Daughters of the Cult Tells One of the Bloodiest Cult Stories Since Jonestown

The latest collaboration between ABC News and Hulu, Daughters of the Cult, cuts through all the true-crime documentary clutter of the last decade. Even if you're familiar with Mormon fundamentalism or watched FX's Under the Banner of Heaven (which was based on a different Mormon fundamentalist sect that also ended in violence), the story of Ervil LeBaron and his breakaway Mormon fundamentalist cult will still shock you, as it proves that evil doesn't die.

Ervil LeBaron was born and raised within one of several Mormon fundamentalist sects dedicated to the concept of "plural marriage" (polygamy) who fled to northern Mexico after breaking off from the LDS church in Salt Lake City. In 1972, Ervil and his brother Joel, the leader of their sect, suffered a falling out, and later that year Joel was murdered by Ervil's followers on his orders.

Ervil's bloody rise to power was far from the end of the horror, and what's so unsettling about this story is how long his reign of terror lasted. Once in power, LeBaron concentrated on eliminating perceived threats to his dominion, which meant taking out the leaders of other polygamist sects. Much attention is paid to the murder of Dr. Rulon Allred, who was shot to death by two of LeBaron's daughters disguised in red wigs. This earned LeBaron the moniker of the "Mormon Manson," sending his sons and daughters out into the world to do his bidding.

The team at ABC News takes a journalistic approach to the story, speaking to dozens of people both inside and outside the LeBaron family. Despite its title, Daughters of the Cult is not a memoir, but rather an investigative deep dive into a macabre story. Ervil LeBaron evaded capture and ran his family like a criminal empire — sweatshops, car theft rings, activities all carried out by his own children, who he marshaled like his own personal army. Executive producer Beth Hoppe and her team interview witnesses, experts in Mormon fundamentalism, and law enforcement officials. But it's the perspectives of Ervil's family that are the most compelling.

LeBaron’s daughters Anna and Celia feature most prominently in this five-part documentary. Their perspective on Ervil's rise to power is understandably limited to their own experiences as the brainwashed children of a cult leader. Anna and Celia talk through their experiences with other siblings in a kind of roundtable chat (they've got playing cards in their hands, to suggest we might just be dropping in on them for poker night, which feels a bit too folksy for the doc's own good). These segments are the most valuable, showing the scattered and varied experiences of LeBaron's children — what they knew about their family and how fully they bought into the cult's brainwashing. It's fascinating to see how differently these adult siblings came to understand the perversion that was their upbringing, and the one real salve of this project is to watch these liberated (if haunted) adults share their familial bond without fear or threat.

The turn the documentary takes in its final chapters, after Ervil LeBaron has been apprehended in 1979 and dies in jail in 1980, is the most chilling aspect of the story. It involves a hit list that LeBaron left behind, in the form of a testimony to God that was received by his loyalist family members quite literally as a gospel. These beyond-the-grave orders led to what were known as the "Four O'Clock Murders," and the brutal, coordinated violence of those attacks constituted some of the most horrific acts carried out by religious cults outside of Jonestown. In these last two chapters, Daughters of the Cult becomes a thriller, one whose ending we know all too well.

Hoppe and her team have made a documentary that actually sticks with you. So many elements of the Daughters of the Cult story resonate today: the notion that cult followers don't necessarily disband just because the leader goes away; the omnipresence of guns, demonstrated by how easily the LeBaron family was able to arm themselves. It doesn't let the viewer sit easily with just another murder show. The violence sparked by Ervil LeBaron and broken families he left behind by Ervil LeBaron still linger, both on screen and off.

Daughters of the Cult is available to stream on Hulu. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.