Mormon Crime

In 1878, Elder Joseph Standing traveled into the Appalachian mountains of North Georgia, seeking converts for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sixteen months later, he was dead, murdered by a group of 12 men. Most accounts of this event have linked Standing's murder to the virulent 19th-century anti-Mormonism that also took the life of prophet Joseph Smith and to an enduring southern tradition of extralegal violence.

In 2007, Dr. Martin MacNeill - a doctor, lawyer, and Mormon bishop - discovered his wife of 30 years dead in the bathtub of their Pleasant Grove, Utah, home, her face bearing the scars of a facelift he had persuaded her to undergo just a week prior. At first the death of 50-year-old Michele MacNeill, a former beauty queen and mother of eight, appeared natural. But days after the funeral, when Dr. MacNeill moved his much younger mistress into the family home, his children grew suspicious.

Determined to pursue his passion for undercover work wherever it led, Stallworth finally lands in Salt Lake City, UT. Once again, he’s an outsider–not only as a Black man on a mostly white police force but also an unapologetic non-believer in a state dominated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. But soon after his first drug bust in the Beehive, Stallworth makes a startling discovery–Bloods and Crips are infiltrating Mormon Country, threatening to turn the deeply conservative community into a hotbed of crime.

Travis Alexander was a handsome, hard-working, practicing Mormon who lived in Mesa, Arizona. His good looks and easygoing manner made him popular with everyone, especially the ladies. So when he was found with a bullet wound in the face and his throat slashed, the brutal murder sent shock waves throughout his community. Who could have done something so sinister? But soon a suspect was singled out-Jodi Arias. A beautiful, aspiring photographer, Jodi had been in a long-distance relationship with Travis the year before.

From the moment Sariah and Lehi’s family arrived in the promised land, their prophets warned that the people would face destruction if they failed to trust in Christ. Centuries later, Mormon witnesses the fulfillment of this dark prophecy. He witnesses his own people hewn down in open rebellion against God. Crying out from the depths of his heart, the prophet reflects on what went wrong and how it might have been avoided. Through it all, hope in Christ abides.

In 1830, a young seer and sometime treasure hunter named Joseph Smith began organizing adherents into a new religious community that would come to be called the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (and known informally as the Mormons). One of the nascent faith’s early initiates was a twenty-three-year-old Ohio farmer named Parley Pratt, the distant grandfather of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In The Mormon People, religious historian Matthew Bowman peels back the curtain on more than 180 years of Mormon history and doctrine.

Diamond Dust is the memoir of how a young person’s talent ran away with itself, careening off into one unexpected adventure after another. With humor and introspection, it is a story of hubris and redemption, of talent and conscience, of art and absolution—and how life can lead us to second chances—at finding our better selves.

Long-term Bangkok resident and former New Orleans cop Bob Turtledove has a knack for getting people out of difficult situations. So when a young man from Utah goes missing in Bangkok, his parents are soon knocking on Bob's door asking for help. But what starts out as a simple missing person case takes a deadly turn as Bangkok Bob's search for the missing Mormon brings him up against Russian gangsters, hired killers, corrupt cops and kickboxing thugs.