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NEW HARMONY - John D. Lee of Mountain Meadows infamy might come home again.
Or at least a bronze likeness of the controversial pioneer settler.
Days before the 150th anniversary of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the Fort Harmony Historical Society is launching an effort to buy the statue, which has been languishing outside the sculptor's gallery since a southern Utah city shunned it more than three years ago.
Karen Platt, chairwoman of the society, says her group is raising money to restore Fort Harmony and hopes to place the Lee likeness in a memorial garden near the adobe outpost he built in 1854 and where he lived for eight years with his nine wives and scores of children.
"We should pay tribute to all the pioneers," Platt says. "It's important we preserve such sites."
But Cherie Walker of Amarillo, Texas, a descendant of the massacre victims, balks at any public display for a convicted mass murderer.
"I'm outraged about it and others will be, too," Walker says. "We may need to take some action, like writing letters. Whatever good he [Lee] did, it can never overshadow what he did at Mountain Meadows."
Lee, an adopted son of former LDS church leader Brigham Young, is the only person ever convicted and executed for his part in the Sept. 11, 1857, slaughter of 120 men, women and children at Mountain Meadows, about 30 miles north of St. George. The slain immigrants - part of the Baker-Fancher wagon train - were bound for California.
Many Lee descendants do not believe the massacre should blot out the positive accomplishments he achieved in establishing pioneer settlements in places such as New Harmony, Kanarraville, Santa Clara and Washington.
Platt is hoping these descendants will help raise the $35,000 needed to buy the jilted statue from southern Utah artist Jerry Anderson - along with an additional $80,000 to purchase property for the garden where it would stand as part of a tribute to early settlers.
Stella Shamo, a Lee descendant who lives in Hurricane, argues it's time for her famous forefather to receive some recognition.
Shamo says the historical society formally will ask the family to help raise money today, when Lee's kin gather at the fort for an annual reunion, which also will include a trip to the massacre site.
Platt is not worried about taking in the statue - and the rancor it could spawn - despite the bloody cloud that hangs over Lee's legacy.
Washington City, which had commissioned the 7-foot Lee likeness for a garden featuring other oversized bronzes of city founders, took so much flak it ultimately rejected Anderson's creation.
For his part, the sculptor likes the idea of moving the statue from just outside his gallery in Silver Reef, where it looks eastward into Zion National Park, and pairing it up with the fort Lee founded.
"New Harmony," Anderson says, "would be a good home for him."
Lee's fate
Shortly after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, John D. Lee was arrested at Fort Harmony.
He was tried in Beaver and acquitted by a jury. Two decades later, Lee was tried again in Beaver, but this time was found guilty and sentenced to death.
On March, 23, 1877, the sentence was carried out at the massacre site. Lee asked members of the firing squad to aim at a paper target in the shape of a heart he had pinned on his coat while he sat on his open casket.
The Sept. 11, 1857, massacre incites debate to this day about Lee's involvement and whether he was acting on orders of LDS leader Brigham Young.
Lee is buried in Panguitch.