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

by Musser, Rebecca

  Despite Smith’s advice, I was unprepared for Piccarreta and the other defense attorney, Richard Wright, to act like spoiled children, throwing tantrums and not abiding by any modicum of polite behavior. It was appalling. I had to take an oath to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God”—but the lawyers were bound by no such vow. With no judge or jury in the room, opposing counsel could apparently say almost anything they wanted to a witness.

  As soon as Piccarreta asked a few preliminary personal questions, he jumped right into forbidden territory: “Now, have you had any contact with law enforcement in Texas in regards to the FLDS or the YFZ ranch?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss any participation that I have had in any investigation going on in Texas.”

  “Why is that?” he probed.

  “I’m not at liberty to say anything about that.”

  The assistant attorney general of Arizona backed me up, but Piccarreta wouldn’t stop trying to get me to talk about Sheriff Doran, Brooks, CPS, money from Texas, and more. I stood my ground.

  “Can you answer this—do you know Rozita Swinton?” I was mad. The woman who’d posed as Sarah Barlow had nothing to do with Arizona, only Texas.

  “I do not.”

  “All right. Did you not have any communications with Rozita Swinton either before the search or after the search?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  When Piccarreta finally began to focus on Warren’s criminal trial in Arizona, I was open and very, very honest with him. I shared FLDS teachings about marriage, Rulon’s health, Warren’s power plays, Elissa’s marital problems and abuse, as well as Warren’s edicts for her to go home and obey her husband.

  I could tell by the look on his partner Wright’s face that he was not happy with my answers, which must have been fairly damning. Piccarreta asked me about my personal life up until 2002, when I left the FLDS.

  “You didn’t want to marry Warren?”

  “Hell, no,” I answered before I could stop myself. We covered some details about Elissa’s life after my departure, and Piccarreta asked if I’d read Elissa’s book.

  “No.”

  “Have you read any of the books from—that people have written that have left other religions and have been critical of the religion they left?”

  “I’m grateful for lessons I’ve learned. Warren has been one of the greatest teachers of my life…”

  Wright’s eyes widened, and he grabbed a notebook and pencil. The room went silent.

  “I’ve learned some incredible lessons from that man, more so what not to be and how not to treat people.”

  I couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction when Wright hurled his pencil so hard onto the table that it bounced and clattered onto the floor.

  CHAPTER 32

  Power vs. Force

  Not long afterward, Mike Piccarreta sought to have a judge compel me to answer questions about Texas. Texas’s lead prosecutor, Eric Nichols, would have to come to stand up for Texas, as I had no lawyer of my own. In addition, I was in more physical pain than I could handle. Finally I was scheduled for surgery to remove the large and painful growth from my spine. Leading up to it, I slept poorly and was plagued by nightmares. Over and over I dreamed of being in a room where my sister-wives were gathered to pray for me—only they had gathered to pray for my death.

  Patrice, a dear friend of mine who had also left Short Creek, did some Reiki, theta, and chakra balancing work on my body. It seemed to relieve much of the pain, although the growth was still there. After our session, she told me she had the strong impression the growth had been caused by negative energy being directed at me from the FLDS.

  I looked at Patrice in astonishment. I hadn’t told anyone about my dreams, or the fact that Nick had informed me that FLDS attorneys had just recently discovered I had gone into the temple. I remembered in 1999 when my sister-wives and I were directed to pray against Jason Williams, a former member who had the guts to sue the FLDS for custody of his own children. We were actually ordered to pray for his death. Could negative feelings have that much power? Whatever the case, Patrice’s work eased the pain until I went into surgery in March 2009. The procedure was easier than the doctor thought it would be, but he was clearly perplexed by the large, pus-filled growth he extracted.

  That April, I received a warning from Brooks that on the one-year anniversary of the investigation, Willie Jessop had passed around a commercial bottle he had designed that looked like the most recognizable brand of ranch dressing. Only it was labeled, “Happy Valley, the Original Compound. YFZ Anniversary Edition.”

  The label on the back of the bottle read:

  Special Cure-All for the following: Cyanide Poisoning, Broken Bones, Tempers, CPS Brutality, Texas Ranger BS, Underage Marriage, CASA Nausea, Bus Ride Sickness, Mean People, Grumpy Men. Use extra portions when dealing with the following: Doran, Long, Voss, Gutierrez & Malonis. Goes well with YFZ cheese and Grandma Gloria’s Fresh Vegetables. TEXAS ATTORNEY GENERAL’S WARNING: Looks like Ranch, Tastes like Ranch, Smells Like Ranch, Feels like Ranch, but it’s really “Compound.” Happy Valley becomes toxic when mixed with the following: Diversity Foundation, Dan Fischer, Flora Jessop, Becky Musser, Sam Brower, Carolyn Jessop, Rozita Swinton, Randy & Kathy Mankin.

  The last line was a little disconcerting:

  If remedy fails, don’t forget the “Cult 45” option.

  It was sobering to receive word from some visitors to Short Creek sometime later that Willie Jessop had his ranch bottle proudly displayed on a shelf in his large conference room in Hildale, which he called “the War Room.” And on the same shelf sat two large three-ring binders whose spines were labeled REBECCA MUSSER.

  That spring, I found I could no longer stomach Ben’s cruelty and constant, degrading comments. I recognized it was unhealthy for our children to be around, too, so the three of us separated from Ben and went to Salt Lake City, not knowing if we would ever return. While I was grateful for the hospitality of my siblings and friends, I felt vulnerable and afraid for my children and our future. We no longer had a home to call our own.

  The next several months were an emotional roller coaster, as Ben begged us to come back. We returned to Idaho for a short while, but Ben and I couldn’t make it work despite how badly we both wanted to stay married and how much we loved each other.

  Things came to a head in July 2009, when we got a visitor from Texas: Eric Nichols, the special prosecutor for the FLDS cases, who’d asked to come all the way to our home to meet with Ben and me.

  At first, Ben was resistant, saying, “Why don’t you just tell him to go to hell?” Eventually he relented, even taking the kids for a drive so I could concentrate. Eric, full of energy and intellect, used our small kitchen table as a desk as he peppered me with questions and took careful notes. Then he laid out the reason for his visit. The prosecution team had collected sufficient evidence for all twelve indictments, but he said Texas sorely needed my help—again. Would I do it?

  He pulled out a sheet of paper with names and trial dates and slid it across the table to me.

  “Raymond Merrill Jessop, Allan Eugene Keate, Michael George Emack, Merrill Leroy Jessop…”

  With each name, memories washed over me. These had been my Priesthood and community leaders, classmates, students. I knew every single one of these men personally.

  “… Lehi Barlow Jeffs, Abram Harker Jeffs, Keith William Dutson Jr., LeRoy Johnson Steed…”

  And I was related to most of them.

  “… Frederick Merrill Jessop, Wendell Loy Nielsen, and Warren Steed Jeffs.”

  The time had come. I was being asked to testify not only against Warren but against several more of my own people.

  Isn’t there some other person who could do this? I thought of Ben and how we had barely survived my last trip. Maybe I could come to every other trial?

  “Becky, it is critically important that we have you in the courtroom to authenticate evidence. Since Warren
and their families will never allow the girls to testify against their own husbands, these will be ‘paper cases.’ They are much more tenuous. In order for this to stick, in order for the FLDS and others to get the message, in order for Warren to be stopped, we need you.”

  I knew the truth of his words… and I knew my answer. It was yes.

  After Eric left, Ben confronted me. “Why would you do that, Beck? Is it the fame? It certainly isn’t the fortune!”

  “No,” I said quietly.

  Finally, my husband dropped his voice.

  “Why then?” he asked, his voice full of anguish. “Why do this?”

  “Ben,” I said softly, “you have never been that young girl violated in the name of God.”

  The end of summer marked the very end of my marriage. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t laugh, either. I was numb. On Kyle’s and my birthday, Ben had left to go camping with friends, shouting, “I’m done!” and slamming the door. Early in September, while I was visiting a friend, he locked me out of my own house, moved all of the money from our bank accounts, and cut off our credit cards. Except for a tiny sliver of income I had coming in from real estate deals I had previously closed, I was penniless. He didn’t prohibit the kids from seeing me, but he didn’t make it easy, either.

  Eric Nichols asked me to fly to Austin to help prepare evidence for the first trial. I told him that given the short notice they would need to cover the airfare in advance. I arrived in Austin, Texas, with less than $40 in my checking account. We worked long hours, so food was sometimes brought in for the whole team, but when others in my crew from DPS went out for lunch or dinner, I’d make an excuse to go to my hotel room and slip out to a 7-Eleven for crackers. Though I knew I would eventually be reimbursed by the state of Texas, I had no funds to pay in the first place.

  I refused to let anyone know that my personal life was crumbling, motivated in part by pride, but also by reality. These officers and attorneys had enough to handle, and they had suffered from countless hours away from their spouses and children, too.

  “I’ve spent so much time away from home, my little boy asked me how many wives I have in Eldorado!” chuckled Wes Hensley, the co–case agent from the attorney general’s office. Wes’s contagious sense of humor lightened my mood considerably.

  It was especially fun to see Wes and Nick interact. Though from different state offices and different regions, the co–case agents connected like brothers.

  “How is it you guys get along so well?” I asked.

  “Even though Nick’s the guy the lady reporters always want to talk to,” Wes said, grinning, “when it comes to our work, it’s a God-thang!” I giggled. Serendipitous happenings in Texas were always labeled a “God-thang.” And while it was hard not to notice Nick Hanna’s fan club, I witnessed both men’s fierce devotion to their wives.

  “I think it’s because we’re both daddies of little girls and boys,” said Nick, “we feel the same sense of personal responsibility to these FLDS kids. I’m sure God orchestrated us being on the same team.”

  Security in the attorney general’s office was tight. I had to be issued a badge before I was led to copies of evidence regarding the twelve men the press had dubbed “the Dirty Dozen.” I would have been offended at the term, had I not already been privy to some pretty filthy evidence.

  Wes brought me to greet Angela Goodwin, the other main prosecutor working with Eric Nichols, and together we went to the evidence room, where the copies of evidence from San Angelo were being stored. The team immediately began working on evidence for the first case, Texas v. Raymond Merrill Jessop. There was a laptop, FLDS texts, and a Book of Mormon. My job was to provide the critical continuity to their case and to present the information in lay terms the jury and judge could understand.

  I left that night with a stack of copied CDs—audio that Warren had recorded from his revelations and activities. I was to flag anything that needed special attention. For security, Wes walked me to my hotel lobby and saw me into the elevator. It wasn’t until I clicked the latch on the door of my room that I collapsed against it. The weight and reality of what I had to do was crushing, and there was no one to talk to about it.

  I couldn’t eat, so I pulled out a yellow legal pad and slipped the CD into the laptop. It was eerily familiar to be writing notes on Warren’s sermons again. After I gulped back an intense wave of nausea, I started to transcribe. I went into a bit of a hypnotic or dissociated mode until something Warren said set off an alarm in my head. I looked down at my notes, in the FLDS shorthand of abbreviations only the FLDS would know so well, and became livid as I realized that this recording was another “teaching of the ladies.” It had to do with being “comfort” wives.

  Warren reported that he was suffering in the night with visions from God that would wrack his body with pain. His only solace was the “comfort” of his wives, often more than one of them at the same time. I was horrified. This was a definite aberration, not something that was ever deemed appropriate among the FLDS! He expanded further about a “man’s needs,” and how it was the duty of the wife to pleasure him, always, on demand and without question.

  The paradox astounded me: first, he shamed women for desiring sexual relations. Yet, in the next breath, he shamed those who did not desire him, saying that by not being “close” to him, they were cutting themselves off from the presence of Heavenly Father. Those were not light words. They meant eternal death.

  The next recording was from a time when Warren and Naomi were on the run but had secretly visited Short Creek to perform more weddings. Photos in evidence showed Naomi’s hair cut and worldly in style. She had been wearing clothing and makeup like mainstream women to avoid bringing attention to Warren.

  “Look what you have done to her!” Warren scolded his wives in Short Creek. There were gasps and cries of heartbreak. “You have not been faithful enough, not pure enough,” he cried, “to stop the pursuit of law enforcement.” He claimed it was their lack of faith that caused him and Naomi to suffer so greatly.

  “You asshole!” I declared to the empty room. This was the same man who had reported in a revelation, “The Lord has told me I need to do some more suntanning today.” His wives, who did not know better, were taking on all the guilt and shame that Warren was doling out.

  All night my dreams were haunted by their suffering. I would sleep for an hour or two before I awoke sobbing, having dreamed I was in Short Creek among Warren’s wives. I pulled myself together the next morning and met with the team. They could tell I’d had a bad night, but they didn’t say anything. Brooks Long had joined us to go through more evidence. Our team was alone in the secure room when he and Nick mentioned a recording they had found in Warren’s car. Warren had begun alluding to “quorums,” but they sounded unlike any of the quorums or groups of anointed men talked about in the early days of the church—instead, they were all about women. But since Warren did not treat women with respect or grant them any authority, what were these quorums about?

  “Becky, he talks about ‘Heavenly sessions,’ but it sounds an awful lot like S-E-X to me.”

  I took a deep breath. Everything that I’d been listening to either covertly or overtly pointed to exactly that—an obsession with sex.

  That week I got to know Angela, the efficient attorney with beautiful, sharp eyes behind her glasses, and a dazzlingly organized mind. She was kind to me and conscious of my time away from my kids. I shared with her my anxiety about Natalia’s next upcoming surgery, which was scheduled for right after I arrived back in Salt Lake City. It had to be timed perfectly so I could share her recovery period with her just after the first trial.

  Toward the end of the second day, Angela said, “I need you to listen to something.” Her eyes were serious. “We’ve got it down, but we would love you to have a stab at transcribing it because Warren’s vowels are not always easily distinguishable. You know his voice better than anyone else here. I need to know if it says what we think it says…”


  She handed me a headset and a copy of their attempt at a transcription. My hands trembled slightly, and I hoped she wouldn’t notice. Then she handed me a box of tissues saying, “You might need this.”

  Oh, God.

  I pulled out a new pad of paper from a stack and grabbed my pen. Angela put her own headphones on. My heart pounding, I turned on the recording.

  Twenty minutes later, Angela gently touched me on the shoulder to indicate that the recording was through. I glanced down at my paper, which was completely wet with tears. At some point, I must have stopped recording notes, lost in the gruesome scene that I was hearing. I felt ashamed until I saw that she had tears streaming down her cheeks, too. I could hold it in no longer. Great, silent sobs shook from somewhere deep within me, while Angela put her arms around me and held me until it all came out.

  The audio was a recording of Warren molesting his young wife Merrianne Jessop Jeffs, who had just turned twelve, in the YFZ temple, in front of witnesses. I would have been sickened at any recording of molestation, but I knew several of the people involved, and I was revolted at how Warren invoked the name of God to perpetuate this abuse. There were women I knew—had looked up to, learned from, and listened to—who were participating, and Naomi was front and center. I had to steel myself to listen to the recording a second time for content and accuracy.

  The official transcript was heartbreakingly accurate:

  “Always praise Him,” Warren begins. “ ‘That feels good’… now repeat the words from your mouth,” he orders. “How do you feel, Merrianne?”

  “Feels good?” the soft voice of a child responds.

  There was rhythmic heavy breathing in the foreground. Warren instructs Merrianne on what to do while he orders the women around the bed to alternately come forward or back away. All the while, Warren’s breathing is heavy and impassioned.