CHAPTER 17
Serious problems were bubbling to the surface, one after another, faster and faster, and Warren was discovering that he could not handle it all. The year after his father’s death, 2003, would prove to be a terrible year.
A few of the women who had escaped the FLDS grasp were breaking their silence, and church secrets began spilling into the gentile world. Drawing public attention could only spell trouble for the cult.
A taste of what was to come surfaced on April 22, when Carolyn Jessop ran away. She had been assigned to a top Warren confidante named Merril Jessop as his fourth wife, when she was eighteen and he was fifty, and had borne eight children. But with Warren now pushing hard for underage marriages within the FLDS, Carolyn was terrified that her fourteen-year-old daughter was entering the danger zone, and that her kids would become more fodder for the FLDS abuse mill. So she packed all of them, including a handicapped son, into a broken-down van and sped away from Colorado City in the middle of the night with twenty dollars in her pocket. She was thirty-five years old.
Women and girls who try to break away from the FLDS are always vigorously pursued, and if caught, they are usually returned to the family from which they had fled. Carolyn Jessop could not expect much help from anyone, particularly the church-run Short Creek police. She knew they would be coming after her, and they did, but this courageous woman somehow beat the odds.
“When I first fled, I felt that I had landed on another planet,” she would later testify before the United States Senate. “I had only limited exposure to the outside world I had been brainwashed since birth to believe was evil. My rights to my own life and liberty were taken from me when I was forced to marry Merril Jessop. I never knew what it meant to be safe.”
For the prophet, her disappearance was not a huge difficulty in itself, but it fed into his churning imagination as additional evidence that control might be slipping away. At the time, he knew only that Carolyn Jessop had become another enemy. What he did not know was that she was going to tell everything. Four years later, she published what became a bestselling book, Escape, that offered a shattering portrayal of life within the radical polygamist cult.
One important thing for a private investigator to do is just to listen: What are people saying? One story circulating around Short Creek concerned a set of twins born to Ora Jeffs, one of the late Rulon’s wives, in April 2003—seven months after the old man died. That required some fast and fancy coverup work, because the ailing, wasted Rulon could not possibly have been the father. The newborns were kept out of sight in another location so as not to be noticed by the faithful, who might count the months and notice that the arithmetic of gestation was slightly off.
It is not uncommon for FLDS children to receive birth certificates later in life, if at all, and those documents were finally issued for the twins a few months later by the church’s doctor, Lloyd Barlow. They only muddled the picture. The supposedly genuine papers claimed the two children were not twins at all, but were born to the same mother, Ora, with Warren listed as the father. The birth dates were a few months apart, the timing adjusted to cover the normal gestation period, but still quite impossible. It was a typical FLDS dodge of fabricating paperwork, especially birth certificates, to cover up whatever was necessary.
In May 2003, without asking Warren’s permission, the Barlow family unveiled a historical monument, a library, and a museum in Short Creek to house books and artifacts from the historic 1953 Raid in which the State of Arizona had sought to crush the FLDS. That government intrusion had famously backfired when the national press had published pictures of children being taken away from their mothers, and public opinion had swung against the state and in favor of the polygamists. The Barlows emphasized the roles of their own ancestors in the historic event while cutting out the Jeffs.
Warren was furious when he discovered what had been done, and he ranted in a meeting that the people of Short Creek were idolatrous and were worshiping their ancestors and a graven image instead of God. He ordered that the artifacts in the museum and library be burned, and that the stone monument be smashed. Its dust was scattered to the winds that whipped around the striking red cliffs that overlook Short Creek.
The Barlows were enemies.
Next in 2003 came an unexpected source of outside pressure with the publication of Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer, who once had been run out of Short Creek. Banner was an immediate bestseller, although it had almost no impact on the lives of ordinary FLDS members. Since Short Creek residents were not allowed to read books, magazines, or newspapers, watch TV, or listen to the radio, most never even knew that the book had been printed. Church leaders tried to dismiss it as just another example of religious persecution by the world outside, but the story opened an unwanted window through which their private world could be examined.
Krakauer was placed high on Warren’s ever-expanding list of enemies. He was a nightmare to them—a well-known journalist they could not control—and they were in for a disappointment if they hoped that Krakauer would disappear once the book was finished. A lot of things had happened in the four years since his first wild ride through Short Creek, and the author had no intention of walking away from it all. He would later tell me, “After being so closely involved with the tragedies that were occurring continually from within the FLDS community, I found it impossible to turn my back on it. I had made the transition from author to activist. I knew too much.”
That summer, the State of Utah scored a significant victory against the FLDS by convicting one of the Short Creek cops, Rodney Holm, of bigamy and unlawful sexual activity with a minor. For the first time since the ’53 Raid a government had moved against the polygamist religion, but this time the state had won.
Holm had been thirty-two when he took sixteen-year-old Ruth Stubbs, against her will, to be his third wife in 1998. The assigned marriage had been arranged by Uncle Rulon, with Warren by that time lurking close by, and since Holm was more than ten years older than his underage bride at the time, it was a third-degree felony under Utah law. After having two children and while pregnant with a third, Ruth had escaped; and, for a change, the law paid attention and brought charges.
“At the age of sixteen, I was pressured to marry Rodney H. Holm, under the rule of the [FLDS] church,” she would testify later in a child custody case. “Since that time, I have lived in a controlling and abusive environment common in the community. The ‘sister-wives’ were physically and emotionally abusive to both myself and my children. I have scars on my face from one beating. Children were beaten and locked in rooms. On several occasions, younger children would be smothered by one of the mothers until they choked or gasped for air. I was required to work and leave my children with the other eighteen in the care of the other two mothers.”
Holm was found guilty and spent eight months in a work-release program at Purgatory Correctional Facility and three years on probation. That sentence appeared to be not much more than a slap on the wrist for a man who had abused a sixteen-year-old girl, but it was generally in line with a case of statutory rape for someone whose presentencing report showed him to be a first-time offender and a former police officer with an otherwise clean record. His religion, in which such treatment of women and girls was commonplace, was not a factor, although it should have been. Holm had no remorse for the crime he had committed and the chances that he would repeat the offense were one hundred percent, if called upon by the prophet to do so. Instead Holm became a hometown hero for taking a hit for God and the prophet.
Still, it was a shattering blow for the polygamists. Utah had broken through the threadbare argument of religious freedom to convict an FLDS loyalist of a crime concerning underage marriage. A lot of men in the priesthood suddenly recognized that the threat of legal action was real.
Fresh off of that courtroom victory, Utah attorney general Mark Shurtleff convened a “Polygamy Summit” on August 23, 2003, in St. George, assembling government agency representatives from Utah and Arizona to start a serious discussion about crimes that might be taking place within communities that practiced polygamy. The attorney general rattled the prophet with the comment: “I don’t mind telling Warren Jeffs that I’m coming after him … We have seen compelling evidence that crimes are being committed, children are being hurt, and taxpayers are footing the bill.”
A morose and angry Warren Jeffs struck back by declaring that Short Creek, which had for so long been a religious haven for the FLDS, was unworthy of further protection by the priesthood, which was his quasi-religious doublespeak way of saying that he was washing his hands of the place, and he slipped out of public view.
He was not quite finished with the town, however, and did not slow his frantic drive to marry off its young girls. Instead, he hastened to do even more, and much faster.
Warren was ripping through the families of Short Creek, searching for tender daughters who could be given to older men, along with his permission to immediately start having sex with them. The Priesthood Record painted his perverse goal with shocking clarity in November:
The Lord is showing me the young girls of this community, those who are pure and righteous will be taken care of at a younger age. As the government finds out about this, it will bring such a great pressure upon us, upon the families of these girls, upon the girls who are placed in marriage … And I will teach the young people that there is no such thing as an underage Priesthood marriage but that it is a protection for them if they will look at it right … The Lord will have me do this, get more young girls married, not only as a test to the parents, but also to test these people to see if they will give the Prophet up.
It was an ultimate trial of faith. Would they cooperate, or would a disloyal mother or father turn him in to the gentiles? As always, they cooperated without fail.
The prophet intended to practice what he preached. When his brother Lyle approached Warren with questions “about [Lyle’s] 16-year-old wife—should he wait until she is ‘of age’ so-called before he goes forward with her and has children? I told him he should live the [Celestial] law now. He didn’t get married to not live the law!”
Then on November 25, Warren summoned his staunch ally Merril Jessop to inform him of a new revelation from the Lord, a shocking dream in which wicked men wanted to destroy certain young girls, including Merril’s thirteen-year-old daughter, Ida. She was in mortal danger! The prophet said that if he stood aside and did nothing, he would be held responsible for the terrible things that would happen to her—kidnapping or even death. Merril scurried home and fetched the girl back so she could be saved. With her father looking on proudly in a hurried evening ceremony, Warren Jeffs married Ida Vilate Jessop in the presence of his henchmen, Uncle Fred and Wendell Nielsen.
“She will be raised up as a daughter and gradually as a wife,” the prophet promised Merril. He added an extra comment in his private diary: “But she looks like a natural wife, already.” Being only thirteen years old was not going to protect her. Within two weeks, Warren would turn forty-eight. The child was almost like a birthday present to himself.
The following day, Wednesday, November 26, spelled the end for Ron Rohbock, who never knew what hit him. The prophet had a revelation that showed Rohbock had to be removed from the FLDS. It sent a message to the entire membership. If a ranking confidante like Ron Rohbock could be summarily axed, then no one was safe.
Rohbock was the father who had been so obedient that he had been dispatched to Canada to fetch back his runaway daughter Vanessa to be blood-atoned, although he had failed in that mission. He was Uncle Rulon’s old winemaking and dining buddy and was considered by some to have been the former leader’s bodyguard. He had taught at Alta Academy and knew the entire family well. But during the new revelation, Warren discovered a “subtle deception of Lucifer” had crept into Rohbock. The prophet designated him a “son of perdition,” ruling that “Ron Rohbock and his son John do not hold Priesthood … and they are to be sent away … and not be among the people and repent from a distance.” Rohbock was out, along with John, who had defended his father.
All ties were broken. Rohbock lost his place among the blessed priesthood and was excommunicated. Warren called a special meeting of FLDS leaders to say that anyone who sympathized with the heartbroken castaway would receive the same treatment. Even generous Uncle Fred, out of fear of being flattened by Warren’s momentum, turned his back on Rohbock and demanded the return of a down-payment he had lent Ron to buy a pickup truck.
As is usual with FLDS men who are expelled by Warren, Rohbock genuinely did not understand why he was being booted out of the church and losing his home and family. Warren never explained anything more than to say it was a revelation received from God. When Rohbock asked his old friends to help him understand the decision, he was shunned. To Warren, questioning the decision proved that Rohbock was a master deceiver trying to worm his way into the hearts of the people. When Ron tried to confess his sins, the prophet judged that the sinner did not admit to some of the “immoral” things that the Lord had unveiled.
My investigation eventually would show there was more to the story. Some sources told me that Rohbock’s real sin had been catching Warren in bed with a couple of Uncle Rulon’s young wives while his crippled father was confined to another room. With the marriages to his stepmothers causing such controversy, Warren did not want Ron to have any sort of political leverage against him. But there was more.
Rachel was a daughter of Uncle Rulon and a sister of Warren. She was a troubled creature who daringly sought help from a professional therapist outside of the FLDS, but eventually could not bear the abuse she had suffered and would succumb to a drug overdose that many thought may have been suicide. Upon learning of Rachel’s death, Warren slid coldly into one of his pious ramblings about how that was the sort of thing that could happen to women who strayed from the faith.
Released from confidentiality by the death of his patient, the therapist finally shared Rachel’s story with ex-FLDS family members and friends outside of the church, who told it to me. The cause of Rachel’s troubles, according to the therapist, was that she had been sexually molested as a child by her father Rulon and by her brother Warren Jeffs. As Rulon’s confidant, Ron Rohbock apparently knew this and kept the abuse she suffered quiet. Connecting the dots, it all made sense. Warren would later admit to having immoral relations with a sister and daughter. He used Rohbock to demonstrate in the harshest terms that he practiced neither mercy nor forgiveness, even when it came to his most loyal followers. And any protest would only prove that God had discovered his black heart.
Later during my investigation, in the summer of 2005, I worked through a contact to set up a possible meeting with Rohbock. Knowing his background, I was not optimistic, but I had to try. He had the potential to be a very valuable source of information. A deal was arranged: We would go to a restaurant, where I would sit on one side while Ron and my contact sat at a table on the other side. If Ron was comfortable with the idea of talking, the contact would wave me over. But the wave never came, and I never made personal contact. Even after being ruined by the FLDS, he could not summon up the courage to speak out against the prophet and the church.
The stress of all the negative attention, the sudden awakening of government law enforcement, the relentless threat posed by his enemies, and the requirements of running the entire FLDS all by himself overwhelmed the prophet. Danger lurked everywhere. He expected to be arrested or assassinated, and he routinely prayed for “fire from heaven … to keep all evil powers and spirits away.”
“No one knows how many times you have been through this mortality,” his stepmother-wife-scribe Naomi cooed sweetly to comfort him after watching him twist and turn in his bed all night, burning within rings of fire. “You were foreordained to come back to earth at this time … You are a God.”
She always knew what to say, but this time soft words of praise were not enough. He needed a way out from under his mounting problems. Warren was flying blind, relying on an instinct for survival. “I ain’t got all the answers, ’cause I ain’t been asked all the questions. So don’t demand all the answers right now, because all the changes ain’t takin’ place yet,” he told his scribe. “I am taking it as it comes.”
He thought discord was spreading within the FLDS, and had even wormed its way into his own household. Jealousy was breaking out as earlier wives were forced to make room for the new ones, and one even had the audacity to become upset when she discovered him groping and kissing a new wife. None of this slowed down his acquisition of young girls. In a single eight-day span, he zoomed from twenty-five to forty-two new victims in his stable, with still more undergoing religious “trainings” before being officially corralled. At least one was given a double wedding ring to prove she was married to both Rulon and Warren.
Troubles mounted throughout 2003. Legal actions were being filed, less than half of the original congregation in Canada remained, and the law in Arizona and Utah, according to Warren, was telling “terrible lies against [him].” He likened the accusations to a Mafia novel because authorities gave their sources pseudonyms to protect their identities, even as Warren himself became more and more like the Mafia dons he professed to abhor. He hauled along a full security detail when he shared breakfast with ninety women and children in Cottonwood Park.
It was becoming too much for him to handle, and he decided on a unique solution: simply to disappear. “The Lord has directed me to move away,” Warren confided to some wives after a revelation. Scouts were dispatched to seek isolated locations across the nation in which he and those loyal to him could find shelter when the world finally came to an end. In reality, they would be a series of emergency bolt-holes in which he could hide from the law.
A place in heavy forest about twenty miles outside the little town of Mancos, in southwestern Colorado, was the first selected, and the first of several parcels of land there had been purchased on July 11, 2003, through an FLDS shell corporation called Sherwood Management, under the guise of being a corporate hunting retreat. The mountainous and thickly wooded terrain reminded Warren of the grand family estate that had been abandoned in Little Cottonwood Canyon when they had all moved to Short Creek. Mancos was given the code name of Refuge One, or R-1, to avoid disclosing its location. Specially chosen work crews were dispatched to start building there in great secrecy, and orders were placed for truckloads of Canadian logs from the FLDS colony up north that would be turned into cabins. The hideout was to be in operation by the last day of November, a tight deadline that Warren promised could be met because angels would work alongside crews, even when they were only putting up sheetrock.
After a good deal of work had been put into the Mancos project, another even more attractive possibility was found down in West Texas, a state that was very light on zoning and building restrictions. Texans tended to mind their own business, and the state’s marriage laws had not changed since the nineteenth century; girls as young as fourteen could still legally be married there with the consent of their parents. It looked very promising, and FLDS front man David Allred was authorized to buy 1,371 acres of rural land outside of the town of Eldorado, in Schleicher County. Several hundred more acres would be purchased later. “Thanks unto the Lord for His bounteous blessings in acquiring the land in Texas,” Jeffs sang out with great joy on Sunday, November 23.
This presented a whole new set of problems: how to get construction under way in Texas even as the R-1 refuge in Mancos was still incomplete. Warren set unrealistic deadlines, saying it was a “life and death” matter to finish the houses in Colorado by November 30, so that he could send four men down to Texas to begin foundation work there. He said the workmen should not be concerned about the breakneck schedule because “attending angels” would be helping them pound the nails and put up sheetrock.
When they were not actually building in Mancos, the chosen workmen underwent intensive new spiritual training for their sacred new calling at the Texas site that Warren was calling both “R-17” and “Zion.” They were already loyal FLDS members and skilled workers, but now they had to be elevated to the exalted rank of “temple builders,” a title never before heard within the FLDS that carried great prestige as well as secrecy.
With his master escape plan coming together, the time had come to slam the hammer down on his Short Creek enemies. Warren would later report that God delivered specific instructions on what had to be done during a special revelation on December 24, the night before Christmas 2003. When he returned from Texas, he would follow those instructions and take care of one last important piece of business in Short Creek.