‘Sister Wives’: Christine Brown Doppelgänger Anna LeBaron Is Her First Cousin From a Rival Polygamist Cult
Christine Brown’s first cousin Anna LeBaron, who hails from a rival polygamist community, looks nearly identical to the Sister Wives star. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, the two women are practically doppelgängers.
Inside the rival between the Allreds and the LaBarons
The Brown family practices polygamy or “plural marriage” based on their belief system taught by the Mormon fundamentalist group called the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB). Christine is considered polygamist royalty as the granddaughter of the founder of the AUB, Rulon C. Allred.
Anna LeBaron is the daughter of Ervil LeBaron, who created a competing grouping of Mormon fundamentalists called The Church of the Firstborn (or the LaBaron Family), which stretched to Chihuahua, Mexico.
Ervil is known in the media as “The Mormon Manson,” who was responsible for more than 25 murders carried out by his followers in both the US and Mexico, which continued after his death thanks to the hit list he left behind. Some of the murders include rival polygamist leaders, his own family members, and even some supporters.
In 1977, Anna’s father, Ervil, ordered the killing of Christine’s grandfather, Rulon. In 1979, Ervil was arrested for four murders in Texas and sentenced to life in prison. He was found dead in his prison cell within the year.
Ervil left behind 13 wives and over fifty children, one of which was Anna. Christine’s maternal grandfather, Floren LeBaron, is brothers with Anna’s father making them first cousins, one generation removed. The polygamist rivalry has continued to this day, with both families reportedly still engaged in hostile activities toward each other.
Christine Brown’s first cousin Anna LeBaron is her doppelgänger
Despite Christine and Anna coming from different backgrounds, the two women have an uncanny resemblance. Anna and Christine look so alike they could easily pass off as twins. Both women have the same facial features, hair color, and reportedly even the same mannerisms.
“My father and Christine’s grandfather are brothers, making us first cousins, one generation removed,” Anna revealed (via Reddit). “I have never met Christine because we were raised in separate polygamist communities. I follow her on Twitter; that is the extent of our relationship,” she wrote.
“It’s funny to me that even though we’ve never met, we look alike, sound alike and talk alike, and have many of the same mannerisms. The DNA of our family origin evidences itself in the fact that we are each other’s doppelgänger,” Anna revealed.
How Anna and Christine’s childhood differed
Christine talks about being raised in the AUB in the Sister Wives 2012 memoir, Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage. Christine was raised in Utah in what seemed to be a happy polygamous family. However, her mother, Ruthanne ‘Annie’ Allred, left Christine’s father and the church after being unhappy in her plural marriage for many years. Despite this, Christine believed in the covenant of plural marriage and wanted desperately to be a man’s third wife.
At 22 years old, Christine married Kody Brown as his third wife, joining her sister wives Meri Brown and Janelle Brown. However, after 26 years of plural marriage, Christine divorced Kody and left the AUB, just like her mother.
Meanwhile, Anna’s childhood was much darker. Anna was born in Mexico at a cult hideout where the family was on the run from the law. At an early age, she was separated from her mother, Anna-Mae Marston, who was Ervil’s fourth wife. She was shuttled from one packed house to the next, where she recounted sleeping on filthy foam mattresses and scavenging for food in the trash among Ervil’s other children.
The kids weren’t entirely cut off from the outside world as they were allowed to go to school but were taught to lie about their home life. Ervil’s children were used as unpaid labor in the appliance repair shops that the cult ran as their primary source of income. Anna recalls being forced to scrub grease from kitchen appliances for over 12 hours a day on her days off from school.
“I watched siblings of mine receive horrific beatings for any type of attitude,” Anna recalls in an interview with BBC. “And these are young kids. They’re kids. How much work can you really get out of a 10-year-old, or an 11-year-old, really? You can get work out of them if you are beating them.”
Anna escaped her murderous father’s cult at 13, just before the marriageable age within the cult, which was 15 years old. “I escaped by the skin of my teeth,” Anna said.
The similarities between Christine and Anna are a testament to the power of genetics. Despite growing up in vastly different environments, the two women share a remarkable resemblance that cannot be denied.
