Wanted - Dead or Alive

Warren S. Jeffs
Originally uploaded by markinmexico.

Another Jim Jones

The animal pictured to the right is Warren S. Jeffs, The Prophet, and also judge and jury, bank and police, and above all defender of the faith as head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This church broke away from the Mormon church about 100 years ago.

He is wanted by authorities in the adjacent border towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT, charged with conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor for arranging the marriage of two young girls to an already married man. He is the defendant in a lawsuit by one of his nephews alleging sodomy and child sexual abuse. He is also being investigated by Ron Barton, special investigator for the Utah legislature, for underage marriages, incest, domestic violence, welfare fraud and tax evasion.

He has 80 some spiritual wives and no one knows how many children he has fathered. He has complete control of some 7000 residents in the two towns. He has disappeared under mounting pressure from law enforcement, judges and disaffected church members. He may be hiding on church owned property in or around a 1,371-acre ranch near the West Texas town of Eldorado, Texas, about 150 miles from the Mexico border or on church property in Bountiful, BC, Canada.

Colorado City, AZ - Even on a weekday afternoon, the main commercial street is eerily empty and unkempt. Not a single newspaper or magazine can be found. A variety store displays about a dozen second-hand books, mostly on good housekeeping. No movie theatre, no video rental. The culture-averse prophet banned television years ago. Word of a stranger in town spreads like wildfire, and a burly man in an SUV becomes a permanent fixture in the rear-view mirror. His holiness is said to have a private security force called "The God Squad."

The nephew who has sued him for child sexual abuse says that the sexual abuse occurred in the 1980s at Alta Academy, the church's now-closed private school in the Salt Lake Valley, where Warren Jeffs was principal. He said that when he was 5 and 6 years old, his uncles repeatedly took him from his Sunday school class to a bathroom and sodomized him. The nephew, Brent Jeffs, has alleged in a lawsuit filed in July, 2004, battery, child molestation, conspiracy, fraud and sodomy.

Jeffs is responsible for the banishment of young boys who are driven out of the two towns, dropped off along the roadside and left to fend for themselves. If they are lucky they end up in shelters or foster homes. If they are unlucky, well.... Jeffs has reportedly driven out some 400 of these unfortunate male children. Why? Mathematics. Less competition for the females.

Are we talking humans here or baboons?

Read more here, here, here, here and here.

This is an animal who should be shot on sight.


Linked to: The Captain, Atrios, The Peking Duck, Voluntary Xchange, Reconstitution, Pandagon, Bad Thinking (perfect blog name to post this story),
.