John Singer grew up in Nazi Germany. His father, an ardent Nazi, shipped him off to a Hitler youth camp. But his mother didn’t share her husband’s affinity for the Führer. They would battle for their child’s mind and soul in a struggle that would culminate after the war when his mother escaped to America with John. She settled in Salt Lake City, where she and her child joined her “brothers and sisters” in the Mormon Church. John Singer vowed he would never subject his own children to an educational environment that was contrary to his religious beliefs, as he and his mother had suffered in Germany.
John married Vickie in 1965. They had seven children and were described by neighbors as a close, loving, and unpretentious family living in the rolling hills in Marion, Utah. They had a small farm, and John worked as a TV repairman. They were devoted to their beliefs, were self-sufficient, and wanted to raise their children safe from what they viewed as the evil influence of the public schools. The Singers felt driven to follow the admonition of the scriptures that placed a nondelegable duty on them to educate their children and “to walk upright before the Lord.” But here in this celebrated haven of ultimate refuge, men in power wanted to force their children into the public school in nearby Kamas and were dictating how their children would be educated. Singer thought that was prohibited by the scriptures. He saw history repeating itself—the state, as in Nazi Germany, dictating what his children would be taught.
The official Mormon Church, considering the players, could only pretend that this tragic story was immune from the church’s influence. Val Edrington, the superintendent of the local schools, was a Mormon. Robert Adkins, the Summit County prosecutor, was a Mormon, as were the juvenile court judge, Charles Bradford, and the state superintendent of schools, Dr. Walter Talbot, as well as the governor, Scott Matheson. Even the United States District Court judge, David Winder, admitted he had grown up as a practicing Mormon.
I saw John Singer as a man stretched between two prongs of fear—fear of men in power and fear of the Lord. He could turn to no one for assistance. He remembered Joseph Smith and many other Mormons who’d been murdered as their earthly reward for their faith, and Christ hanging from the cross, a renegade in the eyes of the Romans. Yes, John Singer was a renegade. He’d also refused to “sustain the presidency,” which is church language meaning he would not agree that the church president alone received the word of God and was therefore empowered to speak for him, to interpret the word of God for him, and to even think for him. Mormons must “sustain the presidency” or face excommunication. Singer’s refusal created a dangerous breach between him and Utah’s power structure, which, in significant ways, was synonymous with the Mormon Church, officially known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS).
The Singers believed their children were being exposed to dope, disease, and decadence. And the last straw that finally triggered their decision was a child’s reader containing the pictures of George Washington and Martin Luther King “side by side as equals and great men,” as Vickie put it in her journal. John Singer didn’t believe textbooks should promote a mixing of races.24 On March 29, 1973, he and Vickie took their three oldest children out of the public school and attempted to begin their own program of homeschooling.
Val Edrington, the superintendent of South Summit School District, wrote to State Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Walter D. Talbot seeking guidance: What power did he possess to regulate the Singers’ homeschooling of their children? In a letter dated May 9, 1973, Talbot responded that under Utah’s compulsory attendance law, the parents didn’t have to be certified as teachers, but their teaching had to meet minimum requirements. Yes, but minimum requirements dictated by whom?
Edrington wrote the Singers informing them that the local board would send someone to evaluate their schooling methods. If the board was satisfied that its teaching requirements were being met, it would issue a certificate of exemption, and if not, the board would be forced to report the parents to juvenile court. The message was clear: You better teach your kids the way we want them taught or you’ll face the judge.
Singer’s response to Edrington was tinctured with his childhood experiences under Hitler. He wrote to Edrington:
My God has let me know by His scriptures and by His Holy Spirit that I am not required according to His Laws, to bow under laws which trample upon my liberties by which my God has made me a free man.…
My God is more powerful than you and your illegal laws, and only slaves will bow under those conditions; therefore, all I can say is go to Hell you and your kind for such unrighteous demands.
Edrington turned once more to Dr. Talbot, the state school superintendent, who in turn consulted with the Utah attorney general. Talbot then wrote Edrington: “The District would not be discharging its responsibility if it did not do as the law requires and report this matter formally to the juvenile court in your area.” So Power’s ducks were all lined up against this one Utah citizen and his family, whose only opposing power was whatever divine benevolence drifted down from on high.
By October 18, 1973, the case was festering in the Juvenile Court for Summit County. On the information of Val Edrington the Singers were charged as criminals for neglecting their three oldest children in that they had refused to comply with the Utah compulsory attendance law. The Singers were summoned to appear in juvenile court on December 10, and when they failed to appear, a warrant for their arrest was issued.
At this point one is put to wondering about Power’s concern for the Singer children. If the Singers were hauled off to jail, would Edrington see to their feeding and shelter? When the sheriff came to arrest John, he asked him to go with him peacefully, but John refused. “Well then,” the sheriff said, “the judge will probably send about ten guys after you and break the door down to get you.”
John replied, “If that’s the case there will be bloodshed.”
On January 10, 1974, John Singer was arrested while he was making a television repair call. The charge was child neglect. He offered no resistance, spent the night in jail, and was released the next day after agreeing to appear at a designated time. In their attempt to appease the authorities, the Singers filed with the school board an outline of what they’d be teaching their kids. And the case against him was postponed.
Next Edrington demanded that the Singer children be tested. Still attempting to appease the school authorities, the Singers allowed their children to be given the school’s standard achievement test. Their scores were lower than the group average in the equivalent grade. The school board let matters ride along until Edrington got into the act again the following year. He wanted up-to-date testing of the children. This time the Singers refused.
Edrington reported the Singers to State Superintendent Talbot, who passed the well-worn buck to the juvenile court again. This brought Summit County Attorney Robert Adkins into Judge Bradford’s juvenile court. Adkins, ex parte, discussed the Singer problem with Judge Bradford. (“Ex parte” is a legal term meaning that Adkins talked to the judge without the Singers being present. This is not permitted in most courts in this country.) To his credit, Judge Bradford told Prosecutor Adkins he thought that parents should be permitted “substantial discretion in the matter of the education of their children.” Adkins reported back to District Superintendent Edrington that in view of Judge Bradford’s attitude, it would be difficult to put pressure on the Singers.
Edrington would not retreat. On November 29, 1976, he reported to Dr. Talbot that the juvenile court was “failing to act.” Talbot said he would follow up but suggested that Edrington “keep it low key.” Talbot then contacted Attorney General Robert B. Hansen, and Hansen, ex parte, talked with Judge Bradford. And if that wasn’t enough pressure on the judge, a probation officer from the juvenile court told him that he’d heard that Talbot had complained about the judge to the governor. All of this pressuring of the judge, this “back-dooring” behind the backs of the Singers, was a violation of proper court proceedings.
Now enters the ghoul named Politics. Dr. Talbot happened to sit on the Juvenile Court Commission that screened candidates for the juvenile court judgeship, and Judge Bradford’s term was about to expire. Judge Bradford was soon to learn that he was not one of the three judges recommended to the governor for reappointment. But Judge Bradford also discovered that one of the three who had been selected for his job was a partner of one of the juvenile court commissioners who would be voting on the matter. This wouldn’t pass the smell test from fifty miles off. When this good-old-boy move was discovered and exposed by Judge Bradford, Talbot had no choice but to have the commission reconvene, and this time Judge Bradford’s name got on the list.
Following the suggestion of Superintendent Edrington, the members of the school board then voted to bring John Singer before them once more. Their message to Singer was the same: We have the power over you and your children. So show us why we shouldn’t revoke your exemption that permits you to homeschool your kids.
Singer appeared in his best pair of jeans and a clean, pressed shirt. He stood alone before the school board without a lawyer. His face was deeply burned from the sun, and his voice was marked with an obvious German accent acquired from his early years in Nazi Germany. He pled his case into the faces of strangers. Singer told the school board that his family was holding school 180 days a year, the same number required in the public schools, and was covering the same subjects. However, he told the school board he would not allow the board to monitor his children’s schoolwork or further test his children.
On March 11, 1977, the school board notified the Singers it had withdrawn the certificate of exemption that had allowed them to teach their children at home because of their refusal to allow testing of the children. The board gave the Singers until March 18 to send their children back to the public schools, failing which the Singers would be reported to the juvenile court.
On May 3, John and Vickie Singer were charged with the crimes of contributing to the delinquency and neglect of Heidi Singer, Suzanne Singer, Charlotte Singer, Joseph Singer, and Timothy Singer by failing to send those children to the public school.
On June 7, a preliminary hearing was held before Judge Bradford. The Singers were present. They had no funds to pay a private lawyer and refused the services of a court-appointed attorney. Vickie Singer said she remembered talking in a “personal manner” with Judge Bradford, explaining to him that they believed “what was happening was unconstitutional.” She said the judge actually agreed with them.
Now real trouble was about to begin. On August 3, Judge Bradford appointed a guardian ad litem for the Singer children. The word “guardian” sounded to John as if the court had taken away his children. In fact, the judge was appointing someone with legal standing to represent the interests of the children during the trial.
In a letter to Judge Bradford dated August 7, Singer, suffering from his mistaken belief that his children had been taken from him, wrote as follows:
Dear Mr. Bradford!
I have received your orders by which you appointed Robert F. Orton as guardian for my children.
My reply!
You, Mr. Bradford, by making a court order of this nature are, according to the laws of the land, a lawbreaker, & to pursue this matter further against me & my family makes you also the lawbreaker in the eyes of Allmighty God. I have lost all confidence in you as an officer of Justice & as a man of God. God’s remedy of restoring confidence, is, that the transgressor repents.
Singer warned that if Robert Orton came to his home as the guardian of his children he would “personally … throw him out.” He went on to write:
You have placed us in a very peculiar situation, namely, either to transgress the laws of my God & obey men’s corrupt laws, or obey my God’s laws & defy men’s corrupt laws. I, fearing God more than men, have chosen the latter.
The matter was set for hearing on August 23, 1977, before Judge L. Kent Bachman, who had suddenly replaced Judge Bradford just a week before. How or why the change of judge came about remains a secret on the record. At the juvenile court hearing, Singer reported the number of hours the children were being homeschooled. He identified their textbooks and described the little schoolhouse that he and the family had built, in which their teaching took place. Yes, a schoolhouse built by the hands of the Singers and their children—an exemplary part of a child’s education, one might argue.
The record does not reveal Singer’s struggle at cross-examining Val Edrington, and others. His efforts were likely lacking. Lawyers spend years learning the art, and many never learn it. But when Singer testified, he told the judge that God had given him the responsibility to rear his children, and that he’d done so according to his beliefs. He insisted that he was a responsible parent and denied he’d been negligent.
One of the reasons Singer had been cited was that he wasn’t teaching a full five and a half hours a day. But Singer felt he was being punished for his efficiency—two and a half hours a day of focused learning was, in his view, equal to the education children were getting in the longer public school day due to the “goof off” periods between lessons, as he referred to recesses and in-class exercises when real teaching was not performed.
When it came time to rule, Judge Bachman found that there had been a “neglectful situation” in the Singers’ failing to teach their children the basics of education, but the record was silent as to what the exact failures were. So the judge decided to have Dr. Victor Cline, a psychologist from the University of Utah, deal with the matter. In the meantime the Singers were committed to the county jail for a period of sixty days and ordered to pay a fine of $299, to be suspended upon compliance with the court’s orders. No official seemed to care who was going to feed, provide for, and protect the children during that sixty days. By letter the Singers declined to meet with Dr. Cline and tried to explain with “all due respect” that they would be judged by God, not by the psychologist.
On August 29, 1977, the Singers filed their notice of appeal, but their appeal was dismissed when the Singers “failed to perfect it,” which simply meant that they didn’t use proper legal language in the time required by law. On September 13, the Singers were ordered to appear before Judge Bachman to explain why they’d failed to comply with the court’s order to meet with Dr. Cline for testing. Worn down, they finally consented to Dr. Cline’s evaluation of the children and met with him on September 15 at the university, and again on September 27 at the Singer home in Marion. Then the psychologist sought to test both John and Vickie. The Singers concluded that the power structure was preparing to declare them both unfit to teach their own children. Both John and Vickie Singer refused to permit the psychologist to test them.
It was around this time that the Singers learned there might be a different way to achieve their goal of homeschooling their children. They were contacted by Tom and Mary Bergman of Porterville, Utah, who had incorporated a private school, though, in fact, they were teaching their own children. Presumably this tactic had allowed them to homeschool their children without government interference, since the public school board seemed reluctant to exercise its power over privately incorporated schools. The Bergmans shared a copy of a letter they’d received from Dr. Talbot stating that private schools were not subject to state regulation. Sometime in October of 1977, the Singers filed articles of incorporation for a private school called High Uintahs Academy, Inc.
But on November 1, the judge found that the Singers had failed to submit to an evaluation by Dr. Cline, and again ordered the Singers to pay a fine of $299 and sentenced each to sixty days in the Summit County jail. After praying about the matter, the Singers decided to allow Dr. Cline to test them. On November 15, Dr. Cline’s report on the Singers was reviewed by the judge. The contents of the report do not appear in the record, but something was clearly worrying Judge Bachman. He told the Singers that if he allowed them to continue their home teaching, and if they wouldn’t “bend,” he ran the risk of losing his job. Losing his job? Who exactly was in charge here—the juvenile court judge or some outside political power threatening the judiciary? From our earliest times in grade school we learned that in America our judges are independent from all the other branches of government.
Singer reported to Judge Bachman that he’d given up his job repairing televisions in order to teach full-time in their private school. Finally the judge vacated the jail sentences and fines he’d previously imposed, noting that he would give thought to the information contained in Dr. Cline’s report. On December 4, John Singer wrote a letter to Judge Bachman, the prosecutor, Terry Christiansen, and the guardian ad litem, Robert Orton. The letter was written on the stationery of the Singers’ newly incorporated school, High Uintahs Academy, Inc. After reviewing their history with the school board, John concluded his letter:
My family and myself have been smitten more than three times since these troubles have begun; and we have not reviled against you people, nor did we seek revenge, but we were always in hopes that you people’s hearts would be softened and show fairness to our beliefs and freedoms. But now, since this has not been the case, and the threat that my children would be taken out of our home still exists, I now warn you in the name of Jesus Christ, my Lord, to cease your mischief against my family and myself. This letter is also my second Standard of Peace that I raise to this court, and all others concerned. Hoping you people will repent, is my deepest desire.
On December 15, the Singers sent another letter to Judge Bachman in which they respectfully declined to appear at the upcoming trial accusing them of criminal child neglect. That trial had now been reset for December 16. The Singers wrote in part:
According to the Supreme Law of the Land and of God, the jurisdiction over my children is strictly vouched safe in my hands. Also, we are incorporated legally, by the State of Utah, as a private home school.
In response, Judge Bachman issued a bench warrant for John and Vickie’s arrest, and the trial was again continued until January 3, 1978. The following day, John Singer sent an additional letter to the judge that in part stated:
I have tried to raise the standard of peace twice before. Your decision to have me arrested is an indication that you have ignored my attempts to live at peace in this community. Therefore, in accordance with the law of God I am raising the third standard of peace and implore you in the name of the living God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob to dismiss all charges against me and my family.
Sympathetic members of the Singers’ community had learned of the struggle the Singers were facing. Indeed, a significant population of “fundamental Mormons” (those who embraced polygamy), along with other friends and concerned citizens, were aroused at the continued abuse the Singer family was suffering at the hands of the school district and protested to the school board. As a consequence Edrington decided to “set the record straight,” and on December 22, 1978, he came out with a detailed press release that outlined the extraordinary patience, tolerance, and consideration the school district had given the Singers, who, on the other hand, were unyielding and had refused to conform to reasonable requirements necessary for the well-being of their children.
Remembering what John Singer had earlier told the sheriff who threatened to arrest him—that if his arrest were attempted there would be “bloodshed”—one might surmise that Edrington’s press release was intended to prepare concerned citizens to see the conflict from the standpoint of Edrington and the school district if bloodshed did in fact occur.
The Singers failed to appear for the January 3 hearing. Dr. Cline was at the hearing and testified that he’d seen the Singers on four occasions, that the children had been deprived of intellectual stimulation, and that the test differentials between the parents and the children were “shocking.” Even though Vickie Singer was a “marvelous mother and woman as far as the emotional life of the children was concerned,” she was “in no way competent or prepared, really, to teach these children.”
Cline further testified that the Singer children tested in the bottom 8 percent of their peers, while the Singer parents tested in the top 20 percent of theirs. One wonders if Dr. Cline took into account that one child was mentally disadvantaged from birth.
Dr. Cline recommended that the Singers and the school district “negotiate” to accommodate the personal and private values of the family, while affording the children a “remedial educational experience” by having properly trained teachers come into the home. If things continued unchanged, he worried, the Singer children would suffer some “very negative, very very major adjustment problems, both vocationally as well as socially, in their later adolescent and adult lives.” At the same time, he noted that in his view “yanking” the children away from their parents and putting them in another environment would not serve their interests.
Judge Bachman took Cline’s recommendation. He ordered that the Singer children have daily tutoring under the direction and at the expense of the South Summit School District, specifying that the “interests, feelings, and beliefs of John and Vickie Singer … be taken into consideration in the type of materials used so that they are not personally offensive,” and that the parents be allowed to assist in preparing the plan for the education of their children. He further ordered that the tutoring of the Singer children be monitored through testing by Dr. Cline every two months, and that Dr. Cline work with the parents and children “to bring the children to a level where they will not fall within the status of being intellectually deprived” until August 1, 1978, “at which time a hearing shall be held to examine the progress of the children and determine whether the children are prepared to return to private or public school.”
The court also ordered that John and Vickie Singer “permit and allow Dr. Victor Cline … and school personnel into their home to teach and test their children and to cooperate fully with said persons.” They would be held in contempt of court if they refused.
On January 30, 1978, the final approved plan for the tutoring of the children was mailed to the Singers by registered mail. The Singers did not respond.
On February 21, Edrington met with the Citizen’s Group, a small, attentive, but vociferous group that had been previously formed to provide community input concerning school district issues. Over time their interest had expanded to include the Singer case. When a member of the group stated to Edrington that he felt the Singer issue should not be pursued, Edrington responded that he intended to press the matter to “the very ultimate.”
“To the ultimate?”
People at the meeting objected. Certainly the matter should not be pushed to the point that John Singer would be killed. (A curious irony was at work here: In an earlier time John Singer had saved Edrington’s son from drowning in a nearby reservoir.)
On March 1, members of the South Summit School District Board of Education met with Judge John Farr Larson, who had replaced Judge Bachman on the case. Again, why Judge Bachman was replaced is not revealed in the record. There is also no record that the Singers had been invited to the meeting. This was another of those ex parte get-togethers that are prohibited in the law. Judge Larson promised he would take action on the Singer case and “not allow the court to be backed into a corner by what has taken place in the past.” Judge Larson issued an order for the Singers and their children to appear in court on March 14, 1978, to show cause why the Singer children should not be placed in custody of the state for the Singers’ failure to comply with prior court orders and why John and Vickie should not be held in contempt.
Was it in the best interests of children to be ripped from the love and protection of their parents and put in the foster care of utter strangers? I wondered what I might do in the face of such threats if I were poor, without a lawyer, without a legal education, and otherwise powerless. Sheriff Ron Robinson later testified that when he served the order on the Singers, John said he’d never let anyone onto his property to enforce it.
The Singers appeared in court as ordered. Judge Larson found both John and Vickie in contempt and imposed a thirty-day jail sentence and a $200 fine, but stayed the fine and sentence for seven days to allow the Singers a chance to appeal. Judge Larson said, “The olive branch is still out. But this court cannot tolerate just a complete ignoring of the system.” Vickie recorded the following in her journal:
After analyzing our situation and praying, John experienced a marvelous feeling and everything was made plain. If we appealed this case to the Supreme Court it would make null and void all that we’d done in the way of setting God’s laws in motion, by sending the three Standards of Peace and having performed the ordinance of the washing of our feet. We both saw the clearness of the way—that we should not appeal the case, and it became plain that the “olive branch” that the Judge said was still out towards us, was another subtleness of Satan.
But on March 20, one day before the stay of sentence was to expire, an unsigned notice of appeal was filed with the court. The Singers had not filed it. When they heard of it Vickie wrote, “We really felt that perhaps Satan was trying to pull trickery on us to ‘thwart’ the purposes of the Lord, which an appeal would do.” Since this was not their appeal but one filed by an impostor, the appeal was never perfected.
When news of the supposed appeal first came to the courthouse, Terry Christiansen, the prosecuting attorney, yelled from the basement, “I’ve got good news—the Singers have appealed to the Utah Supreme Court!” Shortly after, Sheriff Robinson went to the Singer home and told them of Christiansen’s reaction and encouraged them to appeal. Obviously the power people wanted the matter lifted from their hands and dumped in the lap of the Utah Supreme Court. Judge Larson was even willing to provide a transcript of the record free of charge and an attorney if the Singers would only appeal. Appeal! Perhaps the power people were experiencing doubts about the legality of their action.
Sheriff Robinson failed in his efforts to have the Singers appeal. Power seemed trapped by its own power, leaving the judge no alternative but to back off, admit defeat, and leave the Singers be. But Power does not surrender to the powerless. The judge directed Sheriff Robinson to take John and Vickie Singer into custody under the judge’s thirty-day jail sentence. But again the court continued the matter to July 7, 1978, for further review.
In the meantime the public was becoming even more concerned. Some contacted their local representative, who in turn contacted the sheriff. Judge Larson, too, was called by caring citizens. Again the sheriff approached John Singer and asked him to appeal, but the Singers, nailed to their belief that an appeal would void their work with the Lord, refused. Then the national press got interested in the story. Their publications began supplying Utah with an abundance of adverse publicity.
Governor Matheson, embarrassed, agreed that the actions of the officers had been excessive and promised that from that point on he himself would personally approve all arrest plans. The legality of his proclamation is not clear.
Reporters from a Salt Lake City television station were interviewing Dr. Cline. Speaking with all due professorial authority, he stated that because of their isolation on the family farm the children were “brain damaged”!
Stop!
If one hears a respected expert from the University of Utah state on TV that parents are brain-damaging their seven children, might not one agree that those kids should immediately be taken from their brain-damaging parents?
Sheriff Robinson, unarmed, again went to see John and asked him to surrender peacefully. John refused.
Judge Larson gave the Singers yet another week to comply, but remarked from the bench, “Compulsory attendance law is the law of this state.… It’s not the court’s desire to remove these children from their home unless they are denied the required minimal educational opportunities, which I believe can be afforded them without interfering with the parents’ teaching their moral and religious matters.… I would hope that the parents will take this opportunity now to seek an appropriate solution to this important matter.”
Robert Orton, the guardian ad litem for the children, wrote asking the Singers to meet with him to resolve the issues. Vickie’s journal reveals the Singers’ response:
They must think we’re stupid—to trust such a trick—we know that we would be arrested right on the spot! Besides, we have literally washed our feet of them and we have nothing more to say to them. As far as we’re concerned, that court doesn’t exist.
Then State Representative Samuel Taylor and two other legislators visited the Singer farm with the Bergmans, the family who, as we remember, had incorporated their own private school without any objection or intrusion by the school board. The Bergmans offered to assist in any way to “appease the courts.” And again Judge Larson stayed the proceedings.
But do we understand? From the Singers’ point of view, the judge had decreed that their children be taken from them and placed into the hands of strangers if the Singers did not submit to his orders. They believed the government was filled with tricksters. The Singers had made their commitment to God. God stood in the way. Their very souls were at stake. John Singer was a fugitive. What escape was there? We recall: Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge had faced this same impasse.
Was the solution to kill the father of the children? Was the solution to thereafter take the children from the surviving mother? Was that in the best interests of the children? The Bergmans recommended that the charges be dismissed, that the Singers be left alone.
On July 3, 1978, another hearing was held, at which time Robert Orton asked the judge to vacate the order placing the children in the custody of the Division of Family Services and to grant probation to John and Vickie Singer, and a qualified homeschool person testified she’d visited the Singers’ school facilities and would assist in the Singers’ program. Thoughtful people were telling Power to surrender. But Judge Larson believed he had a duty to sustain the compulsory attendance law unless it was declared unconstitutional, and no constitutional issues had been raised in the case. The judge said he would give the Singers an opportunity to raise them. Finally he vacated the order granting custody of the children to the state. But in the same paper he ordered the arrest of John Singer, and to ameliorate the likelihood of violence he provided in his order:
The sheriff shall, in his sole discretion, employ such means and take such time as are reasonably calculated to avoid the infliction of bodily harm on any person.
The judge wanted the Singers to keep their kids, but he ordered the arrest of their father?
Representative Taylor and the Bergmans again visited the Singers in a futile attempt to get them to “bend a little.” On July 4, Representative Taylor wrote them a letter stating that the judge had given them “98%” of what they wanted and asking, “What will you do about the other 2%?” Again, this effort proved futile.
The judge stated that the action against the Singers could not be dismissed since there were children who had been “duly adjudicated as neglected and their parents duly convicted of a criminal offense,” which was another way of saying that Power can never surrender. At the same time, the Singers were still trapped between man and God.
On July 12, Judge Larson wrote Governor Matheson a three-page letter to “inform and update” him on the Singer matter. Why did a judge feel it necessary to appease the governor? The judge’s conclusion: “I cannot in good conscience excuse [Singer] from complying with the law of this State because of his threats of violence nor his claimed communications from God.”
On July 17, 1978, John Singer, without a marriage license, married himself to a second wife, Shirley Black. At the time John performed this marriage, Shirley Black was legally married to Dean Black. Did this polygamous marriage in a state framed, founded, and historically fed on polygamy provide the last straw?
Sheriff Robinson now asked the judge to amend his earlier order requiring the cops to avoid violence. He argued that he could not predict what Singer would do, and therefore he could not arrest Singer under the terms of the judge’s order. Judge Larson amended his order, opening the door to killing. Looking back, we remember that the original charge against John Singer—a failure to send his kids to the public school—was a misdemeanor, something slightly more serious than parking in a no-parking zone.
Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge would have understood: His failure to appear in court as ordered led to the killing of a dog, to the killing of his son, and to multiple deaths and horror. Ah, Power!
The sheriff wanted more help. He commandeered more officers from the Narcotics and Liquor Law Enforcement Division with Governor Matheson’s approval. After Judge Larson heard of Singer’s illegal marriage, he ordered the children back into the custody of the Division of Family Services and ordered that Vickie be arrested for their neglect. Polygamy was the Singers’ latest crime committed against Mormon Power, which to this day knowingly tolerates nearby polygamist settlements. Power now jammed the door wide open for a killing.
Arrest the Singers and put their kids in the hands of the state?
John Singer would die to prevent that.
* * *
Robert Wadman, the director of the Narcotics and Liquor Law Enforcement Division, Larry Lunnen, the Utah commissioner of public safety, and Highway Patrol Superintendent Robert J. Reid put their minds together: How could they arrest John Singer? These agencies, with scores of armed men, now directed their focus on this one “renegade Mormon” who simply wanted to educate his own children (and shelter a second wife).
Aware of the challenge a cornered Singer presented, the lawmen held at least three meetings to plan the arrest. They first considered masquerading as hunters in the area, and when Singer left to retrieve his mail from his postal box some distance from the house they’d arrest him. This plan was rejected. Hunters would be armed, and if Singer suspected they were cops he would likely arm himself. They wanted no confrontation with an armed John Singer.
Next they considered posing as religious people sympathetic to polygamy, but this plan was rejected because the law enforcement officers were not sufficiently knowledgeable regarding religion to pull off that ruse. For similar reasons they shot down a plan to pose as sympathetic attorneys who wanted to help.
The arrest plan on which they finally settled was for the cops to pose as news reporters. Wadman and two of his agents went to the Singer farm, and Wadman identified himself as a journalist and offered to pay John for his story. Two other officers posed as his camera crew. As they shook hands with Singer, they planned to advise him they were officers and place him under arrest. But as Wadman later testified in his deposition, Singer didn’t go easily.
A. We were wrestling trying to put handcuffs on.…
Q. What prevented you from getting Mr. Singer subdued?
A. He was just too strong for me.…
Q. Do you know of anybody who showed him a badge?
A. Bill Riggs [one of the other cops] did. At one point Singer pulled out a gun.
Q. How could the officer show him a badge when you were engaged in the struggle?
A. It was afterwards when he [Singer] was waving the gun around.
Q. Did anybody show him a badge before?
A. No, sir, not that I seen.…
Q. As a matter of fact, as he was struggling with you it would have been as reasonable for him to believe that you were lying to him about being police officers as well as lying to him about being newspapermen, isn’t that right?
A. I guess.
Vickie’s journal provided a decidedly different story:
John had gone out to meet the press and was shaking their hands, when they all started to grab him and started lifting him into their van. John began kicking and struggling, as the men held his hands behind his back.
I ran out and grabbed the man who was on John’s back and was ready to smash him hard in the face, when he pulled back with a startled, scared, look on his face, and said, “No! Don’t!” I said, “I’ll knock your teeth out!” I didn’t have to strike him because he let go.
As I read her account, I was shocked to see that sweet, humble, retiring woman in such a ferocious frenzy. She reminded me of the hummingbird that will attack even a man if you invade its nest. She went on in her journal:
Just before that time, John had gotten his hands loose somehow and was able to get his gun out of his pocket.… The kids started to pound on the cops.
Right away the men said, “We’ll leave!” They looked really scared. They were white and sickly looking.… They left in a cloud of dust!… They did not identify themselves at the first as they said they did in the newspaper.
Governor Matheson didn’t remember giving the OK for this group to arrest John, and said he was opposed to their ploy. Nonetheless, the next move of the police was to obtain a felony warrant against Singer for his “assault on police officers.”
On October 30, 1978, Judge Larson submitted a new order stating that because his previous arrest orders on both John and Vickie Singer had not been executed, he was ordering the sheriff of Summit County to arrest the Singers “upon penalty of contempt.” In layman’s language that meant, “Arrest the Singers, Mr. Sheriff, or I will throw you, badge and all, in jail.” The Utah lawmen next had the Singer situation reviewed by a number of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department, the National Guard, the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, and the police departments of Provo, Ogden, and Salt Lake City, Utah. Surely all of these experts could come up with a reasonable plan to arrest the Singers, who were peacefully staying home, trying to educate their kids, and keeping themselves safe from invading cops.
The record reported that among the plans these lawmen considered was shutting off the power and water, and putting tranquilizing drugs in the water supply, but these were deemed too dangerous to the children. They ultimately decided to carry out a twenty-four-hour surveillance of the Singer place by disguising themselves as vacationing skiers. They carried on this surveillance for eighteen days.
Governor Matheson was asked by Harald Singer, John’s brother, to pardon John and to let the whole thing just go away. Matheson said he couldn’t, because the power to grant a pardon was vested in the Board of Pardons, not the governor.
By January 15, 1979, the Singer farm was in full winter regalia. The snow was deep. Three snowmobiles with two officers each, all with bulletproof vests, and fully coordinated by radio, would descend on Singer when he left his house to get his mail. Two more snowmobiles, two officers on each, would cut off his retreat. At the time, some lawmen called the plan “stupid” and “dangerous.” At about 12:15 P.M., John Singer walked down the snow-covered lane to the family mailbox. Suddenly six officers on three snowmobiles roared full speed toward him, brandishing shotguns. Neither the officers nor their snowmobiles bore any police markings.
Singer, alarmed by this charge by armed strangers, drew his pistol in an attempt to frighten them off, but he didn’t shoot. Instead, he turned and ran toward his house. But he never made it—he was shot with multiple rounds of buckshot in the back. Officers on the shooting team would later admit that under this arrest plan the killing of John Singer was foreordained, a conclusion confirmed by the later deposition testimony of preeminent police experts.
The officers would dispute the claim that they weren’t wearing police identification jackets and that only one shot from a shotgun was fired. They admit that Officer Lewis Jolley was about twenty feet from Singer when he was shot. Jolley says he saw Singer squint his eye as if aiming at him. John fell facedown in the snow.
The officers later claimed that they hollered they were police, but Jolley, closest to Singer, heard no such thing. An officer turned John over where he lay in the snow, bleeding but still alive.
Charlotte Singer was in the house watching through binoculars just before her father was shot. She said, “I seen his mouth go open and blood come out.” Then she saw him fall. I wondered if the power people thought a child seeing her father killed was an appropriate part of the child’s education?
Vickie had been teaching when Charlotte screamed. She grabbed her .22 rifle, and Singer’s second wife, Shirley Black, found a pistol, and little Heidi took her bow and arrow. That meager contingent would face ten fully armed lawmen with enough shotguns, buckshot, pistols, and ammo to blow away half of the county. Heidi heard two shots. One of Shirley’s children heard two shots. Both Joseph and Benjamin Singer, eight and six years old respectively, testified at their depositions that they also heard two shots.
Officer Ron Gunderson told Officer Jolley that he, Gunderson, had also fired, but he changed his story at his deposition. But on the day of the shooting another officer reported, “Gunderson thought he had shot. He said that he was squeezing the bastard [the gun] so hard he had to have shot.”
After John Singer fell, the cops, without determining if first aid was called for, loaded him into the front seat of a pickup truck. Vickie Singer testified that when the truck left, it turned away from, not toward, the hospital. Given the fact that his death was predictable, it is noted that no medical personnel were included among the platoon of officers who took part in his arrest. The trip to the hospital required half an hour. It was no surprise: The subject was DOA.
Vickie was hauled off to jail. The record is silent on how she learned of her husband’s death. Her children were taken from her and lodged in a “Salt Lake detention center,” harmless sounding words for jail. Good education for kids, right?
* * *
In such a notorious case one would expect an exceedingly careful investigation. The state medical examiner, J. Wallace Graham, recovered only two of the shotgun pellets in the body of Mr. Singer and two others from Mr. Singer’s clothing. He gave the four pellets to a Summit County deputy, who recalled at his deposition that he had signed a receipt for the pellets but could not specifically remember ever receiving them. Late in September of 1980, it was discovered that the pellets from Singer’s body as well as his shirt were missing. Tests for gunpowder residue on the hands of the cops were not made. Neither the officers’ guns nor their ammunition was ever collected. Meaningful diagrams and photographs, standard in police investigation, were never made. No better cover-up of a crime can be imagined than no investigation at all.
One would expect the state to charge forward with all information necessary for a full and fair review of the incident. The state contended publicly that John Singer was shot only once when the autopsy photos showed a spray of projectiles across his back. And the eminent pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz testified at his deposition that Mr. Singer was shot multiple times.
The same concerned citizens’ group asked the attorney general to submit a list of more than twenty questions to a grand jury, but they were ignored. The FBI investigated, but the results have never been published. The county attorney’s office did its investigation, but those results remain unpublished, too. Preparing to defend possible lawsuits, the Utah attorney general’s office also investigated. The Summit County attorney then issued a statement that he found no grounds to file any criminal actions against any of the officers. As we recall, the case against Horiuchi in the Weaver case was also finally dismissed, and no officer was ever charged with the killing of Little Sammy and his mother.
Yet another hearing was held in Judge Larson’s court on January 19, 1979. Vickie was released after four days in jail, but the children were kept in “protective custody.” Protection from a mother’s care and comfort after having witnessed the killing of their father?
* * *
A local printer called me and put me in touch with Vickie. When we talked on the phone, the sound of her voice and her straight, clear, simple plea for justice moved me. But if we were to represent her I needed help. I’d been appointed the special prosecutor in a criminal case I would soon file against Mark Hopkinson, the evil, psychopathic killer of at least five Wyoming citizens. That trial began on September 3, 1979, and was followed by my defense of the Rock Springs sheriff and fast gun Ed Cantrell, who was charged with murder and whose trial began on November 12, 1979, and continued to the end of that month.
I asked my partner Bob Schuster to investigate, and after his initial fact gathering he recommended that we file suit on behalf of Vickie and her children for the death of their husband and father, and that we take the necessary depositions to support a case Schuster believed was waiting to be fully unearthed, one that would show that John Singer had been wrongfully killed.
We brought suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah in Salt Lake City against Robert Wadman, the director of the Division of Narcotics and Liquor Law Enforcement, and Val Edrington, the county superintendent of schools. We sued Governor Matheson, Sheriff Robinson, the county attorney, and a bunch of deputies and secondary participants in this story. In fact, we sued about everyone in sight, and some who were hiding. Our sixty-five-page complaint named them all.
Our case was about the violation of John Singer’s right to life. The surviving Singers claimed they were deprived of other constitutionally protected rights—to due process of law, to be free from “a systematic scheme of harassment and intimidation by law enforcement officers,” to be free from unlawful assaults, to be free from malicious prosecution, and to be free from discrimination because of their religious beliefs. We sued the defendants for their negligence, gross and otherwise, along with other causes of action.
In December of 1982, my assistant, Rosemary McIntosh, and I drove up to Mrs. Singer’s home near Marion, Utah, in the mountains. It was a farm with outbuildings; the house was a rugged wooden structure with faded greenish paint. Vickie Singer met us at the door and invited us in. She was plain, yet in plain ways beautiful. She wore no makeup. Her blond hair fell in a single long braid down her back. She was obviously missing some teeth, and she was dressed in a simple cotton dress that extended to her ankles. Yet if I were to pick one word to describe her it would still be “beautiful.”
This was a widow with seven children. Her husband had been killed and the surrounding facts covered up. She was calm, quiet, and sweet in a naïve and simple way. I thought her ability to forgive, perhaps even to love, was somehow in control. We met only her younger girls. Presumably the boys were working. The girls, too, wore long skirts.
The kitchen was large with a woodstove. Tomatoes were lined up on the windowsill to ripen. A large eating table sat in the middle of the room. Mrs. Singer and I adjourned to the living room, a small, worn, but cozy place where we could be alone so that whatever she told me would be protected by the attorney-client privilege. That privilege would be lost if a person not her attorney were present during the conversation.
After we left I asked Rosemary, a good judge of character, what she thought of Vickie Singer. She said, “I like her a lot. She was open and quietly committed. Yet she seemed gentle. Her beliefs were a little outside the norm. But she had a good sense of humor and laughed easily.” I agreed.
By the time the federal district court judge, David Winder, found time for our case, some twenty-odd motions were pending before his court, including motions to throw the case out brought by all of the officials we’d sued.
Approximately a thousand pages of legal memoranda had been filed in the case. We’d taken the pretrial testimony of seventy-two potential witnesses—depositions, as they’re called—that included thousands of pages of their transcribed testimony. Judge Winder endured nearly two full days of oral arguments from the litigants, including us. The issue: Had we made enough of a case to present to a jury?
Judge Winder labored over his opinion, one that took on the proportions of a book, perhaps the longest in Utah’s judicial history. Ironically it took him 218 pages to conclude that we had no legal claim of merit, that there was nothing for the jury to decide, and he dismissed our case, depriving Vickie Singer and the Singer children the right to a jury trial—or any trial, for that matter. “Get out of here. Go home” was the effect of the judge’s message to Vickie and her kids.
Judge Winder related most of the facts I’ve recited here, but he also faced testimony by leading experts who stated that the cops’ arrest plan, as well as the execution of that plan, violated basic police protocol, and that both the planning and its execution—yes, the official conduct of the police themselves—were grossly negligent and in violation of standard law enforcement procedures. Despite this testimony in the record before him, Judge Winder tossed our case into the judicial garbage pit.
We’d asked Winder to disqualify himself from hearing the Singer case and appoint a judge from outside the district, someone free of local political and religious influence. Winder was a friendly man with a sparkling reputation. But cases exist that the best of judges cannot try, for despite their occasional suggestion to the contrary, judges are people, often good people, and it is hard for good people to be disloyal to their friends and those who have befriended them. And it’s hard for a good person to ignore the culture, teaching, and beliefs of the community in which he was born and reared, in this case the Mormon establishment. It is the obligation of such a judge to disqualify himself if any of the foregoing might influence his decision. What am I talking about here?
Glenn Hanni became the spokesperson for most of the defendants we’d sued, including Governor Scott Matheson, County Attorney Adkins, Attorney General Robert Hansen, and Deputy County Attorney Terry Christiansen, who, along with Judge Winder, were all fellows of the Utah Bar. Hanni and Judge Winder were close friends and had practiced law together for eleven years. And who originally appointed Judge Winder to the bench? Governor Matheson had elevated him to the state court bench in 1975, before Winder became a federal judge. What rights would we expect a powerless widow of a dead “Mormon renegade” and her childen to have against such a cadre of power?
Further, Judge Winder had been reared in a Mormon family, though in response to our motion to disqualify him he assured us he was no longer a practicing Mormon. Undoubtedly most of his friends and associates were practicing Mormons, and their continued approval of the judge’s decisions would likely be important to him.
Vickie Singer herself was so concerned about the judge’s ability to impartially hear her case that during our arguments before Judge Winder she asked to address him personally. I shall never forget hearing her trembling words in open court to a powerful federal judge in his black robe peering down at her. She could have just come in from the garden. She was wearing her usual cotton dress that came to her ankles without frills or flowers. Her shoes were low heeled and round toed and scuffed from long use. She held on to her calloused, cracked hands as she spoke, and wore a small sad smile on her face. Her eyes were gentle and her voice soft with quavers that fell off at the ends of her phrases.
As she spoke, the judge leaned forward to hear her, her words plain and clear as the song of a distant prairie bird. She took the judge in with kindness but never took her eyes from him. Here is what she said:
I humbly and respectfully approach you, and I want to tell you that this is not strategy. I’m a very deep-feeling individual, as was my husband. We have had a very hard time of it because we are in the minority. Very much so. Our sacred beliefs have been defiled and trampled upon by those who do not understand, by those who may be, perhaps, in the lower realm of progress. Not that I am boasting that I am in a higher realm, but I have seen that those who are on the opposing side cannot and do not rightfully consider our deep and sacred and holy beliefs.…
And I truly believe that you are an honorable person. I have talked with a friend of yours who went to school with you and he said, “I’m really glad that you have him for a judge.” … I am very worried, and I am worried for you.…
I am worried for me. Because I have to be heard as I am and I haven’t had that chance. My husband never had that chance because he was looked upon as a renegade, as a stubborn and rebellious person. Not one of you in here knew my husband, and I feel badly. And I’m afraid because of the atmosphere and the things that were said the other day that no one will be able to know my husband.…
And you have to believe me that I am telling you truth, and I humbly tell you that you are in a very peculiar situation and very hard situation. And I’m afraid that if you continue to carry forth with this case you will have to put everything on the line to be able to be just. And I know you want to be just. I feel that in you. I’m afraid that you can’t be just unless you are willing to pay the price that I have paid and that my husband paid.
But her simple, eloquent plea did not move Judge Winder. Later, some of the judge’s personal feelings escaped into his opinion. For instance, when we complained that those we sued had attempted to manipulate the judges and the press, for which there was ample evidence in the record, Judge Winder wrote:
Only disciples of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm [of Grimms’ fairy tales] could accept as reasonable the inferences which plaintiffs’ counsel seeks to foist on this court (my emphasis).
To his credit, the judge wrote, “I know the heat is on me.” Respecting his ability to impartially judge, he wrote, “I didn’t say I can do it. I am going to try to do it.” A judge who isn’t sure he can be impartial ought not try. Why would a fair judge require John Singer’s heirs to take the risk that he couldn’t be impartial? And if he couldn’t be impartial, how would he know it? Our self-judgments are usually the most myopic and most prejudiced.
Judge Winder should have taken himself off the case.
If one reads his opinion, which carries on with the committed endurance of a long-distance runner, one comes across jewels like “There are no objective facts in the record from which it can be inferred that the defendants manipulated witnesses to present false and misleading information to the juvenile courts in order to obtain their objectives.” But I ask, how many ex parte conversations, meetings, and the like were held in the absence of the Singers? The inferences of impropriety were scattered over the entire record like dust in a desert dust storm that a jury trial would have uncovered.
The judge wrote, “Without attempting to become embroiled in a debate as to the propriety or impropriety of these alleged contacts, the court states only that this objective evidence does not give rise to an inference that the defendants conspired to commit a lawful act by an unlawful means.” That simply means, “Those ex parte carryings-on in the juvenile court may have been improper, but I, the judge, am not going to look, and a jury isn’t either.”
Judge Winder passed the ever-ready buck. He found that “it was for the [juvenile] court to determine the constitutionality of the school law that forced citizens into public schools when their religion was in conflict with the same.” The juvenile court? Too bad, he said in effect—you may have been prosecuted under an invalid law. Who knows? (And who cares?) And pray tell, why were those judges taken off the juvenile court and replaced by other judges from time to time like flat tires on a jalopy? No one knows to this day.
How does a decent judge who says he is no longer a practicing member of the church perform the necessary surgery on his subconscious mind and extract the influence of the very culture he was born in, grew up in, and lives in every day of his life? We asked too much of the man. He asked too much of himself. I think he knew it.
We appealed to the circuit court, first charging that Judge Winder should have disqualified himself. Among other rulings, the appeals court wrote that Judge Winder’s former partnership with a lawyer for one of the defendants did not require his disqualification, and the court held that “the various remarks made by the district judge [Judge Winder] during the course of the proceedings do not, as counsel suggests, substantiate the claim of bias or prejudice. On the contrary, in our view, the district judge exhibited commendable patience and restraint throughout this admittedly and understandably emotional affair.”
The court continued in its opinion, “Applying the definition of a civil conspiracy to the instant case, the record indicates beyond any doubt that though the defendants, or some of them, were acting in concert, they were not committing an unlawful act.” I suppose that the repeated ex parte meetings with the various judges, and the application of Governor Matheson’s influence on juvenile court judges, were not unlawful. “On the contrary,” the appeals court ruled, “the defendants were committing a lawful act, enforcing the Utah Compulsory Attendance laws and arresting a person for whom there were outstanding arrest warrants.”
What about shooting John Singer in the back as he was running home? Here’s what the court wrote: “With respect to the claim for relief alleging excessive force, the depositional testimony shows that Singer, who on prior occasions had stated that he would resist arrest and that any attempt to arrest would involve ‘blood shed,’ resisted arrest on this occasion by pulling a gun from his belt and pointing it at the law enforcement officers. In such circumstances, the deputies did not have to wait for Singer to fire first; they had a right to shoot to kill.” I wondered what the appeals court judges might have concluded had they joined the pathologist in digging out the shotgun pellets that had been sprayed across the back of the running John Singer. Is the new rule of law that if you run, you are resisting arrest and the cops can shoot you in the back?
The appeals court said the court did not want to repeat the facts contained in a 218-page opinion. I don’t blame them. As my old grandfather used to say, “Enough is enough, and too much is aplenty.” Lost in this storm of judicial rhetoric was the original issue: the welfare of the children. One wonders if the judges felt comfortable in deciding that the children’s interests were protected by multiple slugs in their father’s back, compounded by the loss of their right to a jury trial for his death. Judge Winder’s decision, as confirmed by the court of appeals, stopped any further exposure of the embarrassing facts in this case and, as we shall see, led to the killing of yet another American citizen.
We, of course, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but, as expected, certiorari was denied—cold, hard, dead words, which, when John Singer’s penniless heirs knocked at that great court’s door and pled for admittance, simply meant, “Keep out. We have important cases to decide (when we get around to it).”
John Singer was buried in the Marion, Utah, cemetery on January 22, 1979.
I wish I could say that this was the end of it. But I have said more than once: One can suffer all nature of physical injury and survive; one can never bear the supreme injury of being deprived of justice. The pain is too deep and too real, too disabling and too lasting. As time passed, the need for retribution became an irresistible compulsion to the Singer family. Such is the resulting disease of injustice.
* * *
John Singer became a messiah to his surviving family. We must believe in messiahs. They connect us to hope. Even in our short lives we have witnessed budding messiahs, and seen them deified. Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King Jr. come easily to mind. And Gandhi.
After nine years, starved of justice, and facing the rejection and disdain of the Mormon establishment, Addam Swapp, who had married two of John Singer’s daughters, Charlotte and Heidi, came to a belief that questioned sound minds—that the destruction of a Mormon symbol, namely one of its churches, would so please their messiah, John Singer, that he would reappear. Swapp, his two wives, and their six children, along with Vickie and her family, lived on the same two and a half acres near Marion where John Singer had lived and died.
On January 16, 1988, two days before the ninth anniversary of John Singer’s death, and to fulfill his revelation, Addam Swapp broke into the Kamas LDS Stake Center, the local Mormon church. He lugged in fifty pounds of dynamite, along with a booster of ammonium nitrate intended to double the charge, and detonated it at three in the morning as the family watched. The blast rocked the neighborhood and was said to cause $1.5 million in damage. Stuck in the ground at the scene the authorities found a spear with nine feathers standing for the nine years that had passed since John Singer had been murdered.
The Summit County sheriff’s office immediately requested help from the Utah Department of Public Safety, and because explosives had been used, the department called in the ATF and FBI. Within twenty-four hours, an army of more than a hundred law enforcement officers surrounded the premises, along with a canine corps of attack dogs. Because of the six children who huddled in the house, all under the age of six, the authorities were instructed not to fire their weapons. Their tactic was to capture the leader of the clan, Addam Swapp, on the assumption that thereafter the rest would surrender.
In an attempt to exhaust and demoralize the Singer clan in their standoff, the attackers day and night barraged the house with flashing floodlights and blaring sirens, which made sleep impossible. The government attackers next shot out the house’s power transformers to deprive the family of electricity. The main water line to the house was severed so that the occupants had no water or sewer facilities. A public address system was installed that emitted high-pitched electronic static, intended to force into submission people whose mental stability was already in question.
Inside, the Singer family prayed to God and to his son, and to John Singer. They prayed for salvation, for guidance, for deliverance, and for peace and, yes, they prayed that their attackers would be forgiven. After more than a week of torture, the Singers still refused to surrender. Their revelation was that an armed confrontation was necessary to bring the resurrection of John Singer, and that was worth dying for.
In the meantime, as many as fifty Utah citizens descended on Governor Norman Bangerter’s mansion to demand a peaceful conclusion to the standoff. The governor sent a letter to the Singers asking them to surrender. But in a seven-page responding letter Swapp wrote, among other things:
We are independent and separate from your wicked society of ever changing laws and dark councils.… Those who would come against this my people, will I verily cause to be destroyed.
Vickie Singer joined in the correspondence, writing a nine-page letter that said, in part:
I am John Singer’s faithful wife. Prophet of God [Christ] was persecuted and martyred because he would not compromise the truths of Heaven.… [The authorities] will not take our children for they are a heritage of the Lord and they are the children of Zion, the covenant children of the Lord.… We will not compromise our stand.… The matter of the bombing of the church was of God making bare His arm through his servant, Addam Swapp.… Church, state and nation will be brought up to a standing like a wild colt to a snubbing post.
On January 28, 1988, the police commissioned something they called a “flashbang,” essentially a blinding, deafening explosion. When Swapp left the house at six in the morning and began to tear down a loudspeaker, the flashbang was ignited, intended to put Swapp out of commission. Immediately following the flashbang a police dog handler released his dog to attack Swapp, but the dog was as startled by the explosion as was Swapp and ran from the scene without attacking. Swapp fired at the dog and missed.
The feds then decided they would turn two trained dogs loose on Addam and Jonathan Swapp, his brother, when they next left the house to feed the animals and milk the goats in the early morning. After they finished the chores and started back to the house, a couple of cops, who’d been hiding along the windowless side of the building, jumped out and loosed the dogs. But before the dogs could reach Addam and Jonathan, three shots were fired from the house. One shot killed one of the dog handlers, an officer named Fred House from the Utah Department of Corrections. Both dogs were uninjured.
Swapp put his rifle to the ready, but before he fired he, too, was hit; a bullet went through his wrist, traveled into his chest, and lodged in his back. He managed to run to the house for cover. Meanwhile, more shots were fired from the house, with one hitting FBI agent Don Roberts, who was saved by his bulletproof vest. Then Swapp came running out of the house waving a bloody white towel and surrendered, and with his surrender came the surrender of the entire family and the end of a thirteen-day siege.
Addam Swapp, John Timothy Singer, Jonathan Swapp, and Vickie Singer finally were brought to trial in the state court of Summit County, where they were charged with murder along with many lesser charges. These nine years after the killing of John Singer, our firm was no longer representing the Singers. The cases against the Swapps and the Singers were defended by court-appointed lawyers.
In the state court criminal cases, Addam Swapp and John Timothy Singer were convicted of manslaughter for the death of Fred House. Jonathan was convicted of misdemeanor negligent homicide; it was his bullet that had hit House. Vickie, who hadn’t fired a weapon and had nothing whatsoever to do with building a bomb, was found not guilty of any state crimes. That she should escape punishment was unacceptable to Power. So the feds came with a new eight-count indictment that recharged the same four with various other crimes—from building, possessing, and using bombs to resisting and assaulting the FBI, attempting to kill FBI officers, and possession of a sawed-off shotgun.
Addam Swapp was the only defendant at the federal trial who testified. He said that he never aimed at or tried to shoot any of the law enforcement officials, although he had plenty of chances, and that he knew the siege had to be over after he’d been shot. He said that when he saw the bomb explode it looked as if many evil spirits were rising above the church. He said God told him to stand and fight like a man. He admitted he owned a sawed-off shotgun.
On May 9, 1988, the jury returned its verdicts in the federal court, finding Addam guilty of seven of the eight counts, Vickie guilty of five, and Jonathan and John Timothy each guilty of three. U.S. District Chief Judge Bruce Jenkins gave Addam Swapp a fifteen-year prison sentence, plus five years probation. He sentenced Vickie Singer to five years in prison and five years probation. Jonathan Swapp and John Timothy Singer were each sentenced to ten years in prison and five years probation for attacking federal officers and using guns in the siege and shootout.
Vickie Singer, in her quiet way, said she didn’t believe justice was done, but she thanked God that court-ordered tests proved she was not mentally ill. “I just ask you to please release me so I can go home and take care of my family,” she said, weeping, to Judge Jenkins.
The children! We remember that this tragedy began when the forces of Power were exercised over a simple matter: John Singer wanted to homeschool his children, something that across America is common today. But Power is merely power. It is not wise. It does not love those over whom it exercises its supremacy. Power loves only power.
A few years earlier, when John Timothy Singer was seventeen, a tree fell on him and paralyzed him, confining him permanently to a wheelchair. He’d been taken from public school at age five and educated by his mother and father. John Timothy had no education or experience in the criminal law. He was terrorized when he was arrested by the feds, and he didn’t understand his Miranda rights that protected him from saying anything to the authorities.
John Timothy, in his wheelchair, told the police that he hadn’t surrendered earlier because he felt doing so would mean he didn’t believe in the Lord. In pure innocence he made statements to the authorities on his way to jail that incriminated him as well as other members of his family. He said he fired shots at the dogs. He did not aim his gun because he didn’t need to. The Lord would guide his bullets. Later the FBI claimed it had been a bullet from John Timothy’s gun that hit and killed Fred House.
Although this young man talked to the officers on his way to jail, the officers, of course, claimed that they’d fully advised him of his Miranda rights to remain silent. At the police station they had him sign a waiver of his rights.
Michael DeCaria, a psychologist, testified that he had examined John Timothy and concluded that he was very susceptible to coercion, that he was unable to make decisions based on a rational intellect, that he was unable to exercise his own free will, and that he would have been unable to make a knowing and intelligent waiver of his constitutional rights. Nevertheless, surprising no one, the trial judge let John Timothy’s confession go to the jury, and the court of appeals agreed, with an accompanying judicial yawn.
The federal trial judge thought that Addam Swapp should only be sentenced to count one, and not count two of the complaint since both counts relied on the same facts. But the appeals court disagreed, and Swapp was sentenced to fifteen years in federal prison for the bombing and to an additional five years for using explosives in the bombing. I have never understood how one could be guilty of bombing without explosives having been used. Might that teach one not to appeal? Swapp was sent to a federal prison in Indiana, and after spending more than twenty years in prison he was recently released on parole.
John Timothy Singer and Jonathan Swapp both served ten years in the federal pen and were released. Vickie Singer served three and a half years and finally came home to her family.
As in the Weaver case, again the haughtiness of Power and the stubborn belief of citizens in their constitutional rights brought on death. The triggering acts were simple: in the Weaver case, the killing of their dog; in the Singer case, parents who wanted to homeschool their own children. Both the Weaver and Singer families claimed to be following the revelations of God. Both believed that God and the Constitution would protect them. Both families were mistaken in both instances. None of the foregoing purports to approach the unfathomable grief and loss suffered by the families of the slain on both sides. No one won. Only dead Power prevailed.
Years later I got a letter from Vickie. I value it more than any fee I might have received. She wrote:
[I remember] the magnificent performance and tremendous sacrifice that you gave in behalf of my husband’s wrongful death. It shall never be forgotten. The powers that be wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed at that time. I am not a vindictive person, God knows, but the truth shall be known, believe me. Your monumental work was not in vain. You shall yet witness the fruits thereof. May you be blessed beyond words.
Bob Schuster, my partner, spent massive portions of his life attempting to force the justice system to open its doors and give her and her children a fair trial for their damages brought on by the death of John Singer. But not even the United States Supreme Court had the inclination to hear the plea of this saintly woman for justice.
Let us ask simple questions:
Why was this family deprived of any justice? Any.
Should a federal appeals court permit a federal trial judge to sit on a case against the Mormon power structure when that judge, from his earliest days, had been affixed to that same Mormon power structure like an apple to an apple tree and suffered his own doubts about his ability to be impartial?
Is it acceptable in America for our courts to turn their judicial backs on the surviving family of an American citizen whose underlying crime was simply his refusal to give his children over to others to educate in ways he believed would damage their souls and his?
Is it acceptable in Utah, or anywhere in America, for officers to shoot a fleeing citizen in the back who was running home to escape arrest?
Is it acceptable that the killing of an American citizen by the police should be covered up by the deliberate failure of the police to preserve the evidence, so that a competent investigation could never be made?
Deprive a human being of justice and the human will die for it. Ask the martyrs of history. The refusal of justice plants a cancer in the soul. The refusal of the justice system to give the Singers the opportunity to have their case heard by a jury, a celebrated American right, caused the cancer to grow and to finally detonate nine years after John Singer’s murder with the church bombing by Addam Swapp.
I think of Vicki Weaver, the mother. I think of Vickie Singer, also the mother. Both were powerless and poor. Both were simple, gentle, loving women. One was killed by a sniper’s bullet. The other has died endless deaths over the murder of her husband, her long years of imprisonment, and the imprisonment of her children. Both mothers were martyrs for religious beliefs not embraced by Power. Both were the victims of Power. And both glowed in that certain light of the saints. But Power has little ability to understand mothers, because Power, in the end, is ignorant of the nascent goodness of the human species, especially its mothers.