New book on Mormon-led massacre opens old wounds

The date is etched in blood in Utah and Mormon church history and, on a more intimate level, the family trees of people like Karen Maxwell, a mother of eight and choir teacher from Salt Lake City.

On Sept. 11, 1857, Mormon militiamen led the slaughter of 120 men, women and children on a wagon train bound for California in an incident known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Chief among the instigators was Isaac Haight, a local militia and church leader. Several generations later, Karen Maxwell would come to know of him as her grandfather's grandfather.

For years, Mormon church officials downplayed the role Mormons played in the mass killing, first …