Prophet's Prey (22 page)

CHAPTER 27

On the Road

With little money and few friends and a circumscribed existence, most fugitives find hiding to be hard work, but Warren Jeffs was not the usual fugitive. He had a network of believers that stretched all the way across America, thousands of people who saw it as an honor and a privilege to give the pedophile prophet shelter, money, literally anything they had, with total loyalty and no questions asked. Many of the numerous places of refuge were not extravagant like R-17 in Texas, but simply modest family homes dotted somewhere on his map of safe havens.

When he had first started traveling incognito around the country, he had been rather modest about his disguises. As he became more adept at hiding in the world of the gentiles, he became almost brazen in his taste for the good life. He was no longer satisfied with just putting on a hat and telling his driver not to exceed the speed limit. Like everything else in his life, the traveling was carried to the extreme, almost as if Warren were an addict chasing the big rush.

Warren and Naomi had dashed from Texas to Oklahoma to Colorado to Washington State, and from Sacramento to Fresno, California, before looping down through Las Vegas and heading east to Florida. Before leaving each place, Warren took time to raise his arm to the square and condemn it to the judgments of God as a curse for the wickedness he had found.

By the end of June 2005, he was in deep cover at the Hilton Garden Inn in Pensacola, Florida, sprawled in the sunshine on a sandy beach. Naomi was at his side, her hair dyed the color of chocolate, with red highlights. Both wore bathing suits as they happily watched the other near-naked bodies around them. Warren reported that he was pleasing the Lord “in this amazing experience of being unclothed, suntanning, dressing like the world with only a swimsuit on.”

He had bought a year's worth of new contact lenses, his hair was trimmed, and he was starting a mustache. One of the church-run businesses had just sent him $15,500 for spending money along with a sparkling new Porsche Cayenne. At night, he and Naomi watched television and movies in the hotel room and appeared to be feigning disgust at the pornography as they avidly scrutinized each scene. “They displayed the open corrupt sexual actions one with another,” he said. “Men with women, women with women, as though it is the delight and way of life.”

During the day, he would sit in the Porsche, turn the air-conditioning on full blast, and phone detailed instructions back to his followers as he checked on the temple work. The Lord had instructed him on landscaping—the types of flowers, grass, and trees to be planted. Nothing escaped divine scrutiny.

He used prepaid, throw-away cell phones routed through complex dock and talk networks as his main means of communication, but bags of mail containing letters of support and plenty of cash for him were waiting at rendezvous points. Warren would often slit open the envelopes to extract the cash and often appeared to have set aside the confessions of repentance unread, at least until he could take sufficient time to savor the transgressions and figure out how best to use the secrets to control the writers.

The man who tried so hard to avoid attention was, however, totally contradictory on that point when it came to cars. He loved hot wheels, and he rolled into the Texas compound one day driving a bright yellow Ford Mustang convertible. Faithful followers obtained flashy vehicles for him, which they would register in their own names, to help Warren roam. He was partial to expensive SUVs and had been known to travel in a Porsche, a BMW, and a Mercedes-Benz; he even for a while had a couple of fiery red Harley-Davidson motorcycles, with fancy biker-dude leathers and accessories, and a picture shows a motorcycle parked with him astride the big machine and Naomi behind him. But looks can be deceiving. The physically weak prophet never mastered the heavy $50,000 Harley and was a failure as a biker. It eventually was stolen, but Warren did not report the theft because the police would have become involved.

The indictment on criminal charges following Candi Shapley's testimony apparently was the prophet's ticket to party as no other FLDS member had ever done; he used it as an excuse to gallivant around the country and live a life that was not possible inside of the FLDS compounds. He had escaped not only from the law, but from the horrendously oppressive rules that he imposed on everyone else. Warren paid a “negro woman” in California $250 to braid Naomi's hair in plaited corn rows. When other wives joined him on the road, they also wore jeans and tops and sweaters and sported new hairstyles.

Tooling along in a new SUV, with pretty young wives made up like gentiles at his side, eluding the cops, keeping the flock scared to death with pronouncements of doom, directing the building of his temple at R-17, and still managing all of the affairs of the church, expelling men and conducting underage marriages, lifted him to the status of a cult hero among the believers. His FLDS acolytes thought the way that the prophet outwitted his enemies was great fun.

The mysterious road trip of Warren Jeffs, fueled by his inner ferocity for secrecy, would continue for many months and take him from “the gentile amusement park called Disneyland” in California, through the heart of Dixie, up to the rocky coast of Maine, across the prairies, and into the mountains. He lived in hotels and motels or secret refuge houses or he might just show up unannounced at the home of a sympathizer. By far, his most preferred stop was the YFZ Ranch in Texas, where he could be smuggled in and out and secrecy and protection were assured.

Eventually, he felt that even the United States might be too small for him, that he might not be able to outrun his mounting troubles. He dyed his own hair and went shopping with Naomi in a Dallas mall to buy expensive clothes “for going among the rich in Europe.” He charged his lieutenants with getting false identification papers and passports that would allow him to escape to foreign lands. Obtaining authentic-looking documentation proved to be impossible, and although the negotiators spent freely, they were afraid that the underworld characters with whom they were dealing would double-cross them. They ultimately failed, and Warren eventually called off his plans for Europe, deciding that he would just have to be more careful.

He had good reason to remain paranoid and on the run. Each passing month seemed to bring him more bad news.

Although Winston Blackmore and I disagreed about polygamy and other issues, we had learned to work together and had earned each other's trust. Now that careful maintenance of Blackmore as a source paid a huge dividend when a “what if” brainstorming session between us resulted in a devastating move against the United Effort Plan Trust. Warren Jeffs was still president of the UEP, a position that gave him total control over who could stay on Trust-owned lands and who must go.

Blackmore and I reasoned that if an FLDS follower wished to willingly turn his home over to the church, that should be a personal decision. But nearly all the families in Short Creek had built their home on UEP-owned land, and had lived there for years, and were considered to be only tenants in common—beneficiaries of the UEP Trust—by the church. Then there was an additional group, those who had been expelled by the church but flatly refused to move out. We felt that all of the residents deserved the right to choose whether or not to live in their homes, and not to have the church arbitrarily making that decision. Thousands of people and millions of dollars in assets were involved.

So Winston and I kicked around some ideas during a three-hour telephone conversation. I was parked in Utah, with my cell plugged into the car, and Winston was on a swather in Canada, doing the first cut of spring hay. We wondered if there might be some way to replace Warren, who was on the lam, and the trustees with a new board of directors comprising a fair representation of all beneficiaries of the trust. The reorganization would strip the church of its arbitrary power and allow individuals to make pertinent choices regarding their homes; something stronger than the “life estate” granted to the Chatwins and a few others.

Ironically, it was Warren himself who had opened the possibility of a reorganization through his beloved “answer them nothing” legal strategy. Since he had disappeared, the Trust was being mismanaged and lay at risk of losing all its assets. With Warren not answering the lawsuits, if our clients chose to take a default judgment by the court, they could seize anything of value belonging to the Trust beneficiaries. They could have become rich.

But their intent all along had not been to make a lot of money in a lawsuit; they wanted to deny Warren Jeffs the use of the Trust as leverage to kick their families out of the community by taking their homes and everything they had.

The prophet could not have it both ways; he either had to appear in public and answer the charges in court, or he would remain silent and in hiding and lose. It gave our clients the unique opportunity to pursue home ownership for all of the beneficiaries of the Trust.

I ran our conversation by Roger Hoole, who had taken over from Pat Shea as our Utah counsel, and he consulted with the Utah Attorney General's Office. They concluded that if such a charitable trust was not being managed properly, then the state could step in to protect the rights of the beneficiaries. A special fiduciary could be appointed, and a court could assume control until it was all settled.

On May 27, Third District judge Robert Adkins issued a temporary restraining order that suspended the power and authority of the United Effort Plan Trust.

The prophet went ballistic. His piousness had boomeranged, and by maintaining silence, he was sure to lose the legal challenge, thus surrendering control of the wealth represented by the UEP lands in the United States and Canada.

He concluded that “the devil” was behind the attack because God had absolutely ordered him to tell the courts nothing. He instructed his UEP board members to ignore the courts until forced to give up. Then, he predicted, the faithful could expect to be driven from their homes, perhaps even killed, and if they survived, they would be scattered across the nation to live in rented homes among the gentiles. It was still another test from God, he said. When all else failed, Warren could always place the blame with God as a test of faith.

When Ross Chatwin's brother Andrew learned that the UEP Trust was no longer under the control of the prophet, he decided to come home again.

As a boy, he had attended the sadistic Alta Academy, where he had gotten Warren Jeffs in trouble by tattling about being whipped badly by the sadistic schoolmaster. Uncle Rulon was still alive at the time and allowed Andrew to go unpunished. When Andrew turned eighteen, he was given a piece of UEP land on which to build a home so he could start a family. Not being one to forgive and forget, Warren exacted revenge when he became the prophet's mouthpiece: He ran Andrew out of town.

Now Andrew was diabetic, having trouble continuing to work in the construction trades; money was tight, and his kids were getting ready for school. Since the house he had built from the ground up in Short Creek stood empty, but was being maintained by his father, he thought he could move back in and live without the burden of any house payments.

The FLDS hierarchy saw it differently. They were not about to allow this apostate, his gentile wife, and their three kids to move in among the chosen ones. Afraid that he would be the brunt of Warren's revenge, Andrew's father had forewarned church authorities that his son would be moving in. When they arrived with their belongings, Andrew found the police blocking the driveway, and the church had suddenly moved another of his brothers, Sam Chatwin, into the house that very day.

Still determined to live in Short Creek, Andrew found an alternative. The Trust manager would allow him to claim another house of equal value, as long as it was empty so he wasn't displacing any other family. Andrew found a potential candidate on a list of properties, and he started moving in, with the help of friends and other castaways. The police soon showed up there, too, and a standoff developed.

The refugees captured everything on video cameras, and the scenes are still disturbing to anyone unfamiliar with FLDS radicalism. I was called on the phone to give what advice I could, and the usual theme played out: The cops were told this was a civil matter, that they had no authority, and that Andrew had obtained legal permission to occupy the dwelling. The cops ignored them.

Throughout the day and into the evening, more police cars rolled up, as did a fleet of automobiles and pickup trucks driven by other FLDS men. The Mohave County sheriff's office was called and within a few hours, an Arizona deputy arrived. He did what any law enforcement agency would normally do: He refused to get involved in a civil dispute because no crime had been committed. The deputy made a report and advised the local police not to meddle in property disputes involving private parties. The local cops pretended to agree, and the crowd drifted away.

As soon as the deputy cleared out for his five-hour drive back to Kingman, the local police and vigilantes returned. About midnight, Chief Marshal Sam Roundy looked out at the gathered throng and turned to his brother Deputy Marshall Jonathan Roundy to ask, “So, are we going to do this?” Jonathan replied, “Let's do it.”

There was a burst of movement and from the darkness emerged a throng of about seventy-five men, tramping in military unison with their hands clasped behind their backs. Uncle Rulon had created an organization that he christened the Sons of Helaman, after a figure in distant Mormon history who had fathered valiant offspring. Present-day FLDS boys were trained like soldiers and learned, among other things, how to march. Warren would eventually expand their role to form a network of spies and snitches within the community. The Sons of Helaman reminded me of similar familiar youth groups.

Upon reaching the house, the silent advancing column encircled it within a closed perimeter. Immediately, a herd of work crews with pickup trucks and small bobcat tractors swooped out of nowhere. Colorado City refuse department drivers backed up their trash trucks in the middle of the night. Chief Marshal Sam Roundy threatened Andrew Chatwin with arrest if he did not stand aside, then stalked directly into the house to direct the vigilante raid and actually helped remove the Chatwins' furniture.