Owen Allred, 91; Patriarch of One of Utah’s Largest Polygamist Congregations

Owen Allred, the patriarch of the Apostolic United Brethren, one of Utah’s largest congregations of practicing polygamists, died Monday at his home in suburban Salt Lake City. He was 91 and had been in failing health.

Allred was excommunicated from the Mormon Church when he married his second wife in 1942. Over the years, he had at least eight wives, 23 children, 25 stepchildren and more than 200 grandchildren. In his later years, he called his wives, whose ages ranged from the 60s to the 90s, his “LOLs,” or “lovely old ladies.”

Whenever he was asked how many he had, however, he was inclined toward deliberate vagueness. “Just say I’ve got enough that I don’t need to chase after my neighbor’s wives,” he told The Times in 1988.

Allred became a living prophet to his clan in 1977, when his brother, Rulon, who founded the clan, was killed by the head of another group of polygamists. Called Holder of the Keys, Owen Allred led a flock of 5,000. The clan says it is upholding the original teachings of Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disavowed polygamy in 1890, which opened the way for Utah statehood. But the Apostolic United Brethren and other fundamentalist Mormon offshoots refused to renounce plural marriage, believing that the practice embraced by Smith conferred heaven’s highest blessings. They see themselves not as outlaws but as true believers.

“We haven’t changed, but the Mormons have,” Allred once told the Washington Times. “All our priesthood authority comes from Joseph Smith. We don’t teach anything different from what he taught.”

At the same time, Allred was opposed to legalizing polygamy. He believed that legalization would encourage many people to embrace the practice for sexual rather than religious reasons and lead to abuses, such as incestuous unions and child brides. He acknowledged that child abuse in polygamist communities was a problem, “a stinking mess,” he told a reporter recently.

In 1998, he took the unprecedented step of allowing a team of state experts to address his congregation on sexual, child and spousal abuse. He did not announce the meeting, which took most of his followers by surprise as they arrived for what they thought would be a regular Sunday service. The meeting opened up Allred to criticism from some clan members who saw it as a betrayal.

Described as a dignified old gentleman who wore a conservative dark suit when he met with outsiders, Allred was born in Idaho, the son of Byron Harvey Allred Jr., a respected Mormon elder and speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives. Owen Allred moved to Utah as a young man and worked most of his life in an oil refinery. He retired in the 1960s. His clan ran a collective that included a 100-cow dairy farm, 250 head of cattle and a cabinet-making business.

Allred and dozens of his followers and businesses were sued in 1997 by a woman who claimed they swindled her out of $1.5 million in cash. In March 2003 a judge found in favor of Virginia Hill, described as a onetime South American movie star and ex-wife of a Detroit mobster, and ordered Allred to pay damages of $30,000.

That case brought unwelcome attention to Allred’s group. Although generally averse to public exposure, he was one of Utah’s most prominent polygamists and testified before the state Legislature in 2001 when it was debating a bill to make it a felony to marry a minor or conduct a secret spiritual wedding involving a minor.

“Right now in the state of Utah, if a young woman goes out to love-making with her boyfriend and gets pregnant and has a child out of wedlock and bears a child, the state will pay for the doctor bills, the child’s food and clothing and healthcare,” Allred, recalling his testimony, said in an interview with the New York Times. “But if a man marries that woman and takes her home with him as his wife and honors and respects her, loves that woman and child with all his heart, then he’s an evil man, a felon. I can’t believe that.”

The Utah law was prompted by the case of polygamist Tom Green, who was convicted of bigamy in 2001 and ordered to pay restitution to the state for fraudulent welfare payments to 25 of his 30 children. A so-called independent because he did not belong to a clan, Green married at least one of his five wives when she was only 13.

Had he belonged to Allred’s church, Green might not have enjoyed any matrimonial rites. Allred frowned on dating before the age of 17, and clan rules stated that a man could not ask a woman for a date without first receiving permission from the woman’s father and Allred. The clan leader once estimated that no more than 10% of his followers had multiple wives.

“I won’t give anyone permission to have a plural wife unless I feel sure that the man’s practically a saint,” Allred told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “That man’s gotta prove to me that he’s qualified to support them and is kind, sweet, hard-working, honest and just a darned good man who’ll make a fine husband and father. Otherwise I won’t let him have even one wife.”