Mormon Polygamy on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) officially renounces polygamy on this day in 1890. The 1890 Manifesto (also known as the Woodruff Manifesto or the Anti-polygamy Manifesto) is a statement which officially advised against any future plural marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Issued by church president Wilford Woodruff in September 1890, the Manifesto was a response to mounting anti-polygamy pressure from the United States Congress, which by 1890 had disincorporated the church, escheated its assets to the U.S. federal government, and imprisoned many prominent polygamist Mormons. Upon its issuance, the LDS Church in conference accepted Woodruff's Manifesto as "authoritative and binding."

The Manifesto was a dramatic turning point in the history of the LDS Church. It advised church members against entering into any marriage prohibited by the law of the land, and made it possible for Utah to become a U.S. state. Nevertheless, even after the Manifesto, the church quietly continued to perform a small number of plural marriages in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, thus necessitating a Second Manifesto during U.S. congressional hearings in 1904. Though neither Manifesto dissolved existing plural marriages, plural marriage in the LDS Church gradually died by attrition during the early-to-mid 20th century. The Manifesto was canonized in the LDS Church standard works as Official Declaration 1 and is considered by mainstream Mormons to have been prompted by divine revelation (although not a revelation itself), in which Woodruff was shown that the church would be thrown into turmoil if they did not comply with it. Some Mormon fundamentalists rejected the manifesto.

Today, Utah has some of the strictest anti-bigamy laws in the country. The husband can get 20 years in prison, and each wife can get 5 years. One day after the show "Sister Wives" aired, Utah state authorities announced they were investigating the family.

See also: The Sex-Determinant in Mormon Theology

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True Crime Queen, Ann Rule, on This Day in History

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This Day in History: The Queen of True Crime, Ann Rule, was born on this day in 1931. In the early 1970's Rule worked alongside Ted Bundy at a Suicide Hotline (crisis call center), and even though she was ten years older and a mother, they had a friendship for quite a few years. She turned this relationship into a best-selling book about Ted Bundy called The Stranger Beside Me. This book would come to be a landmark book in the True Crime genre alongside books such as Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood; and the best-selling true crime book of all time, Helter Skelter, by the lead Manson family prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry.

Another popular book by Rule was the 1987 work, Small Sacrifices, which tells the story of Diane Downs, an Oregon woman who in May 1983 murdered her daughter and attempted to murder her other two children. The book was filmed for television in 1989, with Farrah Fawcett in an Emmy-nominated and Peabody-cited performance.

In 2006, Associated Content stated that since 2000, the genre of writing that was growing the fastest was true crime. The majority of readers of true crime books are women. Other true crime authors of note are M. William Phelps (Murder in the Heartland), Joe McGinniss (Fatal Vision), Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City), Jack Olsen (Son, A Psychopath and His Victims), Gregg Olsen (Starvation Heights), Jon Krakauer (Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith) and Joseph Wambaugh (The Blooding).

Ann Rule passed away in 2015, but before she died she was terrorized by her sons. "Bestselling true crime author Ann Rule was bilked out of more than $100,000 by two of her sons, one of whom demanded money while she 'cowered in her wheelchair,' authorities said. Michael Rule, 51, has been charged with theft in the first degree and forgery, for allegedly writing himself $103,628 in checks from his mother's bank account, according to charging documents. Andrew Rule, 54, was accused of coercing his mother into giving him $23,327 and was charged with first-degree theft." Source

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