Tearful teen testifies in Kingston case
By JENNIFER GALLAGHER
Standard-Examiner staff
May 1998
BRIGHAM CITY -- The 16-year-old girl allegedly beaten by her father after she
ran away from her plural marriage to her uncle testified against her father
today at John Daniel Kingston's preliminary court hearing this morning.
Wearing a simple gray suit and white blouse, her long brown hair held back,
the girl's eyes welled up with tears when asked to describe her relationship
with John Daniel Kingston.
"He's my dad," she said.
Under questioning from Box Elder County Attorney Jon Bunderson she confirmed
that she was married to her uncle in a secret family ceremony. She told
Bunderson the relationship was encouraged by her father.
She recalled the events leading up to the May 23 incident at the Washakie
Salers ranch.
On May 23, Kingston, 43, allegedly drove his daughter from Salt Lake City to
the ranch near Portage, and beat her as punishment for running away from a
plural marriage to her uncle, David O. Kingston.
John Daniel and his attorney, Carl Kingston, sat silently as she testified.
Carl Kingston asked for spectators to be removed from the courtroom, a
request that Judge Ben Hadfield denied.
The preliminary hearing will determine whether the case will go to a full
trial. The hearing was continuing at 11 a.m.
The 16-year-old girl was initially reluctant to tell her story to a Box Elder
Sheriff's deputy who picked her up at a Plymouth gas station just after 1 p.m.
on May 24, saying she didn't want to get anyone in trouble and only wanted a
place to stay.
She eventually broke down, telling a detective she didn't want to be married
to her father's brother and wanted to finish high school.
The Kingstons involved in the case are all members of a secretive polygamist
sect of Mormon fundamentalists who hold church in a restaurant supply house and
are shrewd business owners enthroned on a alleged $150 million financial empire.
In the early 1980s, John Ortell Kingston, brother of group founder Charles
Elden Kingston, agreed to pay back $196,625 to the state Department of Social
Services in child support money collected by three women who had 26 children
between them.
John Ortell didn't admit paternity of the children in that out-of- court
settlement, though it was alleged in the lawsuits filed.
In 1985, John Ortell settled a $250,000 lawsuit out of court, this one
alleging that several of his wives and children collected public assistance over
a period of 10 years, during which time investigators estimated John Ortell's
worth at $70 million.
John Daniel had a run-in with the law in 1987 after allegedly pulling a gun
on two youths he said were trying to break into his car.
He took the youths to the Great Salt Lake, apparently to frighten them.
He was charged with aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping and carrying a
loaded weapon in a car.
