Robert Leroy Parker was born in 1866 in Beaver Utah. His parents came from England with other Saints. While there is no official record that Robert was ever baptized, both his parents were members, so in all likelihood he was baptized. He later changed his name to Butch Cassidy, and took up work not usually associated with being a good Mormon.
Past bad Mormons [1] include Ted Bundy (prolific serial killer); Mark Hoffman (accomplished forger and murderer); Mark Hacking (wife killer) Brian David Mitchell (rapist and kidnapper), and Warren Jeffs (prolific child molester)
To this infamous list we now add Chad and Lori Daybell. While no charges have been filed with respect to the actual killing of the kids (coming this week I would suppose), the Rexburg police have officially released the identities of the two bodies found on their property as the two missing kids.
While the identity of “Mormon” with several of the names above may be incidental, it is still jarring to think “one of our own” could do something so horrible. But, there are bad people of all religions, and I can’t seem to find any study that shows the Mormon faith has any more or less crazies that any other faith.
Mormon’s have such a good reputation in popular society of being hard working, law abiding citizens, that when one does go bad, the news will almost always add that they were a “Sunday school teacher in the Mormon church” or some such reference. When was the last time you saw that with a Baptist, Lutheran or Catholic?
What about when the teachings of the Mormon church can be tied to the hideous crimes these people have been convicted of (or accused in the Daybell case)? I doubt there is any link between Butch Cassidy’s criminal life and his Mormon upbringing, unless we find a long lost diary of his where he waxes poetically about Orrin Porter Rockwell.
The link between the crimes of Mitchel, Jeffs and (alleged) Daybells is much more easy to make. While none of what they did is taught or condoned by any sect of the Mormon legacy, the roots to their craziness can be traced to teachings of the original church. The case could be made for the Daybells that they could have been members of any evangelical end times type church and come up with the same ideas, it just happened they they got them from the Mormon church.
What do you think? Does the Mormon church get called out unfairly for the bad deeds of its members? What past (or current) teaching are ripe to be misinterpreted and lead to criminal activity?
[1] Mormon church is used as any church that traces it origins to Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. All the names but one in this post were members of the LDS (Brighamites), Jeffs being a member of a breakaway sect.
Wheat & Tares 
I have noticed that Mormons seem to have their religion mentioned as a bid deal when they commit a crime. For example, a famous airplane hijacker, whose name I forget but I remember how the news had never once mentioned the religion of any other hijacker, but they were all over the fact that this guy was a Mormon Sunday school teacher. It was the biggest part of the story, and was so sensationalized that people were saying that it reached the level of religious persecution.
I don’t think the Mormon church has more than their fair share of criminals and probably not more than their fair share of those who take their religion into the realm of offshoot cult. For example, what religion was Jim Jones before he formed his cult? David Koresh? Why can’t we think of what religion they started out as, but we all know that Warren Jeffs is Mormon? We all know that Mark Hoffman was Mormon, as well as the Lafferty brothers. For some reason, the news media seems to like to sensationalize when someone is Mormon.
And it isn’t just when Mormons go bad that the news makes a big deal out of their religion. When a few Mormons got in the road of a drug cartel in Mexico, the fact that they were Mormon was huge, but it isn’t even known if their religion had anything to do with the murders. Sure it was why they lived in Mexico, but what does that have to do with their murder.
I don’t think it is just that those of us living in Utah notice Mormon membership more, because my husband and I were living outside of Utah for some of the crimes, such as the hijacker and Mark Hoffman and even in Germany, it was made into a big deal that they were Mormon.
Please don’t forget Bruce Jessen and Jay Bybee.
From Religion News Service:
• Bruce Jessen, a Washington psychologist, helped to develop the techniques; rather than reproving his actions, the LDS Church called him as a bishop in Spokane, Washington. (He resigned from his calling after a public outcry.)
• Jay Bybee, whom Time magazine once called “The Man Behind Waterboarding,” authorized the use of torture when he was a Justice Department official. He is now a judge in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
And then there’s the Bundy family: Cliven who threatened Federal Marshalls after years of refusing to pay for grazing his animals on federal land and his son Ammon who seized and destroyed federal parkland in Oregon.
I’ve noticed that too.
A thought:
Are high profile Mormon criminals identified as such because of our expansive missionary program and that we go around proclaiming exclusively that we are the “true” church, that we have the “truth?”
Or that Mormons are looked at as peculiar? Do criminals who are Scientologist usually identified as such?
Dis-jointed Mormons are joined by those with Seventh-day Adventist affiliations to one degree or the other: David Koresh and “Sybil”’for example. Of course both denominations have had quite positive personalities also. If there is a link, a big if, perhaps when a person rejects “truth” in the form of “true church” upbringing, they may do 180’s down a different path. Just a thought.
I don’t think the Church unfairly gets called out for these crimes because they do reflect some of the extreme teachings of our leaders, some of which were still taught in my life time. While the Church has since retired most of these extreme teachings, I’m not sure they’ve disavowed them as loudly as is needed because a small subset of current and former members still seem to be influenced by them.
Hoffman’s financial crimes get a lot of attention because he fooled members of the Q15 before he committed murder. But as far as financial crimes are concerned I think the real concern should be the number of affinity fraud cases that have occurred in many Wards and Stakes of the Church. These schemes work partly because they usually involve a trusted current or former church leader who often projects conspicuous wealth which the Lord has blessed them with. Then they draw in members who prayerfully conclude that they should invest with this person and that the enormous wealth they’re about to acquire will be used to build up the kingdom.
This last couple have been on the news in Australia without mention of the church.
As someone how has followed this case, because it’s in my hometown, I find your take frustrating. You make no mention of how extreme the Daybell’s beliefs went and yet how those beliefs may have nothing to do with their crimes! Four people are dead allegedly because of these two! I don’t care if Mormons are unfairly called out. I think we need to be called out more. Maybe don’t focus on these two alleged murderers, but focus on the four people who are dead as a result of knowing them. Why couldn’t anyone stop these deaths?
I was abused by my father. No one believed me. Rexburg is majority LDS. It’s more Mormon than SLC. Yet it only got a family crisis center… 15 years ago(?) Two of my friends were sexually abused by family members. But no one could believe that such upright members of the community could be capable of such things. Mormons didn’t abuse family members. I’m not so worried about the Mormons that go “bad” but the ones who appear “good” and commit evil. Was Chad still seen as a good Mormon that no one suspected this? And why?
Ask Elizabeth Smart if religion had anything to do with the crimes committed against her by “Emanual”
Mormons love to play up the Mormon angle when it involves a celebrity or any kind of high achiever. And they want everyone else to highlight only the superstars and ignore the villains. (Come to think of it, this is a recurring theme in Mormonism, isn’t it? “Some things that are true are not very useful.“)
Bad Mormons are called out in the media because as Mormons, they should know better. I don’t think its unfair at all. It teaches the membership not to be so blindly trusting of our fellow Saints, and reminds us that we are not as righteous as we often purport ourselves to be. It also gives me a layer of protection against bishops who try to deny my temple recommend because I supported gay marriage or donated to Planned Parenthood. As soon as I start talking about armed standoffs with the BLM and CIA torture doctrine, I don’t seem like such an evil person anymore.
Good advice, Jack!
If more Mormons were less trusting just because someone was a wardmember or the “close friend” of someone who was, there would be fewer pyramid schemes and fewer Saints suddenly without retirement income. These folks aren’t high profile names any of us would remember but, unfortunately, they’re out there and we read about it after the damage is done every few years.
I’ll just point out that Butch never killed anyone, a fact he was quite proud of, given his chosen line of work.
If you include Warren Jeffs, the list ought to include the LeBaron murders as well.
I agree with the commenters above that the most egregious are the “high-ranking” Mormons who are actually sexual predators, including Joseph Bishop (MTC president who molested sister missionaries), Philander Knox Smartt (mission president in the DR who seduced sister missionaries into becoming his plural wives), Steven Murdock (high counselor and former bishop that took secret cell phone footage of women in dressing rooms), and Erik Hughes (bishop in Mapleton UT who sexually abused the young men in his ward). This cases are all in the last ten years. I’m still waiting for some kind of discipline for the “inspired” leaders who elevated these troubled individuals to positions where they could abuse more easily. Clearly the stake presidents in these cases had zero ability to recognize the Spirit. OTOH, Jesus chose Judas as one of his disciples, so perhaps I’m too harsh…
And Sterling Van Wagenen, the director of the temple movies released in 2013, who molested at least two children.
Ted Bundy had long since gone bad before he was baptized a Mormon, and it seems that he wasn’t held under long enough to bring about any change in his character. But he probably belongs in a class with Jodi Arias: Bad People Who Didn’t Get Any Better Despite Brief Encounters With Mormonism.
There are probably others.
As Mormons, we are told to advertise our faith and convert our neighbors. We enshrine our famous members, think Osmonds, Romney, Steve Young, Marriotts. They will be Mormons until their obits and beyond. So why shouldn’t the press and others mention the Mormonism of bad people. We bring it on ourselves.
Besides that, as others have noted, Church leaders could do a much better job dealing with bad apples and bad local leaders. Instead our leaders seem more interested in spin. Plus they obsess over suppressing ideas that make them feel insecure, or threaten their idea of unity.
I don’t know how to express this. But Church leaders need to deal more with issues that create difficult situations like blood atonement, glorification of weaponry, prosperity gospel, blind obedience, etc.
rogerdhansen
Agree with your perspective on this. Your perspective, when you share it, is one of the things that brings me back to this website. I find your rational approach to the gospel and commitment to service of your fellow humans in your personal life truly helpful as I navigate this journey.
Ted Bundy is a really interesting case. He joined the Church after he had already committed murders but hadn’t been caught. He seems to have had a conflicted relationship with Mormonism: 1) drawn to the goodness and respectability of the people, and 2) preying on the naivete of the people. The Wasatch front Mormon girl-next-door was the exact type of victim he sought over and over again, and he also found it easy to manipulate good-hearted church people into believing he was falsely accused, that he was the clean-cut, well-dressed, attractive man he appeared to be. Right before his execution, he added one more manipulation in claiming that pornography was what led him to murder all those women. This was right out of the moral majority playbook, and I have heard it repeated countless times by Mormons who believed his self-diagnosis, but it was of course, like most of what he said, a self-serving lie to make himself seem like the real victim.
But this pathos probably plays out with other “bad” Mormons: being drawn to the appearance of goodness, the innocence of Mormons in their bubble, both to use that as a mask or persona and to prey on those who are innocent and gullible. It’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing thing, if the wolf is still trying to decide whether it reveres the sheep, wants to be the sheep, or wants to devour them.
I’ve read quite a few national articles about the Daybells, mainly because I live in E. Idaho. I’ve been surprised that their membership in the church is very rarely mentioned. Given that he had been a very active Mormon writer and publisher–in fact, when this all began, I looked him up on Deseret Book’s website and saw one of his books (a rather harmless looking one) for sale–I’m surprised their religion isn’t mentioned much more frequently.
I watched a recent installment of NBC Dateline which recapped the Chad and Lori story – definitely not good PR for the Church…