At roughly the same time as the loathsome Roch Thériault was operating (no pun intended) in Ontario, a similarly small and ugly cult took root in Kirtland, Ohio. The messiah of this tawdry cult, Jeffrey Lundgren, born in 1950 in Independence, Missouri, grew up in the bosom of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS), one of the Mormon splinter groups that did not choose to follow Brigham Young to Utah. [Note: the Mormons seem to have an inordinate number of splinter groups. Even their splinter groups have splinter groups.]
Lundgren claimed to have been an abused child, and was certainly an abusive husband and father. He also displayed some of the earmarks of a classic clinical psychopath: a sadistic streak where animals were concerned, a narcissistic attitude that kept him moving from job to job, and a notable level of charisma, which gave him the power to charm and manipulate. After his marriage in 1970, he had a four-year stint in the navy, followed by a brief sojourn in San Diego, but he moved his growing family back to Independence when money ran short.
Back in RLDS territory, he became a lay preacher with an impressive grasp of the sacred texts, but also a few ideas of his own. Disciples impressed by his virtuosity began to gather around him, attending study sessions in his home; they also began to give him money. Thus, the foundations of his private cult of personality were laid. But then he received a new revelation from God; an extraordinary destiny awaited him, but first he had to move to Kirtland, Ohio, where Joseph Smith himself had laid the foundations of the first-ever Mormon temple, back in the 1830s, backed up in person by Jesus, Moses, Elijah and Elias (though only Smith knew they were present, for some reason). Indeed, Lundgren and his wife both obtained jobs as tour guides at the Kirtland Temple, now a National Historic Landmark and a major site of RLDS pilgrimage, not to mention a place that was pivotal to Lundgren’s own revelations. At the same time, Lundgren exercised increasing control over disciples who followed him from Independence, as well as new fans picked up in Kirtland. By 1986, he and his family and followers were living communally, with Lundgren in firm control of everyone’s life—and everyone’s paycheque.
Now for the message God gave to Jeffrey Lundgren, which was in many respects a bog-standard messianic doomsday scenario. The present world was about to end with the Second Coming of Christ. How it was to happen had not only been revealed personally to Lundgren in visions, but was encoded in the Bible, in the Book of Mormon, and in the very structure and ornamentation of the Kirtland Temple. Specifically, according to Lundgren’s reading of the evidence, Christ would touch down squarely at the Kirtland Temple, and it was the job of Lundgren and his faithful to prepare and purify the landing site. This would involve them taking control of the temple by force of arms, and executing ten high RLDS officials, an act of blood purification that would bring on the apocalypse. The date—after a couple of earlier predictions failed to be fulfilled—was definitively set for May 3rd 1989, incidentally Lundgren’s birthday. And of course, all those outside the safety of the Kirtland Temple would be destroyed.
Accordingly Lundgren obtained an arsenal of weapons, and trained his male followers in their use. His following comprised 
about two dozen people at that point, including Lundgren’s wife Alice and their four grown children, and the Avery family of father, mother and three young daughters. Lundgren made the classic messianic demand that they should all live communally on one property, under his control, and that all assets be turned over to him. Most obeyed—except for the Avery family, who followed Lundgren to Kirtland, but only turned over a portion of their assets and used some to buy a house of their own. Lundgren took this as disloyalty to God—and worse, as disloyalty to himself and his leadings.
In September 1987, there was a fateful change in the cult’s circumstances. RLDS authorities became aware of the bizarre nature of Lundgren’s teachings (though not the plot to capture the temple), and also the fact that he had embezzled at least $25,000 of temple funds over the years—he resigned before they kicked him out, and moved his flock to a farmstead outside Kirtland. The upshot was further isolation for the cult, enabling Lundgren’s control to become even more draconian.
Then, in early 1989, Lundgren had a further revelation: the plan to massacre church officials was off. Instead, the Kingdom of God would be established only after a different blood sacrifice had been made, coincidentally the sacrifice of a family of five. And lo, a family of five happened to be at hand, and very much in Lundgren’s bad books over the money issue. In April 1989, Lundgren explained to his other followers that “the vineyard must be pruned”. With their cooperation, he lured the Avery family to a barn on the cult’s property, where one by one the family was shot to death and buried in a pit dug in the floor—first the parents, and then the daughters, aged fifteen, thirteen, and six. But the next day, frightened by a coincidental visit of the police on a different matter, Lundgren fled with his cult to the West Virginia wilderness, where they lived rough for about nine months. When the world failed to end as Lundgren expected, he and his immediate family abandoned the others and went to California.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, the bodies in the barn had been discovered and identified, and the hunt for Jeffrey Lundgren was on. His followers eventually surrendered or were rounded up, and were convicted and sentenced to varying jail terms. Lundgren himself, captured, tried, and sentenced to death, was executed for his murders in 2006.
The violence in this cult was again directed inward, as in the Thériault case; but here, in contrast, the victims first had to be scapegoated and redefined as “the other,” with their deaths integrated into the overall scenario as a sacrifice necessary to bringing on the apocalypse. Thus, Lundgren was able to combine his personal and prophetic agendas very handily. But again, as with the Ant Hill Kids, you have to wonder at his followers: sane, pious people who ended up believing the murder of three young girls and their parents was a good thing to do.
