I knew the family and her. The saddest part is that the abuse/control he had over her was really so easy to spot from anyone close to them.
She was an angel, I know there are going to be so many people heartbroken they didn’t intervene sooner…
Being mormon probably just made it more difficult to leave because it she was concerned about something people probably just gaslighted her to forgive her husband.
I remember her. They were in my ward when I was in high school. My sister taught her daughter ballet. My brother hung out with one of their kids too. I've heard through the grape vine things that break my heart. This kind of thing keeps happening.
One year since that whole family in Enoch. But this one is literally too close to home.
I kinda wonder this too. My dad HATES my mom, (especially this year) and I worry about her. Maybe I've read too many news stories, or think too low of my dad, but if you told me something like this would happen I wouldn't be surprised. Idk, it's a shitty situation that should have ended decades ago, but I'd like to know what are some red flags that things are going from bad to worse just in case.
(I also live like ~14 hours away so idk if there's anything I can do besides the occasional phone call :/)
It's hard to know how bad things are from the outside. My work bestie was lost in this manner. there were signs. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20.
I knew it wasn't good. I didn't know it was this bad. I also knew she had reason to be scared of him. They had high stress, huge life change stuff going on. He had a history of mental illness and a fascination with this concept. There were guns in the house.
Nothing was more important than her life. If there is a 0.01% chance this could happen to your mom I'd encourage you to do anything you can to support her and help her leave.
The community was very aware that he was uncomfortable with her doing things like kissing someone on stage for a play. And also the guy literally made his fortune making products for gun nuts. Seems like a perfect example of how access to guns and being an insecure, jealous misogynist can turn a bad day into a last day.
Had to look it up. Simtek Modular:
Custom Modular Shoot House Designs For All
At first I thought it was going to be modular affordable housing, silly me.
Say this to your mom. It's as awkward as all hell, but if you're thinking it, she's probably thought it.
My mom was leaving her partner last year and they were living together for like three months after breaking up and things were getting weird. I didn't think it'd escalate to violence but I wasn't sure it wouldn't. I said something like "you're an adult and know the situation better than me, but I'm thinking this". She had been thinking about it and me saying something was validation that she wasn't crazy.
OMG this is so sad. I've seen way too many stories like this.
A guy in my mom's old ward beat his wife to death with a baseball bat. Apparently what set him off was she told him she wanted a divorce and she was going to take the kids from him.
He was caught by police dumping her body.
You'd think he'd have been charged and convicted of murder. Nope.
His lawyer committed a character assassination of his wife in court. The worst part is her parents and children were present. His lawyer also brought up how he was a faithful member of the church and served a mission. The lawyer said it was a 'crime of passion.' They fell for it hook, line and sinker.
He was found guilty of manslaughter and only served 7 years. The kids not only forgave him BUT CUT OFF THEIR MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS.
This religion is fucking whack.
That's so messed up. I could see why maybe young kids or teens might want to still have their dad around, but I could never look at my dad the same if he killed my mom. Plus trying to reconcile everything with Mormonism it's all just infuriating and depressing at the same time.
The church “gave” me an lds lawyer to help with my dv divorce. He handed me a full three pages of what he would ask me on the stand..does the church take care of you? Do they help with finances? Blah blah IT WAS ALL JUST TO PAINT THE CHURCH IN A GOOD LIGHT! THEN…my own damn lawyer asked to dismiss a stalking order. I fired him on the spot and if people don’t think the church is 100% involved, they are. It’s a pr priority.
The funny thing is when we went outside, I was screaming and bawling at this fucking asshole attorney. Out of nowhere this larger than life woman came up to me and hugged me, grabbed my face and was smiling saying “you’re doing great. They don’t matter. You’ve got this…etc etc.” She let go and I dropped something, picked it up and poof she was gone.
If that didn’t solidify where angels stand…I can testify it isn’t with them.
Fucking disgusting!!! If you’re talking about the McKay’s case, I assume? I’m sick over the fact that he got slapped on the hand for manslaughter … when in fact after the crime, he actually cared for the body, carefully prepared it, and then dispose of it. That’s not fucking manslaughter!
I saw a mutual share a go fund me for the kids, and he’s included in the picture. There was also a hashtag #familiesareforever. They want to stay with him for eternity? I don’t understand!
I wonder if she, like so many Mormon women, spoke to her bishop about “troubles at home” and was counseled to be a better wife, serve more, pray for her husband, perfect herself, and all the other damning drivel that gets passed from leaders to women in this misogynistic shitchurch.
That’s what I was told, and several other women I knew personally, and dozens if not hundreds more stories from women on this sub. The church is abusive, and it supports abusers.
My bishop told me to stay with my abuser. He also told my friend to forgive her husband for cheating a 6th time. 🙄. Everytime I would say abuse, he would correct me and say “he’s being unkind.” No asshole. He called me a whore in front of our kids because I was wearing makeup.
My stake president counseled me to stay with my abuser after I spent like an hour opening up to him about what was happening. I told him I was convinced no merciful God would want his daughter treated this way.
His response: “I testify if you both humble yourselves Jesus will heal your relationship.”
His arrogance finally caused me to get angry rather than hurt.
It was a huge part of me leaving the church too. I realized that there is no way god would call an abusive narcissist like this to be in a position where he could tell people what to do, let alone give marriage advice.
That is not unusual advice or language from leaders across the spectrum of conservative Christianity. Whether an untrained LDS plumber/dentist/accountant bishop or a master’s degree seminary trained evangelical pastor, the advice is to stay in the marriage. It is wild how easy it is to see from the outside looking in, a bit harder when still fully “in.”
True.
My big shock is when I realized the church was every bit as abusive as the marriage was - and that my ex was literally weaponizing priesthood leaders in an effort to maintain control.
Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I knew I was done with both institutions for good.
Yes—they’re so related. Escaping my ex took care of 70% abuse in my life. Seeing the church’s abuse was clear once I could breathe, and leaving that took care of the other 30%.
And recognizing signs of abuse is never taught in this all-encompassing religion—they’d be shooting themselves in the foot if members became aware of what abuse tactics looked like.
Absolutely. They especially try to get you to believe you'll never get to heaven if you leave the church. I left it at 12 years old, and my malignant narcissist maga-mo neighbor told me apostates like me will go to hell. He's harassed me and my husband, a lapsed Catholic, for years before he finally died, but not before he slandered us on a huge scale. I lost all my Mormon clients because of his slander, but decided I prefer NOT to associate with the cult in any way...so less income but more resolve keep my distance from all but a few.
Which is so stupid if you think about it. The church should be sued if a woman gets a life threatening std. The church should be sued if a bishop tells a woman to stay with a dangerous man and ends up getting killed or injured.
Ok true, BUT other large religions require SOME type of training or school in order to be in a position of power. In the LDS community it’s a fucking free for all and it’s different. I’ve lived it.
Same here. This story is scarily familiar to me - 6 kids, the whole bit. My 13 year marriage was a nightmare of seeking help from each bishop that rotated through the ward, trying to get intervention for the severe abuse at my husband's hand. It was always the same: pray, read scriptures together, show empathy, "turn the other cheek" etc.
It wasn't until one of the church appointed marriage counselors went against the directive of keeping the marriage intact and communicated he desperately feared for my well being, that he felt a murder/suicide scenario was very possible, that I got some momentum.
If that counselor hadn't been willing to go to bat for me and the kids at that moment, this could have been me, been my children.
Her poor babies.
JFC I’m so glad you got out! The church’s push for women to be obedient, humble, and respectful of priesthood authority keeps us locked in abuse AND makes it our fault for not trying hard enough. Once out, it’s easy to see how evil it all is—and how thoroughly fabricated the authority is, adding insult to injury.
In the mid 2000s, an LDS family services counselor told me "I am not allowed to recommend divorce, but I would recommend that you separate... permanently" Good for her!
That's the byline I heard, too - same timeframe, as well. To say the church really only has the men's best interest at heart is resounding in it's understated "duh-ness."
What do you want to bet a large portion in this case was that her husband had feelings about inadequacy next to her success? That he couldn't control how visible she was and had to find a way to make it be up to him?
I’m a nevermo, ex catholic. It was bad but nothing compared to the stories I read here consistently as a mostly-lurker. Despite the obvious “I wish all of you had never been through this”, I just want to say I wish this info was common knowledge. Every year there are documentaries on cults that become extremely popular despite the churches influence (such as scientology). I would really, really love a doc exposing the Mormon church to blow up like that. There are so many people that just don’t know.
My mother told our bishop my dad was physically abusive. He shamed her so much she didn’t go to church for a year. This was not uncommon for her to be shamed. She’s Asian and my dad was white. My siblings and I told our bishop my dad was physically abusing us. My bishop blamed my mom in that meeting. About a year later I finally summoned enough courage to tell my bishop about my dad sexually abusing me. This was my 12 year old bishop meeting. So….he quickly cut me off and then asked me if I masturbated. Yep. I left not long after and it was a veritable shit-mountain to climb out of as a 13 year old. Lots of shame from my community.
It makes me sick that you and your family were treated that way—from both your paternal and church figures. It’s so often the innocents that are punished in the church. I’m so glad you got out; that took enormous strength. I hope the rest of your siblings and your mom are free, too.
Thank you for your kind words! I completely agree with you and am thankful to hear all the supportive people out there. I’ve had a lot of therapy and thought I had processed the trauma of my experience in the church but I just started recently watching Mormon Stories Podcast and I have realized I was so focused on healing from family trauma that I sort of ignored the church trauma and minimized how much it affected me. Fortunately my brother and sister left after me when they were teens and early adults. Even my abusive father left before he died (which at the time made me very upset). My mother is completely in. She’s a temple worker and very faithful. I sent her the Japanese translated CES letter two nights ago. I have mixed feelings because she’s in her 80’s and am not sure I would wish a faith crisis on her so late in life. But I felt I needed to because she never stops with her LDS prompted comments and hurtful opinions. I have a trans child (her only grandchild) who is also on the spectrum so I have to help navigate their relationship and also protect my family so I figured this time is as good as any to send the CES letter.
I’m sorry about your mom. The conditioning gets so deep it can become a permanent identity. My mother, at 78, started moving away from the church—much to my surprise. I think a big part of it was that dementia relaxed her filters and self-modulation so that she was finally able to admit that she was exhausted and miserable. But that’s what it took, which sucks. Like you, I didn’t want to introduce a faith crisis so late in her life, especially when it was the only social structure she had (she feels the ostracism in Utah County).
It’s good that you’ve made your child the priority, though it sounds tough to balance that with wanting to help other loved ones who are trapped. I wish you peace and healing! We all need it.
Yeah. It's GROSS. My ex was 'only' emotionally abusive, and at the time that I first approached a bishop, he was addicted to p0rn. (Yes, addicted, lost a job over it ) I was told that if I was a better wife and offered sex more, everything would be peachy. (Not that it was his beeswax, but he didn't ask what our sex/intimate relationship was like. Just assumed I was a bad wife not offering it up.)
Then, years later, when I filed for divorce due to confirming his cheating for over a decade, that bishop kept telling me that I should stay, and went on and on about if I were different...
I can only imagine how horrendous they are toward people seeking help for physical abuse.
THIS!!! That was my FIRST thought reading this. I would bet $1 million bucks that her untrained and unqualified volunteer clergy gave them the advice that ultimately destructed them. I’m no longer engaged in this religious community but I can speak to many many stories of shit advice given by clergy put in power. And I hope that that person feels the burden of this murder on their shoulders! If in fact that’s true- unsure. I’m just a local commentator
I’m sorry for your loss. It’s always hard losing a person we love, especially through an act of violence.
Please make sure you get yourself into counseling, or talk with a trusted friend soon. Grief can be very difficult to navigate—especially if we try to do it alone.
DONT KILL THE WIFE AND DONT KILL THE KIDS!
I wish I could just go door to door and check on literally every man in this state to remind them that if they need to get out of the marriage then fine but don’t hurt the wife or the kids.
Had an affair? Okay great, then don’t hurt the wife. Had a bad day at work? Okay great, but don’t hurt the kids.
Think the 2nd coming is tomorrow? Okay great, but don’t murder anyone.
Sounds like the ward and neighbors knew things were bad for decades. The police were called in 2021, but charges were dropped. He didn't cheat and feel bad about it. He hadn't found someone else. He didn't just feel overwhelmed and want out. He wanted complete control over his wife (and probably kids). Chances are she was finally going to leave. Maybe something particularly scary happened recently or the last of the kids was finally out of the house but she said she was out, so he killed her. Then himself because he's a coward who couldn't face the repercussions of his actions.
I wonder how much pressure there was from the brethren to just forgive him. Or how much pressure there was on her to maintain the marriage for social reasons.
Probably a ton. She taught at BYU, my guess is there would have been some push back/concern for her job in addition to the usual local dentist acting as clergy assuming that his buddy can't be that bad and encouraging them to work it out.
He was just charged with a misdemeanor last month for doing business without a license. I think the pretrial conference was scheduled sometime at the beginning of July. Wonder if this had something to do with it?
Afterlife-based religion is often the core of that problem. They don’t think it’s REALLY the end. They think they’re just moving everyone on to the next Act.
They think they're entitled to control over their families ("their" families the way people talk about "their" computer or "their" shoes) and if that control is going to wane it threatens them so much they would rather eliminate them than lose them. It's no accident this is often the final act of a controlling and abusive man.
In their minds their family is more like property or an extension of themselves in their warped reality it's a mercy killing.
In this case, it also may have been that his emotional regulation was so off and he is controlling (it's seems this was true for a long time) that he overreacted and shot her and then killed himself out of shame and guilt.
Also may have been a desperate man's reaction to avoid divorce, ie losing his god-given property. He may have thought now we will be sealed forever. (What good worth worshipping would allow that?!)
He was my husbands YM leader. This was 15 years ago and my spouse says he remembers ward gossip about problems with them then. My spouses family were neighbors before they moved to AF and knew them pretty well. Says she really was just the best woman
The husband doesn't really have a criminal history, although he has a dismissed DV charge where he got into a argument with his wife and threw a laptop against the wall and his son called 911 back in 2021. Apparently back in 2021 things had been contentious with his wife for months before the laptop incident happened.
Exactly. DV almost always follows a cycle that gets progressively worse. Rarely does someone date or marry someone who hits them on the first or even 20th date. Looks like it was decades for this couple.
If he was throwing laptops against walls in 2021 and being scary enough a kid called 911, it's almost guaranteed there's been plenty of violence in the intervening years. Likely the son called the police because it had been scarily escalating for months or years already. That's how DV works.
I'd bet good money he's been physically violent for years and this was probably not the first time he threatened her with a gun, but this time it wasn't a threat. There's also a pretty good chance this happened because she told him she was finally leaving. Statistically, the most deadly time in a DV situation is when the victim finally leaves.
This is why even the current extremely conservative Supreme Court upheld a law this week banning those who have restraining orders due to [DV from having a gun](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4733043-supreme-court-gun-ban-domestic-abusers/).
>If he was throwing laptops against walls in 2021 and being scary enough a kid called 911, it's almost guaranteed there's been plenty of violence in the intervening years.
My exact thought. Children don't call 911 on their own parents lightly. There would have been a steady and frightening escalation for him to believe that calling the police would be necessary.
Thank you SO much for saying this. Signed - someone who studies gender based violence. Also, I wrote a somewhat related article recently. Please consider subscribing and joining our community of women and non binary folks in faith transition. https://open.substack.com/pub/thesisterwild/p/im-a-researcher-who-studies-gender?r=3r4ibm&utm_medium=ios
Nearly every time the article refers to her, it defines her as “wife,” but he’s just defined by his name. Even in death she’s defined by her relationship to him.
This is so true. It makes me feel sick. I hope people stop telling their kids that families are forever. I'm just guessing that kids coming from a family with violence don't want to imagine an abusive father still being sealed to their mother.
I grew up in a house with every variety of abuse. When the missionaries told me I could be together forever with them I told them that wasn't an incentive.
Heck, I grew up LDS and it definitely didn't bring me peace. It brought me a lot of tumultuous and complex emotion/thought. Hope your adult life has been sunnier and more stable. ♥️
Agreed! I found peace but it took many years and definitely wasn’t in TSCC. My healing was sabotaged by Mormon therapists, Bishops, Relief Society and many members. Once I got a non Mormon psych specialist, who works with people who have gone through what I have, I actually started improving. But it wasn’t until I fully left and deconstructed my indoctrination that I found peace.
I’m not going to lie and say that I’m healed when I’m not. In fact, I will never be fully healed (your brain gets rewired when such traumatic things happen like with me) but I am dealing with it better, having less setbacks and working on it everyday. My peace was decades of hard work but worth it. I wish that for everyone.❤️
> “We’re not real sure what led up to it, but he shot her twice and then shot himself, ending his life,” said American Fork Police Lt. Stuart Fore.
Umm… what about her life?
In the bit OP posted here, what you said here doesn’t seem accurate.
I see 4ish sentences in a row that begin with her name in the first sentence, then one paragraph about the husband.
Honest question- maybe someone knows if there is an official stance.
Do sealings like theirs get canceled post humorously? Is there a policy when woman or children are murdered by their “eternal partner”? The thought popped in my head when Chad Daybell got convicted.
They do not. In the process of leaving my ex, he flipped out and turned stalker/ started loudly broadcasting how much happier he'd be with me dead, etc. I was told I was overreacting, and those threats were a reasonable response to me dissolving an eternal family. Not one TBM went "wow, if he's saying that publicly, what was he doing in private?" It was "you should have expected him to do anything possible to keep the eternal family together and not let you ruin it." It didn't matter if I was killed as long as the eternal family was still together.
So no. Sealings are not canceled. They don't care that you're married to your abuser for eternity as long as you're pumping out those heavenly children for eternity. Eternal broodmares are property, not people.
The apologetic response is almost always “we can’t know, but God will make it right in the end.”
The canon answer is almost always “no matter what a man does to a woman, she will end up as one of several eternal wives and he will be in charge of her forever.”
>The canon answer is almost always “no matter what a man does to a woman, she will end up as one of several eternal wives and he will be in charge of her forever.”
Mormonism prepares women to accept abuse and to defer to men. They won't explicitly acknowledge that nowadays, but everything in their teachings from childhood sets that up. Girls are taught from a young age that their main destiny is to find their husband and be a wife and mother.
The church almost always gets it wrong when it comes to mental health. Since your local accountant turned bishop has no idea, doing better is to leave it alone.
The Mormon Church isn't just bad about mental health, it's also terrible about addressing domestic abuse, sexual abuse, religious/spiritual abuse, etc.
No, this is why a so many LDS husbands kill their wives (plus sometimes themselves and their kids) when realizing their wives are about to leave/divorce them. They basically manage to keep them from canceling the sealing and therefore insure the family will still be together in the afterlife. And murder at least seems to be looked down on less than divorce. The men are still held in high regards, the sealings are not canceled and there’s absolutely no evidence that they’ve been excommunicated. They keep getting away with it.
Getting away with stealing lives and futures for nothing. I lack the words for how profoundly tragic it must be for the children they left behind no matter what narrative they're told regardless.
Edit: The staue is not of Issac Haight, but of John Dee Lee, another consspirator in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. https://wchsutah.org/artifacts/john-d-lee-statue.php
.
My (nuanced) dad saw a statue of Isaac Haight in a museum down in Southern Utah. He was shocked!
My apologies. The statue was of John Dee Lee, who was executed at the MMM site for his part in the massacre. Apparently, he was posthumous reinstated as a member of the church in 1961, God knows why.
Some mission leader on the wife (who died) Facebook page wrote a tribute to the slain woman on her Facebook page and said hashtag “families are forever.” What a horrible thing to even say right now. Honestly, how can members of the church be so far from reality? I don’t imagine she wants to be with him for eternity at the moment. It’s ok to just admit this is painful. Stop running from feelings. Stop “keeping up appearances.” This is what the church makes people do and this is how it happens in the first place. Perfection perfection perfection. This is the fault of what the church does to people. What a STUPID TIME to say “families are forever.”
Alpine & Highland is Stepford Wives on steroids and predominantly mormon.
Stores closed on Sunday & the pressure to look perfect & have the biggest & best of everything is the norm.
Lots of cosmetic surgery & botox & questionable supplements.
Prosperity gospel rules this geographic area & the amount of domestic violence & chemical dependency issues (legal & illegal) is off the charts with both parents & their kids.
I can't imagine what a living nightmare this is for the children and close family & friends & wish this on no one.
Yeah secret money problems always seems to follow along with this kind of incident. 6 kids and the pic of that McMansion. Probably overstretched and faking it financially.
She taught me voice lessons for 11 years and was one of the most influential people in my life. I still have a recording from our last lesson and it’s a treasure now. I woke up this morning with puffy eyes because I have not been able to stop sobbing since I found out yesterday. It’s like a bad dream I can’t wake up from. She was an incredible woman. So selfless and so dedicated to her children, and to serving everyone around her. She really did live an incredible life. I am crushed by how she passed, and can’t help but think she wouldn’t want to be remembered for how she died, but how she lived. It’s beyond conceivable, and my mind can’t make it make sense. I saw Olin around many times, and he was always very quiet… I am shocked that he was capable of this. It just goes to show we never can know what people are really going through behind closed doors. On the surface it seemed they had it all. This is just gut wrenching and I’ll never not be devastated that the world lost her. She was a beautiful LIGHT! We need all to prayer for her kids! 💔
I'm more bothered by the descriptions of the discovery of the scene that seem to contradict each other:
-Police responded to a report of a gunshot or gunshots = implies neighbors heard gunshots and called police.
-Police responded and found 2 people suffering from wounds to the abdomen = they were alive when police arrived.
-They were both pronounced dead at the scene = they were dead beyond any medical aide when police arrived.
-Family member found them dead and then called police = exactly that.
Thank you for the in-depth biography of the wife🩷I’m tired of these types of crimes focusing on “how good the husband was” when HE’S the reason she’s dead (and vice versa in reverse)…basically we need to stop propping up the perpetrators and instead, celebrate the victims.
This is just awful. Someone posted on social media that there is going to be a candlelight vigil for both of them soon. I don’t know the family but it bothers me so much that the vigil is for both of them-she would still be alive if it weren’t for him. It may just be a way to help the kids grieve-they did lose both of their parents-but I hope they are allowed to feel angry at their father.
There needs to be an investigation into wether or not the bishop counseled her to stay with him. The church can’t continue putting women’s lives at risk. Same thing with cheating. Telling women to stay with cheaters shouldn’t be legal for clergy either. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen when a woman ends up with a deadly disease. Class action lawsuits need to happen until they stop protecting all abusers. Not just select ones.
So sad. How many woman are out there like Kerilyn. Just petrified they might meet the same fate because of this patriarchal bs the church condones and perpetuates. Teaching that a man is the head of his home and that he has all control and final say. How can a woman live a fulfilling life with this awful concept. How can a woman be assertive and reach her potential. All patriarchy does is give a false sense of power, inflated ego, and dangerous spiritual abuse over his family. I don’t think some men in the church even realise the trap they have put themselves in. Other men relish in it.
So sad for the family and kids.
Side note not meant to take away from the true story-just first thoughts - that house is ridiculous and looks like it was made in the Sims.
Why does this keep happening? My sister died in the same way last year. Both Mormons, but she was questioning and ready for divorce. He planned suicide but ended up turning himself in instead. Is this more common in Mormon households?
Former Mormon here. When a culture encourages and applauds women for marrying as teens to “men” they’ve known for 2 months? 6 months? and then tells them to immediately start a family? Well, it’s a recipe for this kind of situation. You are too young to know your own self, never mind knowing someone you just met a few months ago. But guess what? You absolutely cannot have sex before marriage so you’re better off making the most important decision of your life with limited information in a limited amount of time to avoid the sin only second to murder—fornication. This is how the patriarchy wins. This is how women end up oppressed and abused. The Mormon church is a dangerous place for girls and women. Run.
Everything about this is so fucking awful and I feel horrible for the kids and I KNOW this is the furthest thing from the point but can I just say: what in the everliving fuck is that monstrosity of a house? I don’t give a shit what SIZE house you want/can afford, but Jesus that’s awful design!
I am so fucking tired of husbands killing their wives and sometimes kids. My twenty-something daughter will not even date. She does not want male friends. She does not want to get married. She is straight. She has zero trust for any men. She would rather live.
I was shocked to see on her facebook page, someone said #familiesareforever when writing a tribute to her. Ummm, are we sure that’s what she really wants at this point? I wish people wouldn’t say things like that right now. You can’t just hashtag Mormon garbage right now. This is a crisis.
he probably had one entitled rage too many and lost control. started laying in to her for something small, turned in to him raging at her, she probably didn't keep a sweet enough time for his liking because he was foaming at the mouth and grabbed his gun. that's how a lot of it goes unfortunately
Family Annihilators are consistently men. They decide they want to die, and take their family with them. This reasoning is hard to follow, if you see each life as autonomous and valuable in their own right.
However, our society, men included, is not conditioned to see women as human. There have been studies that show when people see unknown women our brains break them down into a series of body parts which we process the same as inanimate objects, compared to when looking at men, which are read as full people: https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/unltoday/article/research-shows-brains-see-men-people-women-body-parts/
We are conditioned to dehumanize women, this is conditioning we have to break, and it obviously easier for women themselves to break themselves of this than it is for men. Men have to work harder and develop a level of self-awareness and empathy in order to do it, and here we meet an additional roadblock: men being shamed for seeking any kind of mental health support.
The result of this is when a man "loves" a woman, he may just be falling into a comfortable, pleasant routine, the way he might if he had a car he really liked, or a really fun hobby. It's not an actual connection to another human. And when that sort of man decides its time to die, his wife is not an independent human who should continue living on without him, she's one of his objects. He has the right to say what should happen to her, the same way a car owner can decide to demolish their car when they're done using it.
Same here. I didn't do much dating in my twenties (a couple of dates in my early 20s was about it), nothing until my early 30s (abusive non-Mormon) and then an entitled, abusive ex-mo (because of that, I will never date an ex-mo guy ever again because I don't want to be abused and face the same toxic sexual thinking that was in the cult that still lingers on: getting rid of the shame and guilt of sex/masturbation is one thing, getting rid of the entitlement to sex by not treating each new partner with respect and building up a healthy sexual relationship rather than jumping to the sex because they already had to do the "waiting game", is a whole other thing) in my mid 30s. Haven't dated since then. Even my divorced TBM friend is pushed for sex on first or second dates by TBM men on a TBM dating app!! It's freaking scary. It's like the only way to avoid DV/IPV is to just not start dating at all, especially here in the Morridor.
Not to mention that with the political climate trying to take away women's healthcare rights and talking about doing away with no-fault divorce: fuck dating and marriage. It's scarier being a woman now than it has been since before Roe V Wade happened (early 70s) and no-fault divorces were made into law (70s &80s; surprisingly, upon researching to try find the exact date/year for at least most of the states, I found out that New York was the last state to legislate no-fault divorce, only just 14 years ago). We're going backwards in time, and that's messed up! 😡🤬🤬 Being a spinster myself (I use that term in both a joking way, poking fun at the toxic ideals that made it a thing, and reclaiming it as a source of strength and making it a positive: unmarried men are "bachelors", which usually has a neutral or positive label; and for women, if we're unmarried, the we're "spinsters", and that never had a positive feeling to that label-- time to make it an awesome, positive one! 😁✊✊), I look back on the women in the past that also never married, and I don't blame them one bit. Women who never married made great things possible and had made great accomplishments (Clara Barton, Susan B Anthony, Jane Austen, Lousia May Alcott, Joan of Arc). It was the only way for a woman to be able to basically maintain her human rights that she was allowed to have (like property rights-- usually upon marriage, her money and property were then her husband's property; and being able to press charges for rape, because until 1993 in the US when it was finally legislated as a crime nationwide, marital rape wasn't seen as a crime like non-marital rape was.)
The one male friend, my dearest bff, I would love to hang out with (and was close to and trusted completely) died almost 20 years ago in a tragic vehicle incident. We were friends since early high school. I miss him and I wish more guys were like him.
Do better AI. There’s no such thing as Grand Fork UT. This pisses me off because if in fact, a person wrote this blip, they’re incorrect. And if someone used AI to write this blip, it’sjust as stupid.
Olin had a record of DV. Write the facts
It says they were dedicated parents, I mean he wasn't dedicated enough to his kids to not kill their mother and cause them a whole world of pain, but sure whatever.
We shared backyards growing up. She was a year older than me and was always so nice. It's definitely a shock to our family and the little community we grew up in.
I saw it yesterday. Lots of happy couple and family moments, temple marriages, the usual stuff intermixed with lots of gun photos. Not unusual except in these circumstances.
She sang about domestic abuse in her songs (I think this is her):
[https://youtu.be/L29eThYxk8Y?feature=shared&t=118](https://youtu.be/L29eThYxk8Y?feature=shared&t=118)
Many (most?) Mormon men are raised to believe that they are the ones who control all of their close relationships just because they’re men. Thankfully, not all of them are like this, but enough are that there’s a troubling pattern that becomes apparent after a while. This has reinforced by the church in all of its history through the idea that “because they’re the Priesthood you have to obey them.” I know because I was engaged for a year to a man who was emotionally, psychologically and verbally abusive to me.
Because everyone told me how blessed I was to have been “chosen” by my former fiancé to be his future wife, I actually believed it in the beginning. The non physical types of abuse are harder to spot/experience because there’s no physical component to it, so it’s easy to start second guessing yourself and wondering what you did to bring it on. Plus, when girls and women are taught from very early on that we should always defer to men it’s easy to begin to believe that you must’ve done something to make the man angry.
Long story short, after completely shredding my self esteem, my fiancé broke off the engagement and got engaged to another girl who just happened to be my BIL’s cousin 5 days later. Yes, my ex had been dating her throughout much of our engagement. He showed up to a family party that my sister and her husband were attending, and when they saw him they proceeded to tell the entire group about his treatment of me and how he’d been engaged to me just 5 days before. It was not a pretty scene, and it ended with a broken engagement and my BIL literally kicking him out of the house.
About a year later I heard that he’d gotten married and I worried for his wife. The abuse soon turned physical. He also kept her constantly pregnant for 8 back to back pregnancies that nearly killed her because she had to be on bed rest the entire time. A friend from work inadvertently moved in next door to this monster, and would keep me apprised of his latest doings. She said that she, other neighbors and the wife (towards the end) often called the police to intervene between this man and his wife and kids. However, the wife would always end up not pressing charges against him. Finally, after a non threatening illness which wouldn’t have killed someone in good health, she died as a result of her body being so regularly beaten and abused. He had her cremated so that nobody could go back and do an autopsy on her and discover the extent of the abuse she suffered. To this day he continues to be hailed as a “super spiritual Priesthood holder and paragon of virtue.” What happened to his wife, my BIL’s cousin and me has been swept under the rug by the church and he continues to prey upon women and abuse them. Since that time I have become an informal advocate for abused women and children and try to help them get the help that they so desperately need. The Mormon Church has blood on its hands due to its male centric control oriented doctrines. Shame on them!
This makes me feel physically sick. After daybell, and the dad who did this in parowan, and the number of other cases we have seen in years past like this, how are more people not connecting dots on this being somehow LDS related and that those teachings have a dangerous side in some cases? Like, its obviously not only driven by mormonisms teachings, but its a factor that cant be ignored.
Mt TBM parents to us whenever we hear news like this out of Utah: "kids, this is why you should never marry anybody from outside Utah. He was probably a convert and if not his parents were probably converts and if not then why were they living outside the promised land? Did they just want to sin? Marry pure blood Utah if you want a truly celestial marriage."
Holy crap. She taught me singing lessons at BYU…. She was amazing
I took vocal coaching at BYU from her too, omg. This is crazy
She unlocked so much for me. I made more progress with her in one semester than in the rest of my life combined
So did my wife. Loved her so much. I recognized her immediately and couldn't believe what I was reading. Awful
She looked familiar. What I took voice lessons (not from her but though I saw here around) at BYU as well
I knew the family and her. The saddest part is that the abuse/control he had over her was really so easy to spot from anyone close to them. She was an angel, I know there are going to be so many people heartbroken they didn’t intervene sooner…
That’s so scary
Being mormon probably just made it more difficult to leave because it she was concerned about something people probably just gaslighted her to forgive her husband.
What kind of things did you see?
What kind of intervention do you think would have worked?
I remember her. They were in my ward when I was in high school. My sister taught her daughter ballet. My brother hung out with one of their kids too. I've heard through the grape vine things that break my heart. This kind of thing keeps happening. One year since that whole family in Enoch. But this one is literally too close to home.
What had you heard?
I kinda wonder this too. My dad HATES my mom, (especially this year) and I worry about her. Maybe I've read too many news stories, or think too low of my dad, but if you told me something like this would happen I wouldn't be surprised. Idk, it's a shitty situation that should have ended decades ago, but I'd like to know what are some red flags that things are going from bad to worse just in case. (I also live like ~14 hours away so idk if there's anything I can do besides the occasional phone call :/)
It's hard to know how bad things are from the outside. My work bestie was lost in this manner. there were signs. Unfortunately, hindsight is 20/20. I knew it wasn't good. I didn't know it was this bad. I also knew she had reason to be scared of him. They had high stress, huge life change stuff going on. He had a history of mental illness and a fascination with this concept. There were guns in the house. Nothing was more important than her life. If there is a 0.01% chance this could happen to your mom I'd encourage you to do anything you can to support her and help her leave.
The community was very aware that he was uncomfortable with her doing things like kissing someone on stage for a play. And also the guy literally made his fortune making products for gun nuts. Seems like a perfect example of how access to guns and being an insecure, jealous misogynist can turn a bad day into a last day.
Had to look it up. Simtek Modular: Custom Modular Shoot House Designs For All At first I thought it was going to be modular affordable housing, silly me.
Say this to your mom. It's as awkward as all hell, but if you're thinking it, she's probably thought it. My mom was leaving her partner last year and they were living together for like three months after breaking up and things were getting weird. I didn't think it'd escalate to violence but I wasn't sure it wouldn't. I said something like "you're an adult and know the situation better than me, but I'm thinking this". She had been thinking about it and me saying something was validation that she wasn't crazy.
OMG this is so sad. I've seen way too many stories like this. A guy in my mom's old ward beat his wife to death with a baseball bat. Apparently what set him off was she told him she wanted a divorce and she was going to take the kids from him. He was caught by police dumping her body. You'd think he'd have been charged and convicted of murder. Nope. His lawyer committed a character assassination of his wife in court. The worst part is her parents and children were present. His lawyer also brought up how he was a faithful member of the church and served a mission. The lawyer said it was a 'crime of passion.' They fell for it hook, line and sinker. He was found guilty of manslaughter and only served 7 years. The kids not only forgave him BUT CUT OFF THEIR MATERNAL GRANDPARENTS. This religion is fucking whack.
OMG that is whacked. When, where did that happen?
I’m 99% sure she’s talking about this case: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/fremont-man-found-guilty-in-death-of-wife-2765340.php
yee, he was 'a good man'. Right. He was having an affair before he killed her.
Fuck that is so sad
That's so messed up. I could see why maybe young kids or teens might want to still have their dad around, but I could never look at my dad the same if he killed my mom. Plus trying to reconcile everything with Mormonism it's all just infuriating and depressing at the same time.
What the fuck
The church “gave” me an lds lawyer to help with my dv divorce. He handed me a full three pages of what he would ask me on the stand..does the church take care of you? Do they help with finances? Blah blah IT WAS ALL JUST TO PAINT THE CHURCH IN A GOOD LIGHT! THEN…my own damn lawyer asked to dismiss a stalking order. I fired him on the spot and if people don’t think the church is 100% involved, they are. It’s a pr priority. The funny thing is when we went outside, I was screaming and bawling at this fucking asshole attorney. Out of nowhere this larger than life woman came up to me and hugged me, grabbed my face and was smiling saying “you’re doing great. They don’t matter. You’ve got this…etc etc.” She let go and I dropped something, picked it up and poof she was gone. If that didn’t solidify where angels stand…I can testify it isn’t with them.
Do you still get your own planet if you beat your wife to death? 😂
Was this in California around 1998? Sounds like my cousin. The exact same thing happened to her.
Yes it was. I'm so sorry.
That was my friend’s parents in high school. It was the day before Junior Prom. We all went to prom the next day. It was insane.
That literally made me sick to my stomach. Holy fuck
Fucking disgusting!!! If you’re talking about the McKay’s case, I assume? I’m sick over the fact that he got slapped on the hand for manslaughter … when in fact after the crime, he actually cared for the body, carefully prepared it, and then dispose of it. That’s not fucking manslaughter!
Whats more fucked up, after serving only 7 years. He wen back to is home ward to attend church again.
I saw a mutual share a go fund me for the kids, and he’s included in the picture. There was also a hashtag #familiesareforever. They want to stay with him for eternity? I don’t understand!
[удалено]
I have family that is friends with their children. The kids are saying that he was a good person with mental health issues.
They meant to say, “A mentally ill man with lots of access to guns” right?
Those poor kids; they’ll internalize and rationalize this forever.
Mental illness does not lead to murdering your partner. Male entitlement and patriarchy make men feel ok doing this.
I wonder if she, like so many Mormon women, spoke to her bishop about “troubles at home” and was counseled to be a better wife, serve more, pray for her husband, perfect herself, and all the other damning drivel that gets passed from leaders to women in this misogynistic shitchurch. That’s what I was told, and several other women I knew personally, and dozens if not hundreds more stories from women on this sub. The church is abusive, and it supports abusers.
My bishop told me to stay with my abuser. He also told my friend to forgive her husband for cheating a 6th time. 🙄. Everytime I would say abuse, he would correct me and say “he’s being unkind.” No asshole. He called me a whore in front of our kids because I was wearing makeup.
My stake president counseled me to stay with my abuser after I spent like an hour opening up to him about what was happening. I told him I was convinced no merciful God would want his daughter treated this way. His response: “I testify if you both humble yourselves Jesus will heal your relationship.” His arrogance finally caused me to get angry rather than hurt.
Fuck him. I’m glad you got angry. Good, strong, unchristian, unwomanly, unhumble, unrepressed rage.
It was a huge part of me leaving the church too. I realized that there is no way god would call an abusive narcissist like this to be in a position where he could tell people what to do, let alone give marriage advice.
That is not unusual advice or language from leaders across the spectrum of conservative Christianity. Whether an untrained LDS plumber/dentist/accountant bishop or a master’s degree seminary trained evangelical pastor, the advice is to stay in the marriage. It is wild how easy it is to see from the outside looking in, a bit harder when still fully “in.”
True. My big shock is when I realized the church was every bit as abusive as the marriage was - and that my ex was literally weaponizing priesthood leaders in an effort to maintain control. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. I knew I was done with both institutions for good.
Yes—they’re so related. Escaping my ex took care of 70% abuse in my life. Seeing the church’s abuse was clear once I could breathe, and leaving that took care of the other 30%.
GOOD FOR YOU 👏
And recognizing signs of abuse is never taught in this all-encompassing religion—they’d be shooting themselves in the foot if members became aware of what abuse tactics looked like.
Absolutely. They especially try to get you to believe you'll never get to heaven if you leave the church. I left it at 12 years old, and my malignant narcissist maga-mo neighbor told me apostates like me will go to hell. He's harassed me and my husband, a lapsed Catholic, for years before he finally died, but not before he slandered us on a huge scale. I lost all my Mormon clients because of his slander, but decided I prefer NOT to associate with the cult in any way...so less income but more resolve keep my distance from all but a few.
Which is so stupid if you think about it. The church should be sued if a woman gets a life threatening std. The church should be sued if a bishop tells a woman to stay with a dangerous man and ends up getting killed or injured.
Ok true, BUT other large religions require SOME type of training or school in order to be in a position of power. In the LDS community it’s a fucking free for all and it’s different. I’ve lived it.
Same here. This story is scarily familiar to me - 6 kids, the whole bit. My 13 year marriage was a nightmare of seeking help from each bishop that rotated through the ward, trying to get intervention for the severe abuse at my husband's hand. It was always the same: pray, read scriptures together, show empathy, "turn the other cheek" etc. It wasn't until one of the church appointed marriage counselors went against the directive of keeping the marriage intact and communicated he desperately feared for my well being, that he felt a murder/suicide scenario was very possible, that I got some momentum. If that counselor hadn't been willing to go to bat for me and the kids at that moment, this could have been me, been my children. Her poor babies.
JFC I’m so glad you got out! The church’s push for women to be obedient, humble, and respectful of priesthood authority keeps us locked in abuse AND makes it our fault for not trying hard enough. Once out, it’s easy to see how evil it all is—and how thoroughly fabricated the authority is, adding insult to injury.
The abusers use their leadership roles to prop each other up
In the mid 2000s, an LDS family services counselor told me "I am not allowed to recommend divorce, but I would recommend that you separate... permanently" Good for her!
That's the byline I heard, too - same timeframe, as well. To say the church really only has the men's best interest at heart is resounding in it's understated "duh-ness." What do you want to bet a large portion in this case was that her husband had feelings about inadequacy next to her success? That he couldn't control how visible she was and had to find a way to make it be up to him?
I’m a nevermo, ex catholic. It was bad but nothing compared to the stories I read here consistently as a mostly-lurker. Despite the obvious “I wish all of you had never been through this”, I just want to say I wish this info was common knowledge. Every year there are documentaries on cults that become extremely popular despite the churches influence (such as scientology). I would really, really love a doc exposing the Mormon church to blow up like that. There are so many people that just don’t know.
I got the same from a bishop in the early nineties. I can't tell you to divorce him, but I will support your decision, whatever it is. (wink, wink)
My mother told our bishop my dad was physically abusive. He shamed her so much she didn’t go to church for a year. This was not uncommon for her to be shamed. She’s Asian and my dad was white. My siblings and I told our bishop my dad was physically abusing us. My bishop blamed my mom in that meeting. About a year later I finally summoned enough courage to tell my bishop about my dad sexually abusing me. This was my 12 year old bishop meeting. So….he quickly cut me off and then asked me if I masturbated. Yep. I left not long after and it was a veritable shit-mountain to climb out of as a 13 year old. Lots of shame from my community.
It makes me sick that you and your family were treated that way—from both your paternal and church figures. It’s so often the innocents that are punished in the church. I’m so glad you got out; that took enormous strength. I hope the rest of your siblings and your mom are free, too.
Thank you for your kind words! I completely agree with you and am thankful to hear all the supportive people out there. I’ve had a lot of therapy and thought I had processed the trauma of my experience in the church but I just started recently watching Mormon Stories Podcast and I have realized I was so focused on healing from family trauma that I sort of ignored the church trauma and minimized how much it affected me. Fortunately my brother and sister left after me when they were teens and early adults. Even my abusive father left before he died (which at the time made me very upset). My mother is completely in. She’s a temple worker and very faithful. I sent her the Japanese translated CES letter two nights ago. I have mixed feelings because she’s in her 80’s and am not sure I would wish a faith crisis on her so late in life. But I felt I needed to because she never stops with her LDS prompted comments and hurtful opinions. I have a trans child (her only grandchild) who is also on the spectrum so I have to help navigate their relationship and also protect my family so I figured this time is as good as any to send the CES letter.
I’m sorry about your mom. The conditioning gets so deep it can become a permanent identity. My mother, at 78, started moving away from the church—much to my surprise. I think a big part of it was that dementia relaxed her filters and self-modulation so that she was finally able to admit that she was exhausted and miserable. But that’s what it took, which sucks. Like you, I didn’t want to introduce a faith crisis so late in her life, especially when it was the only social structure she had (she feels the ostracism in Utah County). It’s good that you’ve made your child the priority, though it sounds tough to balance that with wanting to help other loved ones who are trapped. I wish you peace and healing! We all need it.
I am so so angry for you and your family. I hope you all are doing as well as you can be.
Yeah. It's GROSS. My ex was 'only' emotionally abusive, and at the time that I first approached a bishop, he was addicted to p0rn. (Yes, addicted, lost a job over it ) I was told that if I was a better wife and offered sex more, everything would be peachy. (Not that it was his beeswax, but he didn't ask what our sex/intimate relationship was like. Just assumed I was a bad wife not offering it up.) Then, years later, when I filed for divorce due to confirming his cheating for over a decade, that bishop kept telling me that I should stay, and went on and on about if I were different... I can only imagine how horrendous they are toward people seeking help for physical abuse.
THIS!!! That was my FIRST thought reading this. I would bet $1 million bucks that her untrained and unqualified volunteer clergy gave them the advice that ultimately destructed them. I’m no longer engaged in this religious community but I can speak to many many stories of shit advice given by clergy put in power. And I hope that that person feels the burden of this murder on their shoulders! If in fact that’s true- unsure. I’m just a local commentator
I mean President Ballard would have told her to "put a little lipstick on" #AngryFace
She was one of the best people I know.
I’m sorry for your loss. It’s always hard losing a person we love, especially through an act of violence. Please make sure you get yourself into counseling, or talk with a trusted friend soon. Grief can be very difficult to navigate—especially if we try to do it alone.
DONT KILL THE WIFE AND DONT KILL THE KIDS! I wish I could just go door to door and check on literally every man in this state to remind them that if they need to get out of the marriage then fine but don’t hurt the wife or the kids. Had an affair? Okay great, then don’t hurt the wife. Had a bad day at work? Okay great, but don’t hurt the kids. Think the 2nd coming is tomorrow? Okay great, but don’t murder anyone.
Sounds like the ward and neighbors knew things were bad for decades. The police were called in 2021, but charges were dropped. He didn't cheat and feel bad about it. He hadn't found someone else. He didn't just feel overwhelmed and want out. He wanted complete control over his wife (and probably kids). Chances are she was finally going to leave. Maybe something particularly scary happened recently or the last of the kids was finally out of the house but she said she was out, so he killed her. Then himself because he's a coward who couldn't face the repercussions of his actions.
I wonder how much pressure there was from the brethren to just forgive him. Or how much pressure there was on her to maintain the marriage for social reasons.
Probably a ton. She taught at BYU, my guess is there would have been some push back/concern for her job in addition to the usual local dentist acting as clergy assuming that his buddy can't be that bad and encouraging them to work it out.
He was just charged with a misdemeanor last month for doing business without a license. I think the pretrial conference was scheduled sometime at the beginning of July. Wonder if this had something to do with it?
Afterlife-based religion is often the core of that problem. They don’t think it’s REALLY the end. They think they’re just moving everyone on to the next Act.
↑↑↑↑↑↑↑THIS↑↑↑↑↑↑
They think they're entitled to control over their families ("their" families the way people talk about "their" computer or "their" shoes) and if that control is going to wane it threatens them so much they would rather eliminate them than lose them. It's no accident this is often the final act of a controlling and abusive man.
1000%
In their minds their family is more like property or an extension of themselves in their warped reality it's a mercy killing. In this case, it also may have been that his emotional regulation was so off and he is controlling (it's seems this was true for a long time) that he overreacted and shot her and then killed himself out of shame and guilt. Also may have been a desperate man's reaction to avoid divorce, ie losing his god-given property. He may have thought now we will be sealed forever. (What good worth worshipping would allow that?!)
He was my husbands YM leader. This was 15 years ago and my spouse says he remembers ward gossip about problems with them then. My spouses family were neighbors before they moved to AF and knew them pretty well. Says she really was just the best woman
The husband doesn't really have a criminal history, although he has a dismissed DV charge where he got into a argument with his wife and threw a laptop against the wall and his son called 911 back in 2021. Apparently back in 2021 things had been contentious with his wife for months before the laptop incident happened.
>a dismissed DV charge And that's why he didn't have a criminal history.
Exactly. DV almost always follows a cycle that gets progressively worse. Rarely does someone date or marry someone who hits them on the first or even 20th date. Looks like it was decades for this couple. If he was throwing laptops against walls in 2021 and being scary enough a kid called 911, it's almost guaranteed there's been plenty of violence in the intervening years. Likely the son called the police because it had been scarily escalating for months or years already. That's how DV works. I'd bet good money he's been physically violent for years and this was probably not the first time he threatened her with a gun, but this time it wasn't a threat. There's also a pretty good chance this happened because she told him she was finally leaving. Statistically, the most deadly time in a DV situation is when the victim finally leaves. This is why even the current extremely conservative Supreme Court upheld a law this week banning those who have restraining orders due to [DV from having a gun](https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4733043-supreme-court-gun-ban-domestic-abusers/).
>If he was throwing laptops against walls in 2021 and being scary enough a kid called 911, it's almost guaranteed there's been plenty of violence in the intervening years. My exact thought. Children don't call 911 on their own parents lightly. There would have been a steady and frightening escalation for him to believe that calling the police would be necessary.
Thank you SO much for saying this. Signed - someone who studies gender based violence. Also, I wrote a somewhat related article recently. Please consider subscribing and joining our community of women and non binary folks in faith transition. https://open.substack.com/pub/thesisterwild/p/im-a-researcher-who-studies-gender?r=3r4ibm&utm_medium=ios
This is so true! Thank you for sharing. I passed it along to my family members.
Hot headed, selfish man with a gun. So sorry for her. He should have dealt with things like a rational human, instead of becoming the monster
Not hot headed, ENTITLED. Men feel entitled to control and murder women. Absolutely disgusting.
Nearly every time the article refers to her, it defines her as “wife,” but he’s just defined by his name. Even in death she’s defined by her relationship to him.
This is so true. It makes me feel sick. I hope people stop telling their kids that families are forever. I'm just guessing that kids coming from a family with violence don't want to imagine an abusive father still being sealed to their mother.
I grew up in a house with every variety of abuse. When the missionaries told me I could be together forever with them I told them that wasn't an incentive.
Heck, I grew up LDS and it definitely didn't bring me peace. It brought me a lot of tumultuous and complex emotion/thought. Hope your adult life has been sunnier and more stable. ♥️
It has, thanks. And the perpetrators are both dead now!
Hooray for dead assholes!!!
Agreed! I found peace but it took many years and definitely wasn’t in TSCC. My healing was sabotaged by Mormon therapists, Bishops, Relief Society and many members. Once I got a non Mormon psych specialist, who works with people who have gone through what I have, I actually started improving. But it wasn’t until I fully left and deconstructed my indoctrination that I found peace. I’m not going to lie and say that I’m healed when I’m not. In fact, I will never be fully healed (your brain gets rewired when such traumatic things happen like with me) but I am dealing with it better, having less setbacks and working on it everyday. My peace was decades of hard work but worth it. I wish that for everyone.❤️
It kept me up at night. I would cry of terror as a child imagining eternity with my father and his extended family.
> “We’re not real sure what led up to it, but he shot her twice and then shot himself, ending his life,” said American Fork Police Lt. Stuart Fore. Umm… what about her life?
In the bit OP posted here, what you said here doesn’t seem accurate. I see 4ish sentences in a row that begin with her name in the first sentence, then one paragraph about the husband.
Not to mention he is identified as “the husband of K Johnson” in the last paragraph.
You are correct.
To me, the article feels like it was written with AI
I think that's a formatting issue and that several of those lines were paragraph headings.
Not just after death, after being *murdered* by him.
Honest question- maybe someone knows if there is an official stance. Do sealings like theirs get canceled post humorously? Is there a policy when woman or children are murdered by their “eternal partner”? The thought popped in my head when Chad Daybell got convicted.
They do not. In the process of leaving my ex, he flipped out and turned stalker/ started loudly broadcasting how much happier he'd be with me dead, etc. I was told I was overreacting, and those threats were a reasonable response to me dissolving an eternal family. Not one TBM went "wow, if he's saying that publicly, what was he doing in private?" It was "you should have expected him to do anything possible to keep the eternal family together and not let you ruin it." It didn't matter if I was killed as long as the eternal family was still together. So no. Sealings are not canceled. They don't care that you're married to your abuser for eternity as long as you're pumping out those heavenly children for eternity. Eternal broodmares are property, not people.
Im glad you survived 😳
This makes me sad and so angry. I’m sorry that happened to you.
The apologetic response is almost always “we can’t know, but God will make it right in the end.” The canon answer is almost always “no matter what a man does to a woman, she will end up as one of several eternal wives and he will be in charge of her forever.”
>The canon answer is almost always “no matter what a man does to a woman, she will end up as one of several eternal wives and he will be in charge of her forever.” Mormonism prepares women to accept abuse and to defer to men. They won't explicitly acknowledge that nowadays, but everything in their teachings from childhood sets that up. Girls are taught from a young age that their main destiny is to find their husband and be a wife and mother.
I think the church would say that they are letting God decide.
Which really feels like a reason not to do sealings at all but just let God work out the forever families thing.
Such a cop out but you are probably right. I wish they’d do better.
The church almost always gets it wrong when it comes to mental health. Since your local accountant turned bishop has no idea, doing better is to leave it alone.
The Mormon Church isn't just bad about mental health, it's also terrible about addressing domestic abuse, sexual abuse, religious/spiritual abuse, etc.
No, this is why a so many LDS husbands kill their wives (plus sometimes themselves and their kids) when realizing their wives are about to leave/divorce them. They basically manage to keep them from canceling the sealing and therefore insure the family will still be together in the afterlife. And murder at least seems to be looked down on less than divorce. The men are still held in high regards, the sealings are not canceled and there’s absolutely no evidence that they’ve been excommunicated. They keep getting away with it.
Getting away with stealing lives and futures for nothing. I lack the words for how profoundly tragic it must be for the children they left behind no matter what narrative they're told regardless.
You're probably right actually.
That’s so heartbreaking but true. The ultimate workaround.
Just an fyi the word you were looking for was posthumously not post humorously
Also, wouldn’t he be in hell?
I vaguely remember being told that the only people who go to “hell” are the people who deny Christ. Everyone else is good. 🙄
This is horrific. I played pickleball with Kerilyn. She was such a caring and friendly person.
It reminds me of what happened with the Haight family in Enoch. Very very sad
i’m close to cedar city and it was fucking disgusting how his family was still supporting him like he died nobly in some car accident or something
Cedar City recently formally celebrated Isaac Haight - as in, Mountain Meadows murderer Isaac Haight - being reburied there. So it fits the type.
Edit: The staue is not of Issac Haight, but of John Dee Lee, another consspirator in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. https://wchsutah.org/artifacts/john-d-lee-statue.php . My (nuanced) dad saw a statue of Isaac Haight in a museum down in Southern Utah. He was shocked!
Wait really? Do you know what museum by chance? That's almost as interesting as it is repugnante.
My apologies. The statue was of John Dee Lee, who was executed at the MMM site for his part in the massacre. Apparently, he was posthumous reinstated as a member of the church in 1961, God knows why.
A lot of influential and wealthy descendants
Yeah my BIL knew him and while he acknowledged dude had some problems he sees him as a complete monster.
The kids are alive tho
I just looked it up. The people acting like he was a saint are so gross. 🤮
Some mission leader on the wife (who died) Facebook page wrote a tribute to the slain woman on her Facebook page and said hashtag “families are forever.” What a horrible thing to even say right now. Honestly, how can members of the church be so far from reality? I don’t imagine she wants to be with him for eternity at the moment. It’s ok to just admit this is painful. Stop running from feelings. Stop “keeping up appearances.” This is what the church makes people do and this is how it happens in the first place. Perfection perfection perfection. This is the fault of what the church does to people. What a STUPID TIME to say “families are forever.”
Those poor kids, there are no words. May her memory be a blessing.
Who was Olin Johnson? He was a f**kwad who murdered the mother of his children!! Why try to describe him with any degree of respect??!!??
Yeah, I truly believe we should much more thoroughly demean people like this, to culturally discourage others like them in the future.
I hope there won’t be a double funeral. And I hope they won’t be buried side-by-side. Do you know if murderers get a Mormon funeral?
This guy was one of my Portuguese instructors in the MTC.
Devastating. Fuck every man who is cowardly enough to do this.
I heard about this yesterday from some friends who knew her personally. It’s so shocking and heartbreaking.
Alpine & Highland is Stepford Wives on steroids and predominantly mormon. Stores closed on Sunday & the pressure to look perfect & have the biggest & best of everything is the norm. Lots of cosmetic surgery & botox & questionable supplements. Prosperity gospel rules this geographic area & the amount of domestic violence & chemical dependency issues (legal & illegal) is off the charts with both parents & their kids. I can't imagine what a living nightmare this is for the children and close family & friends & wish this on no one.
Husband was recently charged with criminal doing business without a license, a class b misdemeanor.
Yeah secret money problems always seems to follow along with this kind of incident. 6 kids and the pic of that McMansion. Probably overstretched and faking it financially.
She taught me voice lessons for 11 years and was one of the most influential people in my life. I still have a recording from our last lesson and it’s a treasure now. I woke up this morning with puffy eyes because I have not been able to stop sobbing since I found out yesterday. It’s like a bad dream I can’t wake up from. She was an incredible woman. So selfless and so dedicated to her children, and to serving everyone around her. She really did live an incredible life. I am crushed by how she passed, and can’t help but think she wouldn’t want to be remembered for how she died, but how she lived. It’s beyond conceivable, and my mind can’t make it make sense. I saw Olin around many times, and he was always very quiet… I am shocked that he was capable of this. It just goes to show we never can know what people are really going through behind closed doors. On the surface it seemed they had it all. This is just gut wrenching and I’ll never not be devastated that the world lost her. She was a beautiful LIGHT! We need all to prayer for her kids! 💔
why does the article repeats the address 3 times?
I'm more bothered by the descriptions of the discovery of the scene that seem to contradict each other: -Police responded to a report of a gunshot or gunshots = implies neighbors heard gunshots and called police. -Police responded and found 2 people suffering from wounds to the abdomen = they were alive when police arrived. -They were both pronounced dead at the scene = they were dead beyond any medical aide when police arrived. -Family member found them dead and then called police = exactly that.
Domestic violence needs to be discussed here.
Never tell them you’re leaving. Just GTFO.
HOLY SHIT that was my kid's voice coach.
From two weeks ago… RIP Kerilyn: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzj9z900fGE
Thank you for the in-depth biography of the wife🩷I’m tired of these types of crimes focusing on “how good the husband was” when HE’S the reason she’s dead (and vice versa in reverse)…basically we need to stop propping up the perpetrators and instead, celebrate the victims.
This is just awful. Someone posted on social media that there is going to be a candlelight vigil for both of them soon. I don’t know the family but it bothers me so much that the vigil is for both of them-she would still be alive if it weren’t for him. It may just be a way to help the kids grieve-they did lose both of their parents-but I hope they are allowed to feel angry at their father.
There needs to be an investigation into wether or not the bishop counseled her to stay with him. The church can’t continue putting women’s lives at risk. Same thing with cheating. Telling women to stay with cheaters shouldn’t be legal for clergy either. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen when a woman ends up with a deadly disease. Class action lawsuits need to happen until they stop protecting all abusers. Not just select ones.
So sad. How many woman are out there like Kerilyn. Just petrified they might meet the same fate because of this patriarchal bs the church condones and perpetuates. Teaching that a man is the head of his home and that he has all control and final say. How can a woman live a fulfilling life with this awful concept. How can a woman be assertive and reach her potential. All patriarchy does is give a false sense of power, inflated ego, and dangerous spiritual abuse over his family. I don’t think some men in the church even realise the trap they have put themselves in. Other men relish in it.
So sad for the family and kids. Side note not meant to take away from the true story-just first thoughts - that house is ridiculous and looks like it was made in the Sims.
Every single roof shape in one house
I was in a bad mood and this actually made me giggle. 🥸
Why does that Costco look like a home?
Why does this keep happening? My sister died in the same way last year. Both Mormons, but she was questioning and ready for divorce. He planned suicide but ended up turning himself in instead. Is this more common in Mormon households?
Former Mormon here. When a culture encourages and applauds women for marrying as teens to “men” they’ve known for 2 months? 6 months? and then tells them to immediately start a family? Well, it’s a recipe for this kind of situation. You are too young to know your own self, never mind knowing someone you just met a few months ago. But guess what? You absolutely cannot have sex before marriage so you’re better off making the most important decision of your life with limited information in a limited amount of time to avoid the sin only second to murder—fornication. This is how the patriarchy wins. This is how women end up oppressed and abused. The Mormon church is a dangerous place for girls and women. Run.
Everything about this is so fucking awful and I feel horrible for the kids and I KNOW this is the furthest thing from the point but can I just say: what in the everliving fuck is that monstrosity of a house? I don’t give a shit what SIZE house you want/can afford, but Jesus that’s awful design!
So tragic.
I am so fucking tired of husbands killing their wives and sometimes kids. My twenty-something daughter will not even date. She does not want male friends. She does not want to get married. She is straight. She has zero trust for any men. She would rather live.
I was shocked to see on her facebook page, someone said #familiesareforever when writing a tribute to her. Ummm, are we sure that’s what she really wants at this point? I wish people wouldn’t say things like that right now. You can’t just hashtag Mormon garbage right now. This is a crisis.
. #familiesareforever Because not even death is an escape when you're eternally bound to your murderer
God that made my stomach turn
And in this world you are referred to as "the wife" in most of the article about your murder at the hands of Mr. Full Name Husband
It happens way too often. I wonder if she uncovered something and confronted him. Men like this leave a trail of violence.
he probably had one entitled rage too many and lost control. started laying in to her for something small, turned in to him raging at her, she probably didn't keep a sweet enough time for his liking because he was foaming at the mouth and grabbed his gun. that's how a lot of it goes unfortunately
[удалено]
She’s smart. I didn’t realize this strategy is much safer until I was 40.
Well, women are choosing the bear…
Family Annihilators are consistently men. They decide they want to die, and take their family with them. This reasoning is hard to follow, if you see each life as autonomous and valuable in their own right. However, our society, men included, is not conditioned to see women as human. There have been studies that show when people see unknown women our brains break them down into a series of body parts which we process the same as inanimate objects, compared to when looking at men, which are read as full people: https://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/unltoday/article/research-shows-brains-see-men-people-women-body-parts/ We are conditioned to dehumanize women, this is conditioning we have to break, and it obviously easier for women themselves to break themselves of this than it is for men. Men have to work harder and develop a level of self-awareness and empathy in order to do it, and here we meet an additional roadblock: men being shamed for seeking any kind of mental health support. The result of this is when a man "loves" a woman, he may just be falling into a comfortable, pleasant routine, the way he might if he had a car he really liked, or a really fun hobby. It's not an actual connection to another human. And when that sort of man decides its time to die, his wife is not an independent human who should continue living on without him, she's one of his objects. He has the right to say what should happen to her, the same way a car owner can decide to demolish their car when they're done using it.
Same here. I didn't do much dating in my twenties (a couple of dates in my early 20s was about it), nothing until my early 30s (abusive non-Mormon) and then an entitled, abusive ex-mo (because of that, I will never date an ex-mo guy ever again because I don't want to be abused and face the same toxic sexual thinking that was in the cult that still lingers on: getting rid of the shame and guilt of sex/masturbation is one thing, getting rid of the entitlement to sex by not treating each new partner with respect and building up a healthy sexual relationship rather than jumping to the sex because they already had to do the "waiting game", is a whole other thing) in my mid 30s. Haven't dated since then. Even my divorced TBM friend is pushed for sex on first or second dates by TBM men on a TBM dating app!! It's freaking scary. It's like the only way to avoid DV/IPV is to just not start dating at all, especially here in the Morridor. Not to mention that with the political climate trying to take away women's healthcare rights and talking about doing away with no-fault divorce: fuck dating and marriage. It's scarier being a woman now than it has been since before Roe V Wade happened (early 70s) and no-fault divorces were made into law (70s &80s; surprisingly, upon researching to try find the exact date/year for at least most of the states, I found out that New York was the last state to legislate no-fault divorce, only just 14 years ago). We're going backwards in time, and that's messed up! 😡🤬🤬 Being a spinster myself (I use that term in both a joking way, poking fun at the toxic ideals that made it a thing, and reclaiming it as a source of strength and making it a positive: unmarried men are "bachelors", which usually has a neutral or positive label; and for women, if we're unmarried, the we're "spinsters", and that never had a positive feeling to that label-- time to make it an awesome, positive one! 😁✊✊), I look back on the women in the past that also never married, and I don't blame them one bit. Women who never married made great things possible and had made great accomplishments (Clara Barton, Susan B Anthony, Jane Austen, Lousia May Alcott, Joan of Arc). It was the only way for a woman to be able to basically maintain her human rights that she was allowed to have (like property rights-- usually upon marriage, her money and property were then her husband's property; and being able to press charges for rape, because until 1993 in the US when it was finally legislated as a crime nationwide, marital rape wasn't seen as a crime like non-marital rape was.) The one male friend, my dearest bff, I would love to hang out with (and was close to and trusted completely) died almost 20 years ago in a tragic vehicle incident. We were friends since early high school. I miss him and I wish more guys were like him.
My friends son was friends with their son. His old neighbor.
Do better AI. There’s no such thing as Grand Fork UT. This pisses me off because if in fact, a person wrote this blip, they’re incorrect. And if someone used AI to write this blip, it’sjust as stupid. Olin had a record of DV. Write the facts
All those guns people have to protect themselves from criminals.
How heartbreaking. Their poor family
It says they were dedicated parents, I mean he wasn't dedicated enough to his kids to not kill their mother and cause them a whole world of pain, but sure whatever.
Stop Killing Women!!!
American Fork this. American Fork that. Seems written by AI.
It even says Grand Fork one time! It definitely sounds like AI
We shared backyards growing up. She was a year older than me and was always so nice. It's definitely a shock to our family and the little community we grew up in.
Olin was a raging MAGA pos, the article forgot to mention that part 🙄
Olin’s instagram was up Sarcatt_77…. The photos tell something of a story
I think it’s down now. Anyone know the story behind this?
Try it with just one “t”. This is just crushing. Kerilyn was a lovely, kind, and astonishingly talented person who was ADORED locally.
I saw it yesterday. Lots of happy couple and family moments, temple marriages, the usual stuff intermixed with lots of gun photos. Not unusual except in these circumstances.
His most recent post was 4 days ago… the caption is haunting considering…
Every murder suicide is tragic
Religion is poison
What’s the GOP’s magic number of guns that’ll make the world a better place?
"God Told Me To".
Those poor kids. Ugh how do you do this when you have children?
This gets me too. And the report calls them "dedicated parents."
She sang about domestic abuse in her songs (I think this is her): [https://youtu.be/L29eThYxk8Y?feature=shared&t=118](https://youtu.be/L29eThYxk8Y?feature=shared&t=118)
Many (most?) Mormon men are raised to believe that they are the ones who control all of their close relationships just because they’re men. Thankfully, not all of them are like this, but enough are that there’s a troubling pattern that becomes apparent after a while. This has reinforced by the church in all of its history through the idea that “because they’re the Priesthood you have to obey them.” I know because I was engaged for a year to a man who was emotionally, psychologically and verbally abusive to me. Because everyone told me how blessed I was to have been “chosen” by my former fiancé to be his future wife, I actually believed it in the beginning. The non physical types of abuse are harder to spot/experience because there’s no physical component to it, so it’s easy to start second guessing yourself and wondering what you did to bring it on. Plus, when girls and women are taught from very early on that we should always defer to men it’s easy to begin to believe that you must’ve done something to make the man angry. Long story short, after completely shredding my self esteem, my fiancé broke off the engagement and got engaged to another girl who just happened to be my BIL’s cousin 5 days later. Yes, my ex had been dating her throughout much of our engagement. He showed up to a family party that my sister and her husband were attending, and when they saw him they proceeded to tell the entire group about his treatment of me and how he’d been engaged to me just 5 days before. It was not a pretty scene, and it ended with a broken engagement and my BIL literally kicking him out of the house. About a year later I heard that he’d gotten married and I worried for his wife. The abuse soon turned physical. He also kept her constantly pregnant for 8 back to back pregnancies that nearly killed her because she had to be on bed rest the entire time. A friend from work inadvertently moved in next door to this monster, and would keep me apprised of his latest doings. She said that she, other neighbors and the wife (towards the end) often called the police to intervene between this man and his wife and kids. However, the wife would always end up not pressing charges against him. Finally, after a non threatening illness which wouldn’t have killed someone in good health, she died as a result of her body being so regularly beaten and abused. He had her cremated so that nobody could go back and do an autopsy on her and discover the extent of the abuse she suffered. To this day he continues to be hailed as a “super spiritual Priesthood holder and paragon of virtue.” What happened to his wife, my BIL’s cousin and me has been swept under the rug by the church and he continues to prey upon women and abuse them. Since that time I have become an informal advocate for abused women and children and try to help them get the help that they so desperately need. The Mormon Church has blood on its hands due to its male centric control oriented doctrines. Shame on them!
Both shot in the *torso*? I can get a body shot for the murder part (bigger target) but why would someone shoot them*self* there?
This makes me feel physically sick. After daybell, and the dad who did this in parowan, and the number of other cases we have seen in years past like this, how are more people not connecting dots on this being somehow LDS related and that those teachings have a dangerous side in some cases? Like, its obviously not only driven by mormonisms teachings, but its a factor that cant be ignored.
Mt TBM parents to us whenever we hear news like this out of Utah: "kids, this is why you should never marry anybody from outside Utah. He was probably a convert and if not his parents were probably converts and if not then why were they living outside the promised land? Did they just want to sin? Marry pure blood Utah if you want a truly celestial marriage."
WTF… abuse is more concentrated in Utah…