Episode 158: Dan Neal on Polygamy, Murder and Mayhem in Idaho

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:04)
Hi, this is Lindsay Hansen Park. And this is Bryan Buchanan. Bringing you the story of Mormonism from the shadow of the Everlasting Hills, straight out of Zion, this isn't your grandpa's Mormon history.

**Daniel H. Neal** (0:35)
This is the tale of Mormon saints and sinners from our roots until present day. Saddle up.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (0:40)
Gird your loins, lock your hearts, and pay your tithing, because we're bringing you the story of Mormonism in all its paradisiacal glory.

**Daniel H. Neal** (0:48)
It's the Sunstone History Podcast.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:06)
Hi, Dan. Thanks for joining us on the Sunstone Mormon History Podcast. I'm really happy to have you.

**Daniel H. Neal** (1:12)
Thanks for inviting me. This is, I think this will be fun.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (1:16)
So we actually met through my friend, Sarah Berlingame, who is also a friend of the podcast and lives up in Wyoming and you know her and she just kept saying, you have to read this book. You have to read this book. My friend Dan Neal, who is a fantastic journalist and writer, wrote this book about Mormonism. And so you sent me the book and I read it and I loved it. And we had you come out to Sunstone, the Sunstone Symposium this summer. What was that experience like for you?

**Daniel H. Neal** (1:49)
Well, I mean, I was pretty interested to see the diversity of people there. I met fundamentalist Mormons, what I still refer to as the Reformed LDS Church, Community of Christ. So that was a lot of fun. And it was also great to see that there was a great diversity in age. I mean, I expected to see people as gray haired as me, but there were a lot of young people there, too. Like, you know, and there was Sarah there with her booth for Wyoming Equality. So, yeah, it was good. I liked it. A little nervous about making a first major presentation at a conference like that.
But I thought it went reasonably well and proud it was receptive. So it was good. And, you know, of course, the big thing is this topic that I have a great interest in. And so it was fun to be there.

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (2:43)
Yeah. Well, let's tell the listeners who don't know about your book No Forgiveness. Give us a brief sort of plot summary with no spoilers of what people can expect.

**Daniel H. Neal** (2:55)
Yeah. So the book hinges on the murder of my grandfather, David Stevens Neal, in the Teton Valley of Idaho.
Near Draggs, murder occurred in 1911
My father was just 15 months old at the time his father was killed. So the story starts with the description of the murder, then tracks some of the early newspaper reports about it, the funeral of my grandfather where that left my grandmother. And then I wanted to explain who these people were and where they came from. So I went back and talked about my grandparents and their origins. They both were children of polygamous families in Utah, basically in the Weber River Valley downstream from Park City. And then I wanted to talk a little about Ellington Smith, a killer who likewise was a child of Mormon pioneers, and he married into a polygamous family, I don't know, in about 1884 or 85, somewhere in there. Everybody grew up in the great Mormon theocracy of the late 19th century and lived with all the federal efforts to suppress polygamy, all the scrambling the church did. Ultimately, my great-grandfather was incarcerated for cohabitation in the Utah Territory of Japan. So then the second part of the book, I zero in on the murder trial and then the term of Ellington Smith in the Idaho State Penitentiary over in Boise. It's an interesting period. There was a lot of change going on in penology in the country at the time. And so I found it really interesting to look into life inside the state pen in the second decade of the 20th century. And got a look at some of the changes that were being proposed, some that got through, some that didn't. And then, at that time, Ellington Smith made a number of efforts to win a pardon from the state's pardon board to get him out of prison. So that's a general overview of the reach of the book. It, I suppose, in terms of decades, cover goes from about the time my great-grandparents emigrated to the US in the 1850s through 1918

**Lindsay Hansen Park** (5:12)
Yeah, when I got the book, I read mostly only history books, especially Mormon history books. And so I was, this was really refreshing for me because it was a history book. It's very well-researched. It can read as an academic book. And yet your writing is so good. It also read as a murder mystery. I'm just going to give the blurb on Amazon because I feel like that kind of walks you into it. We're going to be talking and digging the history. But for anyone out there who is listening, I would definitely recommend the book just for the suspense of it. The story of it is really great. So the full title is No Forgiveness, Family, Polygamy, Murder, and Justice Among Idaho's Pioneering Mormons. And the blurb says, On the morning of July 5th, 1911, DS. Neal left his house south of Swanson Creek in Idaho's Teton Valley to irrigate his field. His neighbor, Ellington Smith, mounted his bay horse and rode the short distance to where Neal was working. Shouldering his rifle, a Winchester Model 86, Smith dismounted, climbed over the fence, and stepped into the field. Thus begins the story of the murder of David S. Neal and the subsequent trial of Ellington Smith. Both men were members of the same Mormon ward and came from polygamist families.