This is the prologue to a detailed account of a true story covering a series of murders which took place some 12 years ago. The events of the first two murders offered in the prologue are graphic and are ment to be shocking, brief, yet descriptive. Anyone who has an interest -- healthy or otherwise -- in the evil that men do in the name of Jesus Christ, Gods, and religion should consider checking this book out of your local library and reading it. This evil is one of the things that I oppose - flr 07/May/01 Prophet of Death
The Mormon Blood-Atonement Killings, Pete Earley, 1991
ISBN 0-688-10584-X Prologue Just before dawn on a cool April day in 1989, a lone man climbed a hill a few miles outside of Kirkland, Ohio, a village of six thousand, located directly East of Cleveland. As the morning sunshine began to filter through the branches of the apple and maple trees that towered over him, the man dropped to one knee and began to pray.

"What is thy will?" Jeffrey Don Lundgren asked out loud. "Give me a sign. Tell me what to do."

"Lundgren stared upward into the morning light. He didn't move, didn't speak. For several minutes he waited, and then he nodded his head.

"I understand," he said, addressing a vision that only he could see. "Thy will be done."

It was misty on the on the night of April 17. There was no moon.

The only light outside of the farmhouse that Lundgren rented came from the neglected barn out back. It was a New England-style barn, painted red. It smelled of hay, rabbits, chickens, and oil dripping from an abandoned car. An extension cord snaked across the floor leading into a little room at the rear of the barn.

The cord has been tacked up the wall of the room and stretched out into the center of the ceiling. A single, naked bulb dangled down, illuminating a hole in the room's dirt floor. The hole had been carefully dug and was precisely six and a half feet wide, and seven feet, seven inches long. It was four feet deep.

Underground water had seeped into it, turning the bottom into two-inch-deep mud. The water gave the brown clay walls of the pit a sheen that glistened in the overhead light.

Just before 7:30 p.m., two men could be heard talking as they walked from the Lundgren farmhouse toward thee barn. One of them cried out as soon as they stepped through a door into the barn.

"Ouch! What are you doing? This isn't necessary. Goddamn it!"

The fifty-thousand volt electric charge emitted by the hand- held stun gun was supposed to immobilize a man for several seconds, possibly even knock him unconscience. But when it was jabbed into Dennis Avery's side by the man walking beside him, it neither immobilized Avery nor knocked him down. It only stung and made him mad.

"Goddamn it!" Avery yelled when the gun was jabbed once again to his neck. "This isn't necessary!"

Four men had been hiding in the barn and when it became apparent that the stun gun wasn't working, they jumpped out and grabbed Avery, forcing him down onto the floor. Avery didn't fight. He was in poor physical shape, with a watermelon belly. Even his friends regarded the fourty-nine Amery as weak. His attackers, mostly men in their late twenties, were all in excellent physical condition. Within seconds, Amery's mouth, feet, and hands had been bound with gray two-inch-wide duck tape. His eyes, however, had not been coveresd. Jeffrey Lundgren had given specific instructions about Amery's eyes. "I want him to see who is administering justice," Lundgren had explained to his followers.

"I want to look him in the eye when I break his heart."

As he was carried from the front of the barn back into the lighted room, Avery's eyes flashed with anger. It was as if he were trying to communicate: "As soon as I'm loose, you are going to pay for doing this to me!" But the two men carrying him weren't afraid. They gently slid Avery down into the pit in the floor. He fell clumsily onto his side in the mud.

Without speaking, the two men dashed toward the door.

The lone light bulb served as a spotlight over the pit, casting shadows into the room's corners. As Avery's eyes adjusted to the brightness, Jeffrey Lundgren stepped forward out of the darkness. He held a .45-caliber, stainless-steel, semi- automatic pistol in his right hand.

Avery managed to pull himself up so that he was sitting on his knees now. Lundgren raised his pistol. He would later recall with complete clarity void of all emotions what his thoughts were at that moment as he looked down on the bound man who had considered him to be his "very best friend." Lundgren was thinking about verses from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, chapter 30.

Woe to the rebellious children, saith the Lord, that take counsel, but not of me.... You are rebellious people, you lying children, you children who will not hear the law of the Lord.

He slowly squeezed the trigger.

The first hollow-pointed slug smacked Avery's torso and knocked him sideways; the second round hit so quickly that it almost went in the same hole even though his body was recoiling.

Avery's taped face hit the muddy bottom of the pit with a loud _smack._

Iniquity shall be to you as a branch ready to fall, and you shall break it -- you shall not spare the wicked.

"All right, everybody, come look at this, come see what death is,"

Jeffrey called to the others. The five men who had subdued Avery came into the room and gathered around the hole. Lundgren had warned them earlier that God would someday demand each of them to "slay the wicked." They would be forced to kill dozens, possibly more.

Lundgren examined the face of each man. He was still holding his .45 pistol. The men seemed terrified, yet mesmerized by the body in the pit. He knew that most oif them had doubted him, doubted that he would actually go through with it.

"Okay, bring the next one," he said. He had tasted death and was eager to continue.

Lundgren's plan was simple. Dennis Avery's wife, Cheryl, fourty- two, would be the next to be put into the pit and executed. While Dennis was being murdered, Cheryl and her three daughters were sitting in the Lundgren farmhouse less than fifty yards away, visiting with the wives of the men in the barn. She would be lured from the farmhouse by one of Lundgren's accomplices, who would tell her that Dennis needed help in the barn sorting some personal belongings stored there. Once inside the barn, she would be overpowered by Lundgren's followers and bound with duct tape.

Her husband had no idea that he had been sentenced to death by Lundgren, nor would Cheryl. After Lundgren executed her, the Avery's daughters -- Trina, fifteen, Rebecca, thirteen, and Karen, six -- would be brought into the barn and put into the pit one at a time, the oldest first. Not only would their hands, feet, and mouthes be bound, but their eyes would also be covered with duct tape. The scriptures, Lundgren had explained, only required that the man of the family be allowed to see his executioner.

As Jeffrey waited for his followers to bring Cheryl into the barn, he glanced down into the pit. Blood was soaking into the back of Avery's plaid wool shirt. There was no sign of life.

Killing him had been easy. The pistol in Jeffrey's hand felt good. Jeffery decided that he had been smart to choose the .45 automatic. He had considered using a shotgun, but had rejected the idea because of the noise. Somone driving by the farm might have heard the blast and been curious. The cracking sound of a handgun was more crisp. He had considered using a .357 Magnum or a .9 millimeter, but was afraid that neither was powerful enough. Lundgren had read stories about police officers who had shot criminals three or more times with rounds from a .357 and still not killed them. There was no reason to prolong the Avery's pain. Of course, the .45 had certain disadvantaged. Little Karen Avery weighed only thirty- six pounds and shooting her with the big handgun seemed a bit extreme. Only a few nights earlier, Lundgren had gone to the Avery's house for dinner and had bounced Karen on his knee. While she giggled at the excitement of being tossed up and down, he had wondered if he should use a smaller caliber pistol to kill her. But Lundgren had eventually settled on the .45 on the assumption that it would be better to use too much rather than too little firepower.

Lundgren could hear voices from outside the barn now. Cheryl Avery was being brought into the trap. Another scripture came to him: Revelation, chapter 6, the opening of the seven mystical seals that signaled the coming of Jesus Christ, Judgement Day, the beginning of the Millennium, the end of the world. He thought about verses 2 through 8, passages that described the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see...

Cheryl was in the barn now. Lundgren could hear the sound of duct tape being ripped from its spool. It was only seconds before she would be brought to him. He stepped back into the shadows with his .45 automatic.

...and there went out another horse that was red;

and power was given to him that say thereon to take peace from the earth, that they should kill one another...

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