Prophet's Prey (25 page)

While there was no way of knowing her role at the time, if she had been detained long enough to process some of the evidence found in the car, they would have discovered Naomi's importance. Instead, they let her go. It was a lost opportunity.

A lot of potential evidence walked out the door when Naomi and Isaac were set free. To this day, I don't have an answer for why the Feds did not seize that opportunity. An FBI agent who I asked about it later was as disgusted as I, hinting only that they had gotten orders “from upstairs.” It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last time, that law enforcement agencies would make perplexing decisions in this investigation and never explain why.

I was ecstatic that Warren had been caught, but it meant an almost sleepless night of phone calls and e-mails in my motel room in Kingman. I wasn't the only one awake. The news instantaneously swept through not only the FLDS and the refugee community but the national media as well. By the time I walked through the grove of tall trees flanking the main entrance of the columned Mohave County Courthouse on the morning of August 29, I was exhausted.

Candi looked a lot better. She had long before rejected the FLDS dress code, and it seems that as soon as a woman leaves the cult and tastes that newfound sense of freedom, one of the first things she does is get a new hairdo and update the stale wardrobe. In her appearance before Superior Court judge Steven Conn, Candi was a stylish twenty-year-old young woman whose wavy red hair complimented the black pants, tailored vest, and black heels.

Her mother, Esther, wore a drab brown ankle-length prairie dress and sat on the defense side of the courtroom, right next to the mother of the perpetrator on trial, Randy Barlow, in a silent show of solidarity. Barlow, whose bail had been posted by Willie Jessop, was facing two Class 6 felonies for sexual conduct with a minor, as well as the more serious charge of rape, because Candi had told the grand jury that he had raped her twice after she was forced to marry him when she was only sixteen. Barlow sauntered into court wearing jeans and a gray shirt, seemingly unconcerned for a man who could be sent away for several years in prison if convicted. I wondered if he knew something we didn't.

Barlow was actually the second of eight FLDS men who would be tried in Arizona's crackdown on underage marriages. The first, Kelly Fischer, had been convicted and got forty-five days in jail and three years of probation, a disappointing sentence. Judge Steven Conn's rationale for such a light sentence was that it was normal for a first conviction for statutory rape. The judge apparently didn't take into consideration the fact that Fischer was a loyal FLDS member and might well reoffend if called upon by his church leaders to do so. Five of the eight men indicted were eventually convicted.

Soon after Candi took the stand, I had the sinking feeling that this trial was over before it even started. Only a few minutes into the general background opening questions from Mohave County prosecutor Matt Smith, I saw Esther rise. She moved all the way across the courtroom and took a new position, directly in Candi's line of sight, as if the witness was not already painfully aware of her complex family situation. The church hierarchy was using Esther to play on that weakness. It reminded me of something out of the
Godfather
movies.

Smith asked Candi how she had learned she was being placed with Barlow. She remained cool, and after a long pause looked right at him. I was stunned to hear the words that followed from her mouth. “I have nothing else to say,” she told the prosecutor. I cringed, almost able to hear Warren Jeffs's “answer them nothing” mantra rolling around in her head.

Smith had not expected such explicit opposition. Everything he had was flying right out the window as the prime witness and victim deliberately defied the court. He pressed forward, and she became adamant and her stare hardened. “I have nothing else to say.”

Judge Conn instructed her to respond or face the possibility of contempt of court. Candi remained firm: “I am not willing to answer any more questions.”

She crashed and burned before our eyes. Following the courtroom disaster, the state tried to salvage something from the wreckage.

There was a little more legal wrangling, but it was over. After Candi balked, the man who she claimed under oath had savagely raped her walked out of court a free man. It was unbelievable. She was ruled in contempt of court and sent to a shelter for abused women on a thirty-day sentence. It was later shortened to two weeks when Matt Smith felt there was no need to continue victimizing the victim.

Having gotten to know Esther, I was not surprised by her strange actions. The church leadership had backed her into a corner, and I didn't expect her to have the courage to defy them. But I was highly disappointed with Candi. At least she didn't lie; she just refused to answer. The charges against Warren in Arizona remained in place, but if Candi would not even testify against Barlow, there was no chance that she would take the stand against the prophet.

Of the other three Arizona men who ended up not being convicted of the charges against them, Rodney Holm, the former deputy marshall, remains a convicted felon and registered sex offender in the state of Utah. His Arizona charges were dismissed. The indictment against Terry Barlow was dismissed and Donald Barlow was acquitted.

I wouldn't allow Candi's and Esther's performances in court that day to alter my relationship with either of them. I never burn my sources, no matter how frustrating. Who knows what the future might hold?

CHAPTER 30

Guilty

Warren Jeffs, wearing a dark blue prison uniform that drooped over his skinny frame, had his initial appearance in court before Las Vegas Justice of the Peace James Bixler on Monday, August 31. Arizona and Utah had agreed that Utah would try him first, because it had the stronger case and the charges there were more serious: two first-degree felony counts of rape as an accomplice. Warren was not represented by a lawyer at that initial hearing, and when Bixler asked if he would fight extradition, the prisoner answered in a soft voice that he would not.

The following day, he was transported by a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter over the 150 miles to the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah, and within twenty-four hours he was on a closed-circuit television loop for a six-minute hearing before Judge James L. Shumate, who set a hearing for September 19. By the time of that preliminary hearing, Jeffs had legal representation, a Salt Lake lawyer named Walter Bugden, and the identity of the plaintiff, the fictitious Jane Doe IV, was legally revealed to him: It was Elissa Wall.

A number of Warren's FLDS followers were in the courtroom. He occasionally stole a glance at them, pleaded not guilty to the charges, and was ordered held in Purgatory Correctional Facility without bail. After being on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for more than a year, he was thought to be a considerable flight risk.

While Bugden would be the local counsel in Utah, celebrated Las Vegas defense attorney Richard A. Wright was hired to be the overall honcho for what we called “the beauty show” of Jeffs's well-tailored and well-coiffed lawyers. FLDS legal costs had been huge before Jeffs was arrested, and now the price tag had to be skyrocketing.

In our country, every defendant is entitled to a fair trial and a lawyer, and some attorneys specialize in the high-profile defense arena, where the money is good and the spotlight is bright. Wright was described in the
Las Vegas Sun
newspaper as having “been involved in some of the biggest legal cases in recent Las Vegas history—gamblers, a boxer, murderers and a grandmother—all with low-key aplomb.” He was so good that he managed to win a sentence of life in prison instead of the death penalty for a man who raped and murdered a nine-year-old girl whose body was found in a casino bathroom, with the entire crime caught on security video. Wright also did some work in 2008 for Antoin “Tony” Rezko, a Chicago political hack known to associate with the mob who ran up hundreds of thousands of dollars in markers and debt to several of the best casinos in Vegas, while also being entangled in political corruption and influencing peddling charges back in Illinois. The Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice had named Wright the “Defender of the Decade” in the year 2000.

While awaiting his preliminary hearing after arriving at Purgatory, Warren Jeffs was escorted from his cell to see a visitor just as another prisoner was brought out. They recognized each other instantly, and Warren called out, “Is that you, Doyle Dockstader?”

Dockstader, a tough survivor of the prison system who was then charged with assault and other crimes, became unhinged at the sight of his former Alta Academy headmaster. “I haven't forgotten you,” Uncle Warren said as they passed in the jail hallway, both under guard.

“I can't describe it,” the shaken prisoner told me later. “All the things he had done to me just started coming back.” Two nights later, Dockstader climbed a fence of the prison exercise yard and escaped, shredding his skin and clothing on the sharp concertina wire in his determination to flee. After a couple weeks on the run, he was captured in Las Vegas following a chase in which he rammed a police car while trying to get away.

The shock felt by Dockstader concerned me. Almost from the start, there had been side trails in my investigation that reeked of insidiousness and mystery. Individually, they might be dismissed as foggy memories, old wives' tales, or simple overreaction, but combined, they formed a frightening picture. While the stories might never rise to the standard of proof required in a court of law, it would be imprudent to ignore them.

Here was a man who had an actual army made up of thousands of people who were blindly obedient to him. I had heard one bluntly state, “I would cut my wives' throats if the prophet called upon me to do so.”

Warren's belief that the church should practice “blood atonement” was only the tip of the problem. I had been told by several former students at the Alta Academy of how the headmaster had required what he called survival classes to help prepare them for the day when “the streets of Salt Lake City would run with the blood of the wicked.” Those classes were taught with the help of the feared Dee Jessop, who would personally demonstrate how to cut the throats of an assortment of animals and butcher them in front of the schoolchildren. Stories were commonplace of senior girls at the academy being required to slit the throat of a sheep in order to graduate.

Nobody ever forgot the great slaughter of the dogs in Short Creek. There were hidden caches of guns and explosives around FLDS enclaves. Selected men underwent specialized military-style firearms training at a paramilitary camp in Nevada.

Warren had constantly carped about God's imminent judgments wiping the gentiles from the face of the earth, and had toured the entire country praying for the destruction of whole cities. The religion itself was founded on the principle that its members were above the laws of the land. It was never much of a leap to believe that despite their protestations to the contrary, the FLDS had the means and the will to do something horrible.

The question of whether the prophet's grip on the faithful would remain strong while he languished in jail actually was easy to answer. The people had already been conditioned to the prophet running their world from the back seats of luxury cars prowling the highways of the United States.

Doyle Dockstader knew exactly what Warren Jeffs was capable of and may have been the only prisoner to fear the gangly misfit. Other inmates regarded him as just another child molester who had gained notoriety by talking a lot of religious mumbo-jumbo and had a group of brainwashed followers. The jail's land sharks showed no mercy; child molesters are at the bottom of the prison food chain. Although confined to his own cell, and out of the reach of other inmates, he was ridiculed and taunted from a distance. The nonstop noise and foul language, and the aggressive nature of the prisoners, was completely foreign to the delicate sensibilities of the soft, clumsy man.

Jeffs's mental state began deteriorating from the moment the steel doors had slammed shut behind him for the first time. He had been thrust out of his element, and the shock of not being in control of every aspect of his life and the lives of those around him soon gave way to the rude awakening that he was no longer an extraordinary being. In prison, he was just another convict.

In Utah, there is no insanity defense. If found mentally incompetent to stand trial, those charged are detained in the criminal section of the state mental hospital until deemed capable of understanding the charges and participating in their own defense. Psychologists were hired to evaluate Jeffs, but he answered very few of their questions and would not participate in their diagnostic tests. The official prognosis was that although he was mentally ill and depressed, he was competent to participate in the proceedings. He could stand trial.

The preliminary hearing in Utah was an on-again, off-again affair that got under way on November 22 and ended on December 14, 2006. Then his attorney deluged the court with appeals, fighting hard even in this most routine of legal steps. All the while, his client remained locked up in his little cell. He was having a tough time in there.

As the days turned to weeks, and then months passed, Warren's condition continued to slide. He summoned all the rituals he could concoct to make sure that his six-by-ten cell was spiritually clean and pure, so that God could come and visit and provide revelations. He awoke several times each night to rededicate the tiny chamber all over again. He prayed so long that his knees became herniated and bled. Some of the jail staff made bets on how long he could stay kneeling before toppling over.

Unable to control his compulsions, and despite knowing that he was being viewed through the video cameras, the prophet masturbated so frequently that the guards continually reprimanded him. He ignored them, as he teetered on the brink of fantasy and reality. Any doubt that he was out of control vanished the day he stood at one end of his cell and ran full-tilt and headfirst into the wall at the other end, repeatedly. He would later attempt to hang himself with his pajamas, which resulted in trips to both the hospital emergency room and the psych ward.

The judge was unable to clear away the blizzard of defense motions and make his final ruling until five months later, on May 28, 2007. By then, Warren was a physical and emotional mess. Although he wore a neat dark suit, white shirt, and white tie, he was so gaunt that the shirt collar hung loose around his scarecrow neck. During the proceedings, he would sometimes nod off, drooling to the point that his shirt grew wet.

His condition had been a problem for the prosecution. They wanted to make sure Jeffs was capable of participating in his own defense. To maintain his delicate mental balance, the jailers had pampered him.

He was allowed nearly unlimited telephone access and a constant stream of visitors. He participated in long-distance worship services, led teachings from a pay phone, and wrote new revelations and letters to be passed along to his followers. He assigned code numbers to specific individuals in the church hierarchy because he knew his conversations were being monitored and recorded while in custody. He was still building Zion from his jail cell and was still able to keep a tight rein on his followers. They firmly clung to the idea that the government was persecuting the prophet and church only because of their “unpopular religious beliefs.” In this, they were immovable.

Warren was still captain of their ship, steering them all to salvation in the hereafter. Jeffs made every effort to conduct business as usual, and he almost succeeded—almost, but not quite. He was out of his element and missed the comforts and pampering he enjoyed as the FLDS monarch.

The jail's medical staff made a point of dropping by just to talk to him, and he was allowed a special diet to help to stave off his weight loss. A regimen of medication was prescribed to treat his depression and stabilize him, but he usually would not take it, saying the government was trying to poison him.

He had some disturbing revelations during the Lord's visits at night. Among his dreams was the sad prediction that his Naomi, who he referred to by the code name 91, was about to die. Warren dispatched orders to prepare her funeral arrangements, designated who would speak, and indicated where she should be buried. He spent hours in his cell communing with the Heavens concerning Naomi's mission in the hereafter. It would have been a stunning illustration of his prophetic powers, except that it was all just another manifestation of his psychosis. Warren spent a long week mourning his loss before learning that Naomi remained alive and well.

At the conclusion of the hearing, after finally binding the prophet over for trial, Judge Shumate was taking care of a few housekeeping legal matters and getting ready to recess. Suddenly, Warren stood at the defense table and said, “May I approach the bench, Your Honor? I just need to take care of one matter.” Awkwardly scrawling on a white tablet, he stood to speak and was fumbling to tear off a piece of paper to present to the court.

The judge glanced up, surprised, and immediately denied the request, instructing Jeffs to take up whatever it was with his lawyers. To allow the prisoner to start talking directly to the court and not through his attorneys risked jeopardizing the entire process. Shumate scowled at the defense lawyers, who closed in around their client to see what he was talking about.

“I just have this one matter, it will only take a minute, Your Honor,” Warren sputtered, gesturing with the sheet of paper. “This will just take a minute.” At that instant, a news photographer snapped his shutter.

Shumate barked, “Court is recessed!” and almost bolted from his own courtroom while the lawyers scrambled to take away the paper and keep their client under control.

The picture was distributed to the media, but it gave no clue as to what Warren wanted to talk about. Photography is an important part of my work and I wondered if there might be some way to digitally discover what was on the other side of that paper. I obtained a good copy and got busy with my computer, enhancing and enlarging. Whatever Warren had written became faintly visible on the back of the sheet. Of course, the writing appeared backward in the snapshot, so I made a mirror image, then zoomed in. As I sharpened it and filled in the pixels, some of the words became clear.

He had written, in part, “I have not been a prophet and am not the prophet.” He had intended to announce to the court that he was not the prophet of the FLDS after all.

Ben Winslow, a reporter with the
Deseret News
in Salt Lake City, had called while I was working on the image and I gave him the information. Ben jumped on it, enlisting the help of a photography lab and a handwriting expert. Winslow's story, headlined I AM NOT THE PROPHET, spread to the national media.

Judge Shumate had not allowed Jeffs to make his statement in court, but outside the courtroom no one could shut Warren up, and he was intent on delivering the message, even revealing it to the deputies who were escorting him out of the courthouse. He would make the same confession to several FLDS leaders and family members, recorded on the jail's pay phone, admitting that he had never been God's messenger and he knew that because, of course, God had told him so. While his followers believed everything else he said, this was more than they could bear to accept. The entire episode became comical as Warren tried to convince his people that he was a fraud and a liar, saying, “the truth is not in me.” Even after confessing to his mother and several church leaders that he had “immoral relations with a sister and a daughter,” nobody would listen. He had conditioned them so completely that not even he could reverse the brainwashing.