A consultant for the Utah Attorney General's office, John R. Llewellyn is recognized as an expert on Mormon Fundamentalism and polygamy. A retired Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lieutenant, he specialized in sex crime investigation that included polygamy complaints, and was a polygamist for a time. [...] Polygamy expert and retired law enforcement officer John Llewellyn provides a dramatic inside look at each of the polygamist groups, how they began, how they rule their people, their beliefs, and how many are living off your tax dollars. He explores serious human rights abuses that occur in many groups such as forcing young girls to marry men old enough to be their father. A former friend of Tom Green, the author provides deep background on Tom’s life and polygamist activities. John explores the fascinating underground fraud by the various groups and evaluates Brian David Mitchell’s efforts to turn Elizabeth Smart into a compliant plural wife. Finally, he takes a hard look at the possible value of decriminalizing polygamy so that the many hidden abuses, including tens of millions of dollars of welfare fraud when polygamist wives pose as single mothers with children, can be brought out into the open and finally be dealt with realistically.

In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty.