Jon Krakauer: Under The Banner Of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

Reviewed by PAUL PANCKHURST

Ron and Dan Lafferty were queuing for the lunch buffet at the Circus Circus casino in Reno, Nevada, on August 7, 1984, when armed police arrested them for the murders two weeks earlier of their sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty, 24, and her 15-month-old daughter, Erica.

The Lafferty brothers were excommunicated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - the Mormons.

It emerged that the pair had slaughtered mother and daughter in Provo, Utah County, on God's instruction, as delivered four months earlier in a revelation to Ron Lafferty, a former Mormon missionary who, on his brother's urging, had become what author Jon Krakauer describes as "a Mormon fundamentalist".

Writing on a piece of yellow legal paper, Lafferty had recorded God as saying: "It is My will and commandment that ye remove the following individuals in order that My work might go forward."

Conveniently, the three adults named by God - the brothers never completed their divine mission - were suspected by Lafferty of breaking up his marriage, an event that seemed to be one of the triggers for a crack-up.

The baby was killed as a child of perdition.

Krakauer says Brenda Lafferty was killed after resisting the strictures that the Lafferty brothers - there were five in all - had imposed on their wives under the influence of Dan Lafferty's brand of fundamentalism.

Dan believed the Mormon Church had blundered off-course in the late 19th century by renouncing polygamy, a practice that went back to Joseph Smith, who founded the church in 1830 after digging up the famous golden tablets.

Lafferty interpreted the Book of Mormon as showing that the US Government had no right to levy taxes or to require citizens to hold licences or Social Security numbers.

He ignored speed limits and instead drove "wisely and carefully".

He wanted his wife Matilda's oldest daughter, his stepdaughter, for a second wife.

He was violent and largely withdrew his family from mainstream society.

Matilda described her marriage as initially very happy and ultimately "hellish".

Krakauer is best-known for his classic account of disaster on Mt Everest, Into Thin Air. His aim here is to illuminate the nature of violent religious fanaticism.

The case of the Lafferty brothers is interspersed with episodes from the history of the Mormon Church; illustrations of the beliefs and language of the founder and his diverse bands of followers; and discussions of the borderline between intense religious experience - including communications with God - and lunacy.

The trouble is, the lurid story of the brothers - one on death row, the other serving life - does not reward a search for the profound. Their statements are sometimes kooky, largely banal.

Krakauer describes Dan Lafferty's theology as "a disturbing potpourri assembled from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, fundamentalist scripture, and the hyperkinetic machinations of Dan's own mind".

In short: there were no revelations to be found in the lunch queue at Circus Circus.

Macmillan, $37.95.