The Indians Are Lamanites But The Los Angeles Times Is Not: An Alternate Interpretation Of DNA Results And Promises Made To The Chosen People Of The Americas On February 16, 2006, William Lobdell, a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times, published an article headlined: “Bedrock of a Faith Is Jolted.” Whether or not the Times reporting of a story that (in the jargon of journalism) had “whiskers” or in fact “jolted” Mormonism remains for history to decide. What is more dangerous is that it jolted one of Clifton Jolley’s children, his eldest daughter, who called him seeking explanation. A father’s instinct to defend his daughter against the evils of DNA research seduced Jolley out of his retirement from Mormonism to investigate and explain the pragmatics and polemics of DNA research as a commentary on the heritage of the Lamanite remnant in the Americas. Although Lobdell is suspicious of the Book of Mormon as history, he used to remark on how “nice” Mormons are. Now he says: “That was before I met Clifton Jolley.”

Clifton H. Jolley and Dan Wotherspoon