Prophet's Prey (9 page)

Ron Rohbock's failure to deliver his daughter for punishment earned him a place on Warren's blacklist. As far as Warren was concerned, his father's old buddy was expendable. Punishment would be years in coming, but when it came, Warren would destroy Rohbock.

CHAPTER 13

Death in the Family

The mind of Rulon Jeffs wandered, spinning off in the middle of conversations onto subjects as arcane as how his own father used to call him “Rudy Pergucious.” Warren's quicksilver brain took up the slack. As the effects of the strokes and dementia continued to marginalize Rulon, Warren was the puppet-master, able to get his father to do anything.

Warren would occasionally take his feeble father to the meeting house to preside over a church service. A microphone would be rigged around the neck of the seated old man, then Warren would whine out a long sermon and graciously turn to Rulon and say, “Let's hear what Father is thinking. We would like to turn the time over to the Prophet to hear the word of God.” Silence would smother the crowd for long minutes while Rulon, mouth agape, would struggle to put together some words, eventually blurting out some accusation such as, “The judgments of God are upon you! Do you understand?” To which the congregation would respond with a unanimous,
“Yeesss!”

The father definitely still had usefulness in Warren's plans. In one of his boldest moves, Warren persuaded Rulon to give him the management of the United Effort Plan Trust. Warren personally supervised the revision of the trust documents, then steadied the feeble old man's hand as he signed away his authority. That meant all of the UEP holdings, an avalanche of assets and property in the United States and Canada, now shifted to Warren's direct control. A required board of trustees was made up of hand-picked loyalists, but he made all of the decisions and held veto power. Millions of dollars were generated annually, and it all would be administered by Warren.

All comments about business were carefully phrased by Warren to get Rulon to make the right choices. In one of his more lucid moments, Rulon apparently realized that he no longer ran the empire. He broke down at dinner, pounded his fist on the table, and shouted, “I want my job back!” Warren swiftly soothed him. It was too late for Rulon. Warren had control, and he never gave up anything.

Perhaps to calm murmurs from dissidents that he wanted to take over everything officially, Warren spread a secret: Rulon was going to live for hundreds of years to come. Even Rulon had not known about this until the thought came tumbling out of Warren's rambling imagination. In an interview with me, one FLDS member described paying a visit to the ailing old man one day. The ever-present Warren asked if the visitor would like to hear of a vision that Rulon had experienced. “Sure,” said the visitor, and Warren pulled out a little notepad that he scribbled in. At 2:30 one morning, said Warren, his father awakened him to describe a vision in which the Prophet Rulon had seen a beautiful large valley filled with young women and children, and he had understood it to be his own future. The vision placed the valley more than three hundred years in the future and Rulon was to reach it without ever tasting death.

It was such a startling idea that Uncle Rulon whispered, “Did I say that? I don't remember a thing of it.” The visitor then watched in astonishment as other church officials came and went, and Warren related the same fable of longevity to each in turn. His father continued to say he didn't remember anything of the sort.

“Very soon, that was all that Warren wanted to talk about,” the visitor confided. “We heard it in church, we heard it in private, and there soon became a great fervor.” The big lie, relentlessly pounded home by Warren, became accepted as truth. That was when Warren began thrusting young girls upon Rulon, allegedly to make sure that the prophet would have the “ladies” needed to procreate with him through the coming centuries. In reality, Warren had a much different plan in mind, one that only he knew. Until the time was ripe to unveil it, marrying the girls to Rulon would remove them from the market of brides available for other men.

While his mind might be slipping, the stroke-crippled Rulon still had a sexual appetite, or at least imagined that he did, at ninety-two years of age. Sometimes, a new wife would be shocked to get a wet French kiss from the old man after the evening meal. When one girl proved reluctant to comply with the elderly Rulon's wish for some unconventional sex, Warren set her straight in a hurry: God's command was to “give yourself to your husband mind, body, and soul.” In other words, do whatever Rulon wanted. To do otherwise would jeopardize her status as a mother in Zion. Since there is no such thing as sex education within the FLDS culture, when a young girl was placed with a depraved older man, it would usually be a confusing and crushing experience. She often had little or no idea about sex. Warren, acting as his father's self-appointed pimp, kept track of what was happening, and he would be furious if the concubines did not “keep sweet” and comply with the arranged sexual liaisons.

On a visit down south from Canada, Winston Blackmore was shocked at the fresh new crop of young girls ranging in age from twenty-one down to fifteen entering the Jeffs family. The bishop asked what was going on. Rulon replied, “I don't know. Ask Warren. Why am I being married to all these young girls?” Uncle Rulon married some of them while he was abed, delirious and unaware of what was happening. Marriage licenses, of course, were not required; simply a “sealing” ritual by someone in the church hierarchy who was authorized by the prophet to conduct the ceremony was sufficient. The ceremony had absolutely no legal standing, especially since it was usually performed in conjunction with the crimes of child abuse and/or polygamy.

Warren continued placing new spouses with his father up until only six months before the decrepit prophet's mortal ministry came to an end. It finally took a direct, desperate plea from Rulon himself—“No more wives!”—to make Warren stop.

On the surface, the purpose of the onslaught of marriages was to benefit Rulon. Underlying that fact was Warren maneuvering toward a completely different and sordid purpose: He intended to marry some of his stepmothers into his own growing harem when the old man passed away.

Another myth that has come down in FLDS lore is that the final destruction of the earth will be so complete that “not a yellow dog will be left to wag its tail.” In the summer of 2001, that nightmare would come true in Short Creek.

With Uncle Rulon physically fading, Warren needed to test his own support. Was it real? Had his incessant “trainings” and sermons programmed the believers strongly enough to ensure that they would follow him automatically? Could he count on their blind obedience and loyalty when he took the ultimate leadership role? A horrible tragedy provided the opening for him to test them. Best of all, the target of this grim scheme was one of the rare gentile converts in their midst, who I will refer to as Mike, so not too many people in the Crick really cared much about what happened to him or his family. No matter how devout their beliefs, converts are never really accepted as anything more than second-class citizens.

In June 2001, a chained-up guard dog that was used for breeding attacked, mauled, and killed the family's baby boy. Soon afterward, at the meeting house, Uncle Fred Jessop told the congregants that Prophet Rulon had received a heavenly revelation that pets had no place in the Kingdom of God, not among the pure and clean people of the priesthood. Henceforth, no dogs would be allowed. Everyone understood that this was really Warren talking. Warren didn't like dogs.

Uncle Fred was passionate from the pulpit that day. Not giving up your pet would be an act of disobedience, proving that you lacked faith. Your standing in the priesthood would be in question, which could lead to expulsion from the church and community. Citizens of Short Creek would be given some time to rid themselves of their pets voluntarily, but after that, assigned crews of churchmen led by that peculiar pair of enforcers, Willie and Dee Jessop, would be called on to finish the job.

Local law would not be involved in the massacre. Although the cops were thoroughly in service to the FLDS, this nasty piece of work fell to the church's hooligans without badges. To be called to service in such a position was a rare opportunity for these men to distinguish themselves from the rank-and-file membership. They could move about the community and force compliance from the disobedient, which meant that now they were somebody!

When the grace period expired for people to have disposed of their pets, the gang came in to round up the dogs that had not been given away. They started with the strays, but soon they were snatching pets from the arms of their owners. Dee Jessop went through the streets like a destroying angel, fulfilling his macabre mission. Willie would often be parked in a conspicuous spot nearby to intervene if there was any backlash from a brokenhearted family member.

The captured dogs were driven in trucks out of town to the far side of a sylvan setting known as Berry Knoll, where dusk almost always brings a double sunset as the sun slides down two mountains that nearly touch at Canaan Gap. Not only is light magnified out there, but so is the sound. Residents of the Crick would hear the squeal of a pickup truck's tires on the pavement in town, then not long afterward would come the wail of a dog, as if through a megaphone, followed by a gunshot out by Berry Knoll.

Finally, the guns were deemed too noisy for the job and the killers came up with the idea of clamping jumper cables from the powerful batteries of big pickup trucks onto the animals to electrocute them. Instead of gunshots, the howls of the tortured dogs rent the night air.

There are no more dogs or cats to be found in Short Creek or other Jeffs-run FLDS strongholds to this day. For Warren Jeffs, it was a diabolical test of loyalty: If he could get people to surrender their pets to the executioner, he could continue pushing the envelope and demand even greater sacrifices. The ready-made scapegoat, Mike, was left to shoulder any emotional blame. After all, it was his dog and his child that had precipitated the drastic measures. Warren threw him out of the church and nobody cared.

Rulon Jeffs was aware throughout 2002 that he was barely clinging to life. One day as he shuffled along on his walk with a group of wives and children assisting him, the prophet told them he was tired of living, and the helpers would not be burdened with this escort duty much longer. He struck a fist on his chest and called out, “I am so sick of this decrepit body! When do I get to go?”

The answer was: not yet. He still had some usefulness for his heir apparent.

The reign of Winston Blackmore as the prophet's right-hand man in Canada ended abruptly with a single phone call from the ailing Rulon in the summer of 2002. Blackmore was in his truck with a visitor from Short Creek, Ezra Draper, who heard every word over the speakerphone, and Winston himself later confirmed the incident for me.

Winston was well aware that his old friend Rulon was no longer mentally stable, but although the old man stumbled as he groped for words, he laid down the law: Blackmore was dismissed as the bishop of Bountiful. He was instructed to surrender his wives, was removed as a UEP trustee, and was ordered to turn all of his business assets over to the UEP.

Draper said that after each pronouncement, there would be a pause in the conversation, and they could hear the voice of Warren Jeffs in the background coaching his father on what to say next. The old man would repeat those words verbatim. “Rulon Jeffs didn't even know who he was talking to,” Draper recalled. “Warren told him what to say, sentence by sentence.”

When Ezra Draper returned home to Short Creek, he feigned innocence and asked Warren how the dismissal of the Canadian bishop had gone. Warren beamed with pride. “Ezra, Father handled that situation all by himself.”

The blood-atonement attempt involving Vanessa Rohback was a side issue by then, but Winston's defiance had been remembered by Warren. His revenge for that embarrassment was to engineer the removal of Blackmore as a potential rival for leadership of the FLDS. Warren later dispatched his “God Squad” enforcer Willie Jessop up to Canada to make sure that Winston understood that he no longer “held priesthood.” Blackmore, though, was unafraid of the bully and refused to recognize Warren's claims of authority.

There was fallout anytime someone crossed Warren Jeffs, who kept track of every perceived trespass in his little notebook. He eventually expelled both Ezra Draper and his brother, David, and told them there was no hope of their getting back in. Ezra managed to leave with most of his family intact, but David was devastated at losing his family and everything he had. Ezra made a luncheon appointment to talk with his distraught brother, but David did not show up. His body was found in the wreckage of his truck at the bottom of Hurricane Mesa, about twenty miles from Short Creek, along with a suicide note. As Warren's appetite for power grew, so did the body count of devastated victims, both literally and figuratively.

That the end was near for Rulon was probably obvious to his scheming son; in fact, it couldn't have been going better if he had actually personally planned it that way.

Several years would pass before I was able to piece together the dramatic final sequence of events through personal interviews with people who were there, recordings of the services, and the descriptions detailed in Warren's Priesthood Record. It was a macabre glimpse into the final days of a religious monarch and the rise of his ambitious successor.

Rulon Timpson Jeffs finally died on September 8, 2002. He was rushed to the hospital in septic shock from an obstructed bowel and was in such dire condition that doctors estimated he had only a five-percent chance of survival if they performed surgery, and no chance at all without it. “It does not matter what they say, the Lord is in charge,” Warren told his brother Isaac. The old man's blood pressure was very low, but suddenly it rose enough for the doctors to operate—a miracle. “We knew he was going to walk out of there. No question,” said Isaac.

Rulon was grimacing on a respirator as the medical staff wheeled him to the operating theater aboard a gurney. When he was returned to the intensive care unit, his heart began to stutter. Family and friends knelt in prayer circles as CPR, then electric shock treatment, were performed. Warren was on his knees on the floor at his dying father's bedside. “I could not think of anything else but his renewal in this life. But as I witnessed his final breath and his heart stop, and I wanted to cry unto the Lord to intervene now, but the good Spirit whispered, ‘Peace. This is the Lord's will.' ”