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Question: Were William Parrish and his son murdered as they attempted to leave Utah because leaving Utah was "forbidden"?
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Question: Were William Parrish and his son murdered as they attempted to leave Utah because leaving Utah was "forbidden"?
No guilty parties were ever found
The Los Angeles Star reported that Indians had supposedly killed Parrish and two others; it noted too that "rumor had it [that Parrish]...'had a difficulty with the authorities about removing property which he had previously 'consecrated' to the church.'" [1] No guilty parties were ever found. [2]
The only "leader" accused was Parrish's bishop. [3] If a local leader did commit an act of murder, this proves nothing about Brigham Young or other general leaders ordering it, or that this is a representative example of how Utah Mormons dealt with apostates.
Notes
- ↑ Edward Leo Lyman, San Bernadino: The Rise and Fall of a California Community (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1996), 342–343.
- ↑ Thomas G. Alexander, "Wilford Woodruff and the Mormon Reformation of 1855-57," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 25 no. 2 (Summer 1992), 27–28.
- ↑ Lyman, 343 n. 37.