Sheriff hunts FLDS leader
 
By Tom Vaughan
The Mancos Times
 
Prophet Warren Jeffs, head of the polygamous denomination that purchased two 60-acre parcels in the Mancos Valley in 2003 and 2004, is now a wanted man. A Mohave County, Ariz., superior court judge issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of Warren Steed Jeffs, based on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. Both are Class 6 felonies in the state of Arizona, punishable by not more than one year in jail and up to a $150,000 fine. Bail has been set at $500,000.

According to Mohave County Attorney Matthew Smith, "Jeffs is not charged with personally having sexual contact with the girl but with arranging the marriage of a 16-year-old girl with a man who was at least 10 years older than she."

Montezuma County Sheriff Gerald Wallace told The Mancos Times Sunday that, "We are actively searching for Warren Jeffs."

Until now, Sheriff Wallace and his predecessor, Joey Chavez, were monitoring the situation, staying in touch with authorities in Short Creek and in Schleicher County, Texas, (site of a large, rapidly growing Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints compound) but noting that nobody at the Mancos properties had been accused of a crime. While Jeffs has been the subject of legal actions before, they were all civil, not criminal.

Warren Jeffs is the all-powerful leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group that broke away after the mainstream LDS church stopped plural marriages in 1890 and banned them in 1904. He came to power when he served as principal aide and confidant to his father, Rulon Jeffs, who was the FLDS Prophet until he died in 2002. At that point, Warren Jeffs assumed the top position in the FLDS and he has apparently been consolidating his power over his followers ever since.

Warren Jeffs assumed virtual control over the assets of the United Effort Plan, which has assets worth millions in the twin cities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, (together called Short Creek) as well as near Beryl, Utah, and in a polygamist community called Bountiful near Creston, B.C. The UEP board of trustees has dwindled through death, disappearance or excommunication until the disposition of its assets appears to be at Jeffs' sole discretion. At the request of Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, the UEP assets were frozen by court order. A receiver was appointed by the court to find, inventory and account for UEP assets, possibly to be followed by the installation of a court-appointed set of trustees.

Immediately after the UEP assets were frozen, buildings began disappearing from their foundations on UEP-owned land in Colorado City. Private Investigator Sam Brower told The Mancos Times that he watched an 18,000-square-foot metal building, used by Cozy Log Homes Inc. - which is owned by FLDS members loyal to Jeffs - dismantled in less than 24 hours and trucked away to Nevada.

In less obvious ways, members of the UEP Trust are concerned about evidence of large expenditures by Jeffs on FLDS land and improvements in Mancos and Texas that are not registered in the name of the UEP. Though $1,000 per month "donations" are levied on followers and still heavier tolls are extracted from members' businesses, there is a question as to whether the expenditures on new FLDS properties represent an illegal use of trust funds for private purposes. The Utah attorney general's request to freeze the assets was based, in part, on allegations of insider trading, in which trust properties were deeded over to paper companies in Nevada controlled by Warren Jeffs.

In Mancos, Jeffs' son-in-law, David Allred, paid a good price for 60 acres at 15252 CR 39 in July 2003, and then paid way more than the assessed value of another 60 acres nearby in October 2004.

During the few months after purchasing the first parcel, FLDS laborers worked day and night to expand a three-bedroom, two-bath house and a barn to four residences with a total of 10 bedrooms and 10 baths.

In October 2003, David Allred bought a 1,671-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas. That property now has 14 large buildings on it - several of them more than 20,000 square feet in floor space - including a four-story temple, presently being faced with limestone quarried on the site.

None of these acquisitions or improvements have been added to the inventory of UEP assets.

Legal troubles mount up

While allegations of bigamy, statutory rape, sexual abuse, domestic violence and welfare fraud have long been made against the FLDS in Short Creek, little of that has touched Warren Jeffs personally. His rule is recent, he is elusive and secretive and his followers are reluctant to talk to outsiders for fear of being cast out of the faith that offers them salvation.

Now, however, things are beginning to happen on his watch, in part because of his dictatorial style. In January 2004, he publicly read a dozen people out of the faith in Colorado City, including the town's mayor and other elders of the community. For those men, and others in a steady stream of "adjustments" Jeffs has made of those he considers disloyal, their wives, children and property have been taken from them and reassigned to other men who are judged to be true to Jeffs.

One of those excommunicated, allegedly at Warren's insistence while Rulon Jeffs was still alive and in power, is Winston Blackmore, the FLDS Bishop of Bountiful. Now, in Bountiful as in Short Creek, the friction between the "warrenites" and the apostates and expellees has divided families, neighborhoods, work groups and community institutions.

One such apostate, Shem Fischer, filed a religious discrimination suit in 2004 in federal court in Utah. Fischer claims he was fired from his Colorado City furniture company job and not rehired because he was not a follower of Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is named as a defendant.

Warren Jeffs is also a defendant in two other 2004 civil suits in Utah state court. In one, a nephew, Brent Jeffs, alleges that Warren Jeffs and two of Warren's brothers repeatedly sexually molested Brent during Sunday school in the Salt Lake City area.

In the "Lost Boys" case, six young men who were excommunicated from the FLDS group claim that they were expelled from the fellowship and from their hopes of salvation in order to make it easier for older men to find young women to take as plural wives.

Jeffs forfeits defense

Jeffs and his attorneys have parted ways. In their motion to withdraw from the Lost Boys and Brent Jeffs cases because they disagreed on strategy with Jeffs, the attorneys noted that he had already fired them.

With Jeffs and FLDS forfeiting any defense in those cases, a summary judgment could be made by the court, and large payments to the plaintiffs could be levied against the assets of the UEP Trust. The plaintiffs are also members and potential beneficiaries of the trust, so their attorneys have asked for the UEP to be put under new management. That would remove Jeffs from access to the wealth and safeguard the interests of the trust's beneficiaries. Shurtleff's request to freeze the UEP assets immediately stepped up the timetable.

School district a cash cow?

Just before the Utah judge froze the UEP assets, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard obtained a warrant for state officials to locate and seize Colorado City Unified School District's records in a search for evidence of misuse of public funds. The warrant was executed on May 24, and it entailed a search of school buildings, offices and vehicles. A school 4-wheel-drive pickup was found to contain surveying equipment, beer and other nonschool items; the school official assigned the vehicle has a private surveying company.

Arizona has been pressuring the CCUSD for some time to open its books. Teachers were not paid last fall due to a shortage of funds, yet the payments on the district's light plane were made. With an enrollment reported to be about 300, none of them FLDS (all the FLDS children are home-schooled), there are more than 100 staff on the payroll - most, if not all, FLDS.
 
cortezjournal.com
Originally published June 16, 2005
 
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