CHAPTER 28
The Candi Shapley situation became increasingly bizarre after her grand jury testimony. Her emotions were all over the map as she found herself caught between enormous pressure from the church and her family, and her legal obligation to stand by what she had told the grand jury under oath in a court of law.
Out of the blue, her mother, Esther, initiated a cat-and-mouse game with me about a month after Candi had testified. After being kicked out of the church, Bill Shapley was allowed back into the fold for the express purpose of making sure that his errant daughter didn’t succeed in giving up the prophet. For Bill, it was a religious calling and his salvation and status in the church was dependent on his success. For his obedience, he was given his wives and family back, all but Esther. Warren wouldn’t allow her to be restored as one of the wives of the redeemed Bill Shapley. Over time, she explained to me why Warren had singled her out: She had been raped as a young girl by an older relative who had then piled enough guilt on her to make Esther think the assault was somehow her fault. She had never revealed that secret until Warren came to power, and then in a fit of conscience initiated by Warren’s incessant digging into the private lives of members, she had confessed everything to him. Instead of punishing the rapist, Warren considered Esther soiled from the contact, and forbade her from rejoining Bill as a wife when he was allowed back in the church. Besides, she was past her childbearing years and had become a liability instead of an asset to the family. Instead, she was given a small widow’s stipend and permission to visit with her other two daughters, who remained in Bill’s custody, while she went to live in seclusion with a group of other such “widows.” Even those “privileges” would be at risk if she was disobedient, and Lyle Jeffs, Warren’s brother, was her watchdog.
Consequently, Esther also was conflicted about whether to defend and do what was best for her daughter Candi or please the FLDS authorities. A short time after our first meeting in a little park near Coral Canyon, the FLDS punished Esther by whisking away her daughters Annay, thirteen, and Billie, sixteen. The girls went willingly, but it was a clear message to Esther that Big Brother was watching and her youngest children could and would disappear at any time if she didn’t do as she was commanded, and “keep sweet” about it. She was scared that she wouldn’t see her children again, and she had written down the tag numbers of the Chevy Suburbans that had taken the girls away. She then quietly passed the plate numbers to me. I in turn passed those along to the FBI, who started to consider their options of how to deal with the situation. The FBI agents felt they needed to locate the two missing girls and place the entire crew of Esther, Candi, and the two younger sisters into the federal Witness Protection Program. I was hoping Esther would be strong enough to take a leap of faith and leave the only life she had ever known. She agreed, and was about to take the plunge and go into the program, but just before the FBI was about to make the final arrangements, Esther backed down. She just didn’t have the strength to turn her back on the cultural and religious ties that bound her to the only home she had ever known. This on-again, off-again contact went on for several months before Esther called me urgently one evening in December 2005. She had a key to her ex-husband’s insurance office and sometimes would sneak in there after business hours to call me without being overheard. One evening she called from there, worried that the FLDS was monitoring her movements. About fifteen minutes into the call, she became nervous because there were people milling around outside, and they seemed to be checking out the building. Soon they were banging on the doors and windows of the office. “They’re here! They’re going to be coming in!” she cried.
I worked out a quick code: Use the word “notebook” in a sentence if it was the police, and not just some God Squad enforcer, who entered the room. Almost immediately, I heard a lot of noise, and then she said, “Okay, I’ll have to check my notebook and get back to you.” The crooked cops had her. An hour later, she called again, as calm as a summer pond, her words cryptic and machine-like. “Hello. I’m not going to be talking to you anymore. I’m okay and there’s nothing to worry about. I am happy. Please don’t bother me or try to call me.” I asked if anyone was listening to the call, to which she responded, “Yes, I have to go,” and the phone went dead.
Three days later, the distraught Esther called yet again, asking if she could come by my office. Once inside, she told me that Lyle Jeffs, the prophet’s strong-arm brother, had threatened to take away her widow’s stipend, and had warned that he was awaiting word on whether she would even be allowed back on FLDS Priesthood property. That would have marked the end of her shelter and any means of support; she feared being left homeless and destitute. While we spoke, Lyle called on her cell phone. Esther went stone-faced, using her best “keep sweet” voice to repeat “yes, sir” three times, then she said “thank you” and hung up. Lyle had just delivered the death blow that she would never be permitted to see her children again, and would not be welcome back in the Crick. Esther broke down and sobbed, talking of suicide and how to make it appear accidental. I offered help, but she just turned it away. All I could do was spend time with her and try to convince her that there was more to life than living under the rule of tyrants. She was inconsolable—a plyg woman who was almost sixty, on her own with no home and no means of support, who now didn’t even have her children to love her. Once again, there had been no due process of law, and no mercy.
Lyle was not yet finished; he was waiting the next morning as Esther approached her car after leaving the motel room where she ended up spending the night after leaving my office. He had been following her. This time he dangled an attractive carrot under her nose: The prophet might be magnanimous enough to reinstate her in the church on probationary status, and allow her to keep her stipend, as long as she would obey the priesthood in all things. What else could she do? Esther accepted Lyle’s offer and became a tool to help control her traitorous daughter.
I gained valuable insights in how ruthless the FLDS can be in response to a challenge, and the tactics they would use and great lengths they would go to to threaten a witness. I wasn’t sure that Candi would ever make it to a courtroom, but I hoped that, sooner or later, a stronger witness would somehow emerge.
That moment was approaching faster than anyone expected. Elissa Wall trusted us, but she had remained apprehensive of the process. She had been observing Candi’s experiences, using them as a roadmap for what lay ahead. She wanted some protection against what we all feared, inevitable FLDS retaliation. Roger Hoole, representing Elissa, and Washington County prosecutor Brock Belnap drafted a confidentiality agreement that would not only protect her identity, but would also allow her the freedom to withdraw from the action if the pressure became unbearable.
As part of the camouflage, the prosecutor put off charging Elissa’s ex-husband, Allen Steed, with anything at all until after Warren Jeffs was arrested and tried. To name Steed prematurely would tip off the FLDS that Elissa was involved. Elissa’s safety was more important than Steed. Under those conditions, she agreed to go forward.
A civil suit accusing Warren Jeffs of placing an unidentified child in an illegal and incestuous underage marriage was filed under the pseudonym of “M. J.” on December 13, 2005. Not only were the initials fictitious, but the filing was made far away from Short Creek, in Cedar City, Utah. The plaintiff sought damages from not only the prophet but also from the FLDS church and the UEP Trust. The lawsuit kept Elissa so far in the background that there was little for the FLDS to track.
Two weeks later, on New Year’s Day 2006, Elissa Wall did one of the hardest things a victim of abuse can do: During long interviews with detectives and attorneys from Washington County, Utah—basically, a bunch of strangers—she relived her experiences in an outpouring that left her tearful and exhausted. Step by step, Elissa grew more determined, and at the end, the authorities were convinced she was going to be a strong witness. On April 5, 2006, Elissa Wall completed two more exhaustive interviews with the police and prosecutors, and Brock Belnap felt that he had heard enough. He hit Warren Jeffs with two felony charges of rape as an accomplice.
The identity protection went to a higher level when the prosecutor identified the plaintiff in this case as Jane Doe IV. Only a handful of people knew that Elissa, M. J., and Jane Doe IV were the same person.
The biggest dog in the hunt for Warren Jeffs was the FBI. The Bureau had been there all along, but they kept their support very quiet. Now, because Warren had crossed so many state lines so often, he was wanted as a federal fugitive in addition to being sought on the various state and civil charges. As 2006 dawned, the Bureau got into the game for real, bringing to bear their immense resources.
A lot of these guys were friends of mine. We had a history of working together on other cases long before the FLDS investigation came along: I had helped them break up a ring of gem thieves; and I had assisted in a sting operation to catch a pedophile who had been preying on a thirteen-year-old girl, as well as several other cases. Over the years, I had learned to trust them and also had learned how to obtain their help and resources. When I approached them with an idea on how to put even more pressure on the prophet, they were receptive.
On June 27, 2005, the FBI issued what we call a UFAP (Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution) warrant for the arrest of Warren Jeffs, backed up with a reward of $50,000.
Over the next year, Gary and I lobbied for even more federal help, and on May 6, 2006, the FBI bumped him up to the Ten Most Wanted list and doubled the reward to $100,000. Finally, the prophet’s words had been proven right: He was now among the elite of the international criminals being hunted by the FBI, right up there with Osama bin Laden.
My popularity among the FLDS members had sunk to new lows in Short Creek over the past few months. When I walked into the Colorado City Mercantile Cooperative (the general store), I was always treated to an impressive display of mobile communication devices as cell phones were whipped out to report that the demon gentile private investigator was back in the Crick. Soon, a plyg-rig convoy of trucks would show up on the streets, not just one, but six or eight. It was annoying.
Then the goons went too far. They decided to harass me at my home, something I would not tolerate. That spring, my wife mentioned that she had seen some pickup trucks with tinted windows pull into our driveway a couple of times and just sit there until our dogs barked at them. Then they would slowly back out and speed away. Since my house is situated on twenty acres at the end of a dead-end road that is two and a half miles long, there was no reason for anybody to just happen to be coming out to our place unannounced.
A few days after she told me about the trucks, she called me to the front porch; they were back. A pickup truck towing a trailer was idling in our driveway. Four people were in it, and when they spotted me, they took off. I jumped into my white SUV and we raced down the dirt road and then onto the highway, where I pulled up beside them and motioned for them to pull over. Instead, they tore along for another eight miles until they swerved onto another dirt road, stopping only when it dead-ended at the DeMille Turf Farm. I boxed them in.
Not knowing who they were, their intentions, or whether they were armed, I was reluctant to approach the truck, but they were just sitting there, so I stalked over and rapped on the driver’s window until he rolled it down. Inside sat three buttoned-up men and one woman, who wore a typical fundamentalist prairie dress. It was the FLDS.
“Hey! Do you know who I am?” I shouted in the driver’s face. All four looked down and refused to answer. I was furious, they had crossed the line by coming to my home and it would not be tolerated. My face was now within inches of the man behind the wheel as I screamed again, “Do you know who I am!” The driver, staring down at the floor, shook his head that he did not. Then I asked the others, who did the same, so I cleared up the mystery for them.
“I’m Sam Brower! Why were you at my house?”
“Oh, we were just lost,” the driver mumbled.
I was seeing red. These thugs were invading my family home and needed a lesson, fast. “Listen,” I told him. “You come to my house again and trespass on my property, I’m going to splatter you all over my driveway. You understand? Go back and tell the people who sent you … you come to my house again, I will splatter you. Do you understand?”
They sat there not saying a word, and I wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. I reached in and knocked the baseball cap off the driver’s head. It flew into the face of the guy in the back. “You understand me?” The guy quickly nodded his head and said he did.
“So, if you were lost, why are you here?” I demanded.
“Uh, we came here to buy some turf.”
The farm had just been mowed and there were no rolls or strips of turf left except for little chunks. “Okay. Get out and get your turf.” While they started dutifully loading little scrap clods of soil into their trailer, I called a detective friend and told him what was going on. He said, “Sam, get out of there before you do something stupid.”
I agreed. My goal was not to hurt anyone, just to humiliate them enough to make certain they had gotten the message. The church goons did not return.
I had not seen Candi Shapley for some time when she contacted me in April 2006 and asked me to explain the latest legal wrinkle concerning her upcoming appearance in Kingman, Arizona, for the trial of her ex-“husband,” Randy Barlow. The Arizona subpoena for her appearance as a witness first had to be cleared through a Utah court hearing, which also required her to appear. I explained that it was just a formality to make the Arizona subpoena executable in Utah and explained the consequences of not appearing. But Candi was a no-show at the hearing, and the judge issued a warrant for her arrest on a charge of failure to appear. Once again, our star witness was gone, and this time she was a fugitive. Every cop in the nation had her name.
Gary and I watched her home for more than a week and finally spotted Esther driving up with someone else in the car. I trailed them for a while, but lost her when they turned into a fast-food drive-through. Esther Shapley wouldn’t have gone to Candi’s home just for the heck of it. Candi had to be nearby.
Early the following morning, Washington County deputy Matt Fischer, a savvy cop who had been on assignment in Short Creek for a year, decided to stop by Candi’s apartment. She got there at nearly the same time, and she was arrested.
Candi called her mother, Esther, from the jail to ask for help, without success. She then reached out to Gary and me. Engels was hamstrung because his jurisdiction was in Arizona, and Candi was in Utah. I agreed to help, but I demanded that she first tell me what had been going on—the truth. As I spoke to her in the Washington County Jail, a story of the FLDS luring her away from her home spilled forth.
According to Candi, shortly after she had called me for advice about the Utah court date, her mother had summoned her. Esther had been babysitting one of the twins and they made arrangements for Candi to pick up the child at R&W Excavation in Short Creek. That immediately sent up red flags for me because R&W was owned by church enforcer Willie Jessop.
Candi saw nothing unusual about that. Her uncle and aunt both worked there, as her mother also did on occasion, so she willingly went on over. She was surprised to find her father there, too, since Esther and Bill were still officially apart. And they were both wearing gentile clothes, which was totally out of character. Then Willie Jessop pulled into the parking lot in a new, blue GMC Denali and handed the keys over to Bill Shapley. It was all very strange.
Bill and Esther urged Candi to climb into the truck with the twins so they could all go and visit some people in Phoenix. On the way there, Candi began asking questions and they explained that the FLDS could not take the chance of her testifying against Randy, because that information could also be used against the prophet. The FLDS leaders needed for Candi to disappear and had tasked her mother and father with the ugly job of kidnapping their own daughter and grandchildren.
“Eventually things will get back to normal and the prophet will find a good priesthood man for you,” Esther reassured her.
“I don’t want a good priesthood man,” Candi retorted. “I’ve already had one of those.”
They ended up at a condo that Candi said belonged to another FLDS loyalist by the name of Paul Holm, where she was supposed to remain in hiding. But after a few weeks in Phoenix, her handicapped baby took a turn for the worse and once again needed urgent medical attention. Candi feared that if her little girl didn’t receive specialized care back at Primary Children’s Hospital in Salt Lake City, the baby probably wouldn’t make it. The FLDS phobia against using unfamiliar hospitals was ingrained in her. The new doctors would demand information. So a rendezvous was set up with another of Candi’s sisters in Mesquite, Nevada, with the understanding that the sister would transport the child on to Salt Lake and Candi would sneak back into hiding.
Once in Mesquite, Candi threw a public fit within sight of gentiles. Her parents decided to avoid a scene by letting Candi go on to Salt Lake, too. Deputy Fischer found her the following morning.
Now in jail, she was furious at her parents and the church for luring her and her babies away.
As the father of two daughters and a son who I love dearly, I often struggle to understand how an FLDS mother and father can set aside normal parental instincts and knowingly place their underage daughter into a sexually abusive relationship with a man who might be decades older than the child. My youngest daughter was only fourteen when I started working these cases, and the thought of such an event taking place involving one of my girls left me nauseated.
I felt sorry for the things Candi had gone through. My heart went out to her, and every time I see one of those little girls in a prairie dress at the Crick, I think about Candi’s plight and that of many other young girls there and ponder the simple truth that they just don’t stand a chance.
They will never become a concert violinist, or even play guitar with friends in their garage. They won’t be physicists or chemists, or help their own children with their geometry homework, because they will never learn geometry themselves. Ambitions, goals, and achieving one’s potential are limited to what a maniacal religious zealot lays out for them. The only thing on their horizon is bringing as many children as they can into the world, to replenish the insatiable requirement for ever more wives and ever more children. I try not to dwell on that bleak future when I see the kids working in the summer gardens of Short Creek, but it’s a hard image to flush from my mind.
I suppose those feelings came to the surface when I called Esther and bluntly told her to get hold of Bill Shapley and get their daughter out of jail. It was their duty to help her out of this mess. Neither of them was aware at the time that I knew that their ruse had gone awry. Esther told me that she didn’t have the money, and I snapped back that Bill certainly did. Esther promised to see if he would help. After a couple of hours, I called back. She claimed that Bill was unavailable. I was furious. A few years later, in December 2010, I came across a photograph in National Geographic of a kindly Bill Shapley watching some of his fully-clothed daughters swimming in a mountain pond. Where the photo seemed to portray a family having fun, all I saw was a devious father.
I couldn’t bear to watch Candi sit in jail, although the FLDS just might lure her away again or find some other way of keeping her quiet if she got out. The bail was five thousand dollars, meaning that if she went through a bondsman, it would cost about five hundred dollars, and a friend or family member would have to co-sign on the bond. None would, so I personally took care of it, carrying the liability if she didn’t appear in court at the appointed time. That was never fully reimbursed.
I told Candi that the time had come for her to do the right thing. As part of our deal, she had to let me know where she was in the future as the trial neared. The good part was that she was now extremely angry with her family and the church hierarchy. She told friends about how she had been lured away and held hostage. She told Gary and me the same thing. If she could keep that state of mind, and keep focused on the truth, then I felt we had a chance.
A short time later Candi informed me that she had hired an attorney, something that few victims ever do. Since I had been the one who had bailed her out, I knew Candi had little money. I therefore suspected that the FLDS may have supplied her with a lawyer. Her new attorney promised that henceforth Candi would show up and testify.