Prophet's Prey (12 page)

“He's not here right now,” she responded when I asked to see the bishop. I handed her the papers and thanked her for her help while she stammered, “I … I can't take these!” It was a valid service, and I left the building as fast as I had entered.

I had been inside less than two minutes, but by the time I came out, two police trucks were at the scene, one of them already in the compound. Out of that truck stepped Sam Johnson, one of the newly hired cops who, livid with anger, told me that I was trespassing. I shot back that I had every legal right to be there serving a subpoena on a registered agent of the church. Then I added, “You know what? It's a misdemeanor for you to interfere with the service of legal process. A Washington County deputy sheriff is outside the gate right now, so I'll talk to you out there.”

I walked away and yelled at the guy in the guard shack to open up. The gate slid back just enough for me to step outside, with Sam Johnson at my heels, threatening to arrest me. The other cop, Helaman Barlow, had blocked the clinic's entrance with his car to stop Deputy Fischer from coming in to assist. As we stood outside the gate, talking to sort things out, a flurry of papers was flung over the fence by an inside guard. It was the subpoena, fluttering to earth. I got a kick watching Johnson scurry around picking the pages off the ground and then try to hand them to me.

“I don't want those,” I said, trying to hold back a laugh.

“You can't serve this here,” he replied, turning in a circle, as if lost.

“I've served them already, and the person named on it can do whatever he wants with them. It's not my business anymore.”

Frustrated, Johnson slapped the subpoena down on the center dividing post between the gates, where the breeze soon sent the loose papers sailing about again.

In July 2004 we sent out a news release to announce a press conference at the state capitol, at which details would be given concerning the filing of a racketeering lawsuit against Warren Jeffs and the FLDS church. The second thunderclap aimed at the FLDS came only came a week later, when we filed another suit on behalf of Brent Jeffs, charging his Uncle Warren with those brutal rapes in the children's bathroom at the Alta Academy.

Since the church's beginning, the FLDS fundamentalists have been plagued by legal problems of one sort or another, involving internal power struggles and external issues associated with polygamy and underage marriage practices. The standard response from the FLDS leadership to outside challenges was to raise the “religious persecution” flag and claim the gentile world was just trying to defame an unpopular religion. Our assertions were significantly different and more focused. The target was not their religion; this country provides everyone the right to worship as they please. Although our cases would be handled in the civil courts, we were alleging outright criminal activity, and we were going after the prophet himself as the leader of a criminal organization that practiced systemic child abuse. Now all I had to do was find him.

CHAPTER 16

The Record

At the time Warren Jeffs took over as FLDS leader, his flock was estimated at ten thousand people or more, a huge number for any breakaway sect, but that number is deceptive. The membership cannot be truly measured, because their records are kept hidden in hideouts and “places of refuge” throughout the country. The FLDS exists not only in Arizona, Utah, and hidden colonies across the United States, but also in Canada. After generations of secretive growth, the actual number of members and hidden compounds is unknown. Even most FLDS members don't know how many of them there are. Compounding the problem is the FLDS mistrust and refusal to cooperate with any government entities, including the U.S. Census. Any estimate of precise numbers is no more than a best guess.

Despite media reports such as one in the
New York Times
and the February 2010 cover story in
National Geographic
magazine, Short Creek is not the orderly, spic-and-span utopia molded by a fastidious, fervently religious colony of quirky little worker bees as is so often portrayed. Overzealous reporters often fall into the trap of trading editorial control of their piece in exchange for a promised “exclusive glimpse” of life in the secretive FLDS culture. I know of at least a half dozen of those so-called exclusives that were, in fact, a successful attempt to dupe the media into placing a positive spin on the cult and ignoring the real facts. In fact, both of the twin towns are shabby and continue to deteriorate. The immaculate mansions that belong to the church hierarchy are surrounded by half-finished houses, raw basements covered by crude roofs, and trailers that seem about to topple over. Much of it is nothing more than a run-down trailer park with chickens pecking around fancy pickup trucks. Abject poverty and squalid living conditions are a sad contrast to the unique natural beauty out of which sprouts the most lawless town in America.

And yet, despite the down-at-the-heels appearance, it is not a community of cartoonish hillbillies or throwbacks to the nineteenth century. There is money in the pipeline—plenty of it. It all goes to the prophet.

For decade upon decade, the FLDS faithful struggled to tame this piece of wild land in hopes of being self-sufficient. Orchards and farms flourished from water that was brought in by irrigation systems they had built, and Warren had recently dedicated a Bishop's Storehouse that could hold 45,000 sacks of potatoes that would be brought in from FLDS farming operations in remote Beryl, Utah. FLDS members own and operate a number of businesses, in several states, that deal in everything from timber to cattle to motels and that have done double duty as hideouts for Warren and as FLDS rendezvous points.

Big FLDS construction companies such as R&W Excavation, Tonto Supply, and Paragon Contractors build public-works infrastructure for cities and towns throughout the country and act as subcontractors on other projects. Other smaller, ever-changing FLDS companies are nothing but fly-by-night operations that are suddenly created, get loans for new equipment, then default on the debt, stealing the new gear they had bought in the hope that the finance company will never find it.

FLDS members are involved with not only bricks and mortar businesses but also with modern, specialized production. They have high-tech companies that have a record of doing business in Washington, D.C., developing ideas as sophisticated as top-secret night-vision components and experimental “smart clothing” for soldiers. FLDS businessmen have also made extensive contacts in the legislative branches of government and the Pentagon. Perhaps the most well-known example is the history of Utah Tool & Die, a business founded by Rulon Jeffs in 1968, which grew into HydraPak, Inc., established in 1976 in West Jordon, Utah, while Rulon Jeffs was on the board of directors. The company found a niche in the lucrative aerospace industry and became the sole subcontractor producing O-rings for the aerospace giant Morton Thiokol. After the space shuttle
Challenger
blew up, killing all seven crew members, in January 1986, a formal government investigation blamed faulty O-rings for the fiery disaster. Rulon's name was soon removed from the board of HydraPak, but the company maintained its strong FLDS links, and his son Wallace Jeffs took over. HydraPak changed its name to Western Precision and moved to a huge building that was hastily constructed as a United Effort Plan work project in Short Creek in only thirty days. In August 2006, when the FLDS came under pressure from the courts seeking UEP assets that had been used to finance the company, Western Precision vanished overnight, moving to Las Vegas, it is now called NewEra Manufacturing, Inc.

Some of the FLDS people are trained as professional grant writers in order to bilk great amounts of cash from federal and state agencies and gain preferential minority treatment on government contracts. Trusted wives are listed as officers of a corporation in order to receive minority preference points for the bidding process. For the FLDS community, success in business is more than just a livelihood and means to support their families. It is a religious calling, and they know all of the angles, which they pursue with great zeal, as if their salvation were dependent on it.

Short Creek's water department exists on paper only. The fire department and search and rescue squads have been formally charged with misappropriating taxpayer money to support local businesses and church members, and are still under investigation. It is almost impossible for a building contractor to win a project on which the FLDS is also bidding, because the church membership has such a vast pool of free labor, using their own young kids to bypass minimum wage and tax laws.

The companies and the contracts are privately held but are secretly consecrated to the church to support its massive legal fees and the extravagant lifestyle of the church hierarchy. Even the wages of the boys are donated to the church. Legitimate business and government entities are unwittingly helping maintain the FLDS leaders' lavish lifestyles, supporting illegal underage marriage, and participating in the abandonment and neglect of young boys by doing business with a criminal organization that openly thumbs its nose at the laws which the rest of us live by.

Since all of the property and living arrangements in Short Creek were assigned by the United Effort Plan Trust, which was headed by the prophet, the majority of residents literally live there by the will and good graces of their religious monarch. However, the Utah Attorney General stepped in to protect the beneficiaries of the trust in the spring of 2005, and seized control of all its assets. A battle continues to this day by the FLDS, challenging the government's intervention to secure the homes on behalf of all the people in Short Creek, FLDS members and apostates alike. But the prophet wants the trust back so he can continue to use the people's homes as leverage to compel them to obey the will of God.

Many of the large polygamist families exist primarily on government-provided food stamps and other means of public welfare support. As far back as 2002 an Arizona judge characterized Short Creek as a “taxpayer emergency.” Not much has changed since then, other than the fact that residents have become more experienced and polished in their ability to squeeze money from government treasuries. They willingly take from the federal and state governments they hate and distrust, but they go to extraordinary lengths not to give anything back, claiming that such avoidance is their religious duty. Author Jon Krakauer would famously observe that FLDS leaders refer to the practice as “bleeding the beast.”

Short Creek has long been a drain on the welfare and educational systems of Utah and Arizona, diverting funds that would otherwise be available for sorely needed services elsewhere in those states. Colorado City routinely comes in on the top three cities in Arizona for amounts of money received through homeland security grants, and the town received such high-tech equipment as heat-sensing night-vision goggles costing about $25,000 apiece. If there is a government grant available, the FLDS will find it and take advantage of it.

With no housing or upkeep expenses, the locals are free to sink their cash into pricey vehicles such as the “plyg-rig” trucks, shiny new off-road monsters with dark tinted windows that ordinary construction workers can only dream about. The church permits it because those vehicles can be used in business operations, which, of course, also builds church coffers.

Warren Jeffs now had everything he wanted, but as he surveyed his dusty kingdom, he grew agitated. The Priesthood Record would eventually reveal insights into Jeffs's twisted thought processes, showing that the more power he held, the more he feared it was slipping away; he saw rebellion, desertion, apostasy, and the devil at play wherever he turned, and particularly in wicked little Short Creek.

He felt pushed by the velocity of the changes he had wrought, and the thing he feared most was a revolution among the people. He was determined to quash any perceived movement before it started. The tool he would use to fight this evil was the priesthood, redefining the term to represent a rather mystic authority that covered whatever he wanted. It was not as if all of the high priests could gather in some holy clubhouse and discuss or vote on things, and the so-called Priesthood Council, or the Council of Friends, had withered beneath years of one-man rule.

Priesthood originated as a gift from God to be used to bless people's lives, and it meant everything, but now it was an elastic term defined by Warren, and he was ruthless. Those who were half-hearted would have to prove themselves, and if they failed, they would be removed and lose priesthood.

Members were now terrified of somehow screwing up, making Warren angry, and thereby losing the revered status of holding priesthood. If they made a decision on their own, they might be accused of stealing the prophet's authority. By the same token, if they did not act, they might just as easily be in trouble for not showing enough faith. Either choice contained risk, and the FLDS men were constantly begging forgiveness, making it clear that they only wanted to do the prophet's and God's will in all things. Contritely, they willingly bowed to “accept any corrections” that might be due them.

Because Uncle Warren
controlled
priesthood, loyalty to him was ever more paramount. Back in 1989, Uncle Rulon once was asked to explain the Priesthood Council, and had replied simply, “I am it.” Now Warren was.

Even the most devout had reason to feel as if they were standing at the edge of some cliff, with Warren's fingertips pushing gently on their backs. The prophet could dispense blessings, or he could retract them. He examined his people constantly and seldom found that they were “keeping sweet” as required, even while they strove to meet his impossible standards of absolute purity and obedience in all things at all times.

To enforce his will, the prophet found a source of willing muscle in the teenage membership of the novice Aaronic Priesthood and in the higher-ranking and more mature Melchezidek Priesthood. In a normal world, young men would perform routine church functions. Warren seized the opportunity to steer these youngsters into being his snoops among the faithful. They would enter private homes at will and make sure the inhabitants were being obedient to the prophet, had his picture properly displayed on a wall, and were following his edicts, much as Hitler's Nazi youths had spied on their own families. Any indiscretions discovered were reported through the priesthood line of authority all the way up to Warren Jeffs, who would deal with the offenders. To not allow the “Sons of Helaman,” as Warren referred to them, into your home would be considered an act of disobedience and would be dealt with sharply. The prophet insisted that it was all simple missionary work.

Only a week after his father passed away in September 2002, Warren stepped into the pulpit at the meeting house for the usual Monday morning session to warn the flock: “The outward signs of evil are among us.” Younger people were going to the movies in other towns, buying television sets, and listening to rock music. He sternly chastised them, “When you choose to put in that disk or that tape, and the booming music is taking place, you are denying God, and you are participating in devil worship.” What he called cowboy music and easy rock were equally pernicious. “It grabs hold of you, it puts a beat inside of you, and it makes you lose your ability to pray.” Books and magazines and flashy clothes were works of the devil, and partaking of such evils set bad examples.

Even as he delivered that puritanical lashing, he noted that a lot of his targeted audience—the youth of the community—were not at the service. “Maybe some of them slept in this morning,” he said with heavy sarcasm. He did not tolerate, forget, nor forgive such absences. Such behavior signified disobedience.

As he was micromanaging every aspect of the lives of the FLDS members, he began to preach that Short Creek was hell-bent and needed stern correction. His hammer already seemed to have fallen everywhere. There would be no flying of the American flag, no sports, no organized get-togethers, dancing, or holidays; even Christmas was abolished. No one could wear the color red, because Warren claimed that to do so would be to mock Christ, who he predicted would return in red robes. No television, no books other than approved Scripture, no magazines, and no toys. He seemed intent on erasing all of the happiness and joy from life in order to implement his warped vision of a “pure” society. And he was just getting started.

On October 7, 2002, one day shy of a month after Rulon died, Warren took the controversial step of marrying seven of his stepmothers, chosen because they were the most compliant with his wishes. The “sealing ceremony” was held in the room that had once been the office of their late husband. Warren claimed that he had twenty more ready to be sealed to him for their remaining time on earth, after which they would be reunited with Rulon for eternity. In attendance were Uncle Fred and Wendell Loy Nielsen, who would soon be elevated to fill the first counselor vacancy that had been created when Warren became president. Also present was Warren's brother Isaac, whose duty apparently was to parrot not only the information that Rulon had chosen Warren to succeed him, but also that Rulon had publicly condoned the marriages of the widows. That was important because the FLDS had long believed that Scripture required at least two witnesses to validate decisions of major significance. Warren used himself as one witness and Isaac as the other.