The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

by Musser, Rebecca

  Working superlong hours like the rest of the crew, Elissa and I had been missing our kids like crazy, especially since we’d never been away from them for long. We called them at least a few times a day. It was hard to talk to Ben, as he’d been growing more hateful every day. His family constantly reminded him that I had done more than enough damage to their Prophet. They believed I was now persecuting the common people, in cahoots with the government. Lamont was also upset and, like Ben, did not appreciate having to care for two young ones alone. Our husbands asked constantly, “When are you coming home?”

  All we could answer was “I don’t know.”

  By that Friday, which I spent with Elissa at the CPS building, the rangers had mostly pulled off the YFZ, though the mothers and children were still at Fort Concho. Lawyers and foster homes were being found, but it was a complicated process. While we were grateful for what CPS was trying to do, Elissa and I remained vigilant about the rights of the women and children. We had to repeatedly remind hundreds of different investigators and workers to use the term “marital relations” instead of “sex,” as well as explaining Warren’s peculiar indoctrination so they could understand our people better, without judgment.

  In the meantime, at Fort Concho, the cultural rifts were glaringly apparent. A CPS worker told me that the first night the young boys spent there, an overnight guardian had come upstairs to check on them at five a.m. and found all of them awake and sitting fully clothed on the edges of their neatly made beds. She presumed they were preparing to run away.

  “We’re ready to go to work,” one of the boys said, and the others nodded. “What work are we supposed to do?” they asked.

  CPS was under fire from the public, DPS, and the media. No matter what CPS did to create order so they could take the very best care of the children, the women were constantly undermining the workers. They switched wristbands, spoke snidely to workers and volunteers, refused to cooperate, and still lied about ages and family groups. I knew, because I held many files on my own lap in which women I was well acquainted with had written lie after lie—names, ages, parents, etc.

  Still, there were things CPS could have been doing better, and they all knew it. That week, CPS workers had come in from all over the state to help out. As we were looking at Texas’s normal regulations for the removal of children and placement into foster care, I told them that their usual operations would not work in this situation.

  “Please hear me on this,” I said. “You will not find the drug problems that are normally in abusive homes. You will not find physical, domestic violence to the point that you might see in some of these other circumstances. While it does happen, it’s not common. The sexual abuse through spiritual teachings is common—but it’s a different problem than you have encountered in most of your cases in Texas.”

  “Okay,” said Elaine Leonard, a high-level CPS administrator. “What do you suggest?”

  “Is there any way to remove the fathers and return the mothers and children?” I asked.

  “If it were up to me,” she said, “we could, but we have to deal with structures that are already in place. We can’t undo what’s been done in this time frame, and we have to be extremely careful about setting a precedent.” We kept trying to dream up better solutions, but time was against us. At one point, I saw tears on Elaine’s face.

  Later, a CPS official from Austin came in as I was answering questions.

  “Who is this?” he said, looking down his nose. “Why should we listen to her?”

  I erupted in frustration. “Look, I don’t have the education you have. I don’t have the background and credentials you have. But what you normally do is not the solution.”

  I walked away and escaped down the hall, blinded by tears. Turning a corner, I ran straight into Brooks.

  “What am I doing here?” I asked him desperately.

  “Who said something to you?” he asked. He prodded me until I blurted it out. Brooks immediately marched into the CPS room.

  “I don’t care who you think you are,” he said. “We are mighty damn grateful that Becky has come to help us. What you need to know is that things would be much worse without her. Out of all of the hundreds of people and cases out there, there’s probably only a handful of people that she doesn’t know or isn’t related to. Can you identify any of those people? I didn’t think so. You listen to her and treat her with respect.”

  To add to the turmoil, Ben called, angrier than ever. Two different flights I’d booked out had come and gone. Elissa was preparing to leave to engage in some big media on the book she had written, hoping to educate the public about the plight of all FLDS women. Ben couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t leave, too, but there were hearings and issues that urgently deserved resolution here in Texas.

  “So what’s it like down there with all your cowboy boyfriends?” he said accusingly. “How does it feel to be so important? You want everyone to think you’re so cool?” I couldn’t handle it any longer. I sat on a sofa away from the others and sobbed.

  “Look,” I told Ben, “I’m doing the best I can. I’m sorry. I thought I would be done.”

  “Well, it affects me, too, Beck. Get home. Get home now.” The line went dead.

  At that moment I felt like such an idiot, working with people at CPS who couldn’t care less, trying to help people who hated my guts. If that wasn’t crazy making, I didn’t know what was. Even worse, I missed my kids with a physical ache.

  After a deep, private cry, I realized that deep down, part of me felt responsible for what was going on here. I had escaped it—and it ended up in the laps of little girls. If I had stayed, could I have made a difference? Could I have stopped any of this madness?

  Doran’s exceptionally kind wife, Lenette, knew I would be alone after Elissa’s departure, and she invited me to their home for a Texas-style BBQ Sunday evening. Nothing had been going right. The day before, Dale Evans Barlow, accused husband of the elusive Sarah Barlow, met with Texas Rangers in St. George. They discovered he was definitely not their man. Women from Fort Concho were calling the Deseret News from their cell phones until a judge ordered the phones confiscated to prevent further false statements and staged pictures going out. That had turned the public tide against law enforcement and in favor of the FLDS once again. Doran was the most discouraged I’d ever seen him.

  Nonetheless, the Dorans offered me a warm welcome. Doran’s brother cooked steaks, and I ate okra for the first time. The sheriff had beautiful grandchildren, one of whom was very close in age to Natalia. It made me miss my children even more. I tried to be sociable, but I was homesick and was still really torn up about not being able to connect with Ally and Sherrie.

  “Hey, Becky,” said the sheriff, “I know you’re exhausted, but you’re not your usual chipper self. Is there anything we can do?” I was about to say no and thank him for his kindness when a thought occurred to me.

  “Do you have a violin handy?” He looked at me in surprise, then made a few calls and found one almost immediately from a church member. I lovingly shouldered the instrument, tuned it, and began to play by the fire. The music spun its magic, and I felt my spirits lift.

  Shortly thereafter, Randy and Kathy Mankin came by. I’d not yet met them but was impressed immediately. Yes, they had been the first to break the news in that little town, but they had integrity about what they reported—and when they reported it. Whereas other newscasters had almost compromised the case for ratings, the Eldorado Success was diligent about facts and sources. I was also delighted to discover that Randy played the guitar. He strummed for us and sang Marty Robbins ballads. Together we played around the chimney campfire that evening, and it provided a wonderful respite from the pain of the work we’d been doing.

  What we didn’t know that night was that Willie Jessop, Warren’s henchman, had been driving around Eldorado, staking out the sheriff’s home. The next day, Willie confronted Randy Mankin at his office.

  “I saw you with Becky Musser!�
�� he snarled, insinuating some sort of conspiracy between me, Randy, and the sheriff’s office. Randy laughed and explained the situation, but Willie didn’t believe it. The self-appointed spokesman for the FLDS since the beginning of this investigation, he had taken every opportunity in front of a camera to stretch a tiny bit of truth halfway across the state of Texas. The Texas Rangers had their eyes on him, having been warned by Utah authorities that he was known for violence, possessing both legal and illegal weapons, the use of explosives, and verbal threats and various other forms of intimidation. All I knew was that wherever Willie was, Warren’s edicts were not far behind.

  I woke up early Monday morning feeling more rested than I had for days. I met the sheriff and Elaine on the lawn outside Fort Concho. Another call had come in from Sarah, wherein she gave precise details about the playgrounds and the women’s schedules. Worse, she also sounded like she might be slightly drugged again.

  I wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a floppy jacket so as not to be recognized, since the women at Fort Concho didn’t yet know that I was there. It was best to keep it that way. As we scoured the playground areas and tried to figure which room was Sarah’s, it was eerie to see the curtains move in the windows and see girls and women stare out at us.

  Come on, Sarah. Where are you? Something just didn’t feel right.

  CPS was going to announce later that day that they were moving the women and children to the Foster Communications Coliseum in San Angelo, which was much bigger and had locker rooms with showers, so it would have been the perfect time for law enforcement to slip Sarah out of there safely. Frustratingly, we couldn’t find her.

  That Tuesday, I was at the sheriff’s office when one of the officers suddenly turned up the volume on the big-screen television. Larry King was interviewing three FLDS women—unmistakable in their pastel prairie dresses—with a larger group of women behind them. I knew each woman—Esther, Marilyn, and Sally—quite well. They’d given their real first names, but when King asked them about their children, the lying began. We were used to it.

  But then came the clincher, when he asked about relationships between older men and teenage girls and younger:

  LK: Did you see others at the ranch getting married younger?

  Sally: Not that I’m aware of…

  LK: Marilyn, had you?

  Marilyn: Not that I have ever seen.

  LK: Esther, had you?

  Esther: Not that I have ever seen.

  LK: So all of these stories are false, or just you haven’t seen them?

  Esther: I believe they are false.

  Marilyn: I believe they are false.

  Sally: Me, also.

  LK: So you’re saying there were no young girls at that ranch, ever, ever married to, say, men in their twenties or thirties?

  [All three women shake their heads no.]

  Esther: Not to our knowledge.

  “Oh my God, what bullshit!” I jumped up from behind the desk, a small mountain of files still in my hands. “What a bunch of freaking bullshit!”

  Two of the rangers just stared at me as I slammed back into my seat. They knew it was garbage—they had heard more lies from the FLDS than the truth—but they didn’t understand the significance of what I was saying.

  “I have these women’s files right on my lap, right now!” I shouted. “I’ve got a file of a fifteen-year-old, Janet, who married Raymond Merrill Jessop and had his child at age sixteen.”

  I looked up and pointed furiously at the third woman on the right. “Sally is her mother! And the grandmother to the baby. She was the attending midwife at the baby’s birth! And that’s Sally’s full daughter, right there in the middle! She is Janet’s full sister. I cannot believe they’re lying like this!”

  The rangers’ eyes grew wide at the revelation and my outburst. The reality hit home again that these were children having babies—those women’s grandbabies and great-grandbabies!

  A stark realization came over me and I realized why the fire was so strong inside of me. It wasn’t just because of the lies, but because literally no one was telling the truth! Not one FLDS person was standing up for these girls the way their own mothers and grandmothers should have. In my heart, I was still Grandmother Becky, and fierce protectiveness washed over me. No matter what had happened in the last week—the comments of ignorant CPS workers, the digs into my reputation, the repercussions on my tenuous marriage… I had to keep fighting for those girls.

  CHAPTER 29

  Balm of Gilead

  The next day, CPS hearings began in the Fifty-First District Court, with Judge Barbara Walther ruling in an overflowing courthouse. But I wasn’t there—instead I was making my way through a sea of people, including my sister-wives and their babies, at the coliseum where they were now staying. Behind my sunglasses and baseball cap, I went unrecognized by those I had loved for so long. Still, the hollow looks in their eyes haunted me.

  Rebecca Baxter, my CPS contact that day, had worked with one young woman who she felt would be amenable to speaking honestly with me. She escorted the girl into the interview room where I sat without my disguise, and introduced me as her friend.

  I looked directly at the young girl.

  “Heather,” I said gently. “Do you remember me?” She shook her head. “I’m Mother Becky, and I was married to Uncle Rulon.”

  Heather’s eyes grew large as recognition dawned on her. Suddenly she reached out and hugged me hard. We both began to cry.

  “Look at you—you’re all grown up!” I exclaimed. “And you’re so beautiful!”

  She beamed for a moment, before her sweet face turned somber. “It broke my heart when you left.”

  “Oh, sweetheart… Don’t you think it broke mine to leave?” I told her why it was the most painful decision I had ever made—and the best. I also explained to her that the state had been forced to investigate allegations of abuse, but they’d had no intention of searching every home or removing anyone except Sarah and her immediate family, declaring that Merrill could have avoided all of this.

  “Heather,” I asked tentatively, “what can you tell me about Sherrie and Ally?”

  “Oh, let’s see… They’re both here.”

  My heart skipped a beat.

  “And I think they’re both married.” She thought for a moment. “Oh yes, they are, both Sherrie and Ally. And Sherrie has a baby.”

  My little Sherrie, a mother? And my little Ally, married? She would have been just fifteen that year. It took all my power to hold it together. I almost missed what Heather said next.

  “Wait! You said Uncle Merrill Jessop is married to Ally?” I cried.

  “Yes.”

  “Wow,” I said, dumbfounded. “Is she happy?”

  Heather smiled, but it was hollow. “I think so…”

  According to Heather, Ally had wed our uncle by marriage when he was in his seventies. No wonder he’d called on Valentine’s Day to have the missing person reports cleaned up! He didn’t want their union to have legal ramifications. I hoped beyond hope that Merrill would have respected my sister in a sexual way, yet I knew that he had given his own twelve-year-old daughter, Merrianne, to Warren, who had gone on to molest her in the temple in front of others.

  Just before it was time to leave, Heather leaned over and whispered conspiratorially to me, “They snuck Ally out yesterday!” My heart stopped for a moment. What? How? And how many others had been taken? I quickly realized how much Heather had compromised by telling me, and I would not throw her under the FLDS bus, but my mind was racing.

  I hugged Heather tightly to say good-bye. When she and Rebecca left the room, I lost all composure, crying for her, and for Sherrie and for Ally.

  Several minutes later, Rebecca returned. “I went to find Sherrie for you, but she’s gone to the park,” she said. “Is there anyone else you would like to talk to?”

  I was scared, but I knew it would be my last chance, so I asked to talk to Savannah.

  Quickly I pulled mysel
f together and put my sunglasses back on. Rebecca led Doran and me to another part of the coliseum. We passed LeRoy Jeffs’s daughter, who was standing with a couple of Warren’s daughters. I looked at them, the young girls I remembered teaching in musicals and PE and loved so dearly. Evidently, word had spread quickly, as they regarded me with silent but cold malice.

  The moment Savannah stepped into the interview room, holding her little girl, Generous, who was Kyle’s age, I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. But her eyes were wide and wary, like she was walking into a den of snakes. Savannah was shaking and didn’t say a word. I closed the door and removed my sunglasses and hat. My older sister stared at me, hard.

  “Why are you here?” she spat. “Haven’t you done enough? How could you be a part of all of this? They came to our doors and forced us out by gunpoint. They put guns to our sons’ heads! It was just like in ’44 and ’53! How could you?”

  I was floored. Savannah honestly believed her own words about the rangers forcing people out at gunpoint! Had I not seen the footage, and known firsthand how the rangers treated those women and children, I might have believed her. I realized that this story had become so ingrained in her, it had become her truth. Not just Savannah but her peers sincerely believed that all of their rights had been taken, that the government had been pillaging their homes and touching their children inappropriately.

  I wanted to share truth and light, but I tried to put myself in her shoes first.

  “Please, just give me five minutes of your time.” Happily, five minutes turned into two hours as we caught up, and I finally got to tell her what had happened those final weeks with Warren, including Warren’s words that I would never forget.

  Her lips tightened. “I don’t believe that.”

  Despite this, it was a tender time for us. I was able to express my love and tell her how our siblings were doing. But I saw in her something I’d seen in the others: Savannah seemed hollow, and her responses seemed canned, in her high-pitched, sickly-sweet voice. “We’re so blessed… We’re just so blessed.”