FBI puts LeBaron fugitive on list

Fundamentalist LDS Church leader Warren Jeffs isn't the only fugitive member of a polygamist group to make the FBI's Most Wanted list.

The FBI in Houston has now added Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron to its Most Wanted list — not the agency's Ten Most Wanted list, of which Jeffs is a member, however — in hopes of finally tracking down the fugitive polygamous sect member.

"It's probably been several years, but we've started looking into her again," FBI Special Agent Todd Burns said Friday.

LeBaron's name was added to the list after federal authorities in Texas received new information about her — reportedly from her half-brother, who claims to have found Jesus while behind bars.

Jacqueline LeBaron is a daughter of Ervil LeBaron, who led the polygamist sect known as the Church of the Lamb of God. Authorities said Ervil LeBaron, who had 13 wives and 54 children, once wrote a "bible" for church members that preached that anyone caught breaking his commandments would be sentenced to death.

LeBaron attempted to unite Utah's polygamist sects. Anyone who attempted to resist was met with violence. In 1977, police said Ervil LeBaron ordered the killing of rival polygamist leader Rulon Allred. LeBaron was convicted and sentenced to prison where he died of a heart attack in 1981.

After his death, rumors surfaced of a "hit list" LeBaron had written. Over the next several years, a series of murders and suspicious deaths involving about 30 former church members were carried out — including four that his daughter Jacqueline is accused of helping to plot.

On June 27, 1988, at approximately 4 p.m., four murders were carried out simultaneously in Houston and Irving, Texas. All of the victims were killed by shotgun blasts to the head.

Eventually, five members of the LeBaron clan were arrested in the killings — only Jacqueline LeBaron avoided capture. In 1992, federal prosecutors in Houston charged six people with a laundry list of crimes including murder, conspiracy and racketeering.

"We charged Aaron LeBaron, William Heber, Jacqueline, Patricia, Douglas Barlow and Richard LeBaron," said Terry Clark, assistant U.S. attorney in Houston. "All have been convicted except Jacqueline."

The FBI refused to comment on whether the so-called hit list remains in effect.

"There hasn't been any further activity that we're aware of," Burns said.

With Jacqueline on the run since 1992, the case has remained dormant until recently when the FBI said it received new information from her brother, William Heber LeBaron.

"He said they had an agreement to meet in Mexico. At one time they talked about meeting there before they got arrested and that never took place," Burns said Friday.