Hilary, who is also Mormon, soon bought into the extraordinary notion that she was to assume the role as Doug's earthly mate immediately after God took Faylene.
Doug also spoke often with Hilary by phone after the breakup, though no evidence exists that the two ever saw each other again until after Faylene's death.
Doug Grant, his current wife, Hilary, and their family, including daughter Nevaeh, circa 2005.
Doug Grant took this photo of Faylene in Utah just one day before she fell off a cliff at the site.
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Among Faylene's other articluated revelations was that Doug and Hilary would have a baby girl together, the daughter Faylene long believed she'd be having someday.
She called the unborn baby "Nicolle."
Rather than seek mental help for his wife, Doug seemingly got caught up in his wife's death obsession.
"It just touched me," she wrote in a September 5 journal entry, "that this is another reason I must have faith in Doug's vision (he dreams it every night now), that I will get to go to the Celestial Kingdom because this is where [baby] Nicolle is in the pre-existence."
An LDS tract explains pre-existence: "We were first begotten as spirit babies in Heaven and then born naturally on Earth."
(Indeed, Hilary would give birth to a baby girl with Doug on July 8, 2003. They named the child Nevaeh, which is heaven spelled backwards.)
A few weeks before she died, Faylene made elaborate plans in her journal for her own funeral service.
The plans included the introduction of Hilary to the world as Doug's new (or soon-to-be) wife, though that never did happen at the actual service.
"I am choosing to give up the life I have that is perfectly the way I want it!" she wrote at the time. "I finally have a husband who treats me with love and respect that is even beyond what I could dream of!"
Faylene Grant's death obsessions couldn't have come as any surprise to her family.
Her mother, Glenna Eaves, told Gilbert Detective Sy Ray in 2002, "Faylene told me almost a year ago, when Doug and her were splitting up or after the divorce . . . on two different occasions, that she wouldn't be here long. And I just laughed it off. 'You don't believe stuff like that.'
"I just told her, 'I don't know anyone as good as you, Faye, and you've got these little kids. You're gonna be here a long time.' And then I just let it go. But, she had those feelings, you know."
Faylene had repeated similar thoughts to her younger half-sister Jody just a few weeks earlier.
However, Faylene's family and friends insist she never would have killed herself, saying that suicide would have kept her from passage into the Celestial Kingdom.
But LDS officials contacted by New Times suggest otherwise, pointing to a definitive comment on the subject by the late Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
"Suicide is a sin — a very grievous one," he wrote. "Yet the Lord will not judge the person who commits that sin strictly by the act itself. The Lord will look at that person's circumstances and the degree of his accountability at the time of the act."
Precisely how Faylene believed she might die remained a mystery.
Veteran prosecutor Juan Martinez is about to argue in court that Doug Grant killed her in the first degree.
Doug Grant's suspected motive for murder has evolved over the years.
Police in 2002 latched onto the time-tested motive of money, claiming Doug stood to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in life insurance and other funds after Faylene died.
The benefits were not nearly as extensive as first believed, though Doug did collect $300,000 in life insurance as the sole beneficiary of Faylene's policy.
A onetime pal of Doug's later provided the cops with another money-related motive. Jim McElyea told authorities in 2005 that Doug feared Faylene would leave him again, saddling him with about $2,700 in renewed monthly child support and spousal maintenance payments.
McElyea snitched for the police to avoid his own prosecution after getting caught trying to bribe Faylene's family. He had promised the Eaves family information about Doug's supposed murder confession to him in return for $10,000.
In 2006, McElyea recanted most of his account in an interview with New Times.
"Doug is an asshole, but I can't honestly say if he did or didn't kill Faylene, who was a real sweet lady," McElyea said. "I definitely got the feeling that the detective [Sy Ray] wanted Doug to be strung up on a post, and he didn't care how he got there. I wish I never had gotten involved in any of this."
(It's uncertain whether prosecutors will call McElyea — a linchpin of the state's case at one time — to the stand).
The prosecution now seems to hinge on the premise that Doug Grant is a sex fiend whose outsized libido was the prime catalyst for committing first-degree murder.
Prosecutor Martinez is likely to suggest that Doug realized he had made a mistake by breaking up with Hilary to return to the less-attractive Faylene.
He will try to paint Doug Grant as a coldly calculating wife killer who overdosed Faylene with Ambien and then probably held her head under the water in the bathtub until she was drowned.
