Vickie Singer, the matriarch of a polygamous clan who went to prison for leading her family in a 13-day standoff against federal agents, said the lawman killed in the siege was shot by one of his own.

Singer's claim that Department of Corrections Lt. Fred House died from friendly fire drew a harsh and emotional response from House's mother-in-law, who sat in the audience at a Sunstone Symposium session Thursday at which Singer was a panelist."The shot that killed Fred House couldn't have come from us," Singer told the audience. "It's hard to bring that up, but it's true."

A few moments later, during a question-and-answer period, Wanda Whiting stood, clutching an event program to her chest, and spoke with a quivering voice. Singer stood at a podium just feet away.

"How can you say that?" she asked. "It was my daughter's husband who died! Her children lost their father!"

"You were wrong Vickie," Whiting said. "Wrong!"

Singer seemed stunned by Whitings' accusation but responded by saying she, too, knew the sting of losing a loved one. She was referring to the 1979 slaying of her husband, John Singer, by police trying to arrest him for offenses stemming from his refusal to send his children to public school.

"It is a terrible thing that happened," she told Whiting as the rest of the audience sat silent. "But I know what it is to lose a father and a husband and a son."

Vickie Singer told the audience Thursday that she had talked to a neighbor who claims a police officer said House had been shot by another officer hiding in a nearby home. After the session, Singer declined to name the neighbor.

The exchange took place at a Sunstone session entitled "The People's Militia vs. The Law of the Land: A Few Mormon Perspectives." Sunstone is an annual forum for Mormon thought.

Panelists included Singer, Patrick Watters, commander of the Utah Free Militia; Ogden Kraut, a polygamist, Constitutionalist and scholar of fundamentalist Mormon teachings, and Randall Edwards, an attorney and board member of Utahns Against Gun Violence.

There was little talk of militias, however. The panelists spoke about gun control, pacifism and their Mormon and Biblical scriptural foundations.

But most of the session was dominated by talk of the Singer-Swapp standoff that ended Jan. 28, 1988, after House, a canine officer, was shot and killed during an effort by state and federal agents to arrest Addam Swapp, Singer's son-in-law, and his brother Jonathan.

Thirteen days earlier, a dynamite bomb ripped through an empty Mormon stake center a mile from Singer's tiny ranch in Marion, Summit County. At the blast scene, police found a note declaring the family's sovereignty from the United States and a holy war against the state and federal government for its persecution of their family.

Figuring prominently was the 1979 slaying of John Singer, who was shotgunned in the back when he pulled a pistol on police serving a contempt-of-court warrant.

The family believed Singer would be resurrected and end the siege.

In all, 14 Singer-Swapp family members, including eight children, holed up in the tiny log ranchhouse for 13 days before the botched arrest attempt.

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Vickie Singer - who spent more than three years in a federal prison for her role in the bombing and standoff - decried the tactics of federal agents, which included the use of bright lights, strobes, flares, loudspeakers and low-level overflights by helicopters. Snipers shot out their electricity and agents plugged their water supply in an effort to force surrender.

Many of those same tactics were used later at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, during the Randy Weaver standoff in 1993 and at the Branch-Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, in 1994. The slaying of Weaver's son and wife by federal agents and the deaths of more than 80 people during the Waco siege have become the rallying cry for the radical right.

After those tactics failed to force the family's surrender at Marion, the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms organized a raid to arrest Swapp. It failed and House was shot.

Ballistic evidence at a state murder trial showed he was struck by a .30-caliber, full-jacketed round from a carbine fired by John Timothy Singer.

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