Warren Jeffs

• 1. Introduction

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  Warren Jeffs was in the red 2007 Cadillac Escalade that highway trooper Eddie Dutchover stopped on Interstate 15 in Clark County, Nevada. It was around 9 p.m. on the 28th of August 2006. The reason for the stop was minor. The temporary license plates were not visible. Beside Jeffs sat his wife Naomi Jessop and his brother Isaac.

  What the trooper found in the vehicle suggested a man prepared to disappear. Jeffs had four computers, sixteen cell phones, three wigs, twelve pairs of sunglasses and more than $55,000 in cash. His wife and brother were questioned and released. Jeffs stayed in custody.

  The man in the Escalade led a polygamous church based in Arizona, and his followers called him a prophet. Today he sits in a Texas prison. How did one man come to hold such power over the marriages, homes and land of an entire community? What happened when officers raided a Texas ranch in 2008? What became of him in the courtrooms of Utah, Arizona and Texas? And why do many of his followers still insist that he is their leader?

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• 2. From Principal to Prophet

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  The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, known as the FLDS Church, began in the early 20th century. Its founders believed the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had committed apostasy by renouncing polygamy. The mainstream church disavows any connection to the FLDS Church, although significant historical ties exist.

  Warren Steed Jeffs was born in Sacramento, California, on the 3rd of December 1955, more than two months ahead of schedule. His parents were Rulon Jeffs and Merilyn Steed. He grew up outside Salt Lake City, Utah.

  In 1976, the year he turned 21, Jeffs became principal of Alta Academy, an FLDS private school at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. He held the job for twenty years. People remembered him as "a stickler for the rules and for discipline."

  His father Rulon became president of the FLDS Church in 1986. Rulon had 19 or 20 wives and roughly 60 children, though former members say he eventually had 78 wives.

  Before Rulon died in 2002, Warren served as counselor to the church leader. He then took his father's place under the title "President and Prophet, Seer and Revelator," along with "President of the Priesthood." The Revelator led all adult male members judged worthy to hold the priesthood, a tradition shared across the Latter Day Saint movement.

  Winston Blackmore, the long-time bishop of the Bountiful, British Columbia, group, did not accept the change. More than half of the Canadian branch left the FLDS Church to follow him. Jeffs excommunicated Blackmore in September 2002.

  "I won't say much, but I will say this, hands off my father's wives." Jeffs said this to high-ranking FLDS officials after Rulon died. To the widows he said, "You women will live as if Father is still alive and in the next room." Within a week he had married all but two of them. One refused and was forbidden from ever marrying again. The other, Rebecca Wall, fled the FLDS compound. Naomi Jessop, among the first widows to marry him, became his favorite wife and confidant.

  Rebecca Wall had a younger sister named Elissa. Her marriage at the age of 14 would later become the subject of criminal charges against Jeffs.

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• 3. Land, Wives, and Obedience

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  Only one man in the FLDS Church could perform marriages, and from 2002 that man was Jeffs. Because of this, he alone decided which wife went to which husband. He could also discipline male members by "reassigning their wives, children and homes to another man."

  In January 2004, Jeffs expelled 20 men from the Short Creek Community, among them the mayor. Their wives and children were handed to other men in the community.

  Three wives was the minimum that Jeffs taught a devoted member needed in order to enter heaven. He followed the standard FLDS and Mormon fundamentalist tenet that faithful men must practice plural marriage to attain exaltation in the afterlife. In his telling, each additional wife brought a man closer to heaven.

  The Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report described Jeffs's views on race and marriage in 2005. He condemned interracial marriage and said black people were used by the devil for evil. He also called same-sex marriage as evil as murder.

  More than $100 million is the estimate for the land beneath Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. Almost all of it sat in a church trust called the United Effort Plan, which Jeffs controlled until the courts stepped in. Utah took over the trust in 2005, and the court ran it for over a decade. A judge then handed it to a community board made up mostly of former sect members. After a court decision in November 2012, much of the land was to be sold to the people who lived on it.

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• 4. The Texas Ranch

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  On the 1st of January 2005, Jeffs attended a dedication ceremony for the foundation of a large FLDS temple on the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas. Before his 2006 arrest, it was the last time he had been seen.

  On the 7th of April 2008, Texas authorities raided the ranch and took legal custody of 416 children. The raid followed a phone call on the 31st of March alleging physical and sexual abuse. The caller claimed to be a 16-year-old girl married to a 50-year-old man. She said she had given birth to his child a year earlier.

  Residents told authorities that no such girl existed. The calls were traced to Rozita Swinton, aged 33, who had no connection to the FLDS Church and was known for repeated false reports. Texas authorities kept investigating whether her claims were a hoax.

  Texas courts later found that the state had not presented enough evidence of abuse to justify removing the children. The women and children suspected of being minors were returned. Texas prosecutors would turn to Jeffs himself in 2011, with a conviction that carried a life sentence.

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• 5. Accusations and Flight

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  In July 2004, Jeffs's nephew Brent Jeffs filed a lawsuit against him. It alleged that Warren Jeffs had raped Brent in the church's Salt Lake Valley compound in the late 1980s. Brent later wrote a memoir called Lost Boy with the author Maia Szalavitz. It recounts alleged abuse by Jeffs, his brothers and other family members when Brent was 5 or 6. Brent's brother Clayne died by suicide after accusing Jeffs of sexually assaulting him as a child. Two other nephews and two of Jeffs's own children have also publicly made such claims.

  In June 2005, Mohave County, Arizona, charged Jeffs with sexual assault on a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual misconduct with a minor. The charges concerned a marriage he allegedly arranged in April 2001, between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old first cousin, Allen. Elissa Wall, known then as "Jane Doe IV," testified that she begged Rulon Jeffs to let her wait or choose another man. Rulon was apparently "sympathetic," but his son was not, and she was forced to go through with the marriage. Wall alleged that Allen often raped her and that she repeatedly miscarried before she left him and the community.

  A $10,000 reward appeared on wanted posters from the Arizona Attorney General's office in July 2005. The posters sought information leading to Jeffs's arrest and conviction.

  On the 28th of October 2005, Jeffs's brother Seth was arrested on suspicion of harboring a fugitive. During a routine traffic stop in Pueblo County, Colorado, police had found nearly $142,000 in cash, $7,000 in prepaid debit cards and personal records. FBI Agent Andrew Stearns testified that Seth said he did not know where his brother was and would not say if he did. Seth was convicted on the 1st of May 2006. On the 14th of July he received three years of probation and a $2,500 fine.

  On the 5th of April 2006, Utah issued an arrest warrant for Jeffs on felony charges of accomplice rape of a teenage girl aged between 14 and 18. On the 6th of May, the FBI placed him on its Top Ten Most Wanted list with a $60,000 reward. He was the 482nd fugitive on that list. The reward soon rose to $100,000, and the public was warned that "Jeffs may travel with a number of loyal and armed bodyguards."

  On the 8th of June 2006, Jeffs returned to Colorado City to perform more "child-bride marriages." Two days later, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard told the Deseret News that several sources had placed Jeffs back in Arizona. They said he had performed marriage ceremonies in a mobile home used as a wedding chapel.

  On the 27th of May 2008, The Smoking Gun released images of Jeffs with two underage wives, one of them 12 years old. The photographs showed the three celebrating first wedding anniversaries in 2005 and 2006.

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• 6. Courtrooms of Three States

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  On the 31st of August 2006, in a Nevada court hearing, Jeffs waived any challenge to extradition and agreed to return to Utah. There he faced two first-degree felony charges of accomplice rape. Each carried an indeterminate penalty of five years to life. He was held in the Washington County jail, with a trial set for the 23rd of April 2007. Authorities believed he was still leading his group from his cell. A Utah state board also complained about the Hildale police, believing that many officers had ties to Jeffs and did not cooperate. In May and July 2007, Arizona indicted him on eight counts, including sexual misconduct with a minor and incest.

  The Utah trial opened on the 11th of September 2007 in St. George, with Judge James L. Shumate presiding. Jeffs was kept in solitary confinement at Utah's Purgatory Correctional Facility throughout. On the 25th of September, he was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape. He was sentenced to 10 years to life and began serving his term at the Utah State Prison.

  On the 27th of July 2010, the Utah Supreme Court reversed those convictions and ordered a new trial. The justices cited deficient jury instructions. The trial judge should have told jurors that Jeffs could be convicted only if he intended for Elissa's husband to engage in nonconsensual sex with her. Elissa later wrote an autobiography, Stolen Innocence, with Lisa Pulitzer, a former New York Times journalist.

  On the 27th of February 2008, Jeffs pleaded not guilty in Arizona to charges tied to the arranged marriages of three teenaged girls to older men. He was moved to the Mohave County jail to await trial. On the 9th of June 2010, a state judge dismissed all charges with prejudice at the request of Mohave County prosecutor Matt Smith. Smith said the Arizona victims no longer wanted to testify. He added that Jeffs had spent almost two years in jail, more than he would have served if convicted. With charges also pending in Texas, Smith concluded that a trial in Arizona would be "impractical and unnecessary." Jeffs was returned to Utah while his appeal was still pending.

  On the 9th of August 2011, Texas convicted Jeffs of sexual assault of a minor for raping a 15-year-old child bride. It also convicted him of aggravated sexual assault against a child for raping a 12-year-old child bride. The sentence was life in prison plus 20 years, with a $10,000 fine. He will be eligible for parole on the 22nd of July 2038.

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• 7. The Prophet Who Recanted

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  On the 27th of March 2007, the Deseret News reported that Jeffs had renounced his role as prophet in a conversation with his brother Nephi. Nephi quoted him as calling himself "the greatest of all sinners." According to Nephi, Jeffs said God had never called him to be a prophet.

  On the 7th of November 2007, the Washington County, Utah, Attorney's Office released video of jailhouse conversations between Nephi and Jeffs. On the recordings, Jeffs again renounced his prophethood. He said God had told him that if he admitted he was not the rightful prophet and was a "wicked man," he would still gain a place in the telestial kingdom. He also admitted to what he called "immoral actions with a sister and a daughter" when he was 20 years old. Other records show that Jeffs tried to kill himself in custody by banging his head against the walls and trying to hang himself.

  Jeffs formally resigned as president of the corporation of the FLDS Church, effective the 20th of November 2007. His attorneys released the statement by email, and it said nothing about his position as prophet. Many in the FLDS communities still regarded him as their prophet and leader. Some reports say he told his brother, "Brother William E. Jessop has been the prophet since my Father's passing." His attorneys have claimed he misspoke. In early 2011, Jeffs retook legal control of the denomination.

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• 8. Prison and Legacy

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  On the 9th of July 2008, Jeffs was taken from the Mohave County jail in Kingman, Arizona, to a Las Vegas hospital. Sheriff Tom Sheahan called the medical problem serious but did not specify it. The move covered about 100 miles. Jeffs has also gone on lengthy hunger strikes, which his doctors and attorneys said were spiritual. In August 2009, Superior Court Judge Steve Conn ordered that he be force-fed at the Arizona jail.

  On the 29th of August 2011, Jeffs was taken to East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, Texas. He was in critical condition and placed in a medically induced coma after excessive fasting. Officials expected him to live. He is now held at the Louis C. Powledge Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, near Palestine, Texas.

  In December 2012, Jeffs predicted that the world would end before 2013 and urged his followers to prepare. That year he also released a book, Jesus Christ Message to All Nations, compiling revelations he said he had received. Among them were directives to set Jeffs free and warnings to specific countries. The FLDS Church mailed copies to Utah state legislators. Federal prosecutors stated in 2016 that the book had been paid for with $250,000 defrauded from federal welfare programs and laundered through FLDS shops.

  In 2017, a woman sued both Jeffs and the United Effort Plan trust, alleging he sexually abused her as a child. Jeffs allegedly suffered a mental breakdown in the summer of 2019 that left him unfit to give a deposition. Attorneys for the trust argued that forcing him to testify would be "futile." The plaintiff's attorney said there was little evidence of incompetency. She accused the trust of being "understandably very fearful" about his testimony, since it is liable for his actions as a past president of the FLDS Church. FLDS members continue to regard Jeffs as a prophet who speaks to God and was wrongly convicted.

  The 2006 documentary Banking on Heaven examined Jeffs and the FLDS Church in Colorado City. On the 19th of July 2006, Britain's Channel 4 aired The Man with 80 Wives, in which presenter Sanjiv Bhattacharya searched unsuccessfully for Jeffs in Colorado, Utah and Texas. Sons of Perdition, a 2010 documentary directed by Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten, follows children who left the church. In 2013, Rebecca Musser published The Witness Wore Red, and in 2017 Jeffs's daughter Rachel Jeffs published the memoir Breaking Free.

  On the 28th of June 2014, Lifetime aired Outlaw Prophet: Warren Jeffs, starring Tony Goldwyn. It adapted the book When Men Become Gods by Stephen Singular. In 2015, director Amy J. Berg adapted Sam Brower's book as the documentary Prophet's Prey. On the 8th of June 2022, Netflix aired Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, and in April of that year Peacock aired Preaching Evil, told from the view of his favored wife and scribe, Naomie. On the 8th of January 2024, A&E began Secrets of Polygamy, whose first two episodes returned to Jeffs and the FLDS.

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