The Colony

March 14, 2022
This intriguing portrait of fundamentalist Mormons in Mexico focuses on the 2019 massacre of three women and six children traveling by caravan on a desolate stretch of road between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua. Investigative journalist Denton (American Massacre), who is a descendant of polygamist Mormons, describes the military-style attack in stark detail and shares evidence from the resulting investigation pointing to a local drug cartel. But the focus is on the history of the LeBaron family, from its 19th-century split with the Mormon church in Salt Lake City and establishment of Colonia LeBaron in northern Mexico, to the brotherly feud that gripped the clan from the 1970s into the 1990s, resulting in dozens of “blood atonement” murders meant to “provide the victim with eternal salvation when his or her blood was spilled into the earth,” and the family’s recent efforts to stop cartel-organized kidnappings in the region. The LeBarons, owners of pecan farms and other resource-heavy enterprises, also engaged in long-standing water rights disputes with their neighbors. Drawing on interviews with former “sister wives,” Denton brings nuance and sensitivity to her discussion of the LeBarons’ polygamist practices and the status of women in the community. The result is a fascinating tale of religion, violence, and family secrets.

April 1, 2022

Investigative journalist Denton (The Bluegrass Conspiracy) probes the 2019 massacre of nine women and children as part of a larger study of fundamentalist Mormon sects in Mexico. Dual US-Mexican citizens, the victims of the presumed drug cartel ambush were members of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that practices polygamy--more than a century after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints abolished the practice. Denton ventures back to the establishment of the Mormon church in the 1830s, its bitter internecine conflicts over polygamy and heirship, and the emergence of breakaway sects that emigrated to Mexico. Denton pays closest attention to the troubled LeBaron family, whose cross-border blood feud had claimed dozens of lives in the 1970s. By 2019, Colonia LeBaron had been gobbling up precious Mexican water and land for years, outraging the settlement's poorer Mexican neighbors. Leaders also allegedly consorted with NXIVM, a U.S. cult whose founder was convicted of sex trafficking in 2019. As Denton reveals, the massacre's circumstances are much thornier than official accounts suggest. VERDICT Riveting, insightful, ripped from the headlines, this should appeal to fans of true crime and of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven.--Michael Rodriguez

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May 1, 2022
When investigative journalist and author Denton (The Profiteers, 2016) heard about the horrific massacre of nine Mormon women and children in Mexico in November 2019, she knew the topic of her next book; the world was shocked by the brutal murders of innocents. No stranger to uncovering intrigues and distantly related to the principals in this account, Denton tackles drug cartels, convoluted governments, and a dizzying array of family entanglements, beginning with an unflinching examination of LDS history from its inception by Joseph Smith through its migration westward to Utah and the defection of fundamentalist members to Chihuahua, Mexico, when the official church leadership rejected the practices of polygamy and blood atonement. In Colonia Le Bar�n, deadly family rivalries splintered the groups even further, as the Americans alienated their Mexican neighbors by growing lucrative crops, encroaching on community land, and obtaining questionable water rights, while ostensibly coexisting among criminals who jockeyed to fill the vacuum left by El Chapo's imprisonment. Reminiscent of Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, this is exhaustively researched and riveting.

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Starred review from April 15, 2022
A multifaceted exploration of the Mormon communities that moved to Mexico to escape persecution in the 1880s and their increasingly bizarre connections to contemporary Mexican drug cartels. Denton, the author of The Bluegrass Conspiracy and other acclaimed books, employs the 2019 murder of several young wives and mothers from the sister Mormon communities of La Mora and LeBaron as a point of departure to examine the tumultuous history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. and along the border. (The author mostly uses the term Mormon throughout the text.) While driving in a caravan along an empty stretch of highway between the states of Sonora and Chihuahua, the young mothers were ambushed by members of rival cartels, executed, and burned in their cars. Clearly, they were targeted because they belonged to Mormon fundamentalist breakaway communities in northern Mexico, many of which consisted of wealthy, landowning families in a very poor region, and there had been animosity over excessive water use for their prosperous farms. But this is more than a modern true-crime story, as Denton reaches back into the history of Mormonism and finds a deep well of violence, including the Cain-and-Abel rivalry and "blood atonement" murders involving Joel and Ervil LeBaron from the 1970s to the 1990s and the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1847, when a Mormon militant group murdered a traveling party of 140 innocent immigrants and then tried to cover it up, "the worst butchery of white people by other whites in the entire colonization of America." The author examines the messianic beginnings of Mormonism with Joseph Smith in the 1830s followed by Brigham Young and later highly flawed leaders, many suffering mental illnesses. Denton also dissects other elements of the Mormon practice, including legacies of male superiority, female servitude, and forced polygamy. Thorough research and balanced reporting combine in a riveting investigation.

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