Prophet's Prey

by Sam Brower

  At the end of March 2004, activist and child abuse opponent Flora Jessop telephoned Eldorado Success editor Randy Mankin and asked, “Hey, do you know about that place being built in your area?” The editor replied that he did, and asked what she had heard. The conversation ended with Flora announcing that she was coming down to Texas to hold a news conference and reveal that Warren Jeffs and his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints were going to be the new occupants on that spread outside of town, the area’s biggest construction project. Mankin ran a front-page story headlined, COMMUNITY SEEKS ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS ABOUT NEW NEIGHBORS.

  Nevertheless, David Allred, the official purchaser of the ranch property, stuck with the lie. He met with Sheriff Doran and a new face in the game, Texas Ranger Brooks Long, in the middle of April to assure them that it was indeed a corporate hunting retreat. But the busy editor Mankin tracked down longtime FLDS lawyer Rod Parker, who admitted that the compound was “connected” to the religion. As the story spread, the national media swarmed into tiny Eldorado.

  That spurred government agencies to demand inspections on what was obviously developing into a huge project. Warren thought it was outrageous that others might consider the impact beyond the fence lines, because he had set a deadline of June 27 for completion of a new building that would become an interim meeting house. He believed that once the FLDS was forced to get official permission for everything, the timetable would be out of God’s hands. Still, a host of issues needed to be addressed, from tax assessment to the sewer system and a planned cement batch plant, and despite the lack of building codes, Texas is very picky about the possibility of sewage or chemical contaminants polluting the water table and spreading downstream. Sheriff Doran, Ranger Long, deputies, tax assessors, environmental protection agents, and other public officials were calling for a visit. Warren blamed his flock for the situation, complaining, “We don’t even have the faith to keep them away.”

  Finally, a party of government officials arrived and were allowed to see the orchard and the wheat field and the garden, the well, and trailer homes—everything but people. The sheriff asked where everyone was and was told that not many were around that day. Actually, dozens of Warren’s children and wives were on site at the time, separated and hiding in upstairs rooms under firm orders to stay quiet.

  While traveling between Colorado and Texas on Saturday, April 24, the prophet was given an update on the government visit, and he recognized that the ruse was over. There was no way to hide the obvious any longer. He hotly instructed his front men to lay it out and let the Texans know “we are there to stay.”

  Four days later, Allred met with Sheriff Doran and Justice of the Peace Doyle and admitted that the hunting lodge story had been false from the start. It had been needed, he said, to avoid media attention. The compound would only have about two hundred residents, he promised. That was a lie, too.

  CHAPTER 20

  On the Run

  Warren Jeffs’s paranoia spiked sharply after the discovery of his hoax in Texas, and it wound him even tighter. He was convinced that hired assassins were out to kill him.

  The pressure was relentless. Things had not gone well with building the refuges during the severe bad weather in the winter of 2004, as ice and snow and hard winds delayed both work and travel. It had cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a month to maintain the workers and their families. Legal bills in excess of $100,000 had been incurred on matters ranging from property issues to court hearings to setting up holding companies. The prophet was feeling a financial pinch, with a lot more work yet to be done. Although some of his closest allies already carried debts of several hundred thousand dollars, Jeffs instructed every adult male FLDS member to cough up a “consecration”—donation—of one thousand dollars per month, a staggering sum for people who had little money. He also ordered each family to halt construction on their own homes and give the church any future funds they would otherwise spend on their own place. All of that came on top of the minimum 10 percent of each member’s gross income that they were expected to hand over as a tithe each month. Also, Warren had banned Sunday meetings because the people were too slothful and no longer deserved the blessings of the sacrament, and there were not going to be any more Saturday work projects on individual homes, so the people were ordered to work weekends and take those extra earnings and consecrate them to the church as well. This produced an immediate improvement in the cash flow, but soon he also would be trying to sell off hundreds of acres of FLDS-owned lands elsewhere and shuffling those funds into paying the bills for his refuges.

  Worse, to him, was that everything and everyone was falling short of the Lord’s schedule. He became even more demanding, ordering the builders at all of the refuge sites to “work twenty hours a day, and pray for the strength to work twenty-four.” Men and women should not mingle. All of them were placed under divine condemnation for their laziness and lack of faith. He carefully chose who was good enough to work on the projects, picking from among the best-qualified in Short Creek. Not everyone was going to make it to Zion, and he moaned that the cut would be deep.

  Even the children in Texas were not measuring up to his standards. “We have brought Babylon here in the form of toys, selfish toys, where children … they live to please themselves. The dolls, the trucks … all these are idols,” he said. Every family had to search out all toys, then either discard or burn them. “Instead of a doll, a child can learn how to hold a real baby,” he concluded.

  Warren had what he considered an important dream on a Sunday morning in April 2004. He saw a navy admiral tempting his people with trinkets and dolls and goods from all over the world. His “ladies” decorated themselves, and tried to lure him into socializing. In his dream, Warren just wanted to leave that dreadful place.

  “All I could find was a little scooter, a little motorcycle. I got on it and started driving away,” the Record states. But he was stopped in his dream by a policewoman “over the simple excuse that I didn’t have a taillight on my motorcycle, my little scooter.” Warren read the episode as heavenly guidance to make certain that all vehicles were in perfect order so he would not be stopped for some minor infraction.

  After that, he tightened his road security, traveling with a lead car a mile ahead of him, and often with a trail car, the vehicles staying in contact by radio. They did not exceed the speed limit. The goal was to not be stopped, but if they were, the drivers could not identify themselves as being a “Jeffs” or an “Allred.” The little things could be dangerous.

  His entourage of Naomi, the drivers, and the bodyguards would therefore wear “disguises” of normal gentile clothing, which would allow them to “mix among the people of the world” when they traveled. Naomi still wore a prairie dress over her jeans if they were in an FLDS community or refuge, but she took it off once they were on the road. If other wives came on a trip, they also would be disguised.

  Having established these rules of the road, Warren Jeffs plunged even deeper into hiding.

  As the summer of 2004 arrived, the prophet decided to have a reunion with forty of his wives who still remained in Short Creek and all of their children. Since the Lord had told him that the “dying community” was no longer safe for him to visit for any length of time, he arranged a rendezvous in a secluded campground of the Kaibab National Forest, on the edge of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. The geography made secrecy easy, but the family gathering backfired.

  Individual wives and kids who had not seen their husband and father for so long competed for the opportunity to get some personal time with him, to go for private walks in the pine forests and confide their feelings to him. It made Warren uncomfortable. According to his dictations the hugs and kisses and private notes and photographs were somehow distasteful, and his approval went out only to a few who stayed apart, praying in heavenly light, instead of pestering him with selfish desires. When the outdoor get-together was finished, he fell into a dour mood. He felt few
in his family were “prepared.”

  Afterward, it was back to the despair of Short Creek for the family members. For Warren, it was time for another road trip.

  He was off on a warm-weather journey back to Jackson County, Missouri, to once again visit the early Mormon sites, this time without being hampered by snow and freezing temperatures. He considered the area to be not only a sacred site, but one that had been promised to him by God; he prophesied that after God’s judgments devoured the land and the wicked, the righteous FLDS members who remained would resettle there to construct his ultimate project, the final temple.

  The ranch that was blooming in Texas was merely a step toward that dream, an interim place where his people could learn to build a proper temple. Its official name would reflect that unfinished step, and it became the Yearning for Zion Ranch.

  One of the sites Jeffs visited on his trip was the domed state capitol building in Jefferson City, where he strolled through the office of the governor and both chambers of the general assembly. As he gazed at the statues of Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, and William Clark, he could not contain his inner fury at such brazen “idols.” He found an unoccupied room, went in, and performed a ritualistic curse he termed “kicking the dust” from his feet, calling for the lawmakers and all of the citizens of Missouri to be swept from the face of the earth. His new Zion would need the space.

  Waco was on everybody’s mind when I made my initial visit to Texas in September. In that infamous 1993 bloody standoff between the federal government and the Branch Davidian religious cult, fifty-four adults and twenty-one children had died. Waco was only a two-hour drive to the east from Eldorado, and the shadow of Branch Davidian’s maniacal prophet, David Koresh, easily stretched to the YFZ Ranch, where another prophet was gathering a fervent band of followers of his own.

  I had been monitoring and trying to make sense of Warren’s hideout scheme, and the rumor was that he was in Texas, so after the Brent Jeffs rape case was filed on August 5, I decided to see for myself. I flew into nearby San Angelo on September 4, got a hotel room, then drove directly over to Eldorado and started digging for information and meeting people who I hoped would be beneficial to our cases in the months to come.

  My first stop was the office of the Eldorado Success newspaper, where I found editor Randy Mankin eager to share information. We enjoyed a steak dinner, then got into his truck and drove out to the site. Night had fallen, a wide canopied western blackness, but a bubble of distant lights marked the ranch. They were working around the clock. Randy pulled up beside the wire fence that surrounded the property, and I got out. Although the work was too far off the road to be seen, I could feel the ground quaking from the movement of heavy equipment at the site. “It’s like this every night,” Mankin said. “The only way to really see the place is to fly over it.”

  The following morning, I contacted Sheriff David Doran and told him that I had papers to serve on Warren Jeffs. I found him to be someone who liked to stay on top of what was going on in his county, and if someone new rolled into town, he would want to know about it. He agreed to help, and we drove back out to the ranch in his truck. There was not much more to see in the daylight than there had been at night. Everything was far away, but I could still hear construction going on. Doran dialed a number and soon the new head man at the ranch, Bishop Merril Jessop, came out to the old cattle fence beside the road. He was buttoned up and wore an old-fashioned brown straw hat.

  I stayed in the truck and let Doran talk to him first. The sheriff had been working hard to establish a cordial relationship with the secretive religious group that had turned up on his doorstep, and he felt it important to try and keep the lines of communication open as much as possible. He had visited Short Creek back in May and had come away with the clear understanding the FLDS was not going to compromise, and Doran was still trying to figure out what kind of trouble that might cause. The sheriff had no proof of any wrongdoing at the ranch.

  Finally, Doran called me over. We went through the subpoena delivery routine that had become so familiar to me by now. I asked if Warren was there. Jessop lied, saying no, Warren wasn’t there and hadn’t been seen or heard from for months. Then I handed him the papers, and the bishop said he could not take them. The sheriff interjected that under Texas law, he had to accept service. Jessop reluctantly did so, insisting that he wouldn’t be seeing Warren Jeffs any time soon, so that it would be impossible to get the papers to him. Still, it was an important first step. It was necessary to show that all reasonable attempts had been made to serve Jeffs so that the court could proceed with the lawsuit, with or without the prophet’s cooperation. Those papers gave Warren Jeffs only twenty days to answer them.

  I still had not seen beyond the wire fence, so my next contact was with Justice of the Peace Jimmy Doyle, who regularly flew over the ranch. He invited me up in his four-seat airplane. The ranch was landlocked, and it was outlined by a five-foot-high wire field fence. I readied my camera as we approached, and the actual construction site came into view; it was a lot larger than I had expected, although still unfinished and with plenty of room to expand. A tiny guard shack was at the bend in the road leading to the main entrance, and beyond it, a network of good roads snaked out to various parts of the property. The biggest operation was a cement plant, with a silo sticking up like a rocket from the flatland, and atop it sat a doghouse-like guard post. As I flew over taking photos of their security setup, I peered through the camera at some guy perched on the landing of the silo staring back at me through a pair of binoculars. Some large living quarters were well under way, and some industrial-style buildings were complete. Work had also begun on a large meeting house on the center of the property. Doyle pointed out one construction site as a commissary, which I knew would be the bishop’s storehouse. There was no sign of any temple. The only greenery was the heat-loving mesquite and scrub brush, and much of that was being cleared for future building sites.

  Machinery and building materials were down there, but where were the people? I would learn later that at the first sound of an aircraft, they would scatter inside or hide under the porch overhangs on the houses.

  That evening, I went back out to the compound on my own. I had seen some wires leading from the exterior fence and wanted to determine if they had installed cameras for extra security—and if so, were they to keep people out or to keep people in? When darkness fell, I shined the infrared light from my own camera on the wires and followed them to the power source, a car battery. As far as I could tell, the FLDS had cameras watching every foot of their ranch. Perhaps they were able to see me, but there was no reaction.

  On the way back to Utah, I mulled over what I had found out. A large and isolated hideout, tight security, dodging the law—it all brought to mind what other fanatics like Jim Jones and David Koresh had done. In fact, Warren Jeffs had more followers and more money than either Jones or Koresh. His followers did not cling to him just because of personal charisma; they had been born and bred into the FLDS and had little understanding of the outside world. They would do whatever was required to defend their God, his prophet Warren, and their way of life. I feared things were headed in a bad direction.

  Just after I got back from Texas, the Chatwin family feud erupted again. Ross Chatwin had grown weary of his brother Steven living upstairs and had asked my advice on how to get rid of his unwanted tenant and relative, who had been installed in his home by the FLDS. There was no question that the house was Ross’s; the “life estate” decision specified the entire house belonged to him for his lifetime. But the prophet remained angry about it and had been hounding the United Effort Plan lawyers to find a loophole.

  In desperation, the UEP flipped the “unjust enrichment” argument that had given Ross the victory, and now claimed that Ross could not take possession of the second floor without first paying Steven some $23,000 for improvements that Steven had made on the small and blocky blue-gray house. The claim was bogus. It was the church’s wo
rk crew, and not Steven, who had made those unwanted, unauthorized, and illegal changes, and they had been made under protest of the home’s true legal occupant.

  Instead of obeying the law, the FLDS had relaunched the matter as a new civil case. It had become rather silly. The original tenant of the UEP-owned property, the Chatwins’ mutual brother David, had gone away and was now following Winston Blackmore in Canada, a situation that further fueled Warren’s ire. Any friend of Winston’s would be considered an enemy by Warren. I advised Ross to talk to a lawyer before doing anything, and a strategy was put together in which Ross posted eviction notices on the upstairs door for several weeks. Those warnings were ignored and torn down.

  So on September 7, when Steven left the house, Ross slithered through an upstairs window and changed the locks. Steven, unable to open the doors, called the Short Creek police, and officers Helaman Barlow and Fred Barlow showed up asking to see the court documents. Having already been through a similar exercise back when Chief Sam Roundy had simply ignored the documents, Ross demanded that his attorney be present before handing anything over. When he refused to change back the locks, the officers charged him with criminal trespass, cuffed him, and hauled him to jail. Steven Chatwin then climbed through the same window that Ross had used and reinstalled the old locks.

  Lori Chatwin had recorded the entire episode on a video camera, and she called me while I was in the middle of a dinner meeting at the home of attorney Pat Shea in Salt Lake City. I could not break away, but I told her the audacious arrest would not stand. The following day, Mohave County authorities read the life estate ruling of Judge Chavez and dismissed the criminal charge. Ross was once again a free man.