[Matt] I think, when it comes to polygamy in Utah,
hands down, from what I'm hearing, there's corruption.
I was in what's called The Order, yeah.
I participated in obstruction of justice.
[Matt] I have been in law enforcement for 20 years
and not one time
was I ever meeting with an attorney general.
But you put me out there as someone who took money
and it affected my job. Bull [bleep].
You got 30 seconds right now to address
every fricking rumor that has ever come out.
Ask me anything. I told you, I'm not afraid of anything.
You've never taken money from the Kingstons?
[Matt] My name's Matt Browning
and retired law enforcement out of Arizona.
I was on both the Joint Terrorist Task Force
and the Fugitive Task Force with the FBI.
But, most importantly, I'm a husband and a father.
And I was born and raised a member
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
A few years ago, my wife, Tawni, and I
were contacted by women who wanted help
leaving the polygamist groups.
Since then, we've been contacted numerous times
by people asking for help.
Some of these groups have a history
of incest and child abuse,
and are thriving right here in the United State.
People need to know about this
and that's why we do what we do.
[music]
[Matt] Think, when it comes to polygamy in Utah,
the people in power,
whether it's politicians
or high-up people in government,
they know what's going on,
but they're not looking at it for one reason or another.
They go by a lot of different names.
They go by The Order,
Davis County Coop, the Kingstons.
The Kingstons are unique
in Utah polygamy for a few different reasons.
Back in the Depression era,
they formed a cooperative
which was somewhat common during that era.
The difference with this was
it had a religious underpinning.
They wanted to form a united order
which is a Mormon concept.
And, basically, the idea is that
all your businesses are under this one umbrella.
I this case, it's called
the Davis County Cooperative Society.
[Brian] In 1935, Elden Kingston
reported that he had gone to the highest peak
behind Bountiful, Utah,
which is just north of Salt Lake City,
and there received angelic visitations
and also put him in control of all plural marriages.
The Kingstons were excommunicated
from the mainstream church
over the issue of plural marriage.
After Elden Kingston died, his brother, Ortell,
took the reins of their religious group.
And Ortell had some interesting ideas
about bloodlines
and about a Holy Bloodline that the Kingstons possessed
that went right back to Jesus Christ himself.
[Matt] They are building a pure-blood race, they say,
where the leader tells the young girls
who they will marry,
and a lot of these have been family members,
so, allegedly, they're practicing incest.
And when you talk with people within The Order,
particularly women who have left,
you hear about a lot of sex abuse
and a lot of sex abuse amongst the families.
[music]
In 2022, there was a law suit filed
against the Kingstons
that included allegations of incest and sexual abuse.
The Kingstons filed a counterclaim
and the lawsuit was eventually dropped.
But the fact that people are still coming forward
with these stories is troubling.
[music]
[Nate] There is a head of the church, Paul Kingston.
He is both a spiritual and political,
and business leader of The Order.
You cannot be over a governmental agency
in Utah and not know who the Kingstons are.
And that's where corruption comes in.
Because if the rumors of corruption are true,
this corruption is preventing people
from being able to speak out.
One of the things that's interesting about them
is they have quite a bit of money.
They own a series of small businesses
that produce quite a bit of revenue for The Order.
On the surface, everything appears to be legal,
but the simple fact of the matter
is there's so much about the organization
that we simply do not know.
[Matt] That's why Tawni and I are looking into
the various people and survivors
who have left the Kingstons that can help us understand,
why is nothing happening?
What makes the Kingstons to be so above the law?
Is there corruption? Who did it pay off?
Who knew about it that didn't do anything?
I have people speculating
and that's why we wanna go talk to Ron Barton.
Hey, Ron.
Glad to meet you. Matt Browning.
Tell me about the AG's office
'cause that's why we're here.
The whole Polygamy Czar, how did all that happen?
Well, they were concerned that there were victims
within the closed societies
including the polygamist culture that were not being represented
or receiving the full protection of the law.
I had a position with the Utah Attorney General's Office
assigned to investigate crimes within closed communities.
Some used the concept of polygamy
as a way to victimize other people.
Men like to have power.
They like to have sexual access to whoever they want.
So take me back to when you get that position.
Mark Shurtleff became the Attorney General
shortly after I was hired to fill this position.
Mark Shurtleff was extremely supportive
of my efforts to investigate crimes in polygamy.
There were no guidelines.
Tell me about what happened on Pioneer Day.
[Ron] I first encountered Lu Ann Cooper
early on in my assignment in the closed society position.
Lu Ann was a very strong, courageous woman.
She came into my office.
She reported to me that she was a member
of the Kingston group.
She had been basically forced to marry
Jeremy Kingston.
What was your marriage date?
June 16th, '95.
[Ron] June 16th of 1995?
-Prior to me? Three. -[Ron] Yeah.
[Ron] Three? So you were his fourth wife?
And how old were you when you were married?
Fifteen.
[Man] Lu Ann was 15 when her family told her
she had to marry a man who already had three wives.
"I'm not ready because I'm too young,"
and he said, "No, you're not
because my other three wives were 15 or 16."
He was my cousin/nephew.
And it gets confusing because everybody's so closely related.
They're raised to think that it's okay
because "Dad marries his sister
and so I can do this to you."
I didn't know at the time
that being married to somebody
that was 23 years old when I was 15
was considered statutory rape.
After I left,
I started pursuing pressing charges against him.
So Ron Barton went after Jeremy and arrested him,
and we did DNA on me and my girls and Jeremy
to prove that there is incest,
and Jeremy went to jail for a year.
[Ron] I had a warrant for the arrest
of Jeremy Kingston,
and I suspected that he would be
at this Kingston gathering on July 24th.
Pioneer day is a big celebration day for them.
They believe that Christ appeared
to one of their early leaders on a piece of property
in Bountiful.
So every 24th of July,
they have a large family gathering there.
Early on, I was ordered by my supervisors
that I wasn't supposed to go
to visit any of these polygamist groups by myself.
So I went there in violation
of what their orders were.
Arrested him.
How many Kingstons were there?
Hundreds.
Wow.
That's gutsy.
[music]
[Ron] People like Lu Ann Cooper
have risked everything that they have
to expose what's going on in these organizations.
The whole organization or whole culture
makes it very difficult for them to report
them being victimized.
I'd given out my telephone number
to a lot of people
because I wanted the victims to be able to contact me
anytime they wanted to,
and I did get a lot of contacts.
In fact, I was probably spending more time
working and talking to people
afterhours than during the regular day.
I felt like I was getting a little bit burned out.
I just felt like I needed to change.
[Matt] Of course, you're gonna get a little burned out on it,
so you leave, Jim Hill comes in.
He writes 30-plus search warrants
going after the Kingstons for incest.
He had a judge sign off on them.
He's out to execute the warrants.
And what happened with those?
I think Jim was ready to go forward with it.
[Matt] You guys actually were gonna go out
and change the makeup of how the Kingston was structured,
and do great things,
and I just don't know what happened.
The warrants were ready to go,
but someone put the kibosh on that.
Somebody called them and said, "You're done."
It screams something to me. What does that scream to you?
[Ron] I was very disappointed.
Who were you disappointed in?
Whoever made that decision
that the warrants would not go forward.
I still can't figure out who made the call.
Well, I don't have firsthand knowledge of that either,
who made that call.
Who was the AG at that time?
Mark Shurtleff.
You don't think it was Shurtleff?
No, absolutely not.
Really, why's that?
Shurtleff was totally supportive
of our investigative efforts.
So if there's one thing about all this stuff
that keeps you awake at night, what would it be?
That I worry that I abandoned victims within the culture,
that I could've pushed forward and that, even today,
that those things, those crimes
that are occurring within the culture
need to be investigated
and that's not happening.
[Matt] Yeah.
I wanna find out who called off
the execution of the search warrants,
why they were called off,
and if there's any type of public correction
associated with it.
[music]
We're headed to a secluded location outside Salt Lake
to speak to one of the sources
of the DNA investigation that Jim Hill did.
[Nate] There's typically not much of a paper trail
within polygamist communities.
DNA should be able to prove incest.
If you've got too much of one family
and one person's DNA,
that would be a sign that incest was being committed.
We don't know if money or corruption
was the reason why these warrants weren't served,
and we need to find out if this is going on.
[music]
This person doesn't wanna be identified
or shown or anything else,
so the more private and secure it is,
the better off we are.
[music]
Now, if the search warrant
would've been executed as it should've been,
I know the leadership could've been hit with felony charges
which is potential prison time.
Do me a favor and just turn the cameras off
until we get to where we're going.
Hey.
I'm Matt. How are you?
Good, good, good, thank you for meeting with me.
Are we around where Kingstons would be?
Okay, good.
That's what I was hoping for,
that we can have a talk and you not as worried
as you probably are, right?
Kingston I can understand.
Utah government, how's that?
Okay. All right.
And you were born into The Order, is that right?
Okay.
I've talked to people who've told me about the case.
Were you giving information to the AG's office
on families, on people, on locations?
And what was the purpose of the investigation?
Do you know what some of the problems are?
Wow.
Wow. Now, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a geneticist,
I'm not any of that stuff,
and I don't think you are either.
But it sounds to me like there's a pattern
in all these deformities and abnormalities
that all leads back to the whole incest thing.
Wow. Now, you worked just with the investigator, Jim Hill.
What'd you think of Jim?
He took 2 years to write 30 search warrants.
Can you tell me how it all just stopped?
And then what happened?
What was your reaction to it all?
What's a "close relative"?
Okay. What do you think would've happened?
If they would've served the warrants
and everything would've happened,
do you think there would've been a change?
Truly, honestly, I say this,
if you need anything, please call me.
And I hope I can call you too, and we will make a difference.
Sometimes calling a lawyer for the defendant,
it makes sense, sometimes.
In this situation,
it wasn't the smartest thing to do.
What happens when you call the attorneys for the Kingston,
they tell the Kingstons and everybody runs.
All that time that Jim put in,
talking to informants and getting information,
just thrown out the window.
Why would you do that?
I am so motivated now to find out what's going on here.
[music]
When we're talking about the Kingston group,
it's not just the incest that we have to look at.
I think it's the totality of crimes being committed
in the name of God.
Washakie Renewable Energy scheme
that was put together by Jacob and Isaiah Kingston
who are Daniel's boys,
was brilliant.
They've brought in $500 million.
[Chris] What we eventually discovered
is that WRE was a bio fuels company.
And it turns out that they
hadn't been really producing anything.
But what they had been doing is taking these federal vouchers
to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars
from the federal government,
and just taking that money and not producing anything.
The federal government discovered the fraud
because of some whistle blowers.
And this winds up being an incredible
half-billion-dollar fraud.
Feds have run into some problems
and that Davis County Cooperative Society
and its various parts
haven't been completely cooperative
in where the money's gone.
So however big and intricate you think the fraud was,
it may have been even bigger than that.
And the government doesn't have the evidence.
[Matt] All money does within the Kingston
is it brings power.
Spend the money where you want. They have the power to spend it.
I need to find somebody who's able to speak
to modern day, like right now
what's going on within the Kingstons.
And it's really hard to find those people
'cause some of the people who can speak of the corruption
might've been part of the corruption.
And so that's the battle I'm fighting now.
So I'm looking for somebody within the Kingston group
that, in or out, is gonna be able to give me
some information on the Davis County Coop,
the financial side of things,
as far as Kingstons go.
So this guy's name is Kent Bull.
Looks like he used to be a Kingston,
but he can talk about the Latter-day Church of Christ,
which is Kingstons.
He can talk about the Davis County Coop,
which is Kingstons.
I came to realize that the truth claims
that the group makes are false.
And there is a structure inside of the group
to controlling power and resources
and people's minds.
I like his eagerness.
I understand what he's doing.
He came from something bad
and he wants to make something good.
He's not afraid of doing it.
He put it on a YouTube channel,
so, yeah, let's get ahold of this guy.
Hands down, probably the most well-versed person
in the criminal aspects of the Kingstons is Kent.
He's been raised to take care of the financials
and he developed the apps that they're using to this day
for the Kingston banking system.
-Hey. -[Kent] Hey, Matt.
[Matt] What's going on?
-Hey, it's good to see you. -[Matt] How are you?
Sit down, sit down, sit down.
Let's do this. Let's just start at the beginning.
First of all, you grew up what?
I was in what's called
the Davis County Cooperative Society,
the Latter-day Church of Jesus Christ,
which is colloquially known as The Order, yeah.
[Matt] Okay.
My name is Kent Bull.
I am a member of the Kingston family.
Is your dad a numbered man?
Is he an important guy?
Yes, he's number 26.
According to the Kingston group,
the numbered man concept
is that there are 144,000 men
who will reign with Christ at his second coming.
That comes from the book of Revelations.
He who has the lowest number has the most power.
Paul is number 9. Daniel is number 15.
Kent's father was number 26.
The guy's got some pull.
So Kent comes from a powerful family.
[Kent] My father, he's on the board
the Davis County Cooperative Society,
the governing board, so he's pretty high up.
[music]
I, as a software engineer, built the software services
that connected to the core accounting system.
I built the systems. I know the data structures.
I know how everything's organized.
I know how it's labeled and filed.
I wrote the software.
What type of criminal stuff
do you think they're involved in?
Not just crime, lies, outright lies, fraud.
Clearly, the elephant in the room
is Washakie Renewable Energy.
The top executives, Daniel Kingston's sons,
Jacob Kingston and Isaiah Kingston,
have pled guilty to fraud.
To protect the Kingston family, I was instructed
to remove evidence so that the federal government
would not have what they needed
to prove all of the fraud
in the Washakie Renewable Energy case.
I'm terrified.
If there was anything that would get me in trouble,
it would be this.
I was at a American Digital Systems meeting.
It's the group's internal tech department.
I don't remember exactly who said it,
but they said somebody from within the IRS
told us that we're going to get raided.
[music]
And so they started planning for early February
to have everything out,
and about a week out,
then we were planning,
Okay, we need to do this, this, and this by this day."
And so they said, "Go get this hard drive.
Take it out."
We left about 2:00, 3:00 in the morning.
FBI team got there about 6:00 in the morning.
[Matt] What were you told to remove?
The inventory system
which is an entire listing of all of the possessions
of every member of the group.
[Matt] Okay.
So I don't know if I'm gonna be a convicted criminal one day.
I personally participated in obstruction of justice.
[Matt] So you get hit with a warrant.
Everything's gone.
Week or two later, back to business.
Back to business.
What other forms of corruption is there going on?
[Kent] Sean Reyes is the current Attorney General
of the state of Utah.
Right after the inauguration,
Sean Reyes had a meeting with Jacob Kingston.
My father told me
that Paul said it would be good
if I were to go with Jacob Kingston
to observe.
It was this long table
and on one side of the table was Jacob Kingston
and everyone with Washakie Renewable Energy.
And on the other side of the table, you had Sean Reyes.
And they were leaned over in hushed tones.
And they were talking and they were saying things.
Do I know what they said? No, because I didn't listen in.
Though, what I can say is that, after that meeting,
there was a $50,000 campaign donation
to Sean Reyes by the Kingstons.
Sean Reyes, he and his team lied
about a $50,000 campaign donation
they received from Washakie Renewable Energy.
[music]
So do you think that's the reason
why law enforcement is scared to do anything
when it's Kingston or Order related?
In my opinion, yes.
And you would go to your grave believing that?
Hundred percent.
Wow.
[Kent] In about September of 2018,
I realized, "Okay, I probably don't want to be here."
I thought, "How can I live with myself
knowing that I helped the people that I love
be manipulated, abused, and enslaved
by truly evil men?"
I was a part of the machine.
That's a kind of regret that never goes away.
I think that, by telling this story,
that it's gonna make people have to deal with it.
-Let's do this. -[Kent] [whispering] Yeah.
-All right? -[Kent] Okay.
We'll get it done.
Kent has a sense of anger
because his family had him do things
that he now is looking at
as assisting and building a criminal organization.
We know that Sean Reyes' campaign
took money from the Kingstons.
So you gotta ask yourself,
"Is it at all possible
that his predecessor, Mark Shurtleff,
could have taken money from the Kingstons also?"
There is only one person who can answer that
and that would be Mark Shurtleff.
[music]
There's been a lot of rumors
and a lot of things flying around
about Mark since the beginning
of working on anything polygamy-related in Utah.
But that's why it's so important to go and talk to Mark
to put an end to the rumors.
We're going to meet Mark at the Utah State Capitol
because that's what he has requested.
I've received source information
that Shurtleff actually called
the Kingstons' attorney.
And after the phone call from Shurtleff
to the Kingstons' attorney
is when the key people in this investigation
and in the search warrants all started leaving town.
Jim Hill developed sources within the Kingston group
that gave him 30-plus search warrants on incest.
Then we were able to speak with one of his sources
that confirmed the incest within the group.
Those warrants in 2006 written by Jim Hill
was the best chance that law enforcement had
to stop the incest and stop the possible frauds
that were occurring by the Kingston group.
The people who the warrants were for,
if found to be practicing incest,
that would've been a felony conviction
and it would basically knocked off that level
within The Order.
So what I wanna find out if money and corruption
is any way tied into these warrants not being served.
-Hey. -[Mark] Hey.
[Matt] How are you? I'm Matt.
Good, Matt. Mark, nice to meet you.
-You want me to call you Mark? -Regular Mark.
As the AG, how did you get involved
when it came to the polygamy side of things?
So that's when I asked Ron Barton.
He said he had an interest in it.
And he ended up focusing a lot of his time.
I think he ended up becoming full time.
He even got that [indistinct] thrown at him.
You didn't throw that label on him?
I might've...
The Kingstons, actually, I think you were
one of the first ones that labeled them a crime family.
Yeah, yeah, it just, it just looked like it to me.
The fact that they have this business empire
that I believe is a criminal enterprise.
Okay.
People would come forward when it came down
to actually charging...
One gal came forward about having her baby
with birth defects killed.
Finally, we have someone who came forward.
And then they backed out. They would do that.
It was a criminal enterprise.
We tried to get the feds involved.
If you're labeling somebody a crime family
and thinking that the feds
are gonna come and take over for you,
I've worked at the FBI, you've worked at the FBI,
isn't it better just to have your own guys and go and do it?
-Resources. -[Matt] Right.
Why aren't they doing anything now?
I don't think they have a Ron Barton or a Jim Hill.
Right, let me ask you this.
The search warrants.
Jim was gearing up, getting guys for the DNA swabs,
getting people, tac teams together,
and it was a huge effort, a huge effort.
[Mark] Mm-hmm.
Who made the decision to say "Let's back off"
and not to serve the search warrants?
[Mark] It didn't feel right,
so I said, "No, we're not gonna do that."
So you're talking about the babies,
swabbing the babies, swabbing the wives,
and then getting the Kingston family,
the men.
All three have... We need them all, don't we?
-We do. -[Matt] You got warrants.
Yeah, you got warrants.
Initial proposal was we're gonna go into church on Sunday.
Why didn't you guys just to traffic stops?
There's no resources here to do it.
Okay.
You remember, after the time it was signed,
the warrants were signed,
do you remember how long it was
before you called the attorney and said,
"Hey, we got the warrants,
so let's do this civilly"?
I don't remember. It wasn't a long time after.
I knew there was a clock ticking on it.
It was like day eight, day two, day three?
I would think it would be early on. I don't remember.
[Matt] Not to sound like a jerk,
but you know that was a bad call?
Now, looking back on it,
you know that they weren't gonna agree with you
or they were just gonna run like they did?
The only other option to make it happen
was to go into their church and grab kids away from moms.
Yeah, but...
I don't know how we'd do that.
I just wasn't ready to do that. And do I regret
we couldn't prosecute those? Yeah.
I had the hope beyond hope it would work.
It was one other thing to try.
In the meantime, we're gonna
continue with our outreach efforts
and try to get people to trust us and come forward.
Egh.
Don't do "Egh." I'm telling you, look,
here's the thing...
Mark, Mark, the problem is...
Here's the problem about being a boss.
Yeah.
Everybody points the finger at you.
-Yeah, point them at me. -And that sucks.
Point them at me.
[Matt] Did you ever have any sit-downs
with Kingston attorneys, Kingstons themselves,
Kingston leader, Kingston anybody?
[Mark] Never.
[Matt] Rumor has it, the time when you were the AG,
there was a Kingston working at the AG's office.
Not that I know of.
I sure would've wanted to know that.
Are you suggest that somehow I went light on the Kingstons?
Because, if you're saying that, that's absolute bull [bleep].
That's cow [bleep]. It's horse [bleep].
-[Matt] I don't know. -All of the above.
If that's what you're suggesting.
No. How did I suggest that?
I'm talking about how do we solve a problem...
Whoa, why would you ask,
have you ever had a Kingston in the office?
You're trying to suggest, why did you meet with them?
-No. -You must've had something...
My dad's turning over in his grave
because my daddy taught me honor and integrity,
nothing more important than that.
[Matt] I totally agree.
And I did every decision I made in office
based on getting good advice
from law enforcement officers, attorneys below me,
looking into the constitution myself,
getting on my knees, praying about it,
and doing what I thought was right.
But you put me out there
as someone who took money and it affected my job.
Bull [bleep].
And it's highly offensive to me.
I can totally understand.
And you know what would help me and probably help you to...
What's that?
Is that all the BS rumors, as you said,
about you that are going on,
you got 30 seconds right now
to address every fricking rumor that has ever come out.
Ask me anything. I told you,
I'm not afraid of anything.
You've never taken money from the Kingstons?
Did I tell you "No"?
That's why I'm asking. You said...
-No. -Okay.
How many times you gonna ask me?
-You think it's gonna change? -No, this is it.
This is it because I want people to see.
-Right. No. -I want people to know.
-Hell, no. -Okay.
I did not ever take any money from anybody.
-Okay. -In an inappropriate manner.
I don't know of any campaign contribution.
I would never have taken if I had known that.
Nobody gave any money to me
from the Kingstons, from the FLDS.
This should have been taken care of years ago.
We have let one family grow into a monster.
And the only reason why I'm telling you this
is 'cause I got people calling me, saying,
"Hey, what can you do? What can you do?"
So now I'm standing here with Mark Shurtleff.
Mark, what can I do?
It starts with the media, with public outrage.
That's what gets the attention of elected officials.
You can convince whoever is in authority right now.
Individual police chiefs, wherever they're at,
a county sheriff, county attorneys,
attorney general,
somebody oughta be asking these questions of them.
And then they oughta be putting the pressure on.
I hate corruption in law enforcement.
And I cannot stand cops that don't do their job.
You took a stand at one time.
Now I'm telling everybody else, "Fricking take a stand."
-I agree with you. -Yeah.
I sincerely think this is awesome.
I hope the word spreads
and this becomes something everybody watches
and they get lots of angry Utah residents.
[Matt] I agree completely with Mark
for not wanting to do that at the church.
I agree with that wholeheartedly.
But there's other ways to take care of these warrants
without making a phone call to an attorney
and telling them ahead of time
that they have warrants
to serve for their DNA for incest.
I can't say whether he did right or wrong.
He was there.
But I have to face the victims, not Mark.
The most important thing is
I think we should stay focused on the fact
that there are victims within The Order
who are afraid to get out
because of the power that the Kingstons have.
Stay focused on the crimes.
Stay focused on protecting the kids.
And we can take care of this.