The Salt Lake Tribune reports that a Crawford County Judge has approved a plan to disinter and move to Salt Lake City the body of influential early Mormon leader Parley Parker Pratt from a cemetery near Rudy, Ark.
Chosen by Brigham Young as one of the first Mormon apostles, Pratt was accused in California of breaking up the marriage of one Hector McLean. He later took the ex-Mrs. McLean as his 12th wife. Though Pratt beat the rap in a larceny lawsuit filed by his wife’s ex, McLean and friends tracked Pratt to Alma, Ark. in May 1857, where they shot and stabbed him to death. His murder has been cited by some historians as one of the motives behind the Mountain Meadows Massacre, in which 200 settlers from Arkansas were slaughtered while traveling through Utah.
See a picture of the Arkansas monument to Parley Pratt, courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.