The Brutal Murder Of Brenda Lafferty At The Hands Of Her Fundamentalist Mormon Brothers-In-Law

 On July 24, 1984, Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter Erica were killed by her brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty, after they allegedly received divine instructions to murder them.

Brenda Lafferty was beautiful, intelligent, and assertive. And those were some of the reasons why her brothers-in-law, Ron and Dan Lafferty, decided to murder her and her 15-month-old daughter Erica in 1984.

 Mormon Fundamentalists claiming to be guided by God, Ron and Dan insisted that they were driven to murder by a divine message they called the “removal revelation.” But the truth behind their motives was far more earthbound. Ron, who had “received” the message, was furious with Brenda for helping his wife to leave him after he embraced polyamory.

Beautiful, intelligent, and popular among her peers, Brenda used her good looks to secure a college scholarship from the Miss Twin Falls, Idaho, beauty pageant. Deseret News reports that she spent a year at the University of Idaho and the College of Southern Idaho before she transferred to Brigham Young University back in Utah. Brenda’s mother had gone to BYU, and Brenda hoped to study broadcast journalism.

There, Brenda also met her husband, Allen Lafferty. They quickly fell in love and married, and Brenda gave birth to their daughter, Erica Lane Lafferty, on April 28, 1983, after her college

But Brenda’s marriage with Allen was complex. Though the Wright family liked Allen, he could be controlling and didn’t want Brenda to work. What’s more, two of his brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, had begun to embrace an extreme form of Mormonism. They had joined a breakaway polygamist sect called the School of Prophets and started to preach it to their brothers.

Ron’s extremism upset his wife, Dianna, who found that her husband suddenly expected a servant instead of a spouse. She confided in Brenda about the deepening cracks in her marriage, and Brenda encouraged her to take her children and leave Ron.

Dianna really loved Brenda,” Brenda’s sister, Sharon Wright Weeks, explained to A&E True Crime. “Because all of the other [Lafferty] brothers had wives that they treated like second-class citizens, Brenda ended up giving Dianna the courage she needed to leave.”

Dianna took Brenda’s advice. And Ron Lafferty would not soon forget it

In early 1984, shortly after the end of his marriage, Ron Lafferty claimed to have received divine instructions from God. Curiously, this “revelation” demanded that he murder people he blamed for his problems: Brenda, a woman named Chloe Low who’d supported his wife, and a man named Richard Stowe who who had overseen Ron’s ex-communication from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

“Thus saith the Lord unto my servants the prophets,” Ron’s “revelation” read. “It is my will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that my work might go forward. For they have truly become obstacles in my path and I will not allow my work to be stopped. First thy brother’s wife Brenda and her baby, then Chloe Low and then Richard Stowe. And it is my will that they be removed in rapid succession.”

ccompanied by two drifters named Charles Carnes and Richard Knapp, Ron and Dan Lafferty made their way to Brenda’s apartment. While Carnes and Knapp waited in the car, they forced their way inside and began their attack.

As Erica, 15 months, wailed from her crib, Carnes could hear Ron calling Brenda a “bitch” and a “liar” and the sound of the brothers physically beating her, according to testimony he gave at Ron’s trial.

The brothers strangled Brenda with a vacuum chord and slit her throat. Then, Dan walked into baby Erica’s room and slit her throat as well.

Ron and Dan Lafferty were arrested in Reno, Nevada, on August 7, 1984. They were soon charged with two counts of criminal homicide, two counts of aggravated burglary, and two counts of conspiracy to commit homicide. Dan was sentenced to two life terms in prison; Ron was sentenced to death (but died in 2019 before his execution).