Alex Ronan | The Atavist Magazine | June 2026 | 1,948 words (7 minutes)
This is an excerpt from issue no. 172, “The Extremist in the Family.”
Note: This story contains descriptions of child abuse and death. It draws from testimony given by many of the named subjects and extensive court records.
In August 2016, the Kerr family gathered for a reunion in Minnesota, near the northeast tip of Lake Superior. Becky, the family matriarch, grew up there, and she had long dreamed of showing her grandchildren the area. Everyone stayed together in a big log cabin on a small inland lake. The grandkids made fishing poles and attempted—unsuccessfully—to catch something from the cabin’s dock. Nights ended with s’mores around a campfire. The Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro were on TV, and Becky’s son Joel, then 32, organized what he called the Kerr Family Olympics, complete with an opening ceremony; foot races, cornhole, and other games; and an awards presentation with plastic medals.
Joel was the middle of three kids, raised by Becky and her husband, Glenn, in a devout Baptist tradition. “If the church doors were open, we were there,” Glenn said. As adults, however, the children followed diverse paths. Joel left the family church in Michigan as a young adult, then left Christianity entirely before moving to the San Francisco Bay Area. For his older brother, Aaron, 38, faith and family looked much like what the Kerr kids had been raised in, albeit a bit less conservative. Then there was Rachel, 29. Since marrying almost seven years prior, she had embraced an extreme form of Pentecostalism. Among other things, this meant that she increasingly rejected doctors and medicine in favor of prayer and trust in God.
