OUR & the LDS Church's Promotional Movies

For additional articles covering O.U.R., please go to ACJ Investigates: Derailed: Operation Underground Railroad

Editor’s Note: Lynn Packer is an award-winning investigative reporter, legal consultant and author of “Lying for the Lord: The Paul H. Dunn Stories“. Lynn graduated from Utah State University with a degree in broadcast journalism. He served in the United States Army from ’68 through ’70 in Vietnam, as a television news anchor and producer for the Armed Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN) Quang Tri detachment. Lynn was awarded the Bronze Star. For 15 years Mr. Packer reported for KSL Television News in Salt Lake City. For ten years Lynn was an adjunct professor teaching journalism at Brigham Young University and the University of Dortmund.

Lynn Packer’s 49-minute report is about two Hollywood-style motion pictures and the curious connections between them.

The first is a motion picture with the working title “Project Icon.” It was about “a street kid (who) is forever changed after he endures the trial, persecution and death of Jesus of Nazareth.” It was secretly produced by the Mormon Church and was filmed on the island of Malta in the Mediterranean. Adding to the mystery: After it was completed the project was axed. Two of the project’s managers—LDS apostle Russell Ballard and Madison Avenue marketing expert Gordon Bowen—decline comment.

The second film covered in this report is “Sound of Freedom” which tells the story of Tim Ballard who quit his government job to devote his life to rescuing kidnapped children from global sex traffickers. The film was completed in 2018 but has missed one announced theatrical release date after another. This past March, however, the Utah company Angel Studios, which has been distributing the mega-hit series about Jesus, “The Chosen,” agreed to distribute “Sound of Freedom” to theaters worldwide by the end of the year. (Ballard and his nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad were the subjects of a criminal investigation that stalled after the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Salt Lake pulled the plug on a grand jury that was looking into OUR.)

If you have any information or have suggested corrections, we want to hear from you. Contact Lynn Packer or Damion Moore at damion@americancrimejournal.com