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‘Mormon Land’: Mountain Meadows Massacre — What did Brigham Young know and when did he know it?

Co-authors of the new book “Vengeance Is Mine” explore the aftermath of the bloodiest stain on LDS history, including how church leaders in southern Utah tried to cover up the crime, how investigations were thwarted, and how justice was delayed and denied.

The infamous and inexcusable Mountain Meadows Massacre lives on as the bloodiest stain on the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 2008 book “Massacre at Mountain Meadows” offered modern readers the most complete look to date at the atrocity, when, on Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon settlers deceived a wagon train of emigrants on their way to California through southern Utah and then slaughtered about a hundred men, women and children.

Now comes the eagerly anticipated follow-up volume, titled “Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath.”

(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Richard E. Turley, left, and Barbara Jones Brown, the authors of “Vengeance Is Mine: The Mountain Meadows Massacre and Its Aftermath.”

On this week’s show, co-authors Richard E. Turley and Barbara Jones Brown explain how church leaders in southern Utah tried to cover up the crime, how investigations were thwarted, and how justice was delayed and denied. (In then end, only one perpetrator, John D. Lee, was executed.)

They also explore a key Watergate-like question: What did church prophet-president Brigham Young know and when did he know it?

(Tribune file photo) Brigham Young, second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A new book discusses what role, if any, he had in the Mountain Meadows Massacre and its aftermath.

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