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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.

Chapter 1

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.

For some families, such differences can lead to heated debates at the dinner table, but the Kerrs weren’t like that. They prioritized connection over confrontation. Besides, when they got together, it was increasingly difficult to fit around a single table. Joel and his wife, Emily, had twin boys. Aaron’s wife, Jennifer, was pregnant with their sixth child. Rachel, who already had two boys under the age of three, was also pregnant.

Rachel first told her family she was pregnant that spring, saying that the baby was due in the fall. Becky was at Rachel’s home one day when her midwife came for an appointment and, according to Becky, failed to detect a fetal heartbeat. The midwife said Rachel must have had an early miscarriage, but Rachel insisted to her mother that she hadn’t. Becky was bewildered. When she later discussed it with her daughter, Rachel drew a line down the middle of a piece of paper. On one side she put evidence of a possible miscarriage, like the bleeding she’d experienced; on the other, she listed what she and her husband, Josh Piland, were doing to stand in faith for a healthy baby, such as buying a car big enough to fit three kids. She told her mom that God would not put death in her body.

At the reunion in Minnesota a few months later, Rachel was showing, so her family surmised that she and Josh were expecting again. Emily hadn’t seen much of Rachel since moving with Joel to California in 2009. When she sat next to her sister-in-law at a picnic table, Emily said that she was sorry to hear about Rachel’s miscarriage. Rachel told Emily that she was misinformed; she had not lost a baby.

Like Becky before her, Emily was stunned. “Alarm bells that had been ringing for years really started screaming,” she said. Was Rachel suggesting that she had been pregnant all along, or that the first pregnancy hadn’t occurred? Emily wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want to challenge her sister-in-law on something so sensitive. Instead, she congratulated Rachel and asked when she was due. According to Emily, Rachel replied, “The Lord is going to deliver this baby in his own time. It will come when it’s ready to come.” Then she got up and walked away.

The Kerrs’ story begins at Bob Jones University, which Glenn refers to as the “buckle on the Bible Belt.” At the fundamentalist Christian school in South Carolina, Becky majored in music education, and Glenn received an undergraduate degree in applied music and a master’s in Bible studies. When Becky first noticed Glenn, he was engaged in a theological conversation; she was impressed with the way he defended his beliefs. The next semester, Glenn was a teaching assistant in her music theory class. She often showed up early to practice piano in the empty classroom, and Glenn would listen to her play from his office. He thought she was beautiful, and he knew she was smart because he graded her papers. When the semester ended, he asked her out.

It was 1971, and per campus policy, the couple’s first date was chaperoned. The married couple who escorted them to a Sizzlin’ Steakhouse were Glenn’s friends, and they allowed him and Becky to sit at their own table. Along with sharing a love of music, they discovered that they were both one of five children raised in devout families.

Seven months later Glenn proposed. They married, and years passed without a baby. They were exploring adoption when Becky finally got pregnant with Aaron, who was born in 1978. Joel came five years later and was sensitive from a young age. Once, when Aaron got very sick, four-year-old Joel told his mom through tears, “I want to be sick so Aaron doesn’t have to be.” The Kerrs believed healing came from God, but that God worked through men and medicine. So they prayed for Aaron and took him to the doctor. He got better.

In 1987, waiting to be admitted to the maternity ward for the third time, Becky noticed a framed photo of a row of babies. “Oh, that must be the menu board where we choose which baby we want,” Becky joked, and then made her selection: a little girl with dark hair and dark eyes. A few hours later, the nurse put a dark-haired, dark-eyed baby girl on her chest. The Kerrs named her Rachel Joy.

The family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the early 1990s. Becky and Glenn both worked when the kids were growing up, she in a series of office jobs and as a court reporter, he as an instrument repairman, teacher, missionary, and Bible translator. The Kerr home was a warm one, where sourdough bread and snickerdoodles were baked fresh and music from the piano filled the house. The family spent a lot of time together, especially at church: Becky taught Sunday school and volunteered in the choir, and Glenn served as a pastor and later as a deacon. “It was Sunday school at nine a.m., service at eleven, oftentimes a potluck or something with the church in the afternoon, afternoon choir practice, evening service,” Joel said. Not to mention Wednesday services, youth programs, and Christian summer camps.

Among the Kerrs, Rachel and Becky were particularly close. “I couldn’t have imagined a better mother-daughter relationship,” Becky said. Rachel grew to be spunky and sweet, creative and smart. Missie McGovern became best friends with her in the sixth grade. They sat together at youth group, played on the same volleyball and softball teams, and hung out at each other’s houses. “She was like sunshine,” Missie said. Rachel was also a rule follower. Even in her circle of very devout Christian girls, her efforts to live a sin-free life stood out. Once, in middle school, Missie was chasing another kid and said, “I’m gonna kick your ass!” Rachel gasped—cursing, after all, was a sin. Missie apologized for offending her. Alecia Chapin, a high school friend who described Rachel as a “total goofball,” said that while some girls in their conservative milieu pushed boundaries—wearing tank tops cut a little low, for example—Rachel never did. “I don’t think Rachel even knew an envelope existed to push,” Alecia said.

Rachel dreamed of going to her parents’ alma mater. She liked to sew and draw floor plans for imaginary houses, and she intended to major in interior design. When she arrived at Bob Jones as a freshman, in 2005, she found a place that regulated every aspect of student life, from where women wore jeans (not around men) to how male and female students interacted (only in mixed groups and with strict supervision). Her roommate that year described Rachel as an “impressionable” person who was “always making sure to do everything just right.” She believed what she’d been taught about relationships: that a wife submits to her husband, the spiritual head of the household, just as he submits to God.

As a sophomore, Rachel did a yearlong study-abroad and missionary program in Peru. While there she wrote down a prayer describing her ideal husband. “I specifically prayed for a spiritual warrior,” she later explained. “I asked for a Joshua.” She didn’t mean that her future husband needed to have that name. Rather, she wanted his character to resemble that of Joshua in the Bible: a man of courage and devotion whose faith had been tested and found strong.

Rachel was familiar with what a test of faith looked like because of Joel. Her brother had met Emily, his future wife, when they were both teenagers. Though homeschooled by fundamentalist Christian parents, Emily never considered herself a true believer. When the two started dating, she was already more liberal than Joel, and she challenged his beliefs, particularly regarding gender roles. Later, in college, when he encountered people from a wide range of backgrounds, Joel again found himself questioning aspects of his conservative faith.

Joel and Emily married in the Kerrs’ church, when Joel was 20 and Emily was 21. By then, Joel’s views had changed so much that the couple omitted the bride’s promise to honor and obey her husband from their vows. Soon after, they decamped to a more liberal congregation. Eventually, they stopped going to church altogether. Joel couldn’t bring himself to tell Glenn and Becky. “There’s nothing worse in that community that you can say to your parents,” he explained. But he also couldn’t lie, so when Glenn asked him one day if he’d been going to church, Joel told his dad that he wasn’t a Christian anymore. It was “super traumatic” for everyone, Joel recalled. His parents tried to be understanding, but Glenn continued talking to Joel about his relationship with God until Joel finally asked him to stop.

It came as a surprise to Joel when Rachel returned from Peru to find that Bob Jones didn’t feel right anymore. “I was pretty miserable spiritually,” she later said. “It was almost like I was a completely different person. My freshman year I took comfort in the rules, but by my junior year I started feeling as though the rules did not make me closer to the Lord.” After finishing her junior year, she dropped out and moved back to Grand Rapids, where she took classes at a local college, worked at a chiropractor’s office, and lived alone. She told Becky about dating a non-Christian man—though only after the fact, perhaps because she feared her parents’ disapproval—and one evening she surprised Aaron by ordering an alcoholic drink when they met up for dinner at a restaurant. (Like many conservative Baptists, Becky and Glenn don’t drink.)

Joel never thought Rachel would follow in his footsteps and abandon her faith, but he was glad to see her examining the role of the church in her life. “I remembered what it had been like for me to start asking questions, and seeing that for her was amazing,” he said. “It filled me with hope.” To Emily, it seemed that her sister-in-law was “trying to understand what she wanted” and “experiencing freedom, really, for the first time.”

Then Rachel met Josh.

Rachel wrote down a prayer describing her ideal husband. “I specifically prayed for a spiritual warrior,” she later explained. “I asked for a Joshua.” 

Six years Rachel’s senior, Joshua Piland had a firm handshake and a firmer sense of self. He made eye contact in conversation and spoke confidently. He carried and quoted from the King James Bible, a 1611 translation, and was a great storyteller in his own right.

Growing up in Petoskey, Michigan, he didn’t excel academically—he maintained a C average—but he was charismatic, athletic, and a natural leader, even serving as student body president. During his senior year, the local paper reported that he was “perfectly cast” as Kenickie Murdoch, one of the T-Birds in Grease. The photo accompanying the review features Josh singing “Greased Lightnin’ ” in a leather jacket.

The Pilands attended a Methodist church, but Josh’s early decades were marked by spiritual waffling. He later said in a religious testimony posted online that “God wasn’t even in the equation” when he was in high school. “I wanted to be popular.” After graduating, he was baptized and remained devout for a few weeks. Then he began getting into trouble—mostly fights. “It was either death, prison, or the Marine Corps,” he recalled. He chose the latter. Near the end of boot camp, he prayed to pass Rifle Week and received the highest shooting score out of 291 Marines. He did two tours in Iraq, and when he survived a 2004 attack in Fallujah that killed his friend, he believed that God had spared him.

He came home the next year with a number of medals, including one for valor in combat, but he struggled to adjust to civilian life. He drank heavily. “If I wasn’t at rock bottom, I was pretty close to it,” he said in his testimony. He thought that he might bartend and “live the college life,” then work as private security for a Caribbean cruise line. But something pulled him toward another path: living with his paternal aunt Karen Reid and her husband, Bob, in Lansing.

Like Josh, Bob Reid grew up Methodist and was an average student. He also drank a lot as a young man. But after a Pentecostal minister moved in next door, Bob found himself in a Sunday service nursing a hangover as the people around him spoke in tongues. Drawn to the altar, Bob was asked what sins he wanted to confess. “All of ’em!” he practically screamed. That moment set his life on a new course: He became a Pentecostal preacher and founded Faith Tech Ministries, an organization that offered free educational programs in ministry and theology and organized international missionary trips.

Pentecostalism dates to the turn of the twentieth century. Pentecostals became well known for speaking in tongues, which they viewed as physical proof of communion with the Holy Spirit. They also believed in miracles, especially divine healing; all they had to do was purify their minds and pray to be healed from injury or illness. “The prayer of faith does not have an IF in it,” declares an emblematic Pentecostal essay published in the 1920s. “GOD WILL NEVER HEAR THE PRAYER OF DOUBT.”

The movement has since experienced explosive growth: By 2006, more than 25 percent of the world’s Christians considered themselves either Pentecostal or Charismatic, another branch of Christianity where congregations speak in tongues. As medicine advanced in the twentieth century, Pentecostal churches continued to emphasize the power of divine healing, but some encouraged followers to make their own decisions about whether and when to seek medical care. By the 1980s and ’90s, many Americans fell under the sway of prominent religious voices such as Pat Robertson, who promised instant healing from disease; other evangelists told congregants to toss their prescription medications on stage during revivals.

Some Pentecostals continue to reject Western medicine almost entirely. Through Faith Tech Ministries, Bob Reid developed coursework on divine healing, which taught that God’s word was more effective than doctors’ treatments and emphasized that only people who were free of sin experienced miracles. Those teachings resonated with Josh. From the time he moved in with the Reids, his life was characterized by ever increasing devotion to a God who healed the suffering and sickness of true believers.

Bob’s wife, Karen, worked as a court reporter alongside Becky Kerr. As the two women got to know each other and talked about their families, they wondered if Rachel and Josh might be a good match. Becky and Glenn knew that the Reids’ interpretation of the Bible was different from theirs but considered them good people. In 2009, the Reids invited the Kerrs to a barbecue and told them to bring Rachel. Josh was there, too. The pair soon met at Starbucks for their first date. Rachel later jokingly referred to it as “the interview.” Instead of engaging in casual conversation or flirtatious banter, they quizzed each other on interpretations of scripture. (Josh and Rachel declined requests to be interviewed for this story; their quotes are taken from videos or writings posted online, public records, email, letters, texts, and, where noted, family recollections.)

Meeting Josh marked the end of an era for Rachel. She saw him as the Joshua she had prayed for in Peru and began to adopt his beliefs as her own. After she spoke in tongues for the first time, he told her that he loved her.

Joel understood the “amazing comfort” and certainty that fervent faith could provide. “Josh gave that to Rachel in spades,” he said. But he worried about how conservative Josh’s faith was, and what it would mean for his sister. He wasn’t sure how to intervene. He remembered how hurtful it had been when Aaron discouraged him from marrying Emily because she wasn’t as devout as the Kerr family was. (Aaron now deeply regrets that conversation.) Joel didn’t want to do the same thing to Rachel, even if his concern was that she had partnered with someone who was too religious.

When Rachel and Josh were married just seven months after they met, the Kerrs helped transform a church gym into a winter wonderland, with decorative snowflakes and red roses. Rachel, who was then 22, wore a tiara with a veil and a dress covered in rhinestones. Josh wore his Marine uniform, and they cut the wedding cake with his sword.

The Pilands relationship progressed so quickly that Rachel’s family was still getting to know Josh after the wedding. To Aaron he came across as a bit of a know-it-all, but he could also be fun and generous. When the three Kerr siblings planned to surprise Becky and Glenn with a brand-new kitchen after the couple returned from a weeks-long mission trip, it was Josh who spearheaded most of the construction, driving to Grand Rapids from the home he shared with Rachel in Lansing, and working nights and weekends alongside Aaron. Josh’s jokes cracked Aaron up. “He can be very gregarious, very vibrant, a big personality when he wants to be,” Emily said. “Or he can be extremely cold and distant.”

He could even be that way with Rachel. When the couple visited Jennifer and Aaron’s house, Josh always sat in a particular leather chair. One day, when Rachel sat in it, Josh told her to move. At first, according to Jennifer, Rachel hesitated, as if she was unsure whether he was joking. When Josh said it again, she moved. “It absolutely felt like Josh set the agenda and expected Rachel to fall in line,” Aaron said. “I can’t remember a time when I saw Rachel directly, with him there, contradict what he said or his decision.”

Glenn and Becky hoped that the Pilands’ marriage would evolve. “I probably started out like Josh in some ways,” Glenn admitted. He’d been raised to see men’s authority over their wives as Biblically ordained. “I realized at some point that it was very stupid for me to make a decision that Becky didn’t agree with and that Becky didn’t have input on,” he said.

Emily noticed that while Rachel fawned over Josh, he didn’t seem to reciprocate. “I don’t ever recall seeing him be verbally or physically affectionate toward her in any way, really,” Emily said. “That was heartbreaking, because it felt like she was trying so hard to be loved by him and to be seen by him, and he would just not have any of it. Like he was the man of the house, his word was law, and that’s how it was going to be.”

In the early days of their marriage, the dynamic between the couple worried the Kerrs more than Josh’s interpretation of divine healing. While Rachel did follow her husband’s lead about medical treatment, initially she only took small steps, like forgoing ibuprofen when she had a headache. Besides, Josh’s beliefs seemed less than absolute. In 2010, Glenn was helping his son-in-law renovate the Pilands’ house when Josh put his arm through a glass window, resulting in deep lacerations. Glenn suggested urgent care and Josh went. Glenn concluded that he wasn’t too serious about not going to a doctor.

In 2013, Rachel posted a photo on Facebook of her and Josh beaming next to their black Labrador. The dog was wearing a shirt with the words “I’m the BIG brother” printed on it. The Pilands decided to deliver the baby at home, and the Kerrs were relieved to learn that Rachel planned to use a midwife. Rachel also wrote Bible verses on pink note cards to review between contractions. Bob and Karen Reid had given out similar cards for years through Faith Tech Ministries, referring to them as “pink pills”—in the Reids’ view, scripture was medicine. It was a long and challenging delivery, but the Pilands’ son, Caleb,* was born healthy in January 2014.

* The Atavist is using pseudonyms for Rachel and Josh’s surviving children.

A few months later, Joel nominated Josh for the viral ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, in which participants dumped cold water over their heads to raise awareness about the disease and money for medical research. In response, Joel received a friendly but firm email. “I thank you for the tag, but I will not support this cause,” Josh wrote. Instead, he said, he would point anyone experiencing physical, mental, or spiritual suffering to God. Surprised, Joel wrote back to ask: Were prayer and submission to God a substitution for medical intervention? In his reply, Josh explained that he hadn’t always “walked with the Lord”—he’d been to the hospital in the past, and he went to urgent care that one time with Glenn—but now he did. “Did you know that God refers to his word as medicine?” he asked.

Joel replied once more, stressing that he was not trying to convert Josh, but that he was concerned for his well-being. For Rachel’s, too, and for that of their child. “I would be devastated if anything happened to any one of you,” Joel wrote. “If such a need ever does arise, I hope you would seek the necessary medical care without feeling like you are betraying your beliefs.” Josh wrote back a month later, promising to send a more detailed response, but he never did. He and Joel didn’t discuss the subject again.

Meanwhile, the Kerrs grew concerned when Caleb developed eczema. Rachel initially used topical creams to treat it. “Maybe an oatmeal lotion or something like that,” Becky said. Soon, however, Rachel set them aside. When Becky was watching Caleb and he needed a nap, she worried that he would scratch himself awake in his crib, so she held him in her lap. “When he started to get itchy, I would just jiggle him a little bit so he would go back to sleep,” Becky recalled. “I remember thinking, This is not right.” Becky thought that she might be able to persuade her daughter to try medication, but she didn’t want to risk driving a wedge between Rachel and Josh. After all, it was their marriage and their baby.

The way the Pilands handled Caleb’s eczema upset Aaron and Jennifer, too. Jennifer had eczema herself and knew how excruciating it could be. When her kids had the condition as babies, she used a mix of steroids and natural remedies. But Jennifer wasn’t comfortable challenging Rachel, whom she sometimes found dogmatic. “It was hard to share what I thought about something, because I wasn’t sure if it would match up with what she thought,” Jennifer said. Besides, she and Aaron felt confident that the Pilands would seek medical treatment if something serious ever happened to Caleb, whose eczema eventually improved, or to his little brother, Noah, who was born in 2015.

Glenn and Becky approached the Pilands’ rejection of medicine as a theological problem. When he could, Glenn pointed out that the Bible spoke very highly of medicine or countered scripture on the subject of healing that Josh and Rachel had quoted. He acknowledged that while the Bible was critical at times of physicians, medicine barely existed when it was written. None of Glenn’s arguments were effective. Rachel told her parents that they weren’t anointed by the Holy Spirit because they couldn’t speak in tongues, so their opinions carried less weight with her.

The growing gap between Rachel and her family was especially painful for Becky, who’d always been close with her only daughter. “It was our desire to bring Josh into our family with open arms,” she later said. “But as time went on, it became difficult for Rachel to maintain ties with us while staying true to Josh and his teachings.”

Becky and Glenn saw an opening for dialogue when Josh and Rachel invited them to attend a two-day divine-healing conference in June 2016. The event was put on by Faith Tech Ministries and the Pilands’ church, Free Saints Assembly, a small group that met in a rented room in Lansing. The two organizations were deeply connected. Bob Reid referred to the founders of Free Saints, Brian Harns and his wife, Wendy, as the heirs to his ministry. Brian, in turn, likened the Reids to surrogate parents. Brian had baptized Josh and had known Rachel since 2009. (None of the Free Saints members mentioned in this story responded to interview requests.)

Glenn and Becky went to the conference both as a show of respect to the Pilands and to better understand the couple’s beliefs. They were stunned to hear Bob testify to witnessing or participating in numerous divine healings, including the restoration of sight to a girl born blind and the regrowth of missing fingers. Deep down, Glenn didn’t believe those miracles had occurred. Still, he felt the magnetic pull of possibility when Bob spoke. What if such things weren’t confined to Biblical times? What if they could happen now? To see them in the flesh would be incredible. “God I want to know about these, if possible before I die,” Glenn wrote in his notes from the event.

Brian Harns told conference attendees that he believed there were two parallel health plans—God’s and a “limited” substitute created by men. He pointed to scripture in which God promised to heal his followers. “So let’s let God be our primary-care physician,” he said. Harns described a time when he visited the ER for shortness of breath as a moment of spiritual weakness. The doctors diagnosed him with panic attacks, but he didn’t take the pills they gave him. Instead he turned to prayer. He reported that he hadn’t experienced a panic attack since.

Harns said that he didn’t condemn people who used medicine. “I don’t tell anyone not to go to the doctor,” he said. “That’s between you and the Lord.” He also cautioned those assembled to be wary of sharing their beliefs with skeptics. “You’re going to have people who think you’re crazy, and you might want to avoid them completely,” he said. “You may want to include only in your inner circles those people that are strong in faith.”

Over the two days of the conference, the Kerrs listened as people spoke about being healed from a variety of injuries and illness, including heart attack, severe pain following a car accident, and sudden-onset paralysis. Videos of these testimonies would later be posted on YouTube, and many followed a similar pattern: Even though their loved ones encouraged them to seek medical care, the speakers were only healed once they rejected medicine, turned to God, and stood in faith.

The Kerrs realized that they’d been naive about how the Pilands’ religious community interpreted divine healing. Most worrying to Becky and Glenn was the account of Aaron Gauthier, who’d been one of Josh’s groomsmen when he married Rachel. After consulting with the Harnses and the Bible, Gauthier had decided that he would stop taking medication for his asthma. “What I needed to be persuaded of was not that God might heal me, but that he would,” he said. Gauthier claimed that his condition subsequently disappeared. Still, when his son was diagnosed with asthma, he hesitated to follow the same course. Putting his own life in God’s hands was one thing; doing so with his child was another. “If I teach my kids that God will heal them, but it’s not true,” he said, “they could die if I withheld medical treatment.” After praying about the matter, he and his wife agreed to stop giving their son medicine, over the furious objections of their doctor. (The Gauthiers did keep an inhaler on hand, just in case.) According to Gauthier, his son was declared “all clear” of asthma at a follow-up appointment a year later.

Josh also gave testimony at the conference. He said that there were two types of people in the world: those who thought, I’ll believe it when I see it, and those who trusted in God’s word regardless of what they saw. He referred to a moment in the Bible when Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples, doubts that others have seen Jesus resurrected. A week later, when Thomas himself encounters Jesus, the savior says, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”

From the lectern, Josh repeated the verse twice. Then he asked, “Which type of person do you want to be?”

Aaron and Jennifer agreed that if the Pilands’ kids were ever in danger and not being properly looked after, they’d take action—even if it ended their relationship with Rachel and Josh.

When the Kerrs gathered later that summer for the reunion in Minnesota, there were times that the Pilands seemed much like any other couple. Rachel could be a playful and loving mom, and Josh could be “exceptionally kind to children,” as Aaron put it. At the same time, Rachel’s brothers and their wives were troubled by the way the Pilands demanded strict obedience from their toddlers and spanked them when they did not comply. Rachel’s denial that she had miscarried—and her assertion that God would not put death in her body—was a worrying expression of her zealous beliefs. (Years later, according to public records, Rachel continued to deny that she had miscarried.)

Joel and Emily talked about contacting Child Protective Services (CPS), but the Pilands weren’t doing anything illegal. Aaron and Jennifer took a wait-and-see approach. “By maintaining a relationship, it kept us in a position that if there was ever a serious medical situation, we thought we’d be in a position to help,” Aaron explained. He and Jennifer agreed that if the Pilands’ kids were ever in danger and not being properly looked after, they’d take action—even if it ended their relationship with Rachel and Josh.

Chapter 2

On February 6, 2017, Rachel began having contractions and got out the pink note cards with Bible verses she’d used to weather Caleb’s and Noah’s births. Becky drove to Lansing from Grand Rapids to babysit the boys; the midwife and her apprentice arrived that evening.

“Any baby action?” Aaron texted Rachel the next morning. Rachel sent a photo back. “I’ve got a little girlie on my chest,” she wrote. The baby’s name was Abigail Jeanne Piland. She shared a middle name with Becky, the first person to hold her after she was born.

Rachel had planned a ballerina-themed nursery for her daughter, but for the time being Abigail slept in a crib in her parents’ bedroom. The day after the birth, Becky cooked meals and took care of Caleb and Noah. Rachel and Josh mostly stayed in their room with Abigail. At one point, Becky texted her daughter to ask if she needed help, but Rachel didn’t take her up on the offer. When the midwife and her apprentice arrived for the first postnatal visit that afternoon, Becky let them in and watched them climb the stairs to the Pilands’ bedroom.

The next morning, Rachel brought Abigail downstairs. Becky was shocked: She’d never seen a baby so jaundiced before. Abigail was bright yellow. Caleb had developed jaundice as an infant, but it resolved after the Pilands exposed him to sunlight. Rachel tried the same thing with Abigail. It was an overcast winter day in Michigan, so she found the window getting the most sun and put the baby in front of it. Abigail was wearing only a diaper to maximize her exposure to sunlight. Rachel used a blow dryer to keep her warm.

Becky began to cry. “Rachel, I love you,” she said. “I just don’t want to see something happen to Abigail.” According to Becky, Rachel acknowledged that the midwife had been worried about Abigail’s color during her visit, but Rachel herself didn’t seem concerned. She said that she and Josh were going to stand in faith that Abigail would be fine.

Becky pushed back. If the Pilands wouldn’t take Abigail to a doctor, she said, maybe they could rent the bilirubin lights hospitals use to treat jaundice. But Rachel wasn’t interested in doing that. Instead, she listened to a sermon. Becky didn’t express her concerns to Josh; she found him too intimidating.

Both the Pilands and Becky thought Abigail’s coloring had improved somewhat by that evening. The next morning, around seven, Rachel told Becky about a slew of concerning symptoms—she said that Abigail had gone sixteen hours without eating and had spit up some bloody phlegm. But Rachel also seemed to think that the baby had turned a corner because she’d consumed some breast milk.

By that point, Becky was certain Abigail needed medical attention. When she held the baby around 10 a.m., the infant’s breathing seemed labored, and her hands, feet, and brow were contracting strangely. Becky knew that the Pilands would simply ignore her if she urged them to call 911, and if she made the call herself it would be clear she’d intervened against their wishes when the ambulance showed up. She was sure Josh would refuse medical care for Abigail either way.

Becky went to get groceries for the family. On her way back, she parked a few blocks from the Pilands’ home and tracked down a number for the apprentice midwife, Laurie Vance. “Don’t tell Josh I called you,” Becky said when Vance picked up, “but I feel like Abigail is very sick.” She hoped that Vance and the midwife, Sandra McCurdy, might be able to compel Josh and Rachel to seek medical care for Abigail. Vance asked if McCurdy had visited the previous day; Becky said that she hadn’t. Vance suggested that she might be there when Becky got back.

When Becky pulled into the driveway, there was another car out front. But it didn’t belong to the midwife—it belonged to Brian Harns, the leader of Free Saints Assembly. When Becky walked into the house, Rachel told her that Abigail was “showing signs of lifelessness,” a euphemism that infuriated Becky. She broke down, sobbing. Upstairs, in Rachel and Josh’s bedroom, she saw Harns holding Abigail’s body, speaking in tongues. The baby had lived for only sixty-one hours.

Looking back, Becky had a long list of things she would change if she could. She feared displeasing her son-in-law and had been so busy cooking and taking care of the boys that she never told Glenn or her sons that Abigail was sick. “Of course I wish that I would have called 911 and let the chips fall where they may,” she said. “I wish that I would have thought that I could stand up to Josh. I wish that I would have just said, ‘This is crazy. You have to get something done for your daughter.’ That’s not my character. I wish I would have stepped out of character.”

Rachel let her mother hold Abigail. Becky called Glenn, who was at home in Grand Rapids. “I’m holding my dead granddaughter,” she said as she wept. Nearby, the Pilands prayed for God to resurrect their baby.

Though Joel was the last to learn what happened and the farthest away, he was the one who reported Abigail’s death to the authorities. The hardest part of making that phone call, he later said, was figuring out the right words to describe what he’d learned. He found it difficult to say his sister’s and brother-in-law’s names and provide their address, imagining a mob of law enforcement officials descending on the couple and their young sons. But he felt that it was necessary.

Michigan law requires an investigation of the sudden unexpected death of an infant, and three police officers arrived at the Pilands’ home that evening. Downstairs, the family’s dog sat near brightly colored, neatly organized children’s toys. A wall decal in the room where Abigail spent some of her final moments featured a quote attributed to Joshua in the Bible: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Caleb and Noah were sleeping in their bedroom. Just down the hall, Josh, Rachel, and several members of their church had been praying over Abigail’s body for hours. (According to people present in the house, Bob and Karen Reid came to the Pilands’ home that day but had left by the time police arrived.)

Among the people praying were Jesse and Carrie Farr. The couple told police that they had arrived at the Pilands’ house without knowing many of the details about what was going on. “I didn’t want to pry,” Jesse can be heard telling an officer in an audio recording of the conversation. “I had a suspicion there was something seriously wrong, but I didn’t ask, and I didn’t know, honestly.” He then launches into a monologue about God, faith, and miracles. He says that his own sister was born dead but came back to life when his father heard God tell him to pray aloud and complied. “We do still live in—thankfully—a country [where] we’re allowed freedom of religion,” Jesse tells the police. “I still believe the baby can come back to life is where I’m at.”

The police also spoke to Brian Harns, who was the first person Josh called after Abigail’s death. “For your religion, is that a common practice, if a loved one passes away, to not contact 911, or the ambulance, or police, or medical services?” an officer asked Harns. He said no. The officer then said, “I didn’t know if it was a belief not to seek any medical or anything like that.” Harns again said no. Although the divine-healing conference had occurred just six months earlier, according to a court document, Harns “told police he does not know anyone affiliated with their association (other than the Pilands) who does not believe in seeking professional medical treatment.” 

Rachel told police that the morning after her birth, Abigail was “a little jaundiced, but then she got better and was improving.” The next day, Rachel said, Abigail “wasn’t eating very well, so we tried all sorts of things to get her to eat.” By the following morning, she was “eating great.” Rachel and Josh thought that everything was OK, which made what happened next a total shock to them.

According to Rachel, she fell asleep in a recliner around 10:30 a.m. with Abigail in her arms. About a half hour later, she woke up and put Abigail in a bouncy seat, but she soon realized that her daughter wasn’t breathing or moving. She took Abigail to Josh. They prayed over her, called members of their church, and waited for God to bring their daughter back. Josh said that he attempted a single rescue breath on Abigail but stopped because he didn’t know how to perform CPR on a baby.

The day after Abigail’s death, February 10, both Rachel and Josh went to the police station for separate, voluntary interviews, which were recorded on video. Josh discussed Abigail’s brief life and her death without showing much emotion. Upon learning that the police station used to be a school and the interview was taking place in what was once the principal’s office, Josh quipped, “I spent enough time in the principal’s office.” A detective in the room laughed. Asked if, looking back, Josh would do anything differently, he remained resolute in his faith and sure of his actions. “If I had a choice between putting my daughter in the hands of men with the best intentions and high[est] skill set in this world,” he said, “I’d still put my daughter’s life in the hands of my lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

When Rachel spoke with detectives, she was adamant in her belief in divine healing, but she also recognized how the situation probably looked to outsiders. She acknowledged that people might not understand why she and Josh didn’t take their baby to a doctor. “It could be easy to say that we were neglectful,” she said as she started to cry, “but this isn’t the end of the story yet.” Twice she said, “This isn’t over.” Twice she insisted, “It’s not too late.”

“Is there anything that you second-guess at all about this whole situation?” a detective asked. Rachel replied, “If I second-guessed anything, then I wouldn’t be able to still expect that we’re gonna have Abby back to us.”

“We’re still waiting for the phone call or however the Lord decides to do it,” Rachel continued, “saying that Abby’s life is returned to her.”

“It could be easy to say that we were neglectful,” Rachel said as she started to cry, “but this isn’t the end of the story yet.”

While Rachel and Josh made it sound as if Abigail’s death had come out of nowhere, Sandra McCurdy and Laurie Vance offered a different version of events when they spoke with authorities. According to court documents, McCurdy said the delivery had been smooth. But when she and Vance arrived at the Pilands to check in twenty hours after the birth, as was standard practice, Abigail was so yellow that Vance noticed her color from across the room. (McCurdy did not respond to interview requests.)

Jaundice is caused by bilirubin, the yellow-pigmented by-product of red blood cells breaking down. The liver normally metabolizes bilirubin, and the body eliminates it as waste. But when blood cells break down too fast, or the liver isn’t able to process bilirubin efficiently, it can build up in the bloodstream and become toxic as it spreads into tissue and organs. Physiological jaundice, the most common type in infants, arises a few days after birth and can often be treated with sunlight, which helps break down bilirubin. Pathological jaundice emerges up to twenty-four hours after birth and requires medical intervention.

McCurdy later testified that she’d already warned the Pilands about pathological jaundice, which is important with home birth clients. When she made the twenty-hour visit, McCurdy took out an icterometer, which resembles a paint card with five increasingly yellow hues. Comparing Abigail’s skin with the instrument, McCurdy noted that the baby registered a four out of five. McCurdy encouraged Rachel to take Abigail to the emergency room. Vance did the same.

According to Vance, Rachel “first stated that they were certain God had made their daughter whole at birth and that there were not any problems with her, and she would then text her husband to ask his opinion and decision about whether they would take Abigail to seek medical attention or not.” Rachel texted Josh, who was in the house, and the couple spoke for a few minutes in the doorway of their sons’ bedroom. When Rachel returned to speak to McCurdy and Vance, she said that they would not take Abigail to the hospital. “Client’s religious beliefs are ‘God makes no mistakes. Our baby is fine,’ ” McCurdy’s notes from the visit read.

According to court records, McCurdy emphasized to Rachel that Abigail could suffer brain damage or even death if she did not receive medical treatment. The midwife described the symptoms that would signify that Abigail’s already serious condition was worsening: skin becoming more orange than yellow, lethargy, a lack of interest in breastfeeding. “Even though she declined [help],” McCurdy later said, “I thought if she knew the signs, she would call a doctor.”

McCurdy scheduled a follow-up appointment for the next morning; it wasn’t routine, but she was worried about Abigail. When she called to say that she was on her way, Rachel canceled the visit. On the phone, McCurdy asked how Abigail was doing, and Rachel said that she was more orange. McCurdy again explained the risks of pathological jaundice; she also asked if she could call the pediatrician whose name the Pilands had listed in McCurdy’s client files. (Neither of Rachel’s sons had visited the doctor for annual checkups or routine vaccinations, or when they were sick.) When Rachel consented, McCurdy called the pediatrician’s office and spoke to a nurse, who said that she’d call the doctor right away. McCurdy subsequently faxed over Abigail’s records. According to court documents, the Pilands did not reply when the pediatrician’s office called about Abigail’s condition.

McCurdy left Rachel a phone message the next day but never heard back. McCurdy later testified that she believed she’d done her part in contacting the pediatrician. It was ultimately Rachel and Josh’s responsibility to take their baby in for care.

Rachel and Josh didn’t outwardly grieve in the wake of their daughter’s death, perhaps because doing so would suggest that they were second-guessing whether Abigail would be resurrected. The Kerrs, however, were heartbroken. Glenn rushed to the Pilands’ home to hold his dead granddaughter before she was taken away. Afterward he took a walk. Though he believed that resurrections no longer occurred as they had in Biblical times, he prayed that he was mistaken. “I’m willing to be wrong about this,” he told God, desperate for something to bring his granddaughter back.

Four days after Abigail’s death, Rachel and Josh sent an invitation to family and friends for what they described as Abigail’s resurrection service and celebration of life at a local cemetery. On February 14, the day before the service, Rachel met Becky for breakfast. Becky was alarmed by Rachel’s sunny disposition; she seemed so certain that her baby would be alive again soon. Before parting ways, according to Becky, Rachel told her, “If Abigail isn’t resurrected in forty-eight hours, I will sit down, you can tell me whatever you want to tell me, and I’ll listen to you. I will turn my whole life over to you.” Becky was relieved. Abigail’s death was a tragedy, but Becky thought that there might still be hope for Rachel.

Aaron didn’t want to be around so many people who believed that Abigail was going to be resurrected, so he didn’t attend the service. Joel and Emily flew in for it from California. After the Pilands arrived at the cemetery with members of their church, Brian Harns spoke briefly. Then Josh planted his feet near Abigail’s tiny white casket, raised his arms, and said, “Talitha cumi.”

In the gospels, a man named Jairus seeks out Jesus when his 12-year-old daughter is deathly ill and begs for help. While on his way to the girl, Jesus receives word that she has died. “Don’t be afraid, only believe,” he tells Jairus. Once at the family’s home, Jesus says, “Talitha cumi”—Aramaic for “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” The girl then stands up, alive and well.

After Josh spoke the same words at Abigail’s gravesite, there was only silence. It stretched on and on. Some people present, such as Josh’s coworkers from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, weren’t sure what was going on. Others, including the Kerrs, knew what Josh and Rachel believed would happen. A member of Free Saints had his phone’s camera trained on the coffin, seemingly ready to capture a resurrection.

After several minutes, Glenn and his brother, Edwin, approached Josh to ask if it was OK to lower the coffin into the ground. Josh consented. Glenn then read aloud from scripture and invited everyone to a reception that he and Becky had organized. The Pilands feared that Abigail would be resurrected only to be trapped underground, but Edwin told them that God was merciful: If the baby was brought back, certainly God would help her out of the coffin. Finally, her parents allowed dirt to be thrown into Abigail’s grave.

After the service, Joel was laser focused on finding a way to speak to Rachel without Josh present. If he could just say the right thing, he thought, his sister would snap out of this insanity. Later that afternoon, at the Pilands’ home, he found an opportunity. He told Rachel how much he already missed the niece he never had the chance to meet, and how devastated he was that Abigail’s brothers wouldn’t get to grow up with her. Tears came to Rachel’s eyes.

Emily likened that moment to seeing Joel and Rachel’s shared history come alive. It was as if they were kids again, and the older sibling was patiently trying to help the younger one understand something. “You could see the string that connected them,” Emily said. But then Rachel blinked back her tears and quoted the Bible. “It was like Rachel took out scissors and just cut that string,” Emily said.

Despite her promise, Rachel did not sit down with Becky forty-eight hours after Abigail failed to reappear. Instead, according to Becky, Rachel told her mother that it had been wrong to give a fixed timeline for her daughter’s resurrection. God worked on his own schedule.

As the Pilands remained firm in their position, a rift seemed to open between the couple and their religious community. Josh removed his association with Faith Tech Ministries from his LinkedIn page the month Abigail died; Rachel stated in a court record that their church “abandoned” them. Aaron Kerr, who had already downloaded the videos from the divine-healing conference for safekeeping, noticed on March 21, 2017, that the video where Aaron Gauthier talked about taking his son off asthma medication was no longer online. He thought he knew why: Gauthier was a former assistant prosecutor who worked as a commissioner for the Michigan Supreme Court—a job that, according to Aaron, made him “susceptible to scrutiny.” (Gauthier was elected a circuit court judge in 2019, a position he still holds. He did not reply to multiple requests for comment.)

By May 2017, the rest of the conference videos had been deleted. Free Saints Assembly also removed the Harnses’ names and a photo of the couple from its website and added a “beliefs” section that included a note on divine healing: “We do not preach or teach that Christians should not seek out doctors, hospitals, medication, herbs, diets, or exercise as a natural means of treatment for injury, sickness, or disease. These remedies may be expedient, beneficial, or needful. All such decisions should be left to the individual to make.”

When Rachel spoke to investigators, she admitted that some family members thought they were delusional. But others, she said, believed they were good parents. Sometimes she seemed to struggle with this contradiction. In a moment of surprising candor a few weeks after Abigail’s death, she told detectives, “We can’t be wrong about this and still be good parents.”

The state agreed. The month after Abigail’s death, Caleb and Noah were removed from their parents’ home by CPS and temporarily placed with Glenn and Becky. A week or two later, according to Becky, the Pilands had a supervised visit with the boys. Caleb and Noah ran to their mom, and Rachel started crying. When Becky and Glenn returned at the end of the allotted time to collect the boys, Rachel apologized for getting upset. “Of course you have those emotions,” Becky consoled her daughter, even as she worried that Rachel had apologized because Josh admonished her for becoming emotional—the Kerrs had seen him do that in the past. After the Kerrs loaded their grandsons into their van, Becky watched as the Pilands left the government office where the visit took place. Josh strode ahead, with Rachel following a few steps behind.

Initially, the Pilands seemed willing to compromise to get their sons back. When CPS requested medical examinations of the boys, the Pilands consented. Caleb and Noah were both found to be in good health. In May 2017, a family-court judge ruled that they could be returned home so long as the Pilands followed certain stipulations, including a safety plan with mandated “routine and proper medical care such as well child examinations.” The Pilands agreed and took the boys home. To Glenn and Becky, it seemed like progress. Joel worried that even a safety plan wouldn’t be enough to keep the kids safe. Aaron went back and forth on the issue.

Six days later, the Pilands requested an amendment to the safety plan: They wanted to strike the condition forbidding “physical discipline of any kind.” According to court records, the Pilands said that corporal punishment was part of their religion. “The children are being trained with physical discipline in obeying my words,” Josh said. In response, the state returned the children to Glenn and Becky.

Becky tried to reason with Rachel. “Wouldn’t you rather be the one to have them and not spank them?” she asked. But the Pilands would not bend.

Chapter 3

In September 2017, seven months after Abigail died, the Pilands were arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter. The State of Michigan alleged that they’d failed to seek necessary medical care for their baby, resulting in her death. The Pilands, who continued to believe that Abigail would be resurrected, pleaded not guilty. They were released on bond.

A month later, when Joel was in Michigan visiting his parents, he met with Rachel at a coffee shop. “You have a chance now,” he told his sister. “But this might be your last chance.” Criminal charges had been filed, but there wasn’t yet a conviction, and she still had time to get her sons back. He imagined a future in which Rachel was able to be the parent he believed her to be “at her core”—a loving mother who could be trusted to keep her children safe. Perhaps she could work out a plea deal over Abigail’s death and be reunited with her boys if she gave up her stringent interpretation of divine healing and accepted that she’d made a horrific mistake.

Rachel wouldn’t hear of it. After their meeting, she sent Joel a text. “Lest my resoluteness appear to be disinterest,” she wrote, “let me clarify that the reason why I’m willing to go through anything—even temporarily losing my kids if necessary—is because I love them too much to fail God. I, too, would do anything to keep my kids, and that’s why the One who gave them to me will be the One who gives them back to me and Josh.” The Pilands would go to court and fight for their sons, but they wouldn’t give an inch when it came to their faith.

There was reason to think that the Pilands might have some legal protection. In 1974, the U.S. government enacted the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act (CAPTA), the first federal legislation to address child abuse. CAPTA was shaped in part by a pair of Christian Scientists, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, who were members of President Richard Nixon’s White House staff. Christian Scientists believe that sickness is an illusion caused by fear or sin and should be treated with prayer or spiritual guidance. Thanks to Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s influence on CAPTA, in order to access federal funding to combat child abuse, states were required to pass laws providing protection for parents who declined medical treatment in favor of prayer. (Haldeman and Ehrlichman were later convicted in connection with the Watergate scandal.)

Religious shield laws remain on the books throughout the country. In 2016, a year before Abigail’s death, a Pew Research Center analysis found that thirty-four states plus Washington, D.C., offered at least some protection in civil cases—but not criminal ones—for parents who refuse medical care for their children on religious grounds. In at least six states, parents who treat their children with prayer rather than seek medical care cannot be charged with manslaughter if their child dies.

According to Michigan’s religious shield law, enacted in 1975, “a parent or guardian legitimately practicing his religious beliefs who thereby does not provide specified medical treatment for a child, for that reason alone shall not be considered a negligent parent or guardian.” It’s a civil statute, not a criminal one, which meant that it didn’t apply to the Pilands’ manslaughter case. However, the family-court case—the one that would determine whether the Pilands would be able to keep Caleb and Noah—was a different matter. The Pilands argued that, per the shield law, the court didn’t have the jurisdiction to take their boys away from them in the first place. They requested an adjudication trial, in which a jury would decide if the family court was allowed to determine whether the Pilands should keep their parental rights, and it was granted.

The state argued that failing to give the court jurisdiction “would tell parents and guardians: If your child is dying, and needs emergency care, you may do nothing, as long as you made that decision based on your religious beliefs.” The Pilands believed that the shield law protected them and asked that the jurors be informed of it; the state argued that the law wasn’t relevant. In August 2017, a judge sided with the state, but an appeals court ruled in favor of the Pilands the following May. The case then went to the Michigan Supreme Court.

As the matter proceeded, Becky and Glenn fretted over Caleb and Noah, and over their own daughter. Glenn read about the 1973 case of 11-year-old Wesley Parker, who died three days after his Pentecostal parents, Lawrence and Alice, stopped giving him insulin. The Parkers continued to insist that their son would be resurrected even as they were charged with manslaughter. (They were later convicted and sentenced to five months of probation.) Eventually, the Parkers changed their minds. First Corinthians 13:13 reads, “Now abide faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” Lawrence came to believe that, afraid of failing a test of faith, they had instead failed a test of love.

Glenn wanted Rachel and Josh to be like the Parkers—to come around and see the truth. Hoping to convince them that their interpretation of the Bible was wrong, he wrote them a long, beseeching letter. They never responded.

The Pilands would go to court and fight for their sons, but they wouldn’t give an inch when it came to their faith.

In February 2018, as they prepared for their criminal case, Rachel and Josh met with a doctor to discuss their daughter’s autopsy. Abigail had suffered from hemolytic disease of the newborn (HDN) resulting in pathological jaundice, which, because it went untreated, caused terminal brain damage. When Becky witnessed Abigail’s hands, feet, and face clenching, the baby may have been experiencing a seizure brought on by HDN.

HDN, a condition in which a baby’s red blood cells break down too quickly, is often caused by Rh incompatibility. Rh is a protein found in most people’s red blood cells. Josh’s body produces the protein; Rachel’s does not. Doctors typically recommend that a pregnant person who is Rh-negative receive a vaccine called RhoGAM if their partner is Rh-positive, because the fetus could be positive, too. RhoGAM prevents the mother’s immune system, which perceives an Rh-positive fetus as a biological threat, from sending antibodies to attack the fetus’s red blood cells. Rachel didn’t get the vaccine and Abigail was indeed Rh-positive, meaning that she had been compromised in utero. There was still a good chance to save her life by treating the resulting HDN after she was born, but the Pilands’ refusal to see a doctor had precluded that outcome.

McCurdy didn’t recommend RhoGAM to Rachel—there was either a miscommunication between the two women about Josh’s blood type or a mistaken notation about it in McCurdy’s records. (In court, McCurdy blamed this on Rachel.) But even if McCurdy had recommended the vaccine, Rachel might not have gotten it. Medical records later introduced in court revealed that the Pilands were aware of the risks of Rh incompatibility before Rachel became pregnant with Abigail. In 2013, when Rachel was pregnant with Caleb and using a different midwife, she and Josh both signed an informed-consent form declining RhoGAM based on “personal beliefs.” The form reads, “By making this choice, I/we understand if our child has Rh-positive blood type there is the risk that sensitization may have occurred which could affect future pregnancies.” In other words, once a mother’s body produces antibodies, they lie in wait for future targets, and become more likely to attack a fetus’s red blood cells with each subsequent Rh-incompatible pregnancy.

The doctor who spoke to the Pilands about Abigail’s HDN strongly recommended that Rachel get the RhoGAM shot for any future pregnancy. As it happened, she was four months pregnant at the time. That July, she gave birth to Esther at home, with only Josh present. She had not received RhoGAM.

Somewhere between five and ten hours after the baby was born, Josh contacted authorities, as the state required the Pilands to do. CPS filed an emergency custody order, citing “anticipatory neglect,” and Esther was taken against her parents’ wishes to a hospital. According to medical records, she was already “grossly jaundiced” and was diagnosed with HDN. Esther was transferred to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where doctors treated her with intensive phototherapy and intravenous antibody therapy. Nothing helped until the hospital performed an emergency transfusion, draining Esther’s blood while simultaneously administering donor blood free of Rh antibodies.

As Esther was undergoing treatment, Joel called Rachel. “Do you not see now?” he asked her. “Can you not admit that something needs to change?” Rachel was distressed during the call, Joel said—but only because Esther’s transfusion had happened without her and Josh’s consent. “But knowing what you know now, knowing that she would have died without it, would you have consented?” Joel asked. Rachel said no.

After Esther was hospitalized, none of the Kerrs believed that the Piland children should go back to their parents. “We would have been in favor of reunification had there been a change of heart in Josh and Rachel,” Becky said. “But we couldn’t endorse it if they refused to make their home a safe place for children.” When Josh and Rachel visited with their sons, they continued to insist that Abigail would be resurrected. According to appellate court records, when one of the boys broke a bone, Rachel maintained that the bones of people who obey God don’t break. When their other son had an apparent allergic reaction, the Pilands objected to the treatment he received.

Aaron and Jennifer stepped up to help, offering to take the Piland children into their home. They already had six kids of their own, and Owen, their youngest, had been born a few weeks after Abigail with a serious congenital issue. His parents had prayed for his health, but they also sought out a surgeon, who removed half of Owen’s left lung when he was six months old. He was a healthy, curious toddler by the time Esther was born. One day, Aaron and Jennifer crossed paths with Rachel and Josh in the hospital lobby— one couple had just visited Esther in the NICU and the other was about to. Neither couple said anything to the other.

Esther spent forty-nine days in the hospital. When she was ready for discharge, Aaron sent an email to Josh and Rachel, detailing Esther’s medical plan and explaining that if the couple wanted to be present when Caleb and Noah met their baby sister for the first time, he and Jennifer would make that happen. He also extended a gesture of goodwill: The Pilands didn’t allow their kids to celebrate Halloween—a pagan holiday, in their minds—and Aaron said that, if Josh and Rachel’s kids were still with them come October, his own family would bow out of the holiday. “We will do everything we can to honor your wishes,” Aaron wrote.

Several hours later, the Pilands responded in a jointly signed email. “If in fact you actually care for our wishes, then withdraw your hand from against our family and retire from this foster care endeavor now,” the Pilands wrote. They castigated Aaron and Jennifer for “practicing man-made medicine” on their daughter. (The Kerrs had learned how to insert Esther’s feeding tube at the hospital so they could continue her care at home.)

Aaron and Jennifer were so shaken by the email that they decided against fostering; as much as they cared for Rachel and Josh’s three kids, they didn’t want their own children exposed to a potentially volatile situation. When Esther was discharged, she went home with Becky and Glenn. Caleb and Noah were already sleeping in what was once Rachel’s bedroom. The Kerrs, then in their late sixties, juggled newborn duty and toddler care.

“Every delay in the trial wasn’t just another year,” Aaron said. “It was another baby.”

In May 2019, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a ruling on whether the religious shield law applied to the Pilands’ adjudication trial, which would determine whether the state had standing to rule on the Pilands’ parental rights. By then the couples’ sons had been in foster care with their grandparents for two years; Esther had only ever lived with Becky and Glenn. The court ruled that the trial jury could be informed about the shield law—and thus consider it in their decision-making—if the Pilands requested it and the judge found it relevant to the evidence presented.

Family-court proceedings are not public, but appellate rulings offer some insight into what happened next. At a 2020 trial, where both Joel and Becky testified for the state, the Pilands requested that the judge read the shield law to jurors, but he ruled that it wasn’t relevant. The jury in turn found that a judge had jurisdiction to determine what was best for the Pilands’ children. The family court subsequently terminated the Pilands’ parental rights to Caleb, Noah, and Esther. Josh and Rachel successfully appealed, and the shield law was read to the jury during a second trial in 2021. That jury reached the same decision as the first, and a judge once again terminated their parental rights. 

That December, Rachel gave birth to another child, Ethan. Again she decided against receiving the RhoGAM shot. Within hours of the home birth, Josh called the authorities to report Ethan’s arrival, and the state filed for emergency custody. Like his sisters, Ethan was jaundiced and diagnosed with HDN. He spent over a week in the hospital and received a double blood transfusion, along with other treatments. A judge subsequently concluded that while Josh and Rachel “generally had good parenting skills … they categorically refused to provide medical care.” The Pilands’ parental rights to Ethan were terminated as well. Eventually, all four of the Pilands’ children were adopted together; they remain in contact with the Kerrs.

By the time she lost custody of Ethan, Rachel was no longer speaking to her family. The ordeal had strained other relationships, too. Joel’s conversations with his parents sometimes became contentious. Once, during the family-court battle, Glenn said that he wished Rachel knew it was OK to get a divorce. Joel was furious. “How on earth can you say that?” he snapped. “I know exactly why she doesn’t think that. It’s because it was drilled into her brain and mine by you and every faith leader you took us to the entirety of our lives.” Growing up, Joel later said, he and his siblings were taught that the Bible was the literal word of God and should be placed above all else. “When you teach that so deeply to a child from the age they can talk, it does not easily get reprogrammed,” he explained. “If you find the wrong teacher, or you latch on to the wrong interpretation, this is what can happen.”

It’s not clear what the Pilands’ lives looked like during the years they spent awaiting their criminal trial—where they worshipped, for instance, or who they socialized with. Josh lost his job after he and Rachel were charged with Abigail’s death, and they struggled to make ends meet. They moved in with Josh’s parents when they lost their house. (Josh’s parents did not reply to interview requests.)

Bob Reid died in 2018, and Faith Tech Ministries appeared to wither in his absence. Free Saints Assembly voted to dissolve the church in the summer of 2019. Brian and Wendy Harns are now teachers at Crusade for Christ Ministries and House of Prayer, a church led by graduates of Faith Tech located about an hour from Lansing. (The pastor of the church declined an interview request.)

The Free Saints vote occurred just eight days after prosecutors upgraded the charges in the Pilands’ criminal case from involuntary manslaughter to second-degree murder. A charge of first-degree child abuse was also added, in response to what the prosecution characterized as “significant factual changes” pertaining to medical reports and other evidence. But the criminal trial was delayed by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and by various appeals.

Meanwhile, Rachel continued to get pregnant. “Every delay in the trial wasn’t just another year,” Aaron said. “It was another baby.” In November 2023, Rachel gave birth to a premature infant whom she and Josh named Kore, after a figure from the Old Testament. He, too, had HDN. According to the death certificate, he lived for one hour. The following September, Josh called CPS from his parents’ house. Police and EMS were not needed, he said, because the baby Rachel had just delivered showed “no signs of life.” When authorities responded to the scene, Rachel was in bed, holding what turned out to be an extremely premature fetus. The Pilands named her Olivette, after Mount Olivet in the Bible.

Even though Rachel no longer spoke to her parents, Becky read the Bible passages her daughter routinely posted on Facebook. That was how she realized that Rachel must have lost yet another baby. Becky texted Rachel a crying-face emoji four days after Olivette was born. Rachel did not respond.

Chapter 4

Josh and Rachel’s criminal trial finally began in March 2025, more than eight years after Abigail’s death. It was the first time the Kerrs had been in the same room with the Pilands since the couple’s parental rights were terminated. According to the Kerrs, the Pilands had been offered a number of plea deals, including one with no jail time. They were declined.

To prove second-degree murder, the state had to convince the jury that the Pilands had caused Abigail’s death, that they had knowingly exposed her to a very high risk of death or great bodily harm, and that the killing had not been justified or committed under circumstances that might reduce it to a lesser crime. The Pilands’ “personal beliefs,” the prosecution claimed, weren’t relevant. Josh and Rachel could believe whatever they wanted; they still had a legal obligation to provide care for their daughter. The prosecution argued that the clock began ticking at the twenty-hour checkup, when the midwives urged Rachel to take Abigail to the hospital. At that point, the Pilands knew that their daughter needed life-saving medical care, yet they let her suffer for forty-one more hours before she died.

One of the state’s witnesses was Dr. Sarah Brown, a pediatric child abuse specialist. She said that Abigail’s cause of death was “basically unheard of” in the U.S., given the availability of RhoGAM and postnatal treatment options for HDN. If Abigail had been brought to the hospital soon after the midwife saw her, she likely would have made a full recovery. And there would have been a very good prognosis for survival, albeit with a chance of neurological impairment, if her parents had gotten her to a doctor some hours later, closer to what ended up being her time of death.

The Pilands both took the stand. “We disregarded medical care,” Josh testified. “We did not disregard our daughter or seeking help for her.” His statement was a neat summary of the defense’s case. Concerned by her coloring, Rachel put Abigail in the window to get sun; alarmed by the fact that their baby wouldn’t eat for many hours, Rachel and Josh tried over and over until she began feeding the morning of the day she died. “I knew I was doing the absolute best thing I could ever do for her,” Rachel testified.

But the Pilands’ testimony was hard to square with the evidence. According to the American Pregnancy Association, it’s normal for a newborn to lose 5 to 10 percent of their birth weight in their first week of life. In just two and half days, Abigail lost 18 percent. Her autopsy showed that there were only trace amounts of liquid in her stomach, even though Rachel said she’d fed twice “like a rock star” the morning she died. And while the couple testified that Abigail’s jaundice was getting better, authorities dispatched to the Pilands’ home after the baby’s death described her as having “very, very yellow skin” and a “mottled and jaundiced” appearance. (Jaundice doesn’t worsen postmortem.)

Asked why the Pilands hadn’t taken Abigail to the hospital, where she would have been diagnosed with HDN, Rachel said that it wouldn’t have mattered what the diagnosis was: God was the greatest healer of all. Of canceling McCurdy’s follow-up visit, Rachel testified that she and Josh agreed that there was nothing the midwife could say that would change their course of action. What happened in their house and to Abigail, Josh said, was between them and God.

The prosecution emphasized that although the Pilands had refused to seek medical care for their daughter, they didn’t always do the same for themselves. Rachel wore prescription glasses—including at the trial. She’d taken birth control in the years before she had Caleb, and she’d had a gynecological exam to obtain that prescription. Josh had been to the hospital before, and to urgent care the time he put his arm through a window.

The Pilands offered various explanations. Rachel said she’d asked God to heal her vision, but she couldn’t control his timing. Besides, glasses weren’t actually fixing her eyes, and she needed them to be able to drive a car safely. The Pilands also said that their beliefs had evolved over time; they would no longer seek out any medical care beyond basic first aid.

Jurors learned that Esther and Ethan had survived despite being born with HDN thanks to medical interventions. Josh and Rachel testified that they wouldn’t have taken either child to the hospital if it had been up to them. Nor did they believe that doctors had saved the babies; they maintained that Esther and Ethan were made healthy as a consequence of prayer.

During closing arguments, the defense encouraged the jury to focus on Abigail’s life, not what happened with Esther and Ethan. It also tried to deflect blame. If McCurdy or Vance thought Abigail was in a medical crisis, why hadn’t they called 911? Why hadn’t Becky Kerr?

On March 26, 2025, after four hours of deliberation, the jury found the Pilands guilty of second-degree murder and first-degree child abuse. Before they were led away in handcuffs, Rachel and Josh hugged. When Becky and Glenn left the courthouse, they went to buy flowers, then drove to the cemetery where Abigail had been buried. They left the flowers at her grave with a note. “Dear Abigail Jeanne,” it read. “Today you had a voice. Love from the Kerrs.”

Josh and Rachel’s sentencing in June 2025 didn’t just mark the end of their criminal trial. For Glenn and Becky, given their estrangement from Rachel, it was perhaps their last opportunity to speak to their daughter face-to-face. Rachel and Josh were sentenced separately, in back-to-back hearings. Glenn and Becky spoke at both.

Glenn took the opportunity to call Josh a “false prophet” who refused to hear criticism of his beliefs. “You … offered your daughter up as a sacrifice to your blind faith,” Glenn said. However, he also forgave Josh, in accordance with his own religious principles, and offered his son-in-law guidance. “If you ever reach the place where you need help understanding the Bible and straightening out your thinking, even while you’re in prison,” Glenn said, “I will do anything I can to help you.”

Becky stood before the son-in-law she’d long found intimidating and finally spoke her mind. “I want to let you know that there are people in my life who think that I should hate you for ruining our daughter’s life,” she said. “While I do place much of the blame on you for what Rachel has become, I realize that those who taught you are to blame, and ultimately Rachel herself is responsible for the choices she has made. But no, I have never hated you. I do not hate you now.” Still, there was an undercurrent of anger to the story she told. The Kerrs had tried to welcome Josh into their lives, Becky said. Instead, he’d pulled Rachel away. “Indeed, she has lost her very personality,” Becky said. “What is left seems to be a hard-hearted woman who Glenn and I don’t recognize but still love.”

Glenn told Rachel that she’d “made an idol” out of Josh and fundamentally misunderstood the Bible. He said she’d even driven Joel—“your unbelieving brother,” as he put it—further from God. He pointed out that “all the people who taught you those things that caused you to let your daughter, Abigail, die right before your eyes have abandoned you. But we’ve never abandoned you.” He and Becky had even forgiven her, Glenn said, adding, “I pray that this will not be the last time I see you.”

When Becky spoke to Rachel, she told her, “Abigail is with Jesus now, free of jaundice and pain and brain damage and seizures.” As for Rachel’s surviving children, Becky said that her daughter had “created layers of trauma in their young lives.” Still, Becky longed to restore her relationship with Rachel. “I will always be your mother,” she said. As she walked from the podium to her seat, she glanced at her daughter. “I love you, sweetie,” Becky said.

Joel watched the proceedings via Zoom during a family vacation. He listened as the prosecution read the statement he’d prepared: “I am asking the court to let no more innocent lives be cut short. I am asking that the sentence for Josh and Rachel be sufficiently long to ensure that they can no longer bring life into this world just to snuff it out.”

Josh only spoke to “respectfully request leniency” from the judge. When Rachel had a chance to address the court, she started to cry. She said that she and Josh had “the utmost love” for her children and she missed her husband “very much.” By then, it had been seventy-seven days since the couple had been convicted and separated.

The judge pointed out that Rachel and Josh had never expressed remorse for Abigail’s death. They’d even insisted that, if given the chance, they would do everything they’d done all over again. “We are entitled to have whatever beliefs we want, take action on our own behalf, how we want in terms of caring for ourselves,” the judge said. But with a child, “you cannot ignore their needs for your own beliefs.” He sentenced them to twenty to forty-five years each.

Joel was satisfied with the sentences. Still, he was afraid that they had come too late. As Rachel was led from the courtroom, she was visibly pregnant.

In the Old Testament, Rachel died giving birth. In the hospital, Rachel refused all care.

The Kerrs waited for one of two things to happen next. Either they would hear from CPS that the Pilands had a new baby who needed placement, or they would hear nothing due to a miscarriage, stillbirth, or death shortly after delivery. A few months passed without a word. In September 2025, Aaron pulled up the website for the county where Rachel was incarcerated to search birth and death records. He typed in “Piland,” and a name auto-completed in the search bar: Prisca Piland.

Aaron knew that this had to be Rachel and Josh’s daughter—Prisca is the name of an early Christian martyr. When had she been born? Was she healthy? No documentation was available. Aaron took that as a good sign: Birth certificates aren’t made public, but a death certificate would have been listed on the site.

If Prisca were indeed alive, Jennifer and Aaron planned to adopt her. Aaron wondered if they should purchase a car seat and a crib. Their youngest was eight, and the baby gear was long gone. But when they made inquiries, officials were unable to tell them anything about the baby.

Hospital notes later reproduced in legal filings reveal what had happened. On July 26, 2025, prison staff noticed that Rachel was experiencing significant vaginal bleeding and transferred her to a hospital, where physicians suggested that she might have a placental problem that could cause hemorrhaging and death. In the Old Testament, Rachel died giving birth. In the hospital, Rachel refused all care. She declined an ultrasound and other testing that could help determine why she was bleeding. “[Patient] stated that she ‘believes she will be healed and is not expecting to die,’ but would ‘die before violating her conscience,’ ” the hospital noted. A competency examination found that Rachel was capable of making her own medical decisions.

Her condition briefly stabilized, but by August 5, according to the hospital, it had “severely declined.” At that point, the Michigan Department of Corrections filed an emergency motion requesting a court order to conduct a medical exam and provide any lifesaving care Rachel required, using physical restraint if necessary. A judge denied the request, pointing to a competent person’s legally protected right to make their own health care decisions, even if the result is death.

On August 7, Rachel gave birth to Prisca Liberty Piland. A week or so after his first search for her records, Aaron looked again. This time he found a death certificate. Prisca had lived for one minute.

Rachel survived the birth and had since returned to prison. For the previous eleven years, she had been pregnant more often than not. According to court records, she continued to believe that Abigail would be resurrected until at least 2021, four years after her baby’s death. It’s not clear if she or Josh believe the same thing about their other deceased children.

The Kerrs had struggled to piece together details of what exactly happened to Kore, Olivette, and Prisca.  “I guess it ultimately doesn’t change a lot,” Aaron said, “but it felt like for whatever brief period of time, they were part of our family, and we should at least try to know what we can about them.” They didn’t even know where their bodies were until 2026, when Glenn learned that they were buried near Abigail, in unmarked graves. The Kerrs hope to one day carve their names into stone alongside their sister’s.

In 2025, both Josh and Rachel appealed their convictions. Josh argued that the evidence regarding Esther and Ethan was prejudicial and shouldn’t have been admitted in court, that there had been insufficient evidence for a guilty verdict, and that his sentence was unreasonable and disproportionate. Among other arguments, Rachel’s appeal claimed that she had been denied the opportunity to explain why her religious beliefs precluded her from obtaining medical care for Abigail. Both appeals are pending.

In the aftermath of so many trials and tragedies, the Kerrs have struggled to figure out how to relate to one another. Becky has accepted that Rachel may never resume contact or temper her beliefs. Sometimes Becky’s heart “almost stops beating for a minute” when she thinks about where her daughter is. “What I have to live on is the memories of who she was and the prayer that someday that’s who she will be again,” Becky said. She and Glenn continue to trust in God’s plan for their family, even if it has been filled with pain and loss.

Watching his parents speak during the sentencing process, Joel felt like Glenn was preaching to Rachel, something he believed often caused her to shut down or become defensive. When Glenn called Joel “your unbelieving brother,” the phrase cut deeply. To Joel it was a reminder that his parents viewed him as what he wasn’t rather than all the things he was. He didn’t think Glenn and Becky had adequately reckoned with how they raised Rachel—how it may have contributed to the way her life unfolded.

Aaron doesn’t believe his sister will ever change, and he can’t imagine repairing his relationship with her. His sense of loss is profound. He was nine when Rachel was born, and he would race home from school to rock his baby sister and watch cartoons with her. Yet, when he was asked at a wedding a few years ago whether he had siblings, he only mentioned his brother. He felt like he once had a sister, but Rachel had since become a stranger.

Joel realizes that Rachel may never give up her extreme interpretation of the Bible, admit wrongdoing, or express remorse. But he isn’t ready to leave her behind. Recently, he started drafting her a letter. He’s written a few versions. He’s still trying to figure out exactly what to say.

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