Cult leader on death row, Ronald Lafferty, dies

Ronald Lafferty, a Mormon fundamentalist on death row for what he claimed were the divinely inspired murders of his sister-in-law and baby niece in 1984, died of natural causes in prison on Monday. He was 78.

His death was announced by the Utah Department of Corrections, which did not give the specific cause. In a statement, the department said he died at the Utah State Prison in Draper, roughly 20 miles south of Salt Lake City.

The case against Lafferty, who was convicted of two counts of murder, became widely known after it was featured in the 2003 book "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith" by Jon Krakauer.

Therese Michelle Day, a federal public defender representing Lafferty, said his legal team was preparing to appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court at the time of his death. Day said no execution date had been set, but Richard Piatt, a spokesman for the Utah attorney general's office, said his execution most likely would have happened next year.

Lafferty had chosen to die by firing squad, but Day said he had not been mentally fit to stand trial.

"Mr. Lafferty believed his incarceration and conviction were the result of a conspiracy between the state, the church and unseen spiritual forces, including the spirit of the trial judge's deceased father, among others," Day said. "He believed that all of his attorneys were working against him, and that one attorney was his reincarnated sister who later became possessed by an evil spirit."

"A person suffering from this level of mental illness and delusional thinking is not competent to assist his counsel throughout his legal proceedings," she added.

Sean D. Reyes, the attorney general of Utah, said in a statement that the state had "labored for decades to provide justice" for Lafferty's victims.

The events leading to the killings began in 1983, when Lafferty was excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Angered over his excommunication and the collapse of his marriage, Lafferty formed a breakaway polygamous sect with his brothers called the School of the Prophets in 1984. The brothers claimed they received messages from God.

Lafferty said one of those messages told him his ex-wife, who left him and took their six children to Florida, had been the bride of Satan in a previous life.

God told him to kill all four of them, Lafferty said. So on July 24, 1984 - a state holiday that commemorates the arrival of Mormons in the Salt Lake Valley - Lafferty and a group of followers, including his brother Daniel, went to Brenda's house in American Fork, Utah.

They beat her, strangled her with a vacuum cord and slit her throat. Then they slit her baby's throat, court records said.

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