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Son of cult leader charged in rape of girl
Sep. 2, 2005
Jill Harmacinski and Julie Manganis, Salem News Staff Writers
www.salemnews.com
DANVERS — Police charged the son of a fanatical cult leader with luring a 13-year-old South Shore girl he met in a computer chat room to a Danvers motel and raping her late last month.
Nathan Marquis LeBaron, 30, was arrested Wednesday in Salem, Ore., on a warrant issued by Danvers detectives. State police are in the process of bringing him back to Massachusetts for arraignment on three counts of rape, said Danvers Sgt. Robert Bettencourt, the department spokesman.
LeBaron waived extradition in Oregon and will likely be in court sometime next week, Bettencourt said.
Police said LeBaron is one of 50 children fathered by Ervil LeBaron, a Mormon cult leader who had 13 wives and was connected to dozens of murders in the 1970s. Ervil LeBaron died in a Utah prison in 1981 and has been the focus of a TV movie and a book.
On Aug. 23, according to court papers, Nathan LeBaron flew from Utah to T.F. Green Airport in Providence, R.I. He drove a rental car to Braintree, where he picked up the girl. It’s unclear how long the two chatted before meeting.
The two ended up at Revere Beach, where they got something to eat and then drove around looking for a motel.
LeBaron registered at the Days Inn on Endicott Street in Danvers and paid $70 cash for a room, according to court papers.
Once in the room, the girl told police, LeBaron began touching her. He tried but failed to engage in intercourse with the girl but performed oral sex on her. The girl told police no force was used.
After the incident, LeBaron drove the girl back to the South Shore and left her on a street near her home. Police would not comment on when or how the girl came forward to police. Bettencourt would not comment on further details in the case yesterday, citing an ongoing investigation and LeBaron’s arraignment next week.
Based on information the girl provided about the motel, police were able to identify LeBaron and apply for a warrant for his arrest. Detectives Roland Levasseur and Steve Baldassare investigated.
At 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, Patrolman Bennett Rowe of the Salem, Ore., police department arrested LeBaron at a family member’s home. Rowe said LeBaron was arrested without any problem.
“He was very cooperative,” Rowe said.
Rowe confirmed that Nathan LeBaron was Ervil LeBaron’s son. The patrolman said he knows “quite a bit about the family.”
A former police officer in Arizona, Rowe said he investigated a murder Ervil LeBaron was linked to in the 1970s. Rowe said he does not know who Nathan’s mother is.
The followers of Ervil LeBaron committed murders across the Southwest and Mexico, according to information available on Court TV’s online “Crime Library.” The victims included Ervil’s wives, brothers, church members and even his daughter, Becky, 17, who was pregnant when she was strangled to death.
Authorities believe he also left behind a hit list and some of his followers “picked up his bloody mantle, hunting down their father’s enemies far and wide and eliminating them,” according to the Court TV Web site. Some of his children were convicted for their roles in the murders. Neither Bettencourt nor Rowe, the Oregon officer, would comment on whether Nathan LeBaron had a criminal record.
“To this day, former members of the LeBaron cult whose names are on that list are still in hiding,” according to the crime library information.
A book about Ervil LeBaron, “Prophet of Blood,” was published in 1981. Actor Brian Dennehy portrayed the cult leader in the 1993 movie “Prophet of Evil: The Ervil LeBaron Story.”
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