Jurors convicted polygamist cult leader Aaron LeBaron Friday on charges of ordering the 1988 slayings of three defecting sect members and a young witness.
With his hands clasped behind his back, Lebaron stood impassively before U.S. District Judge Sim Lake as he read the jury's decision.After 61/2 hours of deliberations, the jury found LeBaron guilty in the June 27, 1988, slayings of Ed Marston, brothers Mark and Duane Chynoweth and Duane Chyn-oweth's 8-year-old daughter, Jenny. The victims were shot to death minutes apart at two sites in Houston and one in suburban Dallas.
He faces up to 50 years in prison and will be sentenced June 6.
"It took three years to get Aaron, and we got him," assistant U.S. attorney Mike Shelby said.
He described every aspect of the case as difficult - "from the subject matter of this little girl's death to the notion of God ordering hits on people."
Prosecutors said the girl was killed because she was a witness to her father's death.
LeBaron was charged with conspiracy to commit murder for hire, conspiracy to obstruct religious beliefs, racketeering conspiracy and racketeering.
Jurors took up the case Thursday following a four-day trial.
Prosecutors said LeBaron, the grand patriarch of the Church of the Lamb of God, sent "murderous missionaries" to kill the three men who fled the sect for a new life in Texas.
Defense attorneys, who put on no witnesses, said LeBaron unfairly was targeted as a mastermind in the slayings. They blamed other members of the cult.
LeBaron family members testified that killing defectors, or so-called "sons of perdition," would bring on the kingdom of God in which the faithful would rule and control all earthly riches.
Witnesses said Aaron LeBaron was following the teachings of his father, Ervil LeBaron, who founded the sect in 1972 and died in Utah State Prison in 1981.
The younger LeBaron, a Mexican citizen, had taken the reins just two years before the killings, which were carried out under the sect's "blood of atonement" beliefs, his half-sister Cynthia Le-Baron testified.
The two are among 54 children fathered by Ervil LeBaron, who had 13 wives.
Defense attorneys contended that Aaron LeBaron's half-brother William Heber LeBaron was more powerful in the cult and that it was he who planned the murders. William Heber LeBaron and two other cult members are serving life sentences for their roles.
The Lamb of God cult, based on distorted early Mormon teachings, is disavowed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Prosecutors say Aaron LeBaron and another half-sister, Jacqueline LeBaron, directed the Texas slayings after receiving what they described as a "sign from God." Jacqueline LeBaron remains at large.
"We're not stopping until we see a dead body or her sitting in that courtroom," Shelby said.