The Traumatic Life and Vengeful Death of Charles Alma Sanders

Life wasn't easy for the Mormon refugees flooding into Mexico in 1885, and it was downright terrifying when they fled back out during the Mexican revolution in 1912. Life seemed to be especially hard for one man in particular who was born in Colonia Diaz and he took it out on his family for the rest of his life. When the law wouldn't help them or their mother, a few of his children figured they'd have to help themselves—with deadly consequences.

Join Monica and Olivia to find out what rumble seats, sagebrush, and ropes have in common in this episode of Forgotten Felonies!

• Hoosier Cabinets ad from 1912, voiced by Christian N.
• Lifebuoy Health Soap ad from 1940, voiced by Christian N. and our hosts

For more information on the Mormon colonies in Mexico, watch The Land of Refuge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaP0va4jtDY

Transcript

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What do rumble seats, sagebrush, and rope have in common? You're about to find out on this episode of Forgotten Felonies! Welcome to Forgotten Felonies. I'm Monica. And I'm Olivia. And this is where we take you back in time to rediscover the crimes of vintage villainy that time forgot. In this episode, we're taking you back to a crime that will absolutely astound you, and it happened in the year 1940. But before I can tell you you that story, I actually have to take you back much, much further than that in order to understand the reasons why our victim became who he became by the time 1940 rolled around. and the reasons why his children literally went along for the ride when his son-in-law decided that he ought to be taught a very deadly lesson. Dun, dun, dun, dun. Now, realistically, this story starts as far back as April 6th of 1830, when Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church. In 1838, there had been an extermination order issued by Missouri Governor Boggs that ordered that, quote, 'Mormons be driven from the state or exterminated.' And it resulted in well over 10, 000 Mormons being driven out of the state. And I don't even know how many were mass murdered. But we aren't going into those details here. That would make this episode far too long. I am doing my best to fast forward through the vast majority of that. Mormon church began in 1830, but polygamy didn't get started until the early 1840s. It was practiced secretly at first, but then more openly acknowledged and encouraged by the church leaders around 1852. Now, eventually, Joseph Smith was killed, and lots of different men felt that they were the new rightful prophets. So the Mormon groups did splinter in dozens of different directions. But the one that we know as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today, or the mainstream Mormon church, which would be the nickname. That one was led by Brigham Young, and the followers eventually wound up over in the Salt Lake Valley in Utah. The Mormon people had been persecuted for their beliefs. They had been killed. They had been practically hunted. It had been really rough for them. And honestly, they truly believed. that they were living the way their God wanted them to live. They believed with their whole hearts that they were God's chosen people and they were doing as the good Lord commanded. Now think how rough it would be if you were living the way God told you to live and then people were trying to kill you for it and you had to run away from your home in the middle of the night and put all your stuff in a covered wagon and walk across the desert for months just to find safety from persecution. That would be really awful and traumatic, right? Yes, very traumatic. Very, very. From that perspective, that's pretty awful. So these people wound up over in Utah, which eventually became a territory of the United States. Indeed it did. And they also lived in other places like the territory of Arizona and Texas and, you know, all over. the place. And anyone who knows Utah's history knows that the United States government didn't want to give Utah statehood unless the Mormons stopped practicing polygamy. So this became a really big issue. Now we must talk about the 1880s when the United States government really began cracking down hard on the practice of polygamy. That was, you know, very prevalent among the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Now, by this time, the church was headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was very well established at this time. Now, Brigham Young had been the prophet up until his death in 1887, and then, after he died, the prophet eventually became John Taylor. In the 1880s, the United States was trying really, really hard to squash polygamy altogether. Many men were actually being put into prison for having multiple wives. Now, think about it. I want you to put yourself in their shoes for a second. These men were not actually going to prison for being violent, per se. I mean... Maybe they were. I don't know. I mean, you know, there's there's bad people in every religion. Right. But I mean, they were technically going to jail for being family men. Like to the extreme. So they were going to jail for, you know, supporting more than one woman and extra kids. So it does seem weird to toss a man into prison alongside murderers and, you know, train robbers just because he has an extra big family. Now, when I looked up the man that we will be talking about, I looked at the marriage dates and his third wife, who was much younger than him, was 25. When he married her. So he didn't marry a child, though she was the same age as several of his children. So, I mean, that's weird and bizarre to me, but I mean, he wasn't he wasn't marrying actual children. The guy married three adult women, so if he had been thrown in prison with murderers just for having a big family, that seems a little bit strange in the grand scheme of things. Like when you look at it that way, from that perspective, I'm just saying. Um, so, so to the Mormon folks, this was very scary. The prospect of, you know, going to prison just for following God's commandments, the prospect of the man of the family going to prison and leaving dozens of children without a father. I mean, my goodness, that sounds terrible. So women have... had to pretend that they weren't wives. Men couldn't acknowledge that their wives were wives. And many of the men actually went into hiding. really scary for them. Now in the 1870s and 1880s, the United States government was actually sending marshals to the western states. States to crack down on polygamy. And there were some serious statutes passed in the 1880s, actually. The Edmonds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882 and the Edmonds-Tucker Act of 1887. So the Edmunds-Tucker Act actually dissolved the corporation of the LDS Church. It confiscated all of its property and sold it with the proceeds going to public schools. All women in Utah even lost their right to vote. It made polygamy, and even just cohabiting with more than one partner, a crime. So they could actually go to prison. And it limited the jurisdiction of probate courts in Utah because those courts had been used by the LDS church to counter the influence of federal courts. And this act also required voters, jurors, and public officials to take an anti-polygamy oath. This act, the Edmunds-Tucker Act, again passed in 1887; it actually wasn't fully repealed until 1978. Which was a whopping 91 years later. Now, don't worry— when Utah became a state in 1896, women were allowed to vote again. So, I mean, that trumped the Edmunds-Tucker Act. But again, the act wasn't fully repealed until 1978. Things were getting scary for the Mormons as the government was cracking down on all of these polygamist families. And so, hundreds of them decided to move down to Mexico as a refuge, because they could live their polygamous lives free from the fear of arrest and imprisonment. So, it was February 9th of 1885 when the first group of 14 polygamist families moved down to Mexico in their covered wagon. And two weeks later, 24 more wagons went. And a few days after that, 44 more wagons rolled out and headed south. When the wagons made it to Mexico, they were grateful they could acknowledge all of the wives as wives. They didn't have to pretend that they were married to just one and the others were, you know, random friends or aunts or sisters from out of town. There could be public group hugs. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Yay, let's all hold hands and skip around and woohoo kumbaya. Now, they didn't have anywhere to live, though. So they had just, you know, run off to Mexico with literally no land, no plan, just hope and a prayer. Literally. Well, and tents. They had tents. Now, when they got there, a lot of them noped right back around and decided that they would take their chances with the law in the U. S. because it was rough there. In Mexico. See, they had reached La Ascension, I don't know how you say that, but it is a place in Mexico, on February 22nd, 1885. And they had to go through customs. Now, a man named A. F. McDonald had gone down alone first from Salt Lake City, and he was supposed to be scouting out a place for them to stay. And, you know, I guess they had prayed and they thought that the Lord would provide. But when they arrived on February 22nd, there was no A. F. McDonald to be found. So they just had to set up their camps there in La Ascension and wait. They pitched tents, they built up little shanties by their wagons, and there they sat as more and more wagons rolled in. And it was tough. Those customs officials in Mexico, they were not messing around. And the Mormons had to pay extra for every baby in the wagons. Like 25 cents for every baby. But the camping that they had to do down there, it went on for days and days and weeks and literal months, you guys. And more and more wagons rolled in. Now the prophet John Taylor had sent both A. F. MacDonald and Christopher Layton down from Salt Lake City to Mexico to purchase land, but Mexico was not playing nice. So Mexico was giving them false titles and bad deeds, and the deals were falling through over and over. The women folk were talking and they wanted to go back to the United States. This was miserable. And more and more wagons were arriving. Every day. Now on April 1st of 1885, a man named Moses Martin Sanders Jr. arrived. And he's very important to this story. So Olivia, please tell our listeners a bit about Moses. Of course. Moses Martin Sanders Jr. was born on the 21st of February, 1853, in Salt Lake City, Utah. It was a territory at that time, I believe. His first wife, Elizabeth Ellen Chaney, was born on the 10th of March in 1857 in Springville, Utah Territory. They got married on the 23rd of November, 1872, in Fairview, Utah. Together, they had 12 children between the years of 1873 and 1897. Moses got married a second time on the 25th of March, 1879, in St. George, Utah, to Laura Ann Amelia Starr. She was born on the 5th of January, 1858, also in Springville, Utah. Together, they had 10 children between the years 1880 and 1897. Moses married for the third and last time to Lillian Mae Jackson on the 21st of February, 1901, in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Lillian was born on the 26th of December, 1878, in Glenwood, Sevier, Utah. Together, they had seven children between the years of 1902 and 1915. Now, if you're counting, that's a total of 29 children between 1873 and 1915. In total, there were 19 boys and 10 girls. Unfortunately, as were the times, not all of the children lived past infancy. The oldest child, and only daughter, from Elizabeth, died the same year she was born. I'm not sure if it was a stillbirth or not, but... It said it was the same year. Five children with Laura passed away the years that they were born, three girls and two boys, and two children from Lillian passed away the year they were born, a little boy and a little girl. So in total, 21 children survived to adulthood. Now, let's figure out how many of these children he had prior to 1885 and how many were born in Mexico. Before 1885, he had between his two wives at the time, seven living children. Most were born in Utah, but a few were born in Arizona. After 1885, he had 14 living children. Only one of those 14 was born in Arizona. And the rest were born in Mexico. Very interesting. That is so many kids. Wow. Yeah. All right. So Moses and his second wife, Laura, had arrived with their three-year-old named Elizabeth and an eight-month-old baby, Ethel May, around April 1st of 1885 in Mexico. And like all the other Mormons in La Ascension, they had nowhere to go. And they just pitched a tent and they waited for Moses's other wife and the rest of the children to join them. Now, the year 1885 crawled by at a snail's pace. I mean, can you imagine? They're just like... Where is this land? We keep trying to buy land. The church is supposed to buy land for us to settle on. Where is it? When is this going to happen? So the Mormons camped on the banks of a river there and they planted some crops and they grew very well. I mean, it's right along a river. And the Mormon refugees were preyed upon by thieves and they were very easy targets. You know, I mean, they're just stuck there in tents. So the city of La Ascension was located in the state of Chihuahua. And the governor of Chihuahua finally ordered all the Mormons to leave within 15 days. This was like scary, right, for them. They're like, 'Oh, no, we can't.' Like, we can't go back to the United States. They're going to put all the men in prison. So a couple of the Mormon men traveled to Mexico City to try to meet with President Diaz. He actually canceled the expulsion order, and he said, 'We want a class of people to colonize our lands that will build up and help to develop the resources of our country. And we feel assured that this is your objective in coming among us. Welcome to Mexico.' And so, to make an even longer story shorter, they finally, finally, in August of 1886, about 18 months after they first arrived in Mexico, they found land to buy, and eventually there were several different Mormon colonies. But the first was named Colonia Diaz, named after President Diaz, who had so kindly welcomed the Mormons. Now, Chihuahua was in the middle of a two-year drought. Their cattle were dying. They were ravaged by diseases. They had monsoons. They had horrific windstorms and dust storms and flash floods that washed away several homes at a time. It was quoted back then that, quote, 'life in those colonies was heaven to a man and hell to a woman. Life was so hard for the women.' They were isolated from their families back in the States and they missed out on the advent of electricity, washing machines, all of the things that made life easier here. They had to build the communities from scratch. Churches, homes, farms, stores, everything. But they did. They built mills and shops and everything they would need. Need. They had little more than bare hands and religion. Like that's actually a quote from a documentary called Land of Refuge, which you can find on YouTube. Now, eventually there were about 600 people in that colony and they became very prosperous. Now in 1892, Moses Martin Sanders and his first wife, Elizabeth, welcomed a son named Charles Sanders. Charles Alma Sanders was born into a rough life. He was expected to follow very strict rules in his religion. He had to be very righteous. He had to love. God, say his prayers before every meal, say his prayers every night, attend church every Sunday, pay his tithing, always serve others. He had to live the gospel in its fullness, honestly and righteously, always doing what his church leaders told him. And of course he had to work really hard on the farm. He couldn't slack off. There was no running water, no electricity, no power tools. He had to earn his keep. There was so much death in those colonies. Women were dying in childbirth. Children were dying of smallpox, typhoid fever, malaria. The Apache... Indians as well as Mexican thieves and robbers would come in and attack them. Mormon families were often massacred in their places of business, in their homes, or at home. In their fields. It was brutal down there in those colonies. Not to mention the natural disasters. In 1905, when young Charles Sanders was just 13 years old, there was a massive flood and eight entire homes washed away in Colonia Diaz. So many livestock drowned and crops were completely washed away. It was devastating for the community. Well, just a year before that horrible flood, an apostle from Salt Lake City had come down to Mexico to deliver a message to the colonists. He informed them that the prophet had received a message from God. He was told that there were to be no new plural marriages. Those that already existed were fine, but no new ones would be performed. The principle of plurality in marriage had been completed for the time being, and it was time to end. Now, Moses, Charles's father, had just married his third wife in 1901. So he got that one in, you know, just in the nick of time. And really, the end of plural marriage caused a lot of Mormons to eventually leave the mainstream Mormon church and follow other people who had claimed to be the real prophet, because so many had splintered off after Joseph Smith had died back in the 1840s. And some of those splinter groups turned into some wild cults that went on to murder people and it got crazy. And those are some really good stories fit for other episodes, but I digress. Now, as I said earlier. President Diaz in Mexico, he had been supportive of the Mormons being in Mexico in the late 1800s, and it was basically his support of the Mormons that wound up being their demise in Mexico. The Americans were able to get contracts from President Diaz for various things like, you know, loans and such. And he would give them very long race periods before they'd have to start paying any taxes. And that is what caused a lot of hostility to build against President Diaz. And after a while, all of this political unrest led to the Mexican Revolution of 1910. It was very violent and it went on for years. The Mexican revolutionaries would show up at the Mormon colonies. And there were actually like six or seven of these different Mormon colonies. And the revolutionaries would demand to be housed or fed. And they would just come in and occupy their homes. And they would confiscate all of the hay, and they would feed, you know, 70 of their horses and take whatever other supplies they needed. And the Mexican government, so, you know, the other side of the fight, the state, they would also show up at the Mormon colonies to ask for supplies. So both sides would come to the Mormons and, you know, they would kill Mormon cattle for food or they would loot their stores and essentially do whatever they wanted. Now, by the beginning of 1912, the Mormons were very concerned about the state of things. The rebels finally demanded that the Mormons pick a side. And the Mormons had been told to stay neutral at all times. Like they were told to give or deny with all the wisdom possible. So, you know. Give them supplies, use your best judgment, or don't give them supplies, just use your best judgment, but but stay out of it. Don't pick a side, just try to stay out of it. Be Switzerland. Yes, be Switzerland. Now, this worked right up until the end of July of 1912. Both the Mexican government and the rebels had been honoring the Mormon stance to stay neutral up until then, but both sides did expect the Mormons to give them whatever they wanted whenever they wanted. They wanted it. And by the time summer came around, now they wanted all the Mormon guns. The Mormons, however, were choosing to deny this request because they didn't feel safe giving up their arms. So the soldiers from both sides, they had started just going through their homes to search for the guns. And the church leaders up in Utah had no idea what to do to protect their followers down in Mexico. Finally! The general from the revolutionary side made a threat and said, if you do not bring those guns here by 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, we will march against you with our guns blazing. So it was time for the Mormons to get out of Mexico and fast, like immediately. They didn't have time to pack up all their stuff. I mean, each family got to pack one suitcase or, like, a trunk. And one roll of bedding. And I mean, these are big families. They have a lot of kids. There was a train. They had a train track that, like, went through the colonies and went up to El Paso. Texas. The train basically stopped at each colony and the families got on with their one suitcase and their one roll of bedding. And they thought that this was temporary. They planned to come back. So, you know, they, you know, locked up their houses or whatever. They, you know, just took what they needed, some clothes or whatever, just the essentials for right now, fully planning on coming back home. The train traveled all day and all night. And just as dawn was breaking, they arrived in El Paso, Texas. They were taken by automobile to a lumber yard that was no longer in use and each family was given a stall in an old stable. Tarps were hung between them so they had some privacy and then newspaper photographers took pictures, townspeople gathered, and they were pointing and staring at these Mormons as if they were zoo animals. And apparently there were five babies born that night in these stables. Wow. I mean, can you imagine? I mean, my gosh, like all of this happening. And it's like, here's a woman pregnant. She's got her eight kids in tow. She's giving birth. And they had one trunk of stuff. Of stuff. I mean, that's all they could bring. I mean, and people are here pointing at you like you're a zoo animal. You know, it's just insane. So there were about 25 men who stayed behind in Mexico, hoping to just, you know, keep things secure, you know, just for safety or whatever. And to their horror, after the families left, the revolutionaries pushed empty train cars into the colonies. And then hundreds of men went inside the homes and inside the stores and just looted everything. They took everything that the Mormons had owned and filled up the train cars. And then they pulled the trains through into the Mexican cities. Would just like, you know, uncouple the train cars and just leave a train car in every city. And then the Mexican people, the residents of the cities, would just take what they wanted. They completely emptied out the colonies, completely emptied out the colonies. And eventually, Colonia Diaz, where the Sanders family had lived, they burned it to the ground. And that's the only colony they did that to, but they completely destroyed it. Absolutely burned it to the ground. So. The Sanders family, Moses Sanders, you know, and his family and his son, Charles, who I've mentioned, they never went back to Mexico. Most of the families did not. And they thought they were just in Texas temporarily. But most of those families did not ever return to the colonies in Mexico. So their plural families, they had to make some hard decisions. A lot of the plural wives moved to separate states. So they didn't all stay together just for safety reasons. I know that Moses Sanders, he moved to Arizona. I know that his first wife, Wound up in California eventually. Well, she did wind up in Idaho. I don't know all of that, but. So his third wife. The last two babies she had. Were born in New Mexico. So, okay. So Charles Sanders. Specifically, the son, he was 20 years old when they had to flee Mexico. And that was the only home he'd ever known. He was born in 1892 in Mexico. And he had endured 20 years of traumas and hardship. In Mexico, living down there. And now he was starting over in a completely unknown country, a completely unknown culture, where polygamy, the only life he'd ever known, the life that his God said was the only right way to live. It was outlawed. And he was quite literally gawked at like a zoo animal. Put yourselves in his shoes, okay? I mean, imagine that. Now, Charles Sanders, he had never lived with electricity before. Charles Sanders had never had a washing machine. Not that he would have been the one to use it. But I mean, just imagine. He'd never had any of those creature comforts that were to be found in the United States in 1912. He had a lot of adjustments to make, a lot of culture shock to deal with, and you could say it was not exactly a cakewalk. Here is the opportunity of a lifetime. A Hoosier cabinet for one dollar down. The new way. A Hoosier cabinet makes a model kitchen. Here is the club plan in a nutshell. Memberships shall be limited to only 100 and they shall be sold on special terms for $1 each membership fee and $1 weekly dues. Cabinets will be delivered immediately on payment of membership fee to each member. Those who want Hoosier cabinets should enroll their names at once to avoid disappointment when the club is filled. Remember, this opportunity is closed when 100 members have joined. Only you and 99 other El Paso women can join for a single dollar. Will you be a Hoosier member? Now, I know we just talked a lot about the Mexican colonies, but we had to really set the stage so we could understand what Charles Sanders went through. 20-year-old Charles Sanders first moved with his parents and siblings to Duncan, Arizona, when they heard that their home in Colonia Diaz had been burned to the ground by the Mexican revolutionaries in 1912. I couldn't find anything in the newspapers about his activities in Arizona, like where he worked or what he did. At some point, he got married and moved to Burley, Idaho, and started a family. Now, Olivia, tell us about his family. I know you found a little more. Yes. So, as you said, Charles Alma Sanders was born in 1892, but to be more precise, he was born September 25th, 1892, in Colonia Diaz, Ascension Chihuahua, Mexico. His wife, Gladys Ione Brown, was born on July 13, 1893, in Thorpe, Clark, Wisconsin. They married on the 9th of June, 1917, in Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota. I did see... And an Idaho land assessment dated June 22, 1917, that Charles purchased land in Idaho. So together, they had nine children between 1918 and 1935. Linus Charles, born 1918. Joseph Taft, born 1920. Florence Flossie Gladys, born 1921, George Francis, born 1924, Viola Lida, born 1925, Robert Wimmer, born 1928, John Alma, born 1930, Bessie Mary, born 1933, and Chester William, born 1935. Tragically, baby Robert Wimmer contracted spinal meningitis and died on the 21st of March, 1929, just 24 days before his first birthday. Wow, that's really sad. So for a while, the family lived in the town of Yale, Idaho, which today is a ghost town. Now, Charles ran a small store there for several years, and it was located in Cassia County, Idaho. And the Yale Road runs right through the place where... the community was once located. And it looks like it was a stop on the Washington, Idaho, Montana Railway at the time. I was able to find a cool picture. Um of Yale, yeah, some historical picture. So Charles eventually got tired of being a storekeeper, so he moved his family to the town of Burley, Idaho, where he became what is known as a dry farmer. Yeah, I had to look that up. Like, how do you farm dry? So a dry farmer is a farmer who farms without the use of irrigation. Now, this is a really great way to farm when you live in arid regions without a lot of rain. Fall, such as the Idaho desert. And this method of farming required a lot of like intentional soil preparation, really good timing with tillage, planting, smart conservation of moisture, plant spacing, you know, all of that. And I'm sure Charles picked up some really good dry farming techniques having grown up in northern Mexico. Me having lived in Idaho, I do not see a lot of dry farming anymore. Oh, yeah. Well, back then, maybe they hadn't figured out all the irrigation and everything. Yeah, they didn't have the pivots yet. Now, I wish that I could tell you that everything was great. I wish I could tell you that the family thrived and the kids were happy, you know, that his farm prospered and everything was just fantastic. And then we could cue the credits and sign off, but nothing was really great. That wouldn't be a forgotten felony. No, no. Where's the felony so far? Other than, I guess, the polygamy that was outlined? Something was very wrong with Charles. Charles had lived a very rough life when he was younger. He watched people around him suffer. He watched people lose their homes, get washed away. The floods. He watched people die. He lived in the aftermath of church friends being massacred by Apaches and, you know, Mexican thieves. He was run out of his home in 1912 with just one trunk and one roll of bedding for his mother and all of his siblings. These were serious traumas, you guys. And Charles did not get any psychiatric help. Now, imagine if you will. I'm just guessing here. I'm just trying to, you know, be empathetic and put myself in his shoes. Imagine having lived through all of that suffering and pain. And then you wind up living in a place like, you know, Burley, Idaho, in say, I don't know, 1925, where you have electricity and you can just turn on a faucet to get warm water and you don't have... to grow all of your own food unless you feel like it. Right and your child starts crying because they didn't get the toy they wanted from the store. Okay, I'm just going to hear me out. Hear me out. What you need to know is, Charles was incredibly, horribly, severely abusive to his wife and to his children, okay? The police were called several times to his home to investigate allegations of abuse. And when questioned, the children told the police that they were beaten by their father. That they were tied up by their father. They were starved by their father, by Charles Sanders. And I can only imagine that perhaps it's because he thought, 'You don't know how easy you have it.' But I mean, I don't know. I'm just guessing. But maybe he was like, 'You are crying over the stupidest things. You know, like you're crying because you don't like what you're having for dinner. You don't know what it's like to suffer. Try.' Being truly hungry because, keep in mind, like, there were, you know, droughts where he lived, where the livestock starved, and then they starved, you know, what I mean, like, I can just imagine that he was like, 'You have it so easy, and you don't even know.' And that it just made him angry to be like, 'You try suffering.' Which is not an excuse. No, no, no, no, no, not at all. But I just, I'm trying to understand why he would have reacted that way toward his kids, you know? So, I mean, I'm just trying to get into his head. Mm-hmm. But yeah, I mean, he really severely. You know, was so abusive to his children. But then also all of that trauma that he experienced. Could have led to a personality disorder. He could have developed antisocial personality disorder due to the complex PTSD that he very likely could have had, you know, had from the years of repeated traumas. And then something else that comes to mind would be epigenetics. So you're going to have to explain that one. Okay, so epigenetics is absolutely fascinating. And the easiest way to really understand the power of epigenetic factors is to think about how sometimes identical twins with identical genetic codes can wind up being very different. So, like, sometimes they can even wind up looking different as they get older. Because that seems like that should be impossible, right? If they're identical twins, you know, or like, how could one identical twin get cancer and the other one doesn't? Or like. How could one, at the age of 97, be frail and hard of hearing and need round-the-clock care while the other is still going to the gym, you know? Or how could one identical twin be gay and the other be straight? You know? Like it seems like how could that even be possible? Well, science tells us this is due to epigenetic factors. And this is when the environment actually changes the expression of our genes without rewriting the DNA sequence. So the environment is everything that's not genetic. The environment is the air you breathe, the social interactions you have, the food you eat, the stress you encounter, traumas in your life, toxins you're exposed to— even in the... womb before you're even born, um, stress hormones that your mother exposes you to before you're born. Like this would be environmental and all of these things. And I mean, I did not even name everything that makes up your environment, um, can impact the physical expression of your genes or your phenotype. So it's really amazing. Our traits, our characteristics, even what we physically look like, it can all be impacted. And one way that this happens is through a bio... mechanism called methylation. So what happens is that chemical compounds will be generated based on these environmental stressors that we encounter. And the chemical compounds will actually settle on top of our genes. And these chemical compounds will then work to either reduce or sometimes completely... silence their expression and that alters our phenotype. So essentially, through epigenetics, our genes can be turned on or off. And what's even more amazing is that these changes in gene expression can be passed down through generations, especially through mothers. Yeah, so there was a study done on women who lived through the Rwandan genocide. And those who were pregnant during the genocide and showed through genetic testing to have higher levels of methylation on a chromosome 5 gene, called GR. This gene actually plays a central role in stress hormone regulation. And so when they had that higher level of methylation on that chromosome 5 gene, they tested the children that they'd been pregnant with, tested them years later, and they also tested quite high for methylation on that same chromosome. And the children actually tested higher than their mothers had. Okay. I need you to dumb that down for me. So you're saying that they could handle stress better or not? Not. So the methylation, the chemical compound on that gene, it worked to... Reduce. The so-so the gene. handles stress hormone regulation. Yes. So to regulate stress. So when you are stressed out, the stress hormone gets released. And then so that gene helps you regulate the stress hormone in your body. So regulate it, handle the stress, get back to homeostasis. And so if it suppresses that gene, you don't handle it as well. So people who are traumatized. When they, you know, you get triggered and then you're just extra like. freaked out, you know, you're in all of that, you're not able to regulate it as well. Okay. Yes. So basically, those babies were born already unable to handle stress, and they got it from their mom. Interesting. Because they had been traumatized. Yeah. The moms had been during the genocide. And so their gene, even though it hadn't been that way initially, but because of the trauma, being traumatized, the methylation made it so they now, like, that gene has been suppressed. And then they pass that on with the methylation to their children. Okay. Yeah. And then they have found, this is what's very, very pertinent to this story. Um, they have found that it can even be passed on to subsequent babies. It's not just babies that you're pregnant with at the time. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. So now looking at his mother, at Charles's mother, Elizabeth, she had been through some very stressful things before. Alma Sanders was ever even conceived. Her firstborn child died. Yes. In 1873, her very first baby was stillborn, a little baby girl. So, I mean, imagine the devastation of that. Three months after she had her fourth baby, she had to deal with her husband taking on a second wife. End. I mean, tell me that's not going to be stressful. I don't care who you are. I've seen every episode of Sister Wives. I know they suffer. I have not. Then the crackdown on polygamy in 1882 that happened. The marshals were sent to the West to put men like her husband in prison. You know, and then. The terror associated with that and then packing up and running away from their home in Arizona to Mexico only to find out that they had no home in Mexico. For 18 months, during a drought, while their livestock are starving to death, living in a tent, being preyed upon by thieves, dealing with people giving birth in the stable. All the natural disasters over and over again, the diseases. How many times did she have to give birth and not know if the baby would survive? How many times did her kids enter? Sister wives, kids get sick and almost die. And then the massacres that were happening amongst their church friends, you know, in their stores, like everything. And then. So April of 1885 is when they got to Mexico. August of 1886 is when their church was finally allowed to buy land for them to build on. Then they had to build the homes and the churches and establish themselves. 1892 was when Charles was born. That's a lot of methylation on that GR gene, if I am bold enough to guess. And I would say that Elizabeth's potential for passing it on to Charles was pretty darn good. And then Charles himself went on to endure incredible stress himself, with massacres and natural disasters, and the Mexican Revolution, and the forced exodus to a new country with strange customs where he was a complete outsider. So. Can fathers pass it on too? They haven't done enough testing on that, but I mean, there has been some that they've seen, but it's mostly from the mother. Okay. But even without the epigenetics working against him from conception, he likely still would have been struggling because even in his own life, there was so much trauma. Right. But then he was probably, I mean, I'm just guessing. I haven't seen his blood work, but I mean, he probably already was born with the trauma inherited from his mother. He was born stressed out. Right? Yeah. And now his poor children, all nine, well, I guess only eight of them lived, right? But they had to suffer for it. And suffer, they did. In May of 1939, Charles was 47 years old and his wife was 46. Mrs. Sanders had finally endured more abuse than she could tolerate. She'd been married to Charles for 22 years, and she had called the police more times than she could. She should have ever had to. And she just couldn't take it anymore. Why he'd never gone to jail or face charges, she just couldn't understand. But back in the 1930s, domestic violence was considered a private matter and the police wouldn't touch it. Officer Bray always talked to the children and talked to Mrs. Sanders and then he'd have a conversation with Charles and give him some friendly advice about better handling his domestic disputes. And then Officer Bray would leave because this wasn't a criminal matter as far as the police were concerned. So really, when Officer Bray was talking to Charles, he was just acting as a friend. What a good guy. Yep. Now, Mrs. Sanders did the only thing she could do, and she got a divorce. As she should. In May of 1939. The judge gave her full custody of those children who were still at home, and all of the children moved with her to Rupert, Idaho. I've been there. And I've been to Burley. So this was just nine and a half miles from Burley, where their father still lived on his ranch. Now, still living at home, Mrs. Sanders had six of the eight living children. So again, not counting the little one who had died when he was almost a year old. Now, Charles, he still had his ranch and he had a housekeeper named Mabel E. Nickerson. Mabel's husband had died just a year before. Mabel's husband had been 29 years older than Mabel and he had died at the ripe old age of 77. Mabel herself was just one year older than Charles. Mabel actually had 11 children, only four of them still living at home. Mabel had her own house where she lived with her kids, and soon Charles moved in with her. Now, even though they were Mormons, you know, and Mormons are not supposed to have those sorts of relationships outside of wedlock, the two... began living together. Um, I don't have. The nature of their relationship, you know, verified, but one can surmise. Now, he still did have his ranch. And she still went there to clean it. And he would go there to do ranch things, but he was staying with her at her house. Now, he did tell his family that he had no intentions of marrying her. I'm not sure if she knew that, so I don't know. In December of 1939, Charles's daughter, Florence, who is better known as Flossie, married her sweetheart, Chester Phillips. Now, Flossie was 18 years old that December, and she married Chester on the day of her 18th birthday in the Mormon temple in Logan, Utah. Chester was five years older than she was. So if they were sweethearts and he's five years older, I want to know when they met. Yeah, I don't know. I do not have that information. Now, Chester Phillips plays a really big role in this story. And he had an advantage in all of this because he had not been raised in this family. He was not raised within this somewhat closed community, if you will. You know, this closed community that was the dysfunctional Sanders clan that had operated in just this way as long as those kids had been alive. Chester came into the mix with fresh eyes, and he saw right away that something... was wrong with Charles Sanders. The way he treated those kids was absolutely not okay, no matter how you looked at it. And Chester wasn't shy about telling them as much. Good for him. Now, by 1940, Joe Sanders, the second oldest child, he was 20 years old. He was living in a trailer of his own and he had a steady job. He worked for years by this time and had been saving up his money and he kept a lot of cash in a box in his trailer. His 16-year-old brother, George, was living with his mother. With him that summer as well. Now, I found an interesting article in which a judge said that at one point, Charles Sanders actually went to court and tried to make a judge either force his son Joe to quit his job or make it so that all of Joe's earnings went straight to Charles instead of Joe. I mean, can you believe that? Wow. What a guy. Now, it didn't say why, but the judge was thinking that was pretty preposterous. I mean. Make him quit or either give him give me all his cash. Like, I don't know. So, yeah, Charles was just not really great when it came to his family. Anyway, so now after the wedding, Flossie confided something in her husband. She told Chester that her father had, over the years, attempted to get intimate with her on more than one occasion. Ew. She did not say that it— had ever come to pass, like that it— had ever like happened, but that he had made attempts and that she had lived in fear of him for years. And of course, you know, she said. He had beaten her many times, had tied her up, had starved her many times over the years, because that was just the norm for Charles. He had been— you know, to her and all of her siblings. So Chester, being a very protective sort of bloke, you know, he thought that this was all horrific and he wasn't shy about it. And I think the more he heard, the more horrified he became. And then something happened in June of 1940 that just pushed everything to a breaking point. Perspiring from the heat and party excitement, Lucy offended with B. O. Give Lucy the slip, Tom, and come with us. Later. Oh sis, I've never been so humiliated. 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Tom, you've changed. You're so much nicer. You've changed too, Lucy dear. How about that dance tomorrow? Lifebuoy Health Soap. Its crisp odor goes in a jiffy. Its protection lasts and lasts. Charles had accused Joe, his 20-year-old son, of taking one of his guns. Joe had not taken one of his guns, but Charles was demanding payment. Joe, not having taken anything, did not feel obliged to pay his father for a gun that he did not have in his possession. And then one day, when Joe came home to his trailer after a long day at his honest job, he found that his cash box had been emptied out. His father had come in and stolen the money that he had been earning and saving for years. Joe was absolutely devastated. He felt betrayed. His own father had come in and stolen from him. 23-year-old Chester Phillips had served as a voice of reason for all of the Sanders kids since he'd entered the picture. And that's who Joe turned to first. When Joe told Chester that his dad had stolen from him, this is when Chester confided in Joe that Joe's father had also been attempting to have inappropriate and immoral relations with Flossie over the years. Chester said, 'Someone's got to teach the old man a lesson.' And that's when Chester came up with a plan. It was Friday, June 21st, 1940. Charles Alma Sanders, age 48, was at the home of his girlfriend, Mabel E. Nickerson, in Burley, Idaho. He was supposed to have headed to his ranch, which was called the Raft River Ranch, that Friday, but he wasn't feeling well. Mabel Nickerson went out to the ranch on her own, and Charles stayed at her house to tend to her garden while she was going to the ranch to take care of things out there over the weekend. Chester Phillips rolled up in front of the Nickerson home that evening in his old car. I couldn't figure out what kind of car he drove, but from the description, I could tell it was some kind of coupe with two doors, just one bench seat that could seat three people, and it had a rumble seat in the back. Now, you truly must look up pictures of a rumble seat if you don't know what it is. Basically, imagine a car with a trunk. But instead of the trunk opening from the bottom up, imagine that it opens from the top backwards. And it just turns into another seat that people can sit in. It's hard to describe, but it opens and closes like that, like a convertible seat. They sometimes call it a mother-in-law seat. Old Model T Fords had them. Some old Dodges had them. They looked fancy, and I think they should bring them back. We'll post a picture. Yes, we will. So Chester pulls up in his car. 18-year-old Flossie is riding shotgun. 16-year-old George is in the middle between Flossie and Chester. And 20-year-old Joe is in the rumble seat. Chester and Joe go into Mabel's house and they find Charles in bed. Chester tells Charles that he needs to go with them and Charles lunges at Chester. This is when both Joe and Chester get a hold of him and they drag him outside to the car. They wrestle him into the rumble seat and they close it. He is now closed inside of the compartment, essentially closed in the trunk. Newspaper reports initially claimed that Joe sat on top of the rumble seat, which they sometimes referred to as the turtleback. But when Joe later took the stand in his own defense, he said that he did not ride on top of the rumble seat and instead sat inside the car with his 16-year-old brother on his lap. As they all drove their father 41 miles out into the Idaho desert. Once they got him out there, Joe and Chester removed him from the rumble seat. They used some clothesline to hog-tie him, with his hands and feet behind his back. They used half-hitched knots, so struggling only tightened it. And then the four young people got back in the car and drove back home. First, they dropped Joe and George off at their trailer, and then Flossie and Chester went back to their own house. That was Friday, June 21st. On Tuesday, June 25th, 16-year-old George was out at the Raft River Ranch, which belonged to his father, and he was talking to Mabel Nickerson's daughter, Virginia, age 15. George made a strange statement. He had asked Virginia where his father was. When she said she didn't know, he laughed. And then he said, 'Who's the boss of this ranch now?' Two days later, on Thursday, June 27th, Mrs. Mabel Nickerson went to the Cassia County Sheriff's Office and told them that Charles had been missing since the previous Friday, and she told them about George's alarming statement. It was none other than Deputy Bray, who had been out to the Sanders home to investigate allegations of child abuse so many times, who went out to talk to George. Deputy Bray and his partner could tell something was definitely wrong, but George denied any knowledge. They did put George in jail, but he wasn't talking. So a day or so later, they got Chester Phillips and questioned him. Chester eventually broke down and told them what they had done. It was June 29th when Chester took the police out to the desert, straight to the location of the body. They found Charles with his head under a large sagebrush. He had somehow managed to inch himself 27 feet away from where he had been left in search of shade from the unrelenting sun. The location was 26 miles north of Burley in the Kamama Desert. The body had been left in a wash that was right where Lincoln, Minidoka, and Blaine counties intersect. A surveyor had to come out and pinpoint exactly which county the body was located within, so they knew which county had jurisdiction for the criminal case. And Lincoln County won. Yay! The following day, June 30th, they went to question Joe Sanders at his workplace and got the truth out of him. Then they returned to George and told him that they had the whole story and George came clean. And at some point during all of this, they also arrested Flossie for her role, though neither Flossie nor George ever even got out of the car during the entire ordeal. On June 30th, there was a coroner's inquest, and they found that Charles had died of exposure on or about June 25th, so approximately four days after he had been left in the desert. He lasted a while. He did. That would have been really awful. Mm-hmm. There was an arraignment before probate judge Howard Adkins on July 1st, 1940, and this absolutely pushed 23-year-old Chester Phillips over the edge. He started to completely break down mentally. The following day, July 2nd, they had to separate the four into different county jails. Joe and Flossie could both stay in the Jerome County Jail because males and females were separate anyway. Chester was sent to the Gooding County Jail and George was sent to the Shoshone County Jail. On July 8th, it was revealed that after a few days of Charles being left out in the desert, one or more of his kids had returned to Mabel Nickerson's house to release a dog that had been tied up there so that it would not starve to death. I thought that was interesting, so I had to include it. Forget the dad. I care about the dog. On Friday, July 12th, there was a big hearing and it was the first time the four had been back together since being put in separate jails 10 days before. There's a great... Picture in the newspaper showing all four of them at a table. The courtroom was crowded to overflowing, and things got pretty dramatic. A relative had to be taken from the court. sobbing. On Friday, July 26th, Chester had finally been pushed over the edge completely. He had a complete nervous breakdown and had become so violent that the jail was not equipped to handle him. He was committed to the state mental hospital at Blackfoot, where he remained until the case came to its conclusion. An article I saw said that he would climb the bars at the front of his cell and throw himself to the floor. He was refusing food and he was screaming uncontrollably. Now, what's interesting is his father had actually died in that very same asylum, like years before. But anyway, another article I read said that he had been having convulsive seizures that were brought on by the strain of the court proceedings. Even after he'd been put there. Like every time more things came up with the court proceedings, that's when he would like kind of relapse. And go back. And so he just never was able to get to a point where he would have been able to go to court at all. So the trial began on January 27th of 1941, but Chester was not a part of it. The three Sanders siblings were charged with first-degree murder. And honestly, things were not looking good for the siblings. The defense wanted to show, through cross-examination, that the Sanders family had lived under quote, abnormal conditions. And the state objected, and the judge agreed. He wouldn't allow any testimony in that would let the jury hear that the family was dysfunctional or that the kids grew up being abused by their dad. And there were several things actually along these lines that the judge wouldn't allow. He wouldn't allow any testimony that would let the jury know anything negative about Charles's character. Ew. Which, yeah. Now, two days into the trial... The sibling's attorney, Paul Haddock, was struck by this nasty coughing fit around noon, and he'd been sick several weeks earlier with influenza, and apparently... he just hadn't fully recovered. And the coughing fit was like no joke. So the trial was recessed for the day. And it was actually a pretty good stopping point because the prosecution had just rested its case. So the defense would begin the following morning. Now, Thursday, January 30th, Joe Sanders actually took the stand in his own defense. So he was on the stand that entire day. And he said that the whole thing had been Chester's idea and that initially they were trying to find some caves that Chester knew about. And the original plan was to leave Charles in some caves, but they got all turned around in the desert and they couldn't find them. And also, Chester swore that he was going to go back out the next day to retrieve Mr. Sanders, and the whole ordeal was just to scare him. Chester didn't get him the next day, though, but then he said, 'Well, I'll get him the next day then.' Well, don't worry, I'll go back tomorrow. I swear I'll go get him, you know, and but he didn't. And then, you know, Joe had to go to work and he trusted that Chester was going to take care of it. And then Joe figured it was taken care of, but he heard nothing more until the police came and questioned him about it, like a week later. Mm-hmm. So Joe actually had to finish up his testimony the following morning. So he was on the stand like an entire day. So Friday, January 31st is when he finished his testimony. Then both Flossie and George took the stand. Flossie told them that she wasn't even supposed to go on this whole thing with them, but she was afraid something might happen to Chester. And so she wanted to go just to watch. Out for him, you know, she was protective of her husband, and she said that Chester thought that, if her father had gotten loose, he probably would have just gone back to Mexico. So, when young George took the stand, he said that he and Flossie never left the car through the whole ordeal. We knew that. And so it turns out that none of the siblings actually meant for their father to die. They actually. Like that was not part of the plan at all. If you believe their story. I don't know. On that same day, Friday, January 31st, the defense attorney got sick again. This time he completely lost his voice and he was not getting better. So something drastic had to be done. He could not go on. And so there were only two options. Either the trial would have to be canceled and retried at a later date, or they could just take some plea deals and be done with it. Now the prosecution didn't want to start all over, so some plea deals were drawn up for voluntary manslaughter. Yeah. That's very different. Yeah. So the next day, Saturday, February 1st of 1941, the three siblings officially entered their guilty pleas for voluntary manslaughter and the trial came to an end. 20-year-old Joseph was sentenced to 5 to 10 years in state prison, and Flossie and George were both sentenced to 1 to 10 years. Now, the judge did not seem very... Happy and said that he was pretty sure they all would have been found guilty of first-degree murder if the trial had continued. And he also thought that the 16-year-old George should have gone to the state reform school. But according to the Idaho statute at the time, the sentence for manslaughter required sending someone to the state penitentiary. If, you know, if they were found guilty of that. But as we've seen in a lot of these old cases, a ton of our perpetrators get released shockingly early. They do. Yeah. So Olivia, how much time did these guys actually serve? So Flossie only served five months in prison before she was granted a two-year conditional pardon by the governor. Joe was granted a two-year conditional pardon if he joined the military, which he did. George was released from prison in October of 1941 as well. Chester was never tried on the charges and they were actually dropped altogether because he was in the insane asylum. But they eventually let him out in October of 1941. He was able to reunite with Flossie and they remained married for the rest of their lives. They had three children together. Chester Melvin Phillips died on the 11th of December 2006 in Burley, Cassia, Idaho, at the age of 90, five days after his and Flossie's 67th wedding anniversary. Flossie died on the 2nd of August, 2015, in Burleigh, Cassia, Idaho, at the age of 93. Together, they had three children, as I said. And at the time of Flossie's death, they had 14 grandchildren, 47 great-grandchildren, and 8 great-great-grandchildren. Wow. It's wild that they stayed married, like, forever. Wow. All right. Well, this was a fascinating case. It was cool learning more about the Mormon Mexican colony stuff. Yeah, I didn't know about them. Yeah, I knew that there were. Well, I mean, because I taught the historical crime. No. Which one was it? It wasn't the historic. It was the cult's class. And I covered polygamous cults. And so. I learned about. like covering the polygamy stuff in general, that there were some down in Mexico. So I wonder, this is what I was thinking about because, uh, Moses' last two children were born in New Mexico. Was the... colony in what is now New Mexico, or was it in what we know today as Mexico? No, it was Mexico. Because I know Mexico used to go up to Oregon, pretty much. Oh, no, no, no. It was actually Mexico. They actually referred to it as Old Mexico. So when... When Chester said to Flossie, Um. I assume if he gets free, he'll just go back to Mexico. He actually said 'old Mexico.' Okay. So yeah, they referred to it as Old Mexico. Interesting. I wonder when we dropped that. I don't know. But yeah, yeah. So there is, on YouTube, there is a documentary called The Land of Refuge, Mormon Colonies in Mexico. I can add, I will add a link to it. In the description too. But I watched that. I had to watch it twice because the first time was while I was working out. And then the second time I watched it again so I could like write down notes and stuff about specific dates. It covers. All of the colonies. But since the Sanderses lived at Colonia Diaz, I mostly just focused on that information. But yeah, it talks about all of them. Well. You should follow us on Facebook, Forgotten Felonies. Heck yeah. And Instagram, at Forgotten Felonies. Shout out to Christian for helping out. Yes. Shout out to him. Ancestry. com, newspapers. com, family search, find a grave. Oh yeah. Find a grave is the best. Newspapers. com is also the best. Yeah. We found this one because I just sent you a link to like... Women in Idaho prisons. Why don't they serve a long time? Yes. And I just thought the name Flossie Phillips looked cool. And then I was like, I'm looking into that one. And then it was like, what? They killed their father? Well, hopefully their family Yee! Hopefully they don't get mad that we covered the case, but it's it's um It's pretty interesting. I found it all very interesting. Learning all the history. I don't want to condone violence, but I think it was warranted. Yeah, I think that they just didn't have a lot of options. And I mean, they had called the police so many times. And even, even Chester had said, like, that was one of the reasons they even brought it up in court. They said we had to do something because the law is not helping us. Yeah. They were not helping. Chester didn't. I guess. Before he was sent to the The hospital. Asylum. Yeah, I was like, but he didn't go to court. But he was at first, you're right. Yeah. But yeah. So, I mean, they, it just, I mean, you know, things reached a boiling point. They were together 67 years. That's a long time. Yep. So that's very cool. And their obituaries are awesome. I think it's sad. One of their kids had died in an accident when he was like 19. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And one of their, um... grandchildren and great-grandchildren, I think. Aw. I wonder how many there are now. Cause that was 2015. Yep, they were very, very well loved in their communities. Seems like all of them were. pretty well loved, so. Very cool that it all worked out. They did their time and they didn't commit any more crime. Yep. Not at all. So they were not dumb. Thank you. Over all, bad humans or anything like that at all, so. Yep. Selvom I...