The Mormons slaughtered about 140 people in 1857 including several of my cousins. Now a TV show tells the truth about modern Mormonism

 I deal this "blood atonement" in RACIAL RECKONINGS, two chapters. These were the hardest chapters to writer because I identified with the partial families back in northern Arkansas and because I was so outraged by the hapless American presidents and the success of Mormon coverups.

 Stenhouse in the Rocky Mountain Saints (1873) describes a loving punishment for an adulterous woman. Her husband explained that “she could not reach the circle of the gods and goddesses unless her blood was shed.” She “seated herself upon her husband’s knee, and after the warmest and most endearing embrace she had ever known . . . with his own right hand he calmly cut her throat and sent her spirit to the keeping of the gods.” Stenhouse was acquainted with that particular “kind and loving husband,” who after sending his wife to the circle of the gods and goddesses still preached “occasionally with great zeal,” and seemed “happy enough.” This sort of blood atonement was just not the method Vermonters, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, Georgians, or Tennesseans thought first of when they made threats to kill. For Brigham Young’s frugal followers, shoot if you had to subdue someone in the back, running away from your lawful arrest, but otherwise the rule was slit a throat, save a bullet.

I told the truth as close as I could but worried that readers might think I was prejudiced. No, the truth is hard to find. As I say in one of the chapters, what is on the Internet, even Wikipedia, is often doctored, slanted, or outright false. This is from a news article today about Under the Banner of Heaven:

Exhibit A: Brenda Lafferty (played in the series by Daisy Edgar-Jones), a church member who in 1984 had her throat cut, along with that of her 15-month-old daughter, Erica, by a 10-inch boning knife. The killers eventually were revealed to be two of Brenda’s brothers-in-law, fundamentalists who said they were carrying out God’s will — an act of so-called blood atonement for being what the brothers deemed “children of perdition.” As the man who wielded the knife told Krakauer, with no visible remorse, “You don’t want to offend Him by refusing to do His work.”

should!” Stenhouse in the Rocky Mountain Saints (1873) describes a loving punishment for an adulterous woman. Her husband explained that “she could not reach the circle of the gods and goddesses unless her blood was shed.” She “seated herself upon her husband’s knee, and after the warmest and most endearing embrace she had ever known . . . with his own right hand he calmly cut her throat and sent her spirit to the keeping of the gods.” Stenhouse was acquainted with that particular “kind and living husband,” who after sending his wife to the circle of the gods and goddesses still preached “occasionally with great zeal,” and seemed “happy enough.” This sort of blood atonement was just not tshould!” Stenhouse in the Rocky Mountain Saints (1873) describes a loving punishment for an adulterous woman. Her husband explained that “she could not reach the circle of the gods and goddesses unless her blood was shed.” She “seated herself upon her husband’s knee, and after the warmest and most endearing embrace she had ever known . . . with his own right hand he calmly cut her throat and sent her spirit to the keeping of the gods.” Stenhouse was acquainted with that particular “kind and living husband,” who after sending his wife to the circle of the gods and goddesses still preached “occasionally with great zeal,” and seemed “happy enough.” This sort of blood atonement was just not the method Vermonters, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, Georgians, or Tennesseans thought first of when they made threats to kill. For Brigham Young’s frugal followers, shoot if you had to subdue someone in the back, running away from your lawful arrest, but otherwise the rule was slit a throat, save a bullet.he method Vermonters, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, Georgians, or Tennesseans thought first of when they made threats to kill. For Brigham Young’s frugal followers, shoot if you had to subdue someone in the back, running away from your lawful arrest, but otherwise the rule was slit a throat, save a bullet.

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