Polygamist’s sister takes stand in B.C. tax trial

Winston Blackmore’s own sister, who grew up with him in the polygamous B.C. community of Bountiful, took the stand Thursday to testify against him in a landmark case before the Tax Court of Canada.

Marlene Palmer, 53, a self-exile from Bountiful, worked as bookkeeper for J.R. Blackmore and Sons (JRB), which a Canada Revenue Agency auditor found was used as a “personal piggy bank” for Blackmore.

The CRA says Blackmore, the bishop of the fundamentalist Mormon church in Bountiful, B.C., until 2002 under-reported $1.5 million on tax returns over six years between 2000 and 2006. His appeal of that finding is the first challenge in Canadian history to a section of the Tax Act that deals with the definition of a “religious congregation.”

Palmer testified about her years in Bountiful, where her father Joseph Raymond (Ray) Blackmore presided as bishop until his death in 1984, until her decision to leave her husband and the polygamous community in 2008.

She was 17 when she married her first husband, Marvin Palmer, with whom she had six children.

“I didn’t want to marry him,” she told Judge Diane Campbell. “I didn’t like him.”

Palmer had her heart set on getting a nursing degree and becoming a midwife. But in a meeting after a dinner one night in October 1975, Leroy Johnson, the prophet and president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) at the time, told her no.

“He said I had another calling — to be just a wife,” Palmer said.

“I was married that night at 9:20.”

Palmer’s testimony continues.