Big Island twins PROVO, Utah >> Twin brothers from Hawaii who traveled to Utah to take over polygamist Tom Green's family were arrested Thursday night.
arrested in Utah
for threats
Loren and Lesley Hardy
tried to take over Utah polygamist
Tom Green's familyStaff and wire reports
Juab County Attorney David Leavitt said the arrest in Nephi, Utah, was made for an alleged bomb threat.
Nephi police and other law enforcement agencies in the central Utah town were withholding details of the arrests yesterday.
Loren and Lesley Hardy showed up Thursday at an evidentiary hearing on a pending charge of child rape against Green, who was sentenced yesterday to five years in prison for bigamy and failure to pay child support.
During an afternoon break, Green told court officials the two men, who live on the Big Island, had made an unannounced visit at his trailer compound in Utah's western desert last weekend. Security was quickly stepped up for the rest of Thursday's hearing.
Green's attorney, John Bucher, said the men showed up in the middle of the night and announced they had had a divine revelation that they were to "take over the family in Green's absence."
"It was an implied threat," Bucher said. He said the two brothers claimed to practice "free love with an edge to it."The brothers told an Associated Press reporter in court Thursday they were ambassadors from the kingdom of God on a mission to help the Greens. They planned to attend Green's sentencing, where court security guards had photos of them.
But the brothers were arrested Thursday in Nephi after a traffic stop for an equipment violation, Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Doug McCleve said. McCleve did not have further details.
Green, 53, was sentenced yesterday afternoon to five years in prison on four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal failure to pay child support. The outspoken polygamist, who has five wives and 30 children, claimed he was practicing "fundamentalist Mormonism."
Leavitt said the Hardy brothers' truck and trailer were searched by bomb-sniffing dogs that found no explosives. But there was evidence of a federal crime, and the FBI was investigating, Leavitt said. He would not elaborate.
The Greens and Leavitt have both received threats. Leavitt obtained a concealed-weapons permit to protect himself.
In Hawaii the Hardys first came to public attention in 1997 for illegally storing and dumping thousands of gallons of used cooking oil on land in the sparsely populated Ocean View subdivision near the southern end of the Big Island.The brothers were collecting the oil from major resorts and restaurants, but neighbors complained that the oil was rancid.
Neighbors said the brothers claimed religious immunity for their actions, claiming they were ambassadors from the New Beginnings Kingdom Government.
County officials imposed fines of $103,600 at one time but said it was hard to collect the money because they could not find the brothers.
In 1998 the Hardys asked Hilo harbormaster Ian Birnie to let them use a vacant, multistory sugar storage facility to store used oil.
While they talked, the identical twin brothers tried to confuse Birnie by switching names with each other, Birnie said.
When Birnie refused to let them have the facility, they claimed it in the name of their religion and posted trespassing signs against Birnie. Birnie called police, who removed the men from the harbor.
From 1999 until early this year, the brothers lived in a shack at the Kealakehe Transfer Station in Kona, where they continued illegally stockpiling used cooking oil.
In February, when the county officials arrived to evict them, they and their Rottweiler dog were gone.
The Associated Press and Star-Bulletin
reporter Rod Thompson contributed to this story.