Witnesses for the Lamb

"The world is to know the Messiah is here," wrote Keith Haigler, a member of the Foundation of Ubiquity, a tiny cult based in Jasper, Arkansas. On July 3, 1982, Keith, 26, and his wife Kate, 24, hijacked a Continental Trailways bus and parked it on the Little Buffalo River Bridge in Jasper, demanding to speak to a local TV news reporter in order to broadcast their rambling story of salvation through faith in their leader, Emory "Fou" Lamb, a middle-aged storekeeper. "Contact KY3 News reporter Jim Caldwell," the Haiglers wrote in a letter addressed to the local sheriff. "You have two hours to accomplish this. After two hours, we will shoot one person every half hour until this demand is met. If any attempts are made to come close to the bus, we have the dynamite to blow it apart. We are the witnesses spoken of in Revelation Chapter 11. After we are killed this afternoon, our dead bodies are not to be tampered with, embalmed or any other means of society's funeral rites. The bodies are to be taken to the land of the Messiah, Emory Lamb, whereupon they will lie until July 7, when the spirit of life will enter into them and we will stand on our feet. This demand must be met, or Jasper will be destroyed." This is the narrative of two delusional young people who begged the police to kill them ... and a town held captive as they watched an unimaginable scenario play out before their eyes. It is the tale of a sheriff and dozens of state police officers who patiently negotiated with the hijackers for four hours, attempting to prevent a bloody tragedy.