KIRTLAND, Ohio —

By the late 1980s, Jeff Lundgren was more than a tour guide at the Kirtland Temple; church leaders had handed him the keys. He controlled finances, and as his power grew, so did his defiance. Temple tours turned into private, unsupervised classes.

“Those of us who attached ourselves to him and his family, I think, looked at this as we’re on a journey to become God’s people,” Kraft explained.

Jeff’s cousin Debbie Olivarez joined the group in the late 1980s. She says she watched Jeff change.

“When he first started teaching, there would be a survival knife on the table. And in the end, there was a .357 magnum,” Olivarez detailed. “So, that spoke volumes. That said, ‘You don’t agree with me, you die,’ because he was the prophet.”

Jeff became convinced organized religion h

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