CHAPTER 2
It began for me on a winter morning in the middle of January 2004, as I skimmed through the newspaper before heading to my office. An overnight storm had crashed through the area. The air in Cedar City would be clean and refreshing. Then a picture on the front page caught my eye, and I paused to read the story while munching a doughnut and sipping a can of V8 juice.
Everyone in our area was aware of the ongoing saga of the FLDS down in Short Creek and of its strange leader, the self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs. News coverage of the secretive Jeffs and his flock was usually sparse, but it had taken on a magnetic, soap-opera flavor after the prophet carried out an internal political bloodletting on January 10 by banishing twenty-one men from the sect in one swoop, and reassigning all of their wives and children to other men. The shake-up caused anxious authorities in surrounding areas to offer assistance to the Short Creek police in case there was a riot. Jeffs sniffed at such attention by the law and the media because he considered the actions he took with his large and obedient congregation to be a private matter—what he called “setting the people in order.”
Now he apparently was at it again, wreaking havoc on yet another family, but this time with a surprising result. The front-page photo was of a man by the name of Ross Chatwin, who was holding high a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer’s account of Nazi Germany. I had read that book when I was a kid and had been fascinated at how an entire nation had lost its collective mind and followed a madman like Hitler into utter destruction. Chatwin was claiming the same despotic phenomenon was occurring in Short Creek with Jeffs, who in turn was charging that Chatwin had been booted out of the church because he was a “master deceiver.” This time, the expelled member of the obedient flock had said “No! I’m not going,” after being commanded to leave his home, family, and community. It was an act of defiance that just didn’t happen within obedient FLDS culture.
That was when my curiosity got the best of me. Short Creek was only a little more than an hour southwest of my home. I decided to drive down and see if I could meet this unusual man who was standing up against the prophet, seer, and “revelator” of this strange religion.
Short Creek is actually two towns, in two different states, although they operate in most ways as a singular entity. On one side of the border, it is Colorado City, Arizona, while literally on the other side of Uzona Street, it is Hildale, Utah. Local residents just call the community “the Crick.” No one bothered me when I rolled into town, something I would soon discover was unusual, and I found the address of the Chatwins simply by walking into the town clerk’s office and asking. The receptionist apparently was so shocked at fielding a question from a tall stranger wearing sunglasses and cowboy boots that she just blurted out the directions to 245 North Willow. Within a few minutes, I was sitting in my car before a clutter of lumber and drywall at a small home that was still a work in progress. My impulsive decision was bothering me: Was I doing the right thing by intruding unannounced on a besieged family in a time of crisis? I was almost ready to turn around and leave when a man stepped outside, the guy in the picture. His sudden, friendly greeting caught me off balance.
“Hey! How you doin’?” he called out. He was of medium build with a round, pleasant face and neat brown hair. The discount store sneakers, slacks, and long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the wrist and collar stamped him as FLDS. Almost everyone around Short Creek, more than ten thousand souls, belongs to or has been discarded by that one church, the only one in town. Everyone else in the world is referred to as a gentile, and gentiles, who seldom convert to rigid fundamentalist beliefs, are not welcome in their insular community. The children of Short Creek are taught to fear them and their world.
I gave a wave, smiled, and eased open the door of my four-wheel-drive, climbing out with care to show that I had nothing to hide and was no threat. I am quiet by nature, but a pretty big guy, and my size and appearance can be a helpful psychological deterrent to potential problems. I stand close to six-four in my boots, weigh about 225 pounds, and appear even bigger in the cold months when I wear a cowboy hat and a heavy jacket over bulky winter clothes. I have a mustache, and at times, chin hair; my eyes have a natural squint from working long hours beneath the harsh Western sky. “I’m looking for Ross Chatwin,” I said.
“Well, that’s me,” the man replied, his gentle voice betraying not even a quiver of nervousness. Chatwin had been openly disgraced, excommunicated from his church, and deprived of his livelihood, and he was under direct orders from the prophet to leave his home, his wife, and his children. He was shunned by local businesses, had been abandoned by lifelong friends, and was being watched by the town marshals. In his own mind, he had done nothing wrong: Everyone, especially God, was still his friend. Few in Short Creek agreed.
“Mr. Chatwin, my name is Sam Brower and I’m a private investigator. I think I might be able to help you.”
It was a pretty vague reason for a big guy he had never seen before to suddenly appear in his driveway. Chatwin had been expecting some other visitors: thugs from the “God Squad,” the church-controlled local law and possibly a few unofficial enforcers who might be coming by to make him leave town.
He gave me a welcoming nod. “Well, then. Come on in.”
So I did, and by crossing that threshold, I set a new course for my life.
While construction of the house was under way, the Chatwin family was living in the unfinished basement, a chilly place with ribs of bare studs exposed against the gray cement walls. Once downstairs, Ross introduced me to his wife, Lori, a soft-spoken woman wearing a light blue blouse and a long skirt, with her wavy hair pulled back and braided. Their five energetic children tumbled about. Ross was eager to talk, even to a sympathetic stranger, and he opened up as soon as we settled around an old plastic laminate kitchen table. He was thirty-five years old, and had only about an eighth-grade education, which was not unusual in Short Creek. I would eventually discover that most boys were pulled out of school at about that age to work on construction sites, but even while in the classroom, their private-school curriculum was more focused on the history of the FLDS and an individual member’s duties to the church and its leaders than it was on reading, writing, or arithmetic. The townsfolk had turned openly hostile toward the Chatwins, and Ross was selling used cars and working as a mechanic whenever he could rustle up work to support his family. The couple had been married for about twelve years and had remained monogamous—an unfortunate distinction in this fertile homeland of polygamy.
I understood that almost everyone in the town was a zealous participant in what they politely called “plural marriages.” Even as FLDS members smoothly lie to outsiders that there is no polygamy, multiple marriages are the norm, and there has always been a steady trafficking in underage girls bound for the altar. Ross Chatwin was not a polygamist, but he wanted to be one.
That, I found, was the real reason he was in trouble.
Until recently, things had been looking up for the Chatwins, as evidenced by their having been blessed with this unfinished home. The church owns all the property in Short Creek through its financial operation, the United Effort Plan Trust (UEP). One of Ross’s brothers, as a reward for his faithfulness, originally had been given the little piece of land on which to build a house. When the brother turned against the church and left town, the church leaders reassigned the property to Ross. Prior to that, Ross and Lori had been living with their kids in something that was little more than a dugout house with a roof.
Delighted with their new lodgings, the Chatwins figured the time had come to bring a new addition into their family—a young girl who would be another bride for Ross and a sister wife to Lori. That, however, was not their decision to make. Only the prophet had the authority to decide who married whom, so by pursuing the matter on their own, they were treading on dangerous turf and teetering on the brink of heresy.
The forty-eight-year-old prophet, at the pinnacle of the FLDS hierarchy, could and did marry at will; and he had a large harem of his own at that time, estimated at about fifty “ladies,” a number that was growing fast. But for someone like Ross, near the bottom of the church pecking order, that option just did not exist, and he and Lori were concerned that busy and beleaguered “Uncle Warren” might never get around to assigning them a new wife. The most senior leaders of the FLDS are sometimes referred to as “Uncle” by other church members. The honorary title is meant as a show of respect and endearment, even if the man it refers to is evil to his core.
So the Chatwins began an almost antique flirtation with a sixteen-year-old girl, passing notes back and forth like moonstruck kids in a high school study hall. Lori kept the letters in a small cardboard box and allowed me to look through them. None contained any mention of passion or sex; most were just innocent “I love you. Do you love me?” notes. The girl they were courting suffered from severe health problems and was probably wondering about her own prospects of marriage. To the delight of the Chatwins, their prospective bride thought that marrying them was such a good idea that she suggested including one of her girlfriends. That could mean a multiple plural ceremony.
The Chatwins had foolishly hoped to spin the arrangement in a manner acceptable to the prophet, who, more than anyone, they believed, should understand how God requires a husband to have numerous wives while on earth in order to ascend to higher positions in the celestial hereafter. They could hardly have made a bigger mistake, and at exactly the wrong time. Only a few weeks earlier, Warren had successfully crushed troublesome opponents to his reign with the mass expulsion of twenty-one men and taken away their homes and families. Even before the dust had settled, this new challenge of an unauthorized bride had arisen seemingly out of nowhere. The manic Jeffs concluded that Ross was part of a wider conspiracy to topple him from power, so the prophet announced that satanic influences were being spread among his people, and then excommunicated Ross.
Ross was instructed to write out a complete list of his sins, which Jeffs would compare to a “true list” of transgressions that had been divinely revealed to him by God. It was an exam no one could pass. “My list of sins obviously did not match up with the list of sins that Uncle Warren put together,” Ross told me with a rueful grin.
On Wednesday, January 14, FLDS stooge and UEP trustee James Zitting drove out to the Chatwin place and delivered the final verdict: Ross was out. The order was crushing. He was no longer welcome anywhere in Short Creek and must leave his home immediately. Lori was to drop him, and even a good-bye kiss might jeopardize her own salvation. She and the children were to be reassigned. There would be no divorce, no custody hearing, and no due process of law; just the absolute command by the prophet to “leave [his] family and home and repent from a distance.” He was not to write or call or try to make contact with the family in any way but was required to continue paying tithes and offerings to the church. The girl the Chatwins had been courting would soon be married off to someone else.
James Zitting growled that he had come over just to deliver the ultimatum, not to listen to any explanations from the Chatwins. Ross replied that he fully understood.
“Good,” Zitting said. “So let’s get doing it.” He left, believing his mission had been accomplished. I would later discover that Zitting had had a special reason for being forceful that day. He had recently been cautioned by the prophet to shape up. Fail in this task and he might be the next one gone.
The word spread swiftly throughout Short Creek not only that Ross had been excommunicated, but also that he and Lori were refusing to knuckle under. Lori was a most unusual FLDS wife. Although trained from childhood to be subservient and obedient—to “keep sweet” no matter what—she had a rather independent personality. She could be outspoken and assertive and her words carried weight with her husband. “I love him, not Warren,” she told a reporter. She would stick with Ross.
There was a small number of other so-called apostates in town who had gone or were going through the same painful process of excommunication, but who had not left the area because it was the only home they had ever known. The outside world was petrifying and foreign to them. The Chatwins would be joining this subculture of the dispossessed.
Ross explained to me what had happened next. Poverty-stricken and incredibly naïve, he had found an envelope containing some $220 on his doorstep over the weekend. Also in the envelope was a handwritten note asking Chatwin to mail copies of an enclosed letter to FLDS members who were still faithful to the prophet. He could keep any change left over from the costs of copying, envelopes, and mailing. “I guess whoever left the note knew I needed the money,” Chatwin later told a reporter.
So Lori and Ross had sat down and addressed envelopes to about five hundred people, and then he had mailed the letters. The text of the letter claimed that “Uncle Rulon” Jeffs, the late father of Warren, had appeared in a revelation to an unnamed dissident and announced that Warren was not the prophet after all! This bombshell of a letter claimed that an older man named Louis Barlow should be in the top position. Barlow was one of those who had been excommunicated in Warren’s abrupt “cleansing” of the church.
Warren Jeffs is remarkably adept at monitoring and micromanaging almost every person, business, shop, gas station, and home in Short Creek, and it did not take long for news to get back to the prophet that Ross Chatwin was spreading unauthorized visions about who the true leader of the FLDS was.
Ross was not yet finished, for in this unprepossessing man, the apostates had found a spokesman with nothing to lose and a lot to say. They pitched in to help him stage a front-porch press conference on January 23, during which he stood before news microphones and charged, “This Hitler-like dictator has got to be stopped before he ruins us all and this beautiful town.” He also accused “Uncle Warren” of recklessly wasting more than one hundred million dollars of UEP assets, a portion of which was being squandered on building a secret new compound, a hidden place known within the FLDS only as “Zion.” Very few of the rank-and-file membership knew it even existed, let alone where it was.
“We need your help to stop Warren Jeffs from destroying families, kicking us out of our homes, and marrying our children into some kind of political brownie-point system.” It had been that open plea that had piqued my interest. Was the prophet truly running a whole town in modern-day America by using these despotic techniques? It seemed impossible to me.
During the three hours that I listened to Ross and Lori, I stayed in professional mode and carefully sifted through their words. Were they lying? Were they vague or inconsistent on important details? Were they just after money or media attention? Did the timeline hang together? Was there any proof? They had lent me their love letters to the girl, allowed me to copy the entire hard drive of their computer, and answered all of my questions without hesitation. Those were not the actions of people trying to hide information. I started to believe them.
I finally had to halt their astonishing narrative to explain a sticking point, one they seemed not to fully comprehend: In addition to polygamy being illegal, the girl they wanted to marry was only sixteen! That would be illegal on its own, regardless of any equally illegal polygamous relationship, and Ross could have been prosecuted not only for bigamy, but for child abuse as well.
It was strange having to explain to a couple of adults that there was a huge, sprawling nation beyond the boundaries of Short Creek and that, like it or not, they were part of the state of Arizona and the United States of America and subject to the laws of the land. Living in their little theocracy had blinded them to the values and laws of our society.
“So you understand that the legal age for marriage is eighteen,” I finally said, raising my eyebrows to elicit a promise. “Right, Ross?”
Ross said nothing. Lori remained silent.
“Eighteen! Right, Ross?” Stronger this time. It was a deal-breaker for me. There was a soft groan of acceptance as he mentally discarded an important card from his life. “Uh, okay. Right. Eighteen.”
It was time for me to make a decision. I had found no inconsistencies in their story, but to work on their situation as a private investigator, I had to be paid for my services in order to invoke the protection of client confidentiality, the same as with a doctor or a lawyer.
“I think I can help you, Ross. But first you have to officially hire me.”
“I don’t have any money,” he said.
“Just give me a dollar,” I said. “That’s enough.”
“Ok, but, uh—I don’t have a dollar.”
I pulled out my wallet, removed a one-dollar bill, and slid it across that laminate table. Ross put his finger on it and slid it back. Transaction complete. I was on the job.