Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Warren Jeffs has led the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as its president since 2002, and he now sits in a Texas prison. The church, usually shortened to FLDS, is a Mormon fundamentalist group whose members practice polygamy. Outsiders have variously called it a cult, a sect or a new religious movement.
For years its center of gravity was a pair of border towns, Colorado City in Arizona and Hildale in Utah, where the church was once headquartered. Members also live elsewhere in the Western United States, Mexico and Canada. The wider country barely noticed them until a high-profile law enforcement raid on a 1,700-acre complex near Eldorado, Texas, which the church once owned.
How did a community that claims a prophecy from Brigham Young end up under investigation in several states? What do its members believe, and who gets to decide? And what becomes of a church whose prophet leads from a prison cell?
Brigham Young, then president of the mainstream Latter-day Saints church, supposedly stood in the Short Creek community and made a prediction. According to the FLDS, he said: "This will someday be the head and not the tail of the church. This will be the granaries of the Saints. This land will produce in abundance sufficient wheat to feed the people." The FLDS traces its claim to spiritual authority to those words.
In 1904 the LDS Church issued the Second Manifesto, which renounced polygamy. It eventually excommunicated Mormons who kept solemnizing or entering new plural marriages. Short Creek, then in the Arizona Territory, soon became a gathering place for those expelled men and women.
A statement published in 1912 by Lorin C. Woolley shaped what they believed. Woolley described a divine revelation supposedly given in 1886 to John Taylor, then LDS Church president. Short Creek residents held that it outranked the 1890 Manifesto, which had banned new plural marriages among LDS members. They also held that Wilford Woodruff, by issuing that Manifesto, sold his right to the Priesthood. Under the One Man doctrine, the rightful successor was therefore Lorin's father, John W. Woolley.
Some locally prominent men, including Lorin Woolley and John Y. Barlow, formed the Council of Friends after their excommunications. It consisted of seven high priests, described as the governing priesthood body on Earth. In 1935 the LDS Church excommunicated Short Creek's Mormon residents who refused to sign an oath renouncing polygamy. Barlow led those who stayed committed to plural marriage. Fundamentalists who did not follow him split away, and by 1954 several separate groups existed outside Short Creek. They included the Apostolic United Brethren and the Kingston group, which grew through Joseph White Musser.
On the morning of the 26th of July 1953, 102 Arizona state police officers and National Guard soldiers raided Short Creek. They arrested the entire population, including 236 children. Of those children, 150 were kept from their parents for more than two years, and some parents never regained custody. It was the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history, and the press covered it heavily. Polygamists stayed on afterward, and the town was later renamed Colorado City.
One man holds all the Priesthood keys, and God works only through him. That is the heart of the FLDS teaching called One Man Rule. In practice, the president cannot sit on the Priesthood Council. When Rulon Jeffs died, the rule at first blocked his son Warren from taking over, and the post stood vacant. Members believed Rulon could still hand over his priesthood keys in the days after death, through a physically renewed body.
A minimum of three wives is what the church teaches a man needs for the highest form of salvation. Wives are expected to be subordinate to their husbands. Under placement marriage, also called the law of placing, the prophet can take wives from men and give wives to men according to their worthiness. The numbers show the scale. Rulon Jeffs was confirmed to have married 46 women and fathered more than 60 children. In 2018 it was estimated that Warren Jeffs might have at least 79 wives.
The Colorado City and Hildale area has the highest incidence in the world of fumarase deficiency, an extremely rare genetic disease. Geneticists attribute this to marriages between cousins who descend from two of the towns' founders, Joseph Smith Jessop and John Yeates Barlow. The disease causes severe intellectual disability, brain malformation and epileptic seizures.
In its Spring 2005 Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center added the FLDS to its list of hate groups. It cited the church's fierce condemnation of interracial relationships. Jeffs has said: "the black race is the people through which the devil has always been able to bring evil unto the earth." Church teaching ties this to the story of Cain, holding that his descendants carry a curse and are barred from the Priesthood.
Former member Robert Richter told the Phoenix New Times that Jeffs has repeatedly alluded in sermons to blood atonement. This nineteenth-century teaching holds that certain grave sins, such as murder, can only be atoned for by the sinner's death.
Dress follows strict rules. Tattoos and body piercings are forbidden for everyone. Women generally do not cut their hair short or wear makeup, trousers or skirts above the knee. Men wear plain clothing, usually long-sleeved collared shirts and full-length trousers. Women and girls usually wear pastel, homemade, long-sleeved prairie dresses with hems between ankle and mid-calf, over long stockings or trousers.
The mainstream Latter-day Saints church wants no part of any of it. It says the polygamist groups of the Western United States and Canada have no affiliation whatsoever with it. It also objects to the word Mormon being applied to FLDS adherents, and it discourages its own members from using that label for themselves.
In 1942 the church established the United Effort Plan, known as the UEP, as a subsidiary organization. It came to own the land and houses the FLDS once occupied on the Utah-Arizona border, along with most of the property of businesses run by members there. The church saw this "United Order" as a way of living the traditional Latter Day Saint "Law of Consecration." In 2005 the state of Utah seized the UEP after a lawsuit by the Attorney General, when it was worth $100 million. State control ended in 2019. The trust was reformed into a "religiously neutral" entity that benefits the original donors and their heirs, including people who had left the FLDS.
By 2003, more than $6 million in public funds was being channeled into Colorado City. Church leaders had encouraged members to use welfare and the WIC program for women, infants and children. Government recognizes only one legal wife per man, so his other wives count as single mothers and qualify for aid. Author Jon Krakauer writes in Under the Banner of Heaven that fundamentalists call defrauding the government "bleeding the beast" and regard it as a virtuous act.
On the 20th of April 2015, the US Department of Labor assessed fines totaling $1.96 million against a group of FLDS members. They included Lyle Jeffs, a brother of Warren. The alleged child labor violations took place during the 2012 pecan harvest at an orchard near Hurricane, Utah. Hundreds of children were put to work under orders from church leaders. In April 2017, Paragon Contractors, a company with ties to the church, and Brian Jessop agreed to pay $200,000 in federal fines over the following year. That settlement came hours before the company faced a possible contempt of court citation.
On the 6th of April 2010, Arizona officials executed search warrants at the government offices of Colorado City and Hildale. One report said the warrants involved misuse of funds and shut down the Hildale Public Safety Department. Investigators sought records of personal charges on a Colorado City Fire Department credit card. Fire Chief Jake Barlow said no such charges existed. Bank records obtained by subpoena showed questionable purchases by Barlow and a man named Darger, including diapers, children's clothing and food.
In June 2014, the Arizona Attorney General's office asked a US District Court to disband the Colorado City and Hildale Marshal's Office and appoint a federal monitor over municipal services. Its argument was that the department had operated for decades as "the de facto law enforcement arm of the FLDS Church."
In November 2003, church member David Allred bought the 1,371-acre Isaacs Ranch for YFZ Land LLC. It lay four miles northeast of Eldorado, Texas, and Allred described it as a hunting retreat. Within the sect it became known as Yearning For Zion Ranch, or the YFZ Ranch.
Allred sent 30 to 40 construction workers from Colorado City and Hildale to the property. Soon it held three three-story houses of 8,000 to 10,000 square feet each, a concrete plant and a plowed field.
On the 4th of March 2004, FLDS critic Flora Jessop appeared on the ABC program Primetime Live. Concerned Eldorado residents saw her and contacted her. She investigated, and on the 25th of March 2004 she held a press conference in Eldorado confirming that the new neighbors belonged to the FLDS. On the 18th of May 2004, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and his Chief Deputy visited Colorado City. The church then officially acknowledged the property as a new base.
News reports said the church had built a temple there. Aerial photographs showed a large stone structure, about 88 feet wide, in a state of relative completion. The local Eldorado Success reported that Warren Jeffs dedicated the temple foundation on the 1st of January 2005.
Between the 3rd and the 10th of April 2008, Texas Child Protective Services removed 439 children under 18 from the ranch. A call from an alleged teenage victim of physical and sexual abuse had prompted officers to enter with search and arrest warrants and protective court orders. Texas Rangers took part. The events drew intense press coverage across the United States, especially in the Southwest, and international attention.
On the 18th of April 2008, after a two-day hearing, Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st Judicial District Court ordered all the children to stay in temporary state custody. The 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin reversed her, ruling that removing every child was not justified. The Texas Supreme Court declined to overturn that ruling in a written opinion issued on the 29th of May 2008.
The abuse hotline calls are now believed to have come from Rozita Swinton, a woman outside the FLDS with no known connection to the Texas community. Even so, a court held that the search warrants were legally issued and executed. It also ruled that the seized evidence could not be excluded just because the first call may have been a hoax.
In November 2008-12 FLDS men were charged over alleged underage marriages since the ranch was built. By June 2010, six had been convicted of felonies, with sentences ranging from seven to 75 years. Allan Keate received 33 years in December 2009, and his conviction was later upheld on appeal. On the 17th of March 2010, a Tom Green County jury took one hour to find Merril Leroy Jessop, 35, guilty of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. He received 75 years and a $10,000 fine.
In November 2012, the Texas Attorney General's Office began proceedings to seize the ranch. It argued that the property had served as a rural place where systemic sexual assault of children would be tolerated without interference. Texas officials took physical possession of it on the 17th of April 2014.
In 2003, Rodney Holm, a police officer and church member, was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old and of one count of bigamy. The bigamy charge came from his marriage to, and impregnation of, plural wife Ruth Stubbs. It was the first legal action against an FLDS member since the Short Creek raid half a century earlier.
On the 10th of January 2004, Dan Barlow, the mayor of Colorado City, and about 20 other men were excommunicated. They were stripped of their wives and children, who would be reassigned to other men, and expelled from town. The same day, two teenage girls reportedly fled with help from Flora Jessop. Arizona child protective services placed them in a foster home. They fled again when a judge barred them from contact with Jessop and their new address was given to their parents.
In July 2005, eight men of the church were indicted for sexual contact with minors. All turned themselves in to police in Kingman, Arizona, within days. On the 29th of July 2005, Brent W. Jeffs sued, accusing three of his uncles, including Warren Jeffs, of sexually assaulting him as a child. The suit named the church as a defendant too.
On the 10th of August 2005, former member Shem Fischer added the church and Warren Jeffs to a 2002 lawsuit. He claimed he was illegally fired because he no longer held the faith. A district court found that he had quit, but the ruling was overturned in part. He had been discriminated against on the basis of religion when he reapplied and was refused work for leaving the church. The parties settled for an agreed payment of damages.
On the 7th of May 2006, the FBI placed Warren Jeffs on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list, on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. A routine traffic stop on Interstate 15, just north of Las Vegas, ended his flight on the 28th of August 2006. In between, on the 26th of May 2006, Colorado City mayor Terrill C. Johnson was arrested on eight fraudulent vehicle registration charges. He was released from Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah, after paying $5,000 bail in cash.
On the 25th of September 2007, a jury in St. George, Utah, found Jeffs guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. He was sentenced to ten years to life. That conviction was later overturned. He was then convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault, and was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years and fined $10,000.
John Y. Barlow claimed to lead both the temporal affairs and the Priesthood of Short Creek, using the United Effort Plan. By 1984, some residents rejected that One Man authority. They moved south of Colorado City to Centennial Park, Arizona, and called themselves "The Work of Jesus Christ," or "Second Ward."
Leroy S. Johnson succeeded Barlow, and the stress on One Man Rule grew stronger. Rulon Jeffs came next. In 1984 he incorporated Short Creek as the FLDS, reorganizing it as an Episcopal polity that reflected the One Man authority.
When Rulon Jeffs died, no clear successor existed, and Warren Jeffs took over. Winston Blackmore, who had served in Canada as the FLDS Bishop of Bountiful, was excommunicated by Jeffs in an apparent power struggle. In Bountiful, British Columbia, an estimated 700 members left to follow Blackmore.
On the 20th of November 2007, after Jeffs's conviction, his attorneys released a statement saying he had resigned as president of the church's corporation. It did not address his role as prophet. For the next several years, who truly led the church was unclear. A Salt Lake Tribune transcript of a telephone call suggests Jeffs named William E. Jessop, a former first counselor, as successor. The same transcript suggests he told Jessop on the 24th of January 2007 that he had never been the rightful leader. Press accounts suggested that Merril Jessop, who had led the Eldorado compound, was the de facto leader. On the 9th of January 2010, documents filed with the Utah Department of Commerce named Wendell L. Nielsen as president. That year, spokesman Willie Jessop declined to name the current prophet "out of fear there'd be retaliation by the government."
On the 28th of January 2011, Jeffs reasserted his leadership, and Nielsen was removed as legal president. Affidavits from church leaders say mass meetings of 4,000 members acclaimed Jeffs in February and April 2011. On the 10th of April 2011, a group of 2,000 male members voted unanimously to "uphold and sustain" his authority. Willie Jessop had by then broken with Jeffs and put himself forward as a challenger. He was declared an apostate and left. A 2012 CNN documentary confirmed that Jeffs still led from prison.
Jeffs also purged 45 members when he retook legal control. In 2012 he removed his brother Lyle from the posts of head and bishop. That same year Jeffs published a volume titled Jesus Christ Message to All Nations. It contained revelations, including one proclaiming his innocence and others warning specific countries around the world.
In 2019, FLDS member Samuel R. Bateman broke from Jeffs and declared himself prophet. About 50 followers recognize him. He was arrested in 2022 and charged with sexual abuse. Reports say he had 20 wives, including underage girls, and that his family said he also sought to marry his teenage daughter. Criminal charges for destroying evidence linked to a federal investigation say he sexually abused 10 underage girls he took as wives in "atonement" ceremonies.
Documents presented to the media and state prosecutors in 2022-23 indicate that Jeffs issued revelations from prison in 2022, reasserting his authority and calling members together. One document from June 2022 told fathers seeking "restoral" to reunite with their wives and children. It warned that God "cannot allow sin living to dwell" in the church any longer. Another, distributed in August, required that children be gathered back over the next five years, in preparation for the imminent end of the world.
In April 2023, a group of mothers who had left the church said that a number of children in the care of former members had gone missing since the August 2022 revelation. They were likely to have rejoined the church. In June 2023, Heber Jeffs, a nephew of Warren, was sentenced to three years' probation for custodial interference. He had helped bring about the 2022 disappearance of a former member's daughter, in line with the revelations.
By 2023, investigators said members had spread out to avoid the attention of authorities, some moving north into North Dakota. They were talking regularly with Warren Jeffs over Zoom. His son Helaman Jeffs had emerged as a figure of authority. He was to distribute the 2022 revelations and was given authority to perform polygamous marriages. Helaman uses a P.O. box in Ruso, North Dakota, close to a reported FLDS compound.
More than 400 teenage boys have been excommunicated, former members report, for offenses such as dating or listening to rock music. Some former members say the real motive is to keep enough women available for each man to marry three or more wives. The church has expelled boys as young as 15.
In July 2005, six teenaged and young adult "Lost Boys" sued the church. They said they had been cast out of their homes on the Utah-Arizona border to reduce competition for wives. Their suit stated: "They have become 'lost boys' in the world outside the FLDS community." In 2014, six men aged 18 to 22 filed a conspiracy lawsuit against Jeffs and Sam Barlow, a former Mohave County deputy sheriff and close associate of Jeffs. It described a "systematic excommunication" of young men to reduce competition for wives.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police suspects the church trafficked more than 30 underage girls from Canada to the United States between the late 1990s and 2006, to enter them into polygamous marriages. RCMP spokesman Dan Moskaluk said: "In essence, it's human trafficking in connection with illicit sexual activity." According to the Vancouver Sun, it is unclear whether Canada's anti-trafficking statute can apply to activity before 2005, since it may not apply retroactively. A three-year investigation by local authorities in British Columbia produced no charges, but it did lead to legislative change.
On the 29th of August 2018, Great Big Story posted a short documentary titled "She Escaped a Cult and Now Helps Others." It follows Briell Decker, one of Warren Jeffs's 79 former wives. With director Jena Jones, she started the Short Creek Dream Center in one of Jeffs's former homes. It offers former members counselling, meals, temporary lodging and job preparation.
Television has returned to the story repeatedly. In 2011, Escaping Evil: My Life in a Cult aired on the Crime & Investigation Network. In 2013 and 2014, TLC aired Breaking the Faith and Escaping the Prophet, both following members who left the group. On the 28th of June 2014, Lifetime premiered the movie Outlaw Prophet: Warren Jeffs, with Tony Goldwyn in the title role. Its 2013 movie Escape from Polygamy was inspired by the FLDS. In 2017, an episode of Evil Lives Here featured Wallace Jeffs, a half-brother of Warren, and his nephew Brent Jeffs. In 2022, Netflix premiered the mini-series Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, which includes audio evidence from Jeffs's trial for sexual assault of minors.
In 2026, Netflix released Trust Me: The False Prophet. It follows cult expert Christine Marie and filmmaker Tolga Katas as they go undercover to investigate Samuel Bateman. The series includes footage of Bateman and many of his wives, with the underage ones digitally anonymized.
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Common questions
What is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, is a Mormon fundamentalist group whose members practice polygamy. It has been described as a cult, a sect or a new religious movement, and its members are concentrated in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah.
Who leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?
Warren Jeffs has been president of the FLDS Church since 2002 and has led it from prison. His son Helaman Jeffs has emerged as a figure of authority, and Samuel Bateman declared himself prophet in 2019 with about 50 followers.
What happened at the FLDS YFZ Ranch raid in 2008?
Between the 3rd and the 10th of April 2008, Texas Child Protective Services removed 439 children from the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas. The 3rd Court of Appeals later ruled that removing every child was not justified, and the Texas Supreme Court declined to overturn that ruling on the 29th of May 2008.
What was the 1953 Short Creek raid on the FLDS community?
On the morning of the 26th of July 1953, 102 Arizona state police officers and National Guard soldiers raided Short Creek and arrested the entire population, including 236 children. It was the largest mass arrest of polygamists in American history.
Is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints connected to the LDS Church?
The LDS Church says polygamist groups have no affiliation whatsoever with it and that polygamy is strictly prohibited by its current doctrine. The FLDS traces its claim to authority to Brigham Young and to the LDS Church's 1904 Second Manifesto, which led to excommunications of Mormons who kept practicing plural marriage.
What is the United Effort Plan in the FLDS Church?
The United Effort Plan, or UEP, was established in 1942 as a subsidiary organization of the church and owns the land and houses on the Utah-Arizona border. Utah seized it in 2005 when it was worth $100 million, and state control ended in 2019 with the trust reformed as a religiously neutral entity.
Who are the Lost Boys of the FLDS Church?
The Lost Boys are teenage boys and young men that former members say were excommunicated, in some cases as young as 15, to reduce competition for wives. Former members report that more than 400 boys have been expelled, and Lost Boys filed lawsuits against the church in 2005 and 2014.
All sources
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- 128NewsWhere 'the handsome ones go to the leaders'Robert Matas — March 30, 2009
- 129NewsDozens of girls may have been trafficked to U.S. to marryAugust 11, 2011
- 130NewsFLDS may see more charges: International sex trafficking suspectedMatthew Waller — November 25, 2011
- 131NewsBountiful parents delivered 12-year-old girls to arranged weddingsD Bramham — February 19, 2011
- 132NewsFLDS in Canada may face arrests soonMartha Mendoza — May 15, 2008
- 133NewsThe lost boys, thrown out of US sect so that older men can marry more wivesJulian Borger — June 14, 2005
- 134NewsBoys Cast Out by Polygamists Find HelpErik Eckholm — 2007-09-09
- 135NewsHalfway Home: FLDS Lost Boys Find Life Begins at The House Just Off BluffJohn Pike — August 27, 2008
- 136NewsFLDS Church, leaders sued by 6 'lost boys'Nancy Perkins — August 28, 2004
- 137NewsPolygamy's 'Lost Boys' expelled from only life they knewDavid Kelly (Los Angeles Times) — June 19, 2005
- 138Hate Groups Map: UtahSouthern Poverty Law Center (SPLCenter.org)
- 140NewsPolygamist community faces rare genetic disorderJason Szep — June 14, 2007
- 141NewsForbidden FruitJohn Dougherty — December 29, 2005
- 142NewsBirth defect is plaguing children in FLDS townsJohn Hollenhorst — February 8, 2006
- 143NewsDoctor: Birth defects increase in inbred polygamy communityFebruary 9, 2006
- 144JournalThe FH mutation database: an online database of fumarate hydratase mutations involved in the MCUL (HLRCC) tumor syndrome and congenital fumarase deficiencyBayley JP et al. — 2008
- 145JournalFumaric aciduria: clinical and imaging featuresKerrigan JF et al. — 2000
- 146NewsFLDS-linked company reaches settlement in child labor case12 April 2017
- 147Polygamy
- 149Warren Jeffs gets life in prison for sex with underage girlsLindsay Whitehurst — August 9, 2011
- 150TLC's 'Breaking the Faith': Daring to Flee the FLDS (Exclusive Video)Jethro Nededog — 20 November 2013
- 155My Brother, the DevilJoel Pincosy — 15 January 2017
- 156She Escaped a Cult and Now Helps OthersAugust 29, 2018
- 157In Utah, Hope and Healing After Escaping a CultAugust 30, 2018
- 158Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey8 June 2022
- 160BookFundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and EducationUniversity of Chicago Press — 1997