He wears his hair pulled up into a ponytail on top of his head, like a Buddhist monk, appropriate for a man who calls prison his monastery. He hasn't shaved since he was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison, and his beard, wrapped in bunches every few inches with rubber bands, nearly reaches his waist.

During visits, his hands are cuffed, one leg is shackled, and a chain runs across his waist. His shackles are attached to a thick red bar bolted to the floor, limiting his movement to a few inches.

He wears an orange jumpsuit, rubber flip-flops, and the look of a man pleased with himself. He is a large man and a frightening sight, until he speaks, and then he comes across as polite, articulate, even gentle.

He recalls the murders of his sister-in-law and niece as if he were a surgeon recounting a routine medical procedure. He claims responsibility for both murders, although Ron, who is on death row, was convicted of killing Brenda and sentenced to die for devising the murder plot.

"It's never haunted me, it's never bothered me," Dan says, legs crossed, hands clasped in his lap. "I don't blame anyone for not understanding it. But if you had done it, it wouldn't haunt you either. It was a strange phenomenon."

Dan said he and his brother were led by God to beat Brenda unconscious, wrap a vacuum cord around her neck until she went limp, and then slit her throat. She was 24.

"I held Brenda's hair and did it pretty much the way they did it in the scriptures," he says proudly. "Then I walked in Erica's room. I talked to her for a minute, I said, 'I'm not sure why I'm supposed to do this, but I guess God wants you home.' "

He then looked away as he slit the 15-month-old baby's throat.

"I like to think she didn't suffer," he says. "It probably should draw more sympathy than it does. But I don't let it."

Dan doesn't think he will die in prison; he believes the walls will crumble and he will emerge as the biblical prophet Elijah, announcing the second coming of Christ.

"I don't feel comfortable saying I know I'm Elijah," he says. "But I'd be pretty surprised if I'm not."

Dan believes all organized religion is of the devil, although religion is his favorite topic of conversation. Even though he tore up his scriptures years ago and threw them in the garbage, he quotes from them liberally.

Everyone on Earth is a child of God, he says, or a child of the devil. Ron, who tried to kill Dan in the Utah County Jail when they were first arrested, is a child of the devil, Dan says. Heaven, he believes, is a 1,000-year party.

Dan's mother used to visit him, but he hasn't had a visit from the family he was born into in 15 years. Three years ago, his oldest son, now 26, visited him on Christmas with his wife. Mostly, his son just looked at him, Dan says, trying to figure him out.