Under the Banner of Heaven explores the lives of killers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who murdered their sister-in-law Brenda Wright Lafferty and her 15-month-old daughter Erica in 1984.
The Lafferty brothers were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and, though they were later excommunicated for their fanatical belief in Mormon fundamentalism, the way in which their faith shaped them is examined in greater detail in the FX true crime show.
The way in which Ron (Sam Worthington) and Dan’s ( Wyatt Russell ) relationship with their wives Dianna (Denise Gough) and Matilda (Chloe Pirrie) was impacted by fundamentalism is also of particular importance to the story.
Viewers are no doubt wondering what happened to the two of them, so here Newsweek will look into everything you need to know.
Where are Ron and Dan Lafferty’s Wives Dianna and Matilda Now?
Ron first met his wife Dianna in Florida while on his two-year mission for the LDS church , which he was tasked with undertaking in the state and Georgia.
Dianna was a nursing student when she first met Ron, and they got married shortly after the conclusion of his mission, Jon Krakauer reported in his nonfiction book Under the Banner of Heaven which the show is based on.
They moved from Florida to Utah so that they could be near Ron’s family, and they had six children together.
Krakauer spoke with a close friend of Dianna named Penelope Weiss, who told him that the couple were “so happy for sixteen and a half years” but things took a turn when they began to struggle financially.
During this difficult period, in which Ron and Dianna failed to make their loan repayments and almost lost their home, Dan persuaded his older brother with his fundamentalist beliefs.
Weiss told Krakauer: “Dan convinced Ron that God didn’t want us to have material things, that it was good to lose everything,” and even started to persuade him of the benefits of practicing polygamy.
Prior to Dan’s indoctrination, Ron was said to treat his wife “like a queen,” but after she essentially became “his slave” and was subjugated to horrific abuse at her husband’s hands.
When Ron was excommunicated and lost his job, he became “increasingly abusive” with Dianna, and she turned to his brother Allen’s wife Brenda for help.
Brenda told Dianna that she needed to divorce Ron, an idea she at first thought was impossible but later realized was her only means of escape. Dianna filed for divorce from Ron and this was finalized in the fall of 1983.
Around Thanksgiving in 1983, Dianna took her and Ron’s kids and moved back to Florida, and the pair did not see each other again. Though, she did testify to a Utah County prosecutor for his trial following his and Dan’s arrest for Brenda’s murder.
Similarly to Ron, Dan met future wife Matilda when he embarked on his two-year mission to Scotland, and the divorced mother of two girls was said to have had a “powerful impression” on him.
Dan did not consider marrying Matilda until they met again at a missionary reunion six years later, where he said he prayed to God to advise him on if he should propose to her and received a positive response.
The couple moved to California with her two children so that Dan could study at the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, they lived there for five years and it was at the end of their time there that Dan was introduced to the notion of polygamy and its supposed place in the Mormon faith.
Dan and Matilda had four children together and after finishing his training, the whole family moved back to Utah County, where he became obsessed with the practices of polygamy and discovered a manuscript called “The Peace Maker” that said plural marriage was biblically rational.
He became so fanatical with the idea of polygamy that he suggested he take on spiritual wives as soon as possible, and he told Dianna of his intention to make her eldest daughter, his step-daughter, the first.
At Ron’s trial in 1996, per Krakauer, Matilda testified: “I had come to a place there was no choices. I could either go and leave my kids, or stay and accept it.”
In the end, Dan changed his mind about taking Matilda’s daughter as his wife and instead married a woman named Ann Randak who he’d met when borrowing a horse from the ranch she worked at.
Two days before Ron and Dan carried out the murder of Brenda and her child, Dan met with his second wife for a day and night, and the next day, July 23, he visited Matilda and their family to celebrate his youngest son’s first birthday.
The family gathering was to be the last time that Dan and Matilda saw each other before his arrest.
New episodes of Under the Banner of Heaven are released Thursdays on Hulu.
