In 1838 Missouri, certain Mormons organized in a secret paramilitary organization called the Danites, led by Sampson Avard, who later left the Church. Many Mormons then disavowed the Danite movement, portraying it as lies concocted by Avard. When Leland Gentry wrote his groundbreaking 1965 thesis about the 1838 Mormon War, however, he reported that irrefutable …