The Mormon Patriarch’s 7 Forbidden Wives — The Horrifying Secret Inside His Farm (1888, Utah) | HO

In the remote valleys of southern Utah in the late 19th century, a faith built on divine obedience collided with the harsh hand of federal law. For decades, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believed plural marriage—polygamy—was not just permitted, but commanded by God. It was the path to eternal exaltation, the very foundation of celestial family life.

But by 1888, as the U.S. government closed in on outlawing the practice, one man’s devotion to this doctrine would twist into something far darker than faith. What began as religious conviction ended in madness, murder, and a grotesque attempt to conquer death itself.

This is the true story of Dwayne Green of Spring Valley, Utah — the man who tried to preserve his seven “eternal wives” for the afterlife, and the discovery that shocked the entire American West.

A Patriarch of Faith and Order

By all outward appearances, Dwayne Green was the model of Mormon virtue and success. At 45, he owned one of the most prosperous farms in the Spring Valley region—fertile land of wheat and cattle that seemed blessed by divine providence.

His home, a sprawling farmhouse of seven rooms and an ever-growing annex, was shared by his seven wives, each bound to him in secret ceremonies of plural marriage.

Sarah, his first wife, arrived in 1870. Calm, devout, and meticulous, she managed the household and raised the first of his many children. Then came Cara, the young daughter of a merchant, followed by Mary Catherine, a widow seeking refuge, Juel, the educated teacher, Ila, the healer, Marjorie, the accountant, and finally Miriam, the shy 18-year-old cousin who became his seventh and youngest bride.

To neighbors, the Green family seemed almost mythic — disciplined, devout, and prosperous. Each wife had her own room, her own tasks. The children were well-fed, schooled, and obedient. Family prayers were conducted twice daily, with Dwayne’s deep baritone echoing through the house as he thanked the Lord for his many blessings.

“He walks with the wisdom of Abraham,” one local elder was quoted as saying in a church journal from 1885. “His home is a temple of order.”

But that “temple” would soon turn into a crypt.

The Law Comes for the Faithful

In 1882, Congress passed the Edmunds Act, criminalizing not only polygamy but “unlawful cohabitation.” It was followed in 1887 by the Edmunds–Tucker Act, which stripped the Church of property and civil rights. Suddenly, what had once been considered sacred was a federal crime.

In isolated Spring Valley, the Greens at first felt safe from the reach of the law. Dwayne reduced visitors, limited travel, and began presenting Miriam as his “only wife” whenever he went to town. His other wives stayed hidden inside, living a life of prayer and quiet fear.

Still, the tension grew. Sarah, the first wife, began to deteriorate under the stress. By 1888, she was frail, coughing blood, and confined to bed. The family prayed endlessly for her recovery. Dwayne himself, increasingly paranoid, began to obsess over books on anatomy, medicine, and preservation — texts he acquired from distant towns under the guise of agricultural research.

Then, in March 1889, Sarah died.

Her funeral was small. Dwayne dug the grave himself, refusing help. Neighbors said he wept over the coffin before sealing it beneath the tree she had planted years earlier.

What they didn’t know was that the coffin was filled with stones. Sarah’s body never entered the earth.

The Resurrection Obsession

In the nights that followed, Dwayne Green began what his diaries would later call “the first step toward eternal preservation.” Alone in a barn lit by oil lamps, he drained his wife’s body, filling it with alcohol, salt, and crude chemicals. His goal: to halt decay.

When questioned later, one surviving wife said she had heard him murmuring scripture as he worked, whispering, “Flesh may fail, but the covenant is eternal.”

From that point on, madness took root. Dwayne refused to remove Sarah’s belongings. He insisted her meals still be served, her room still cleaned. “She sleeps, but she remains,” he would tell the family during dinner.

Then, in 1890, came the final blow — the Mormon Manifesto, issued by Church President Wilford Woodruff, officially banning plural marriage. For Dwayne, this was blasphemy. His entire existence — his family, his faith, his identity — had been built on the belief that plural marriage was eternal.

He retreated for three days, praying and scribbling in his diary. When he emerged, he announced a new revelation: “If the laws of men and the Church have forsaken the eternal covenant, I will keep it by my own hands.”

Soon after, wives began to “depart.”

The Wives Who Never Left

The second wife, Cara, “returned to her family,” he told the children. Yet her clothes, her jewelry, her sewing tools all remained.

Then Mary Catherine “left on a calling.” Juel “traveled for the sick.” Ila “went to the mountains.”

But inside the locked rooms of the farmhouse, Dwayne’s “eternal family” was growing. Each wife had been poisoned—killed quietly, swiftly—and subjected to the same horrific preservation rituals. By late 1890, five of the seven wives were dead.

Only Marjorie and Miriam remained alive. The youngest, Miriam, terrified and deeply indoctrinated, was manipulated into silence. She believed her sister-wives were “awaiting resurrection,” their preservation an act of faith.

The children, meanwhile, lived in a waking nightmare. Plates were still set for the dead during dinner. The patriarch held long “family prayers” that included conversations with invisible voices. At night, the children heard him whispering to the lifeless forms locked away behind closed doors.

Lawrence, the eldest son, discovered the truth one night when he peered through a crack in a forbidden door. Inside, his mothers sat motionless in chairs, their waxy faces staring blankly into the dark.

The Note That Saved the Children

In February 1891, Lawrence seized a desperate chance. Accompanying his father on a trip to town, he slipped a folded piece of paper into the hand of a government marshal conducting routine inspections.

The note read simply:
“The mothers never wake up. Daddy keeps them. Patience is sick. Green Farm, Spring Valley.”

That note reached Territorial Marshal Myron Olden, who had seen many horrors in his career but nothing that prepared him for what he would uncover.

Two days later, Olden and two deputies rode to the Green farm. From the moment they arrived, something felt wrong. No smoke rose from the chimneys. No sound came from the barns.

When Green opened the door, he was polite but trembling. Miriam stood beside him, pale and vacant-eyed. The children seemed terrified, answering questions in whispers. Olden noticed the chemical smell in the air — a pungent mix of alcohol, salt, and decay.

When the marshal insisted on seeing every room, Dwayne’s composure cracked. He tried to stall, claiming some rooms were under renovation. Finally, under legal authority, Olden forced a locked door open.

The Room of the Eternal Wives

What he found inside became one of the most infamous discoveries in Utah’s history.

Five women sat in chairs arranged around a parlor, dressed in their everyday clothes. At first glance, in the dim light, they could have been asleep. But the closer the investigators looked, the more the illusion dissolved.

Their skin had hardened into a yellowish wax. Their eyes were glass marbles crudely set into empty sockets. Their hands were stiff, frozen in gestures of knitting, reading, or writing. Some limbs had been repaired with fabric and wood where decay had set in.

The stench was overpowering — an unholy mixture of chemicals, rot, and perfume.

When confronted, Dwayne Green didn’t deny it. “You don’t understand,” he told the marshal calmly. “They are not dead. They are waiting. I preserved them for the Resurrection. God commanded me to keep my family eternal.”

The Horror Unfolds

The surviving wife, Miriam, was found hiding in another room, hysterical. Between sobs she screamed of “the silent mothers” who watched her from the parlor. The children, once separated from their father, confirmed everything.

“They don’t blink,” whispered little Patience. “Daddy talks to them.”

The investigation revealed that the “grave” of Sarah, the first wife, was filled with stones. Her body had been the first “experiment.”

In the barn, deputies found an improvised laboratory — bottles of alcohol, acids, and arsenic, blood-stained tools, and notebooks filled with chilling entries:

“Cara has joined Sarah. The process improves each time.”
“Their faces look peaceful now. They understand eternity.”
“Miriam will soon be ready, and our family will be complete.”

Trial and Execution

Dwayne Green’s trial in 1892 was one of the most sensational in Utah Territory history. Despite an insanity plea, the evidence — the preserved bodies, the poison, the diaries — left no doubt.

He was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Even at trial, he spoke serenely of his “wives waiting for him in eternity.”

“They are not gone,” he said to the court. “They only sleep. And soon, I will wake them.”

On March 11, 1893, on a cold morning in a public square, Dwayne Green was hanged. His final words were: “Sarah, I’m coming home.”

Aftermath and Legacy

The children were scattered among relatives and foster families. Lawrence, the boy who had risked everything to send that note, lived the rest of his life in solitude, tormented by nightmares. Patience, the youngest, died at 21, her mind never recovering. Miriam, the last surviving wife, spent her remaining years in a mental institution, haunted by visions of her preserved sisters.

The house was demolished in 1898. Locals refused to pass near the site, claiming they saw motionless figures in the windows. Even today, old residents of southern Utah call the area “the Valley of the Eternal Wives.”

For the Church, already struggling to distance itself from its polygamous past, the Green case was an embarrassment too dark to mention. But historians and psychologists later saw it as a grim parable: the collision of faith, isolation, and madness.

A Lesson Carved in Shadow

The story of Dwayne Green is not just a horror story—it’s a warning. It shows how devotion, when twisted by fear and absolute authority, can become something monstrous.

In his pursuit of eternal family, Green destroyed the very souls he sought to save. His madness was born not in evil alone, but in the desperate attempt to preserve a world collapsing under change — a world where faith and fanaticism became indistinguishable.

Today, Spring Valley is silent. The wild grass hides the foundations of the old farm, but the legend remains. Locals say that on cold Utah nights, if the wind passes through the valley just right, you can still hear a man’s voice calling softly into the dark — praying to the women who never woke.