My attempt to locate Sarah by reviewing some boxes of evidence and files that were confusing to the officers proved fruitless as well. That Wednesday, I was stationed at the temple annex building with Joe Haralson, an older ranger who had heard so many FLDS lies that he initially had very little faith in me. Ranger Haralson’s wariness seemed to be justified by some disturbing news he delivered to me. My sister-in-law Miranda, who was married to Ben’s brother Oliver, asked her midwife to call the authorities in Texas and provide false information: she said I was an informant with a huge chip on my shoulder, that I was bitter and hateful, and would do anything to bring down the FLDS. Her midwife swore that I had made a prank call as Sarah to spur the raid. Fortunately, I was able to set the record straight with Texas authorities, starting with Joe, and the sheriff, who had heard the recorded calls and backed me up, saying it could not have been me.
Several of the rangers got angry and prepared to go after Miranda for supplying false information. I asked them not to, but I did send her an e-mail warning her about the criminality of falsifying reports and possible prosecution. But she was only one of a slew calling with worries and fears and speculations. FLDS members in other parts of the nation and Canada were terrified as rumors abounded. My dad called to tell me that Irene’s daughter Cindy had been on the YFZ, and she had told Irene that women and children were being held in concentration camps and had been made to line up and strip down in front of men who were checking them by hand for pregnancy.
I angrily refuted this rumor.
“First of all, Dad, they have made sure that women work with the women officers as much as possible. Some urine tests have been conducted, but these women have been treated with more respect than they have by their own husbands. As far as the people, if they had just told the truth, none of this would have ever happened! No one would have been removed—no one would have entered the temple. If anyone is to blame it is Uncle Merrill and his lies, yet still people are continuing to spread fabrications.”
I filled him in on all of the FLDS misdeeds, including LeRoy Steed’s flight from officers with a hard drive, and the van filled with pregnant teens. “Consider your sources, Dad. The women are not being put up in the Hilton, but they have everything except showers, and that’s being fixed as we speak. They’re being well fed and treated with respect. The FLDS are spreading bullshit.”
The calls and speculations seemed to slow considerably when DPS revealed the discovery of beds inside the FLDS temple and suggested that it was an area where men “engage[d] in sexual activity with female children under the age of seventeen.” Doran had warned me they had found even more evidence regarding the ages of some of the girls having to be “trained,” most of them Warren’s younger wives. It made me physically ill, but I pushed it out of my brain and focused on finding Sarah. The longer she was missing, the more we worried for her safety.
I was looking over a list of properties rangers had found, and then the bus lists, and realized that though several of the women had changed their names, there were often enough clues so that I could guess who they were.
Suddenly I gasped.
“What is it?” asked the ranger.
My heart lurched as I recognized the names of my sister Savannah’s children, along with two more I hadn’t even known about. Savannah had made up different first and last names for herself, but wisely used her children’s real first names. To her, I was likely Satan incarnate, but seeing her name made me realize just how much I had missed her. I’d been strong this whole time, but this was too much, and for the first time I cried in front of the officers.
Quickly I gathered myself again, as we were on a serious deadline. Time was rapidly running on out on the search warrants—law enforcement had only a week from issue to be on the ranch. Locksmiths from San Antonio had been brought in to crack the safes in the temple and the annex building I was in. The priority was the temple annex vault, where we speculated the records still were since the temple was not yet dedicated. Brooks also brought in a jackhammer crew and started creating a hole in the eighteen-inch-thick cement. They were making more progress than the locksmiths. Both vaults had air vents built in, so there was wariness in opening either vault as to what, or who, might be inside. Brooks warned both crews that they were taking their lives into their hands, as explosives could have been set to go off in the safes. When they got close to breach, he had me escorted out for safety. I was later informed when a large enough hole had been cut with the jackhammer, and Ranger Jesse Valdez, the slightest of all the men, crawled through carefully, armed only with a flashlight. Brooks let me reenter the area in time to see Valdez emerge from the vault covered from head to toe in thick white dust.
“I found them!” he said, smiling. He’d discovered forty-four boxes of records and several additional safes inside.
Law enforcement felt other repercussions, as the FLDS had launched a full-fledged propaganda campaign, using the hungry media to spin their story. In a Deseret News interview, three mothers reported they were being denied access to their children and housed in the most primitive of circumstances. On CNN, Merrill’s wife Kathleen sobbed, “I want you to understand that we’ve been put in a compound, Fort Concho, over there, with brick walls. One hundred feet by forty feet… one hundred and seventy women and children, two bathrooms… We are being treated like the Jews were when they were escorted to the German Nazi camps.”
Law enforcement reminded the FLDS members and the media that the adult women had come voluntarily and were free to leave anytime, but the media was coming down hard on Brooks, who didn’t have time to call an official press conference to refute the lies.
I met him out on the lawn by the temple annex building, where he was pacing back and forth, furious.
“I do not have time for this shit! You know, Becky, when they first came here, we welcomed them. All they had to do was leave the young girls alone. When we showed up, they lied. And now they’re lying again! How dumb do they think we are?”
In the meantime, he’d heard from Flora that she’d received more calls from Sarah.
“Something’s not right here,” Brooks told me. “I smell a rat.”
I continued my work in the temple annex, trying to locate Sarah, validate records, and answer questions. For lunch, I’d been relying on the cook shed or chuck wagon that a local businessman had donated to feed an enormous number of the rangers and the residents. Most of the FLDS men ate in their own homes, but some of the young men and very old emerged periodically, so we had to be watchful, and I was always accompanied.
As I approached the chuck wagon that day, Ranger Jason Kinerd motioned to me to quietly follow him across the way.
“What can you tell me about this kid?” he asked me, pointing at Warren’s son Tobias, who looked terrified as he sat on the ground, rocking himself. I told him about Toby, who was autistic and obviously wanted to be with his mother. Since he was over eighteen, he wasn’t allowed to leave the ranch.
What I saw next touched my heart. Several gruff-looking rangers sat down next to him, comforted him, and offered him lunch from the wagon. I overheard them reassure him that he was not in any danger, and they went to great lengths to make sure he knew that his mother was not, either. Toby loosened up and ate three desserts—probably a big treat, as most FLDS were raised to eschew sugary foods.
After lunch, as I made my way back to the temple annex building with Joe by my side, Jason approached me again.
“Yeah, I got the dirt on you!” he cried. “You were listening to devil music!”
“What?”
“I read a confession letter from your friend Samantha.”
I looked at the ranger, and back at Joe (who had finally started to trust me), and started giggling. I knew what Jason must have found in the records!
When I was a student at Alta Academy, Warren taught us that devil music began in the ’60s when the Beatles sold their souls to the devil—a black man who gave them a record contract.
“If you take delight in this type of music,” he said, “you are going down an immoral path, and taking on that black man’s devil-worshipping spirit.” I tried hard to be good, listening to church hymns and classical music. But the world was so melodious, and I was often drawn to other forms, like ragtime. (I could only imagine what Warren would say about that!)
“One night,” I told the ranger, “Samantha called. ‘Come and get me right now!’ Right after family class, I told Nephi I had a quick errand, and I took one of the property’s vehicles to pick Samantha up. She popped in some music and we drove around the back roads, turning it up really loud, screaming our guts out!”
“What was it?” the ranger asked. He was expecting some heavy-metal band.
“It was a group called A-Teens, singing their rendition of ABBA’s ‘Super Trouper.’ ”
“Hunh?”
“That was it, I swear! It was baaaad, because it had drumbeats and worldly lyrics—I think there’s even a reference to a kiss.”
“Dear God, no!”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure that was why Samantha says I crossed into dark, dark waters.” We had a good laugh before we got right back to work.
Back in the annex, I realized soberly that most of the letters of repentance officials had found in Warren’s Escalade and in boxes of records revealed secrets much more serious than Samantha’s ABBA confession. Warren had once again found a way to blackmail his greatest supporters: forcing them to give up their darkest skeletons in exchange for their salvation.