Andrew Garfield To Star In True Crime Series Based On Murder Of Morman Woman And Her Baby

An upcoming series will be dramatizing the shocking events surrounding the 1984 murder of a woman and her infant daughter. 

“Under the Banner of Heaven” is an upcoming FX mini-series that will soon stream on Hulu, according to a teaser that dropped this week. The series is based on Jon Krakauer’s 2003 true crime bestseller “Under the Banner of Heaven.”  The book, and the upcoming series, are based on the 1984 murder of Mormon mother Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter, Erica. 

Actor Andrew Garfield will star as Detective Pyre, an LDS elder “who is committed to his Church and family but begins to question some of the Church's teachings through his contact with a suspected murderer,” according to the show’s description. Daisy Edgar-Jones stars as Lafferty, who is described as “a young faithful Mormon who is the victim of a brutal murder.”

The teaser begins with Pyre coming across a pool of blood as he enters the crime scene. Then he states ominously that the murder is caused by “things and beliefs that I’ve only ever heard whisperings about.”

Lafferty’s brothers-in-law Ron and Dan Lafferty were ultimately convicted of the mother-child murders, the Salt Lake City Tribune reported in 2019. The two brothers had forced their way into the home the mother and child shared with their brother and the victim's husband Allen Lafferty. They had apparently blamed Brenda for helping Ron’s wife leave him. They were also apparently angry that Brenda was against Allen joining their polygamous cult School of the Prophets, according to the Tribune. The homicidal brothers were also followers of the teachings of Warren Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who was later convicted of sexual assault in 2011, E! Online reports.