From On the Edge
Robert Fisher always said he’d never do to his kids what his own parents had done to him. It turns out he would do far worse. A health care technician who lived in Scottsdale, Arizona, with his wife and two children, Fisher appeared to be a loving family man. In fact, “he showed a different personality to everybody,” according to Bob Caldwell, an FBI special agent in Phoenix. Fisher’s closest buddies came to know a guy who could be arrogant and oddly aggressive—thinking it hilarious to point his gun right at them during hunting trips.Within the family, Fisher was dominating and, at times, abusive. While fishing one day with his children, he threw the younger one out of the boat and laughed as the terrified boy, who could barely swim, thrashed about in the water.
It was a mean streak that threatened to tip into real violence—and finally did on an April night in 2001.
In the preceding months, Fisher’s wife, Mary, had come to suspect her husband was having an affair with a co-worker and told friends she planned to leave him. The possibility of a broken marriage alarmed Fisher, whose mother had left home, leaving him with a harsh stepmother. That led to his longtime vow that he would never allow his own kids to be put through a divorce.
On April 9, Fisher finished his shift at work and took his daughter to a National Junior Honor Society induction ceremony. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary—until later in the evening, when the Fishers fought so loudly that neighbors could hear the shouting.
Then, in the early predawn hours, there was a sudden explosion and the Fishers’ house burst into flames. In the charred remains, firefighters eventually discovered three bodies amid pools of blood. It was Mary and the children, each with a slit throat. Mary had also been shot in the head. Elsewhere in the wreckage, firefighters found that the water heater’s gas line had been unhooked, a candle put on a nearby table, and accelerant poured down a hallway.
What firefighters and police didn’t find at the site was a fourth body. Robert Fisher had not died with his family. Nor was there any sign of his stainless steel revolver, his hunting rifles or even one item of his clothing. All seemed to have disappeared from the house before the explosion.
Fisher failed to show up at work the next day, or any day after. Scottsdale homicide detectives got to work and, ten days later, found Mary’s SUV on a dirt road about 150 miles away, in an area where Robert often went hunting. Beneath the vehicle lay the Fishers’ dog, who’d been huddled there for two or three days. Police thought Fisher had planned the murders but probably carried them out sooner than he’d intended.
Now, six and a half years later, the FBI still has no leads. A man once called the Bureau to say that his daughter’s new boyfriend fit Fisher’s description. The guy had a scar on his lower back, just like Fisher did, and was missing a tooth in the same spot where Fisher has a prominent gold filling. It could have been the fugitive’s double, but it turned out not to be Fisher himself.
Fisher could be living anywhere. “Wherever he is, I guarantee that he’s going out hunting and fishing,” says Agent Caldwell. “He’ll also be looking for female companionship.”
The most important thing, Caldwell advises, is to call local police if you think you’ve spotted him. “That’s the best way to get law enforcement on the scene quickly. We can’t afford to lose him.”
The Hit List
It was a cult’s gruesome revenge—simultaneous murders in two Texas cities. And years later, one of the main conspirators still eludes justice.Members of the Church of the First Born of the Lamb of God—a polygamous and disavowed mutation of the Mormon faith—didn’t think of it as murder. “Blood atonement” was the phrase coined by Ervil LeBaron, the founder of the Mexico-based Lamb of God sect, and it compelled his followers to kill anyone who abandoned the cult. Ervil not only spelled out the need to murder these “sons and daughters of perdition” in a covenant he wrote while in prison (for murdering his brother, Joel, over a doctrinal dispute) but named specific targets: Duane Chynoweth, Mark Chynoweth and Ed Marston. These former members of the Lamb of God had rejected Ervil’s teachings and left the cult over a period of time between 1979 and 1981. The Chynoweth brothers moved to Houston, and Marston to Dallas, and each man got involved in the appliance-repair business.
When Ervil LeBaron died behind bars in 1981, his role as “grand patriarch” went to his successor, his oldest son, Aaron. And Aaron’s indispensable counselor and confidante became his half sister Jacqueline.
“Aaron LeBaron didn’t do anything without conferring first with Jacqueline,” says Assistant U.S. Attorney Terry Clark.
Aaron inherited his father’s hit list but didn’t do anything about it until Jacqueline urged him to action. According to court testimony from Jacqueline’s half sister Cynthia LeBaron, Jacqueline was moved by a “sign from God” that arrived in the trunk of a stolen car. The cult helped finance itself by stealing cars in the United States and selling them in Mexico. In 1988 Jacqueline and the others discovered weapons in one of the cars brought to the Lamb of God residence in Mexico. Jacqueline, authorities say, told Aaron that this unexpected cache was God’s way of telling them it was time to go after the pernicious ones—and the planning for murder began.
Jacqueline’s quiet manner, not to mention her high, squeaky voice, belied a person with steely resolve. “The killings wouldn’t have happened without her,” says Terry Clark.
The plan was to enlist murderers from within the Lamb of God family. They would travel to Houston and Dallas and kill their targets on the same day, so as not to alert any of them to flee. In two cases, the strategy was a ruse: Duane Chynoweth and Ed Marston would be lured to abandoned houses, on the pretext that they were to pick up used appliances, and they would be shot on the spot. Other assassins were to show up at Mark Chynoweth’s office and kill him there.
Jacqueline, according to court papers, personally gave $500 in cash to half sister Cynthia LeBaron so she could travel to Texas and help coordinate the action. The contract killings went off like clockwork, except for one thing. When one of the murderers confronted Duane Chynoweth in his truck, he discovered that Duane’s eight-year-old daughter, Jenny, was with him. Having orders to kill any potential witnesses over the age of four, the assassin aimed his .357 Magnum and shot the girl twice in the face.
Within a few weeks, the killers were captured by police in Phoenix. It took another eight years before Aaron was arrested in Mexico and extradited. All of those caught are now serving life sentences, except Aaron, who got 45 years, due to the terms of our extradition treaty with Mexico. Cynthia was given immunity and testified against her half siblings.
Jacqueline LeBaron alone remains on the lam. The FBI thinks she may be earning a living in Mexico by teaching English to the children of wealthy parents (a job she’d previously had in the village of Aguascalientes). The Bureau also says it’s possible she has crossed the border back into the United States. Jacqueline, who turns 42 this month, is adept at hiding from the law. In the past, she has used at least a dozen aliases and has worn multiple disguises. She also owns firearms, and the FBI says she should be considered armed and dangerous.
Among the more chilling possibilities is that, even today, Jacqueline and cohorts are committed to Ervil LeBaron’s covenant. And some names still remain on his hit list.
Free Too Long
Most escaped prisoners managed to sneak their way out. But Lester Eubanks, a convicted murderer, got away by strolling into a shopping mall—after being dropped off there by prison guards.No, we’re not kidding. On December 7, 1973, the inmate at the Ohio Correctional Center in Columbus was granted an “honor assignment” for good behavior. He was taken with other prisoners to the Great Southern Shopping Center, where he could wander around on his own looking for Christmas gifts. Just call us in two hours and we’ll pick you up, the guards said.
Surprise—that call never came. And Lester Eubanks has been on the loose ever since.
It’s all the more infuriating given the nature of his crime. On November 14, 1965, Eubanks was out on bail for an attempted rape when he attacked a 14-year-old girl in Mansfield, Ohio. He confessed to taking her into the woods, where he tried to rape her and then shot her twice. He left her for a short time, then returned to discover she was still breathing. Eubanks completed the murder by smashing the girl’s skull with a brick.
Eubanks was convicted and sentenced to the electric chair. When the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional in 1972, Eubanks’s death sentence was commuted. That left him with a sentence of life behind bars … except for that little outing to the mall.
A former Air Force medic who had also been a housepainter, Eubanks was 30 when he disappeared. FBI investigators learned that he had a love affair with the wife of a cousin, named Kay, and lived with her in Los Angeles during the ’70s. At that time, he worked at a place called Quality Quilters, using the name Victor Young. Kay’s son told law enforcement that he was always told Eubanks was “an uncle of mine.”
Kay herself was murdered in 1978 but not before telling the FBI that Eubanks packed up and “went north into the mountains” after learning that Bureau agents were questioning her. The trail is otherwise totally cold.
The son of a minister, Eubanks was always very religious, and the FBI thinks he could be active in a Baptist congregation today. Characterized by police as a quiet loner, he may also be painting houses to earn money. But the closest the FBI can come to guessing his whereabouts is to say that, in addition to having lived in L.A., “he has ties to Michigan, Ohio, Alabama and Canada.” Eubanks, who is left-handed, has a black belt in karate.
It’s now been 34 years of freedom, and counting, for Lester Eubanks—thanks to one of the dumbest Christmas presents ever given to anyone.