Who Are The Kingstons?
The Kingston Clan is one of the biggest success stories in Mormon
splinter group history. While other Utah polygamous clans were making
news with bloody purges and stand-offs against the federal government,
the Kingstons remained under the radar, acquiring teenage wives and
wealth.
The media's roving eye often focused on groups like the FLDS in Hildale,
Utah or the crazed Lafferty brothers' murderous spree. National new
services regaled us with lurid tales of Ervil
LaBaron and that former
spokesman for fun-loving polygamy, Tom Greene. The
Kingston Clan was
left alone to count the dollars rolling in from
its voluminous business holdings, unheralded - out of the public eye.
All that changed in May 1998 when sixteen-year-old Mary
Ann Kingston put in a call to the Box
Elder County Sheriffs. The teenager had stumbled over seven miles in search of
a phone after escaping from the clan-owned Washakie
Ranch near Plymouth
in northern Utah.
A Tale of Woe
And what a tale she had to tell. It seemed she had
been ferried to the ranch after being beaten by her father, one John
Daniel Kingston.
And what had she done that so pissed off daddy? She
attempted a cut and run from a polygamous marriage forced on her by
her father. Her
husband, 32-year-old David Ortell Kingston,
who as it turned out was also her uncle and allegedly already married
to fourteen other women. Yuck.
Of course, the media attacked
the story like hungered sharks in a pool of chum. It had the big three selling points of the best bizarro
Utah news; polygamous Mormon whackos, teenage wives and sex.
John D. Kingston received 28 weeks in jail after pleading no contest
to felony child abuse. David O. Kingston served a four-year bit in
the Utah State pen for incest and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.
Worse yet for the Kingston Clan, the
lid was blown off their little religious good-old-boy club. Things got even dicier for the group when
that same year four ex-polygamous wives founded Tapestry
of Polygamy (later Tapestry Against
Polygamy). One of the founders, Rowenna Erickson,
is a former Kingston multiple wife and she was ready to talk about
life with the secretive clan.
While its more flamboyant polygamous counterparts put themselves in
the national spotlight by killing each other, getting in shoot outs
with the feds, or parading multiple wives around for the edification
of the media, the Kingston Clan was raking in the dough with numerous
business holdings like The Fountain of Youth Spas, the East
Side Market,
the CW Mining Company, vending machine enterprises and many other ventures.
Its cumulative wealth has been estimated at over
$150 million. The
Kingstons may not be the biggest Mormon fundamentalist cult, estimates
put membership between 1,500 and 2,000 members, but they are the
richest.
Under the Media Spotlight
The Kingstons can't stay out of the news now the cat is out of the
bag. A strike started last year by workers at the Kingston owned Co-Op
mines in Emery County threw some light on the Clan's business practices.
Coal miners were paid between $5 and $7 per hour
for long dangerous work, and all this without the added incentive of health benefits and
other some such. The Kingstons got away with this by hiring mainly
immigrant workers.
Tapestry of Polygamy has been keeping the plight of multiple wives
from the Kingston Clan and others under the spotlight. Erickson, due
to her former insider status, has been able to shed some light on the
Clan's secretive religious practices. Not as much as we would like,
perhaps, because the true gospel is kept among a few high ranking church
patriarchs.
Jeremy Ortell Kingston pleaded guilty in January 2004 to misdemeanor
incest for a marriage with a 15-year-old cousin, LuAnn
Kingston. She
was his fourth wife. He received a year in prison. This less than a
year after his uncle David O. Kingston was released from jail for the
crimes that thrust the Clan into the limelight.
The final nail in the coffin for the Kingston's privacy, however,
was the $110 million lawsuit against the Clan filed August 1, 2003
by Mary Ann Kingston. Mary Ann, now 22, named 242 family members and
97 businesses owned by the Clan in the suit. In August 2004 a Farmington
judge threw out a countersuit for defamation against Mary Ann by two
Kingston Clan couples. The trial on Mary Ann's lawsuit is expected
to take place sometime in 2005 and may finally shed more light on the
Kingston's Byzantine business holdings.
Child Rearing Interrupted
In October 2004, the Kingstons were once again thrust
into the limelight. A Utah judge ordered eight children from the polygamous
marriage of John Daniel Kingston and Heidi
Mattingly Foster placed in
state custody. He further ruled that Foster could only get her kids back
if she severed all ties with the Kingston Clan. This included her job
and home, both owned by the fundamentalist order. Foster has been a member
since birth.
