Warren Jeffs is a tall, bony man with a bulging Adam’s apple and a frightening sense of his own perfection in the eyes of God. The self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), now fifty-five years old, has taken more than seventy women and girls as wives—one of whom was just a few weeks past her twelfth birthday when he commanded her to lie on a ceremonial bed in the sanctum of his massive Texas temple and brutally raped her. He demands absolute, unquestioning obedience from his ten thousand followers. He has sodomized children as young as five years old (including his own nephew, who wrote a book about it). He and the FLDS are currently being investigated for defrauding the government of millions of dollars. He has destroyed untold hundreds of lives.
Jeffs conducted his reign of terror with impunity for three decades thanks to a pervasive, Mafia-like code of silence that he systematically instilled in the congregation. Then, in the winter of 2004, a private investigator named Sam Brower began looking into the FLDS Church. Shocked by what he uncovered, Brower concluded that Warren Jeffs needed to be put behind bars posthaste. Thanks in large part to Brower’s courageous efforts, in May 2006 Jeffs was placed on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted List,” was arrested three months later, and on September 25, 2007, was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice. His conviction has since been reversed on a technicality, but presently Jeffs is incarcerated at Big Lake, Texas, awaiting trial on felony child abuse charges.
For the better part of five years I watched with awe (and occasionally provided assistance) as Brower relentlessly tracked Jeffs down, earned the trust of the prophet’s victims, and provided state and federal law enforcement agencies with crucial evidence. A remarkable man on many levels, Sam Brower is the real deal. Readers are apt to find his firsthand account of bringing Warren Jeffs to justice both extremely disturbing and absolutely riveting.
Jon Krakauer
2011