Investigators knew within hours of four Texas murders that the killings were probably committed by members of a Utah polygamist clan.
But no one could place the children of Ervil LeBaron at the three murder scenes. And the children weren't talking.They held their silence through countless interviews with investigators. They kept quiet through prison terms in Arizona for auto theft.
It took another murder - the obscure, undated slaying of Natashia LeBaron - to break the wall of silence that stood between the LeBarons and justice.
A Houston jury Wednesday returned guilty verdicts against William Heber LeBaron, Patricia LeBaron and Doug Barlow for the June 1988 murders of three former clan members and an 8-year-old girl.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on civil rights, racketeering and conspiracy charges. It returned a not-guilty verdict on a weapons charge.
During four years of conversations with scores of LeBaron children, Salt Lake County assistant chief investigator Dick Forbes and assistant U.S. Attorney David Schwendiman kept proffering the same invitation: If you want to get out, call us.
On May 5, 1992, Cynthia LeBaron called Forbes from Mexico. She wanted out.
An excited Forbes called Schwendiman. They met in Forbes' office and waited.
A few hours later, Cynthia called again.
"Tashia has been killed. We're scared to death. We want to come out, and we don't know how to do it," Cynthia LeBaron told the two men, according to Schwendiman.
Forbes and Schwendiman immediately called U.S. Border Patrol and "cleared the border" for Cynthia and her sister, Jessica LeBaron.
Then Forbes, Schwendiman and two Houston detectives flew to Laredo, Texas, where the two girls were waiting for them.
For two days, investigators grilled the LeBaron sisters. Hour after hour, Cynthia LeBaron talked about the Texas murders: the sign from God that prompted the killings, the planning, the surveillance and, finally, a gunshot-by-gunshot account of the executions themselves.
"It was incredibly tense," Schwen-diman remembers. "We were hearing this wild tale of years of homicides. We heard details of incidents we had studied only in shadowy form for four years."
Because Aaron LeBaron ordered the murder of his half-sister Natashia LeBaron, Cynthia LeBaron broke the clan's silence. Authorities believe Aaron took over the cult after the death of his father, Ervil, in Utah State Prison in 1981.
She may have broken the clan, itself. Half a dozen LeBaron children gathered in Houston this week for the trial of their siblings. Several broke their own silences and testified for the federal government.
Details about Natashia's murder are scant. Like Cynthia and Jessica, Natashia was in her early 20s. Like her half-sisters, she hid out with the LeBaron clan in Mexico.
But Natashia took a job in Puerto Vallarta, got a taste of normal life and started thinking for herself, Schwen-di-man said.
She started dating outside the family. "That's what eventually broke it," Schwendiman said. Aaron LeBaron ordered his sister killed.
Natashia was murdered sometime between October 1991 and May 1992.
She died because she wanted a normal life. Her death may have given the gift of normalcy to her brothers and sisters.
"Most of the kids came up from Mexico during the trial," Schwen-di-man said. "I've known all of them since 1987. Back then, it was like they weren't formed. They weren't really people. Something big was missing in all of them.
"But this time when we met them, it's like they've been born. They've come out of this horrible, dark, alien womb. They've actually come into a world that smells good, looks good and feels good.
"Even though they are in their 20s, they are like little kids. Everything is new to them."