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FAIR is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of the doctrine, practice, and history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
It is claimed that Brigham Young and the entire Church hierarchy were responsible for the murder of two apostates, called the "Parrish-Potter" murders.
Local members may well have been responsible for the murder of Potter and Parrish. But, the account is remarkable not—as the some claim—because it was so emblematic of "blood atonement" or the murder of apostates, but because it was an anomaly.
As discussed here, violent crime and vigilantism in Utah was much less frequent than elsewhere in the Union, especially on the frontier.
There is likewise no evidence, beyond several testimonies taken two years after the murders that only suggest that the murders were orchestrated by the Church, that Brigham Young ordered or condoned the murder.[1] And, Bagley (and Denton who follows him) are wrong in claiming that local Mormons did nothing to bring the perpetrators to justice—they were indicted by a Mormon grand jury.
Polly Aird has written the most descriptive account[2] to date of the murder in Springville, Utah, of Mormon apostates William and “Beason” Parrish and spy “Duff” Potter. At the time, Aird found the evidence regarding Brigham Young’s foreknowledge of the crime conflicting enough to call for further analysis.[3] Witnesses reported a letter from Brigham Young being present at meetings where killing the Parrishes was plotted by the bishop of Springville, Aaron Johnson, and other local leaders. However, conspirators were told not report to higher authorities and William Parrish was threatened with death if he attempted to go to Brigham Young to appeal for recovery of illegally confiscated horses. Parrish’s widow visited Brigham four months later, and reported he was unaware of events in Springville. Young undercut the actions of the local perpetrators by arranging for some of the horses to be returned, but did not investigate much further.
Ardis Parshall discovered a copy of Brigham Young’s letter that set events in motion.[4] The contents exonerate Young from being an accessory before the fact.[5] Brigham warned that two non-Mormon ex-convicts (John Ambrose and Thomas Betts) might attempt steal livestock from a farm in Spanish Fork or somewhere else on their way to California. Brigham advised vigilance so that Bishop Johnson’s guards would avoid the mistake “of not locking the door until after the deed is stolen.” However if a theft “should occur we shall regret to hear a favorable report; we do not expect there would be any prosecutions for false imprisonment or tale bearers left for witnesses.” Young was essentially authorized extra-legal violence in the event that specific individuals were fleeing the territory with stolen livestock. Such a response was typical for such a serious crime in the western frontier and Brigham had presented his views on deterring theft in 1853.
William MacKinnon described the conditions Brigham Young labored under while trying to prevent a recurrence of Ambrose and Betts’s earlier crime spree.
In targeting the Parrish family, Aaron Johnson convinced others that the letter gave him license to use extra-legal measures in widely different circumstances than those outlined by Brigham Young. Later in life Johnson defended Young from being complicit in murders, yet sometimes condoning or pardoning the abuse of criminals:
Notes
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