SALT LAKE CITY — The daughter of a polygamist sect leader involved in the murder of four people in Texas pleaded guilty to a contempt charge in federal court in Salt Lake City in connection with the 1988 killings.
Jacqueline Tarsa LeBaron, who was on the lam for more than 18 years, fled a Salt Lake treatment center in 1991 where she was being held on a material witness warrant in a grand jury investigation. Also known as Melonie Martin, she entered a guilty plea Thursday in U.S. District Court to one misdemeanor count of contempt. Magistrate Judge David Nuffer gave her credit for time served and no additional time to her current federal sentence related to the slayings.
Her plea in Salt Lake City resolved the final outstanding legal issue in the LeBaron family's long-running saga.
LeBaron's father, Ervil LeBaron, was the leader of the Church of the Lamb of God. Investigators say the elder LeBaron ordered the executions of rival polygamists in the 1970s. In 1972, he was convicted in Utah of ordering family members to kill his brother, who was said to have disobeyed church laws.
Ervil LeBaron, who reportedly ordered the killing of disobedient church members, died in the Utah State Prison in 1981.
Jacqueline LeBaron, 46, was among six family members charged in the June 1988 shotgun killings of brothers Mark and Duane Chynoweth in Houston, and Ed Marston in Irving. Duane Chynoweth's daughter, Jenny, was also killed in what investigators believe was an effort to eliminate her as a witness.
Jacqueline LeBaron was indicted in connection with the murders in 1992. Federal agents arrested her in Honduras in May 2010 and returned her to Texas. She pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this year to conspiracy to obstruct religious beliefs and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Three LeBaron family members were convicted of murder in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison. Another was convicted of ordering the deaths and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. The youngest, who was 16 at the time of the killings, pleaded guilty to the child's death and served five years in prison.
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