Dead polygamist's daughter added to most wanted list

The Houston FBI office has put the daughter of a dead polygamist on its most wanted list, saying she is wanted in connection with four 1988 murders here and in Irving — killings that might have been related to a hit list her dad left when he died in 1981.

Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron, the wanted woman, is the daughter of Ervil Morrell LeBaron, who had 13 wives and led the Church of the Lamb of God, a fundamentalist Mormon sect, in the 1970s. Ervil LeBaron's story is the stuff of TV movies (really, it is): Through his sect, and often using his many wives as henchwomen, he killed rival polygamists through the '70s, including his brother Joel. (Ervil also tried to have his other brother, Verlan, killed, but failed.) He was eventually apprehended in Mexico in 1979 and was extradited to the U.S., where he was convicted of ordering the 1977 killing of Rulon C. Allred, the leader of another fundamentalist sect. In 1980, Ervil LeBaron was sentenced to life in prison, and he died in the Utah State Prison the next year.

But that wasn't the end of it, apparently: LeBaron reportedly left behind a hit list, and it's said some of his 54 children — yes, 54 — were carrying out the murders he didn't get to see to himself. Jacqueline LeBaron is one of six LeBarons charged in the June 1988 murders of three men who had left LeBaron's sect and the 8-year-old daughter of one of the men. All were shot in the head. The other five people involved with the killings are serving or have served time in prison, but officials are looking for Jacqueline LeBaron now based on new information from a half-brother who claims to have had a religious conversion in prison.

It's believed Jacqueline LeBaron is in Mexico, where she was born and where the family had several colonies.