Hardback: Neighbours in rural Kirtland, Ohio, welcomed Jeffrey Lundgren when he, his wife Alice and their four children rented a rundown farmhouse. After a group of devout, often attractive, and college-educated young men and women, formerly from the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints, moved in, residents assumed they were starting some sort of commune.
But under Lundgren's warped leadership, these people nurtured an apocalyptic vision at odds with true Mormon beliefs that would ultimately lead to the kidnapping and murder of an entire family, including three small children.
Lundgren ruled his group with dictatorial powers. He led the men through paramilitary exercises in preparation for the violent takeover of the Kirtland Temple, and the women through bizarre sexual rituals.
Nightly harangues focused on a "blood sacrifice" that had to occur before the cult members could gain the Promised Land.
Co-authored by a prosecutor of the case, The Kirtland Massacre (1991) is the shocking inside story of the forces that drove the Lundgrens and their followers to cold-blooded, ritualistic execution, as well as the minute-by-minute enactment of the crime itself, the pursuit, arrest, prosecution, and conviction.
About the authors: Cynthia Stalter Sassé is the assistant prosecutor in Lake County, Ohio, who helped successfully prosecute the Lundgren group. She makes her home in Painesville, Ohio.
Peggy Murphy Widder is an attorney and novelist who makes her home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
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