Posted on: Sunday, August 26, 2001

Hawai'i brothers arrested in Utah

Advertiser Staff and News Services

PROVO, Utah — Twin brothers from Hawai'i who traveled to Utah to take over polygamist Tom Green's family were arrested Thursday night in Nephi, Utah. Juab County Attorney David Leavitt said the arrest was made for an alleged bomb threat.

Nephi police and other law enforcement agencies in the central Utah town were withholding details of the arrests Friday.

Loren and Lesley Hardy, known for their schemes to stow rancid cooking oil on the Big Island, showed up Thursday at an evidentiary hearing on a pending charge of child rape against Green, who on Friday was sentenced to five years in prison for bigamy and failure to pay child support.

During an afternoon break, Green told court officials the two men, who live on the Big Island, had made an unannounced visit at his trailer compound in Utah's west desert last weekend. Security was quickly stepped up for the rest of Thursday's hearing.

Green's attorney, John Bucher, said the men showed up in the middle of the night and announced they had had a divine revelation that they were to "take over the family in Green's absence."

"It was an implied threat," Bucher said. He said the two brothers claimed to practice "free love with an edge to it."

The brothers told an Associated Press reporter in court Thursday they were ambassadors from the kingdom of God on a mission to help the Greens. They planned to attend Green's sentencing.

But the brothers were arrested Thursday in Nephi after a traffic stop for an equipment violation, Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Doug McCleve said. McCleve didn't have further details.

Green, 53, was sentenced Friday afternoon to five years in prison on four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal failure to pay child support. The outspoken polygamist who has five wives and 30 children claimed he was practicing "fundamentalist Mormonism."

The Hardy brothers' truck and trailer were searched by bomb-sniffing dogs that found no explosives. But there was evidence of a federal crime and the FBI was investigating, Leavitt said. He would not elaborate.

The Greens and Leavitt have both received threats.

The brothers, also known as Loren Scott and Allen Hardy, owe Hawai'i County more than $100,000 in fines for storing thousands of gallons of used cooking oil on plots in the Hawaiian Ocean View Estates subdivision.

In January, Hawai'i County officials attempted to evict the twin brothers from a shack they occupied at a dump in Kona. Mike Deniz, the supervisor at the Kealakehe Transfer Station, said the Hardys had lived in the shack since at least August 1999.

At one point, the brothers tried to take over part of Hilo Harbor.

Harbormaster Ian Birnie said before authorities knew about the illegal storage of the cooking oil, the brothers visited him and asked questions about a bulk sugar shipping facility at the harbor. They were interested in using the facility for their waste oil business, they told him. Later Birnie realized they were talking about used cooking oil that the twins carted away from local restaurants for a fee.

Birnie said he answered their questions about the old sugar facility. Later, he noticed a man wandering around the harbor. When he went to investigate, he discovered the man and the twins were putting signs up, claiming the harbor in the name of a non-existent church.

Birnie called the police, and had the men and the signs removed.