The land had once been home to the Washakie Indians, and as children, Stephen and his 15 full brothers and sisters played among the wind-swept ruins of a Native American cemetery. Knight was born in Salt Lake City, the sixth child of third-generation polygamists. These days Stephen works on a cattle ranch near the Idaho border, just down the road from where he grew up. Paul married Frances G Chez Kingston. Thanks, it read. She is the fifth of her mothers 12 children. Everyone in the Order knew that she controlled the purse strings for the operation but few were aware that she was sitting on a hidden stash of silver. She also felt a religious call to wed and saw herself as mature enough to undertake such a commitment. The group sought to maintain Pure Kingston Blood by arranging marriages between cousins and other close relatives, and shunning relationships that werent between white people, the lawsuit alleges. They had sped off in a Honda sedan. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Bryan and Mary Nelson of South Jordan were informants for the federal government as they build a criminal case against Washakie Renewable Energy and their owners, Jacob and Isaiah Kingston. When a girl doesnt want to be a polygamist, that information is shared among boys and men in the sect. It begins with the potential groom. But the constant fear has subsided. had some 80 children by 13 wives, but his favorite was Paul, an excellent student who made friends easily. His followers erected a crude stone cross nearby in his honor, covered with inscriptions of the letter K (for Kingdom or Kingston). Short and chubby, the Brown boys looked up to the Knight brothers. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) Jessica Kingston was wed at age 16 in what she says was a marriage she felt pressured into by her parents and others in a polygamous sect. Family photo: Kollene's father, John Daniel Kingston has 14 wives, and she is the fifth of her mother Shirley Hansen's 12 children +9 View gallery Controlling: They got married in March 2009,. The lawsuit includes a copy of whats alleged to be an agreement children had to sign before going to college. At Washakie, he forced clan children to decapitate cows with chain saws to toughen them up, and sometimes beat the children for some infraction of the Orders rules like forgetting to face the Home Place three times a day and pray. Boys are taught that the prophet demands absolute loyalty and that they should be prepared to defend the clan. They were the type of kids you didnt mess with, says Robert Owen, a former member of the clan. The third plaintiff is Michelle Michaels, who the complaint says left the sect in 2017 rather than become a spiritual wife to a cousin who has nine wives. A sheriffs deputy traced the license plate of the Honda to a run-down house in a working-class suburb south of the city. Now, former members say, girls who will be plural wives meaning they have only a spiritual marriage to their husband are left alone until they are 18 so laws about sex with a minor wont apply. Her parents placed her in what she called a repentance home, where she wasnt allowed to communicate with anyone without supervision. The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time 180+ Jonathan Jacob Meijer View Site Google Maps But because they were the sons of the prophet, they got away with it., Stephen vehemently denies that he or his brothers had anything to do with the heist. The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time The father preferred another who had inquired about marrying Jessica. One woman who was married in 2014 at age 16 said she did so for the same reason most people do: She fell in love. There shouldnt really be a reason for an age limit, she said. A body of research suggests the teenage brain is not developed enough to make the kind of long-term decision needed for marriage. The memorial was held in Maxwell Park in Hildale, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015. Stephen moved in with his brother. It was all on me, and, for the most part, thats the case where it is the girls decision whether she wants to get married at that age., She said she knows of a few cases in which the girl was pressured by family or faith leaders to marry, but I can count them all on one hand.. Some former sect members, including two stars of the television show Escaping Polygamy," say girls are pressured to marry at the age most kids are learning to drive and reading Wuthering Heights.. The Tribune also found three marriages in Missouri, where, until a new law raising the marriage age takes effect Aug. 28, 15-year-olds can marry with a parents permission. Paul F Kingston. Kingston succeeded his father John Ortell Kingston as the leader of the Kingston Clan on his father's death in 1987. Stephen hangs up and drives home in silence. Log In Once logged in, you can add biography in the database. Women and girls, after theyre married, submit to their husbands and men answer to higher-ranked men, the suit alleges. Paul Elden Kingston (1959- ): Known as the "Watchman on the Wall" who claims to hear from God regularly, Paul is the son of John Ortell. In the months after the robbery, Stephen couldnt shake the feeling he was being watched. In its place, someone had left a note. 1 choice was not her fathers. Jessica Kingston said a girls devotion and attitude are often measured by her view of polygamy. Paul E. Kingston, considered the top man, signed as a witness for four of the marriages that The Tribune found outside Utah. (Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Salt Lake Community College Redwood Road campus is pictured Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019. presided, while Richauns father officiated the wedding, promising the bride that if she obeyed her husband, she would be guaranteed a spot in the Celestial Kingdom, the highest level of heaven. Paul, a grandson of the group's founder, has 27 wives and more than 300 children, Mary said. Girls, many of them teen brides, answer phones at the Orders law office, bag groceries at its supermarket or tend to the clans many children. Their grooms averaged 20 years and 18 days. At a minimum, the statement said, two employees review every student file flagged for verification to ensure quality assurance in our processes.. Earlier in its history, the Kingston Group had plural wives under age 18. Those cousins and two others have since pleaded guilty to crimes that include fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and witness tampering in a plot to pocket federal energy tax credits. A few days later, the groom-to-be picked up Jessica and took her to Murray Park. But within the Order, where drinking soda pop was against the rules, it was a pretty big deal.. After the chest of gold was stolen, suspicion among the clans leadership immediately fell on a group of rebellious teenagers who had left the cult a few years before. Alex's wife and son, Maggie and Paul, were shot to death at their home in 2021, and Alex is currently on trial for their murders.. You had to be, like, a son of the prophet to know where it was.. Some former teenage Kingston Group brides acknowledge they werent forced to marry; they made a choice. The two boys pulled into the driveway and shifted the green Honda into park. Jessica is hardly the only girl to make such a choice. In 2006 it was estimated that Paul Kingston had up to 40 wives (including two half-sisters of his), some of whom have up . Older teenagers were crammed five and six to a room, sleeping on the floors of trailers. Mysterious cars followed his girlfriend, and he once came home to find that someone had rifled through his drawers. Paul Kingston, the top man within the Davis County Cooperative Society, also known as the Kingston Group or The Order, is accused of overseeing what the lawsuit calls a scheme. A recent estimate is that he has 34 wives and more than 500 children, as several of his wives have had as many as 16 children each! Nor are youths from polygamous sects the only teens who marry in Utah. The marriages, former followers say, can be used as a tool to keep girls in the Kingston Group, known among younger members as The Order. For their part, the brides sometimes see legal marriages as a way to avoid becoming polygamists later (and consequently being matched with a husband perhaps twice their age) or a means to escape their parents crowded households. But lots of people in the sect are already descended from that family, Hansen said; thats why there are so many cousin marriages in the Kingston Group. It was just the best choice, some say, among their bad options. Not every Kingston Group follower marries as a juvenile. I honestly didnt even know there was any gold until they accused me of taking it, he says. Girls are told they will need to pray to God so he might show them who their No. To hide the scope of his organization, J.O. When one of his favorite wives died, he missed her so much that he dug her up from her grave. Those families have intermarried to the extent that half brothers and sisters are now marrying one another, as well as uncles. It would be several more years before Stephen learned that Paul Kingston was his father, and that his mother was just one of his dads many wives. John Daniel Kingston, who according to court testimony once had 14 wives, was on hand in 2011, when his sons held an open house at the Washakie production plant in Plymouth near Interstate 15 and . Marriage preparation can accelerate at puberty. Many of these men are also given stewardship of the Orders business holdings sent out to run the clans coal mine or ranches, or to oversee one of its many storefronts. Regardless, all those applying should do so legally.. That includes the fraud within Washakie Renewable Energy as well as what the plaintiffs allege was a separate scheme by sect members to bilk a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide free lunches to child and adult day cares. When he had finished, he walked toward Stephen, who was sitting on the tractor. [9], He is believed to have practiced polygamy in the past, potentially accruing as many as 40 wives and fathering up to 300 Children. The Kingston Group is not affiliated withthe Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) based on the Utah-Arizona line that is run by imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs, who is serving a life sentence in Texas for sexually assaulting girls he considered brides. Child trafficking is the illegal movement of children, typically for the purposes of forced labor or sexual exploitation (Erase Child Trafficking). Mark Shurtleff, the Utah attorney general, has spent years investigating the clan, gathering birth certificates and genealogical data, and has come to believe that the cult is guilty of a long list of crimes, including child labor, tax evasion, welfare fraud, polygamy and the sanctioning of underage marriages to blood relatives. They had 4 children: John Hozlette Kingston and 3 other children. We were off on our own out there and really close, Stephen says. View Site They had eight children whose baptisms are recorded in the same church. He told the children they would all be applying for financial aid, enrolling at SLCC and majoring in business administration, the lawsuit cites Mafi as saying. He became particularly obsessed with a plant called comfrey, which he believed would protect his clan from the nuclear war that would usher in the apocalypse. By 18 she was pregnant with her first child and ended up having four children in four years. They also knew that much of the clans wealth was stashed inside the unassuming suburban house on the corner. Only the inner circle knew the hoard even existed, says Christian Kingston, a former Order member. The statement also said that of the Kingston Group individuals who married under age 18 in the past 20 years, 95.1 percent remain married, 94.2 percent have earned a high school degree, and a third, most of them women, have graduated from a public college or university.