Cauldron Convos - a Somewhat Funny Paranormal Mysteries & Science Fiction Podcast · Kayla Cauldron

Inside Ervil LeBaron's CULT. (Daughters of the Cult Story)

·28 min·1 clip

Ervil's prison-cell hit list led to three murders on June 27, 1988.

The episode opens with Ervil LeBaron. Cauldron Convos quickly frames him as the so-called Mormon Manson, then starts worrying out loud about why anyone would hand that much authority to one man. The nickname gets mocked. The hosts joke about how blunt and flattening it sounds, comparing it to every tissue being called a Kleenex, which becomes their way of showing how labels can wash out the uglier details. Then the cult comes into focus. Ervil Morel LeBaron is described as the founder of a polygamous Mormon fundamentalist group, and the conversation keeps circling back to the way his followers were pushed toward murder. Nobody in the room treats that lightly. Even when the banter gets goofy, the story keeps snapping back to the violence, the paranoia, and the power games that let the cult keep tightening its grip. Mexico enters the picture. The hosts start wondering how the legal machinery works there, tossing around questions about judges, prosecutors, and bribes without pretending they have the whole system nailed down. It is mostly guesswork, and the show knows it. That fits the conversation, because it is happy to admit confusion while still following the thread of what happened and who benefited from the chaos. Los Molinos is next. The group raids the church community compound to kill Verlin, but Verlin is in Nicaragua, leaving the attackers to wreck the town and kill two men instead. That lands hard. The hosts cannot quite get over the image of the leader being somewhere else while the fallout hits everyone around him, and they keep circling back to that imbalance. Then the rivalry widens. Ervil turns on other polygamous leaders, and the conversation frames it like a vicious contest for status, control, wives, and maybe the pleasure of showing everybody up. By 1975, it turns murderous again. The episode lands on the killing of Bob Simons, who had been trying to minister to Native Americans, and closes with a jokey sign-off that stays half appalled, half amused, and fully unwilling to sand the story down.

As heard by us

A grim cult history told with jokes, skepticism, and a loose conversational pulse.

Cauldron Convos takes on Ervil LeBaron, the self-proclaimed prophet known as the Mormon Manson, and treats his story as cult history built on power, violence, and warped doctrine.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

Want cult history with side-eye and no museum voice?

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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