives their nieces, cousins, and half-sisters. Harold rightly predicted that one day they would be scandalized and branded with the indelible iron of incest. And he predicted that soon they too, as a group, would be faced with the same damning perplexities, unless they opened their doors to new converts and welcomed fresh blood.
    So far, the Barnett sect had married each other's daughters and sisters until there was none left without crossing over that taboo line. So when Harold threw open the doors, the new converts brought with them liberal ideas like fashionable clothes, sporty cars, airplanes, and luxury homes. The more affluent frequented nice restaurants, attended movies and theater. A shyster type convert penetrated the Barnett ranks, a breed of businessmen proficient in the scriptures as well as the ways of the world. They were rainbow chasers teeming with schemes and conspiracies designed to separate honest men from their wealth.
    In a matter of a few years, except for the fundamentalist-born who held fast to the old ascetic ways, one could not tell a Barnett polygamist from a gentile or orthodox Mormon. What a shame, Marvin thought, if fundamentalism were still managed like in the past, there would be no insubordination and those two pretty lasses he coveted would be his wives, and very pregnant.
    The Grass Valley group in southwestern Colorado, he mused, had not deviated from the old ways. Their women still favored the fashions of the twenties and thirties, and wore with pride the homespun, outdated ankle-length dresses. Their long hair, neat and clean with frilly bows and conservative combs, imitated the coiffures of the twenties.
    The Grass Valley women, in many ways resembled the modest, Pennsylvania Amish. Marvin found their bland appearance paradoxically appealing because their outward semblance was devoid of sexual intimidation, therefore unthreatening to his masculinity. The homely attire also bore collateral advantages. It discouraged erotic interest from outsiders, detoured waywardness, and tended to unite the women behind the priesthood. Besides, he satirically thought, when you get a woman all soaped up in a bathtub, you can't tell by looking if she is rich or poor, sophisticated or naive, polygamist or monogamist.
    According to Marvin Heywood, the Barnett Group should be more like the Grass Valley people. At Grass Valley, when a maiden matured and was capable of giving birth, she presented herself to the priesthood and was placed by divine inspiration into the family where she belonged. A difference in age between the husband and the wife was of no consequence. Therefore a sixteen-year-old girl married to a fifty-year-old man was not uncommon. In some sects, when a wife was no longer of child bearing age, if the husband could influence the prophet, he took a new younger wife. It was the raising up of a righteous seed that was important, not lust. In essence, the infallible priesthood arranged for all women to unite with righteous men and raise up, in the name of Jesus Christ, a superior race of offspring. The parent's reward would come in the next life where they would rule as kings and queens, priests and priestesses over a subservient, white-skinned nation.

Marvin's melancholy mind went back to the women and children kneeling on the floor. "Cynthia," he said, "you may rise--and your children with you."
    Carolyn and Rachel were among the last left kneeling. Carolyn, because she was still being punished, and Rachel, the third oldest daughter of Luwana his second wife, because he liked the shape of her buttocks. Rachel, who had physically matured early, would soon be sixteen. Marvin paid particular attention to her development. Of all his daughters, she was the most liberal, easily influenced, and his favorite. For some reason he didn't mind her open-mindedness, a puzzling reaction on his part considering that in every other respect he was a staunch conservative. Nor did he require her to dress as modestly as the other girls.
    After everyone was finally standing and the mothers separated to go about their pre-church chores, Marvin approached Rachel who was changing a stinky diaper on a sibling, and said in his fatherly voice, "Rachel, there is something I need to talk to you about, would you please come with me?"
    Rachel closed the bedroom door behind her and stood patiently while her father sat on the bed facing her. She knew the routine. Her long auburn hair, held together with a silver comb, had been piled high on her head, exposing the delicacy of her ears and neck. Her flawless tanned skin allowed dark full eyebrows and pink lips to dominate her pretty face. The nose, turned up pixie-like, give her profile a Scottish richness.
    "How did it go last night?" he asked. "Did you do as I instructed?"
    "Yes, Father," she replied.
    "Did he touch you on the breasts?"
    "Yes."
    "Did he try to put his hands inside your blouse?" She was not offended by his questions; they had discussed beforehand what might happen. This was her third home date with Kevin Crutchfield.
    "Yes, but I made him stop just like you told me," she said with a smile.
    "Good girl, maybe next time we'll let him touch some skin. How did he act?"
    "He started breathing real hard, was real nervous, and I think he almost asked me to marry him." She smiled, pleased with her accomplishments.
    "Good, good," Marvin responded excitedly. "It sounds as if it won't be much longer before he asks me for your hand in marriage. That's when I tell him about the dowry."
    Rachel nervously shuffled her feet. "Father, the dictionary says it's the woman who gives the man a dowry."
    "Not in this case, honey," Marvin answered with a grin over his yellow teeth as he jauntily brushed his Errol Flynn mustache. "If Kevin wants my daughter for a plural wife, he's going to pay a dowry. After a couple more dates he'll want you so bad, he'll think $3000 is a bargain."
    "But, Father, I don't want to marry Kevin, his breath stinks."
    "You won't have to marry him, honey, I know of someone else interested in you who has more money than Kevin. Rachel," Marvin commanded, "take off your blouse and bra so I can see how you are developing."
    "No, please."
    Her opposition always startled him. After all, he was her God and she should not question any of his commands. But Rachel was the exception, the one he allowed to think for herself. She was the adventurous one, who didn't hesitate to accept a dare and seemed to mature socially at the same pace as her body. But she was sickened by his advances and recoiled as he reached with his hand.
    And then he pulled a magazine from under the pillow that had been turned to a photograph of a naked women. He handed the magazine to Rachel, "This is what we hope you will look like when you're eighteen."
    She glanced at the photograph of a young, dreamy-faced brunette lying naked on a bed. After a quick embarrassing look, she handed the magazine back and did her best to feign indifference. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was less than three minutes, he told her she could go back downstairs. As she started to leave, he said, "Tell Cynthia to come here, I want to talk to her.
    A few minutes later Cynthia stepped into the bedroom. "Lock the door," he ordered while peeling off his shirt.

After each noxious episode with her father, Rachel suffered mood changes shifting from abject guilt to a sense of omnipotence over men. When she entered the family room, depression overcame her. Two adolescent girls sat against one wall thumbing through a stack of coloring books. One of the girls held Carolyn's crying baby between her legs, rocking back and forth. Tears ran down his cheeks, mixing with snot from his nose. Three boys played with toy cars in a corner. One of the boys ran his car through a frayed tear in the carpet, pretending it was a gully. The flowered, threadbare carpet hadn't been cleaned for weeks and reeked of urine.
    Two tattered overstuffed sofas and two overstuffed chairs, gifts from friends, were as frazzled as the carpet. Tina, Marvin's fourth wife, sat in one of the sofas, wrestling with a screaming, squirming little boy as she attempted to change his diaper. The rest of the furniture consisted of two rickety wooden chairs, one lay on its side and a kneeling boy used the other as a desk for his coloring book.
    This is how each day goes, Rachel thought to herself, unchanging from dawn to dark--rags, dirty diapers, and urine stench. And this is my future if I stay.
    She had to agree that Brother Harold was a kind, likeable man, but wondered if he had any idea that her father was teaching her how to tantalize and seduce rich men until they ached with a compulsion to bed her, and how he traded her affections for a dowry. She didn't think he knew or would approve, and many times after Marvin had pulled her blouse to one side so he could look down at her chest, she had been tempted to tell Brother Harold. She was certain that Brother Harold would end her father's debauchery, but if she informed on him, it might taint her chances to leave the group. The police and Division of Family Services might be notified, making matters worst, thwarting her chances to escape. She decided she could handle her father.
    Convinced that her body was the ticket out of the group, she promised herself she would defect as soon as she found the right man. When she was ready, she would not run to the LDS Church like so many other fundamentalist traitors. She longed for excitement and adventure. In the meantime, if things got worse, she could always earn money posing like the women in her father's nudity magazines. And then in a temperament of self-deprecation, she pictured herself even further down the road of degradation. "I'll show him. I'll become a prostitute and make great sums of money." And as this thought lingered, she raised her fantasized future up a notch, and vowed not to become a common street harlot, but a fancy, expensive women of the night.
    Disgusted with the dirty dishes piled high in the sink, the perpetual trash heap on the kitchen floor, the moldy food in the fridge and the mice smells, Rachel walked out to the front porch hungering for fresh air.
    The September sun warmed the morning air. She pulled the comb from the auburn swirl and shook her head, glossy hair cascading down around her shoulders. She stood on the wooden platform that served as a porch and admired the neighbor's beautiful manicured yard next door; their garden overflowed with squash, cabbage, and tomatoes in the back yard. During the summer, the Samaritan neighbor unselfishly shared his garden bounty with the Heywoods. Someday--Rachel told herself--I will have a nice home and garden and will spend my mornings talking with the little birds, smelling the bright gold and red flowers, munching on juicy red tomatoes."
    Her reverie was shattered by one of her younger brothers running and laughing and jumping over a pile of rotting lumber in the front yard. Another brother ran in pursuit, shaking a stick in his hand as tears gushed from his eyes. She looked around at her own front yard. There was no grass or flowers, only hard packed dirt and thirsty weeds fed by rainwater. Trash and debris lay everywhere. Two old cars with flat tires rusted away where a flower patch once grew. The neighbors on both sides had built sturdy, six foot fences, not to block her view, but to block their view of the Heywood mess.
    The exhilaration of fresh air and flowers left her. Taking a lock of auburn hair, she wiped away the tiny rivulets running down her cheeks and stepped back into the house.  

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