Prophet's Prey (32 page)

Debra Brown, the executive director of the Tom Green County Child Advocacy Center, wrote a carefully crafted letter of concern to Governor Perry on October 23, 2008, to put everyone on notice that the ship was sinking. She gave me a copy.

Dear Governor Perry:

CASA or Court Appointed Special Advocates, whose mission is to speak for the best interests of children, has staff and volunteers that have been involved with the FLDS situation in Eldorado since the attempted rescue of the children in April 2008. We have met the families, worked with the children in care as well as in their homes and are appalled at the extent of the abuse to these children emotionally as well as sexually.

It is far more widespread than we could have ever imagined, yet Child Protective Services seems determined to sweep this case under the rug and call it quits. CPS recently nonsuited most of the families and now has only ten cases involving thirty-seven children remaining. The original case total was 468 children.

Please intercede on behalf of the children and help Child Protective Services validate their mission of protecting children.

I visited the Yearning for Zion ranch in Eldorado last Thursday and was amazed to see three new large buildings under construction. This indicates to me that the sect is staying at the ranch and must feel that it is safe to carry on business as usual.

There are literally dozens of young men from Utah and Arizona called the “Lost Boys” that have been forced to leave their homes within the FLDS community and turned out into the streets with no money, little education and no knowledge of the real world simply for watching a movie or asking the wrong questions.

We have many teenage girls aged twelve to sixteen that are married or “sealed” to older men. Many of these girls have babies.

We have met and visited with several men that were forced from the community for questioning the Prophet. For this action their wives and children have been reassigned to other men like property.

Children have told us that they were taken from their mothers, given new mothers and have not been allowed to see their biological mothers at all.

The FLDS has claimed to have a wonderful home school program, but many of the children are testing below grade level by several years.

We have a goldmine of information corroborating abuse of children and need to act upon it now, as we will never have this opportunity again. This situation is only going to get worse. By refusing to pursue these cases, Child Protective Services gives the impression to the public that no crimes or violations were discovered. This is absolutely incorrect. If we abandon these children, because of fear of lawsuits or costs to our state, we are no better than the men who systematically sexually assault the young girls in the name of religion …

This behavior has been unfettered in Utah because fifty years ago the state abdicated their authority and has been fearful ever since of taking on the FLDS. As Texans, we have historically supported the right cause no matter the pain or consequences. I think we can do no less in this cause for these children.

Time is of the essence. Please do what is in the best interest of these children and intervene on their behalf. Don't let this problem become insurmountable on your watch as the leader of this great State.

Instead of receiving help, Brown and her CASA volunteers were criticized by CPS officials. Brown later bitterly told reporter Paul Anthony of the
San Angelo Standard-Times
, “What the media says and what the public thinks is a zero in the equation. It should be what is in the best interests of the child. Who cares what Willie [Jessop] says? Who cares what Nancy Grace says? Who cares what anyone says?”

The CPS spin was that their actual goal had been accomplished because the FLDS had learned the hard way that, by darn, you don't mess with Texas. From now on, those people at the ranch knew the state would be watching, and Willie Jessop had promised that the FLDS would stop underage marriages. It was a naïve and self-serving position. The FLDS had not changed, and had no intention of doing so. All that CPS had accomplished was to teach the FLDS how to fine-tune their crimes in order to better escape detection in the future.

CHAPTER 38

Stalker

As dispirited as I was over the inability of the Texas DFPS to protect the children from future abuse within the FLDS, I was heartened by the justice being meted out to some of the perpetrators. The grand jury was changing the complexion of the overall case.

I was particularly pleased when November brought four more indictments, this time including two of the biggest names in the breakaway religious cult: sixty-eight-year-old Wendell Loy Nielsen, the first counselor of the prophet, and Frederick Merril Jessop, seventy-two, the second counselor and the bishop at the YFZ Ranch. With Warren Jeffs already in jail, that meant that the entire ruling First Presidency was now under indictment, thus emasculating the FLDS leadership. Their trials are pending.

Child Protective Services continued non-suiting the victims until all of the children but one were back with their FLDS parents, mostly at the ranch. It seemed fittingly symbolic that the last child standing was Merrianne Jessop Jeffs, the red-haired girl whom Warren had “married” only a few weeks before he was arrested two years earlier, when she was a mere twelve years old. She had been part of the three-bride ritual on Thursday, July 27, 2006, at the ranch in Texas, when the leadership had locked their fates together.

All of the men involved in that extraordinary triple ceremony had been swept up by the law. Of the three grooms, Warren Jeffs was already doing his prison stretch on the Utah charges and was facing more charges in Arizona and Texas as well as federal fugitive charges. Raymond Merril Jessop and Merril Leroy Jessop were later tried and convicted of sexual assault of a child and received ten years and seventy-five years, respectively, in the Texas State Prison. The remaining two men involved, fathers of a pair of the brides, were Wendell Nielsen and Merril Jessop, both of whom had been named in the latest grand jury bills. All were charged with serious felonies.

Merrianne was a different story. When she was taken during the raid, evidence was discovered that suggested she may have already become a mother herself, at the age of twelve. She would spend several months in a state-monitored foster home, but she was still within the control of the FLDS. In her pocket was a cell phone with which her mother, the ferocious Barbara Jessop, secretly text-messaged advice about how to obstruct the questioners and frustrate her foster parents. “Please stay angry,” read one, while another instructed, “We need you to keep crying, pout, sleep in. Crying will get you what you want.”

When the state's workers tried to interview her and determine a course of action for her future, they found the girl had been transformed from a milkmaid waif into a spitfire defender of the faith. “She was a real little brat,” one told me.

Merrianne plopped herself in a big overstuffed chair while being evaluated, was flippant and rude, and played the familiar “answer them nothing” card of her jailed “husband,” Warren, to the hilt. There was no doubt that she had been well coached on how to take control of an interview.

Then one of the workers handed her a photograph showing a red-haired baby that looked just like her, and asked whose child it was. Merrianne grasped the picture and stared at it hard. She got up, walked unsteadily around the large chair, curled into a fetal position on the floor behind it, and began to weep uncontrollably, rocking back and forth as if she were having a nervous breakdown. She went from being a smart-mouthed child bride to being a sobbing mess in a heartbeat. This time, it wasn't an act; it was eerily reminiscent of the pain of a mother unable to turn off her love for her child. Such was the legacy that Warren Jeffs bestowed on the children he chose as concubines.

The CPS finally gave up on Merrianne, too. Once again they brokered a deal with Willie Jessop and assigned her to a foster home—one within the FLDS, and with the usual sort of history that goes along with those beliefs.

A twenty-one-page report titled “Eldorado Investigation” reviewing the eventful year of 2008 was released soon thereafter by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. It stated that a total of 439 children had been removed from the YFZ Ranch, and that 274 of them, from 91 families, had been the subjects of abuse and neglect. One in four prepubescent girls was involved in an underage marriage. That CPS had not done more was shameful in every way imaginable and will exact a toll on hundreds of children in the years to come.

Appeals and affidavits, supplements and responses, orders and objections, motions and memorandums. The work load was as heavy as ever with ongoing case preparations against the FLDS: tracking down a lead on another place of refuge, digging up information on a newly discovered FLDS shell corporation, or talking to sources down in Short Creek. It never ended.

I began the day on May 12, 2009, in Short Creek, meeting with some potential witnesses on a case, and had to race to catch my plane to Texas for a hearing the next day on the motion to suppress evidence seized during the law enforcement intervention at the YFZ Ranch. The FLDS defense lawyers were fighting the search warrants with everything they had.

I flew into San Angelo at ten o'clock that night, so beat that I had to check my hotel reservations on my BlackBerry to find where I would be staying.

A cheery and efficient young woman checked me in at the front desk, assigned me to Room 233, and handed over the key. Her next words snapped me wide awake. The clerk said my room was right next door to that of my friend. What friend? Nobody knew where I was staying, a habit I had developed long ago because of the sensitive nature of my work. Hell, I hadn't known where I was staying until I had gotten off the plane thirty minutes earlier.

I asked which friend it was, and she scrolled through her computer, then replied, “His last name is Jessop. First name is Dee.” The clerk gave an accurate physical description, because he had checked in using his driver's license and a credit card just a couple of hours earlier. The FLDS enforcer was stalking me. Instead of going to my room, I called my contact with the San Angelo field office of the FBI.

While I waited in the lobby, my mind raced to recall the miserable story of Dee Jessop. He was the brother of Willie Jessop, but by another mother, and was only half the size of Big Willie. He was currently facing charges (later dismissed) for harassing people whom the FLDS perceived as enemies of the church but who were living in Short Creek. And now the sick son of a bitch had tracked me down and rented the room next door? I was getting madder by the second, wondering what that depraved little creep was planning. If anyone was crazy enough to take on the assignment of some sort of attack, it would be Dee.

The FBI agents showed up along with some local officers. My room was undisturbed, and Dee was nowhere to be found. I suspected as much, because guys who carry out special assignments for the church always have access to electronic equipment, including police radio scanners. When the local police were called to the scene, I figured Dee would have heard the dispatcher, and would have bolted.

The desk clerk told us that she had received several calls throughout the day from a man claiming to be Sam Brower, who said that she should expect some friends to also arrive at the hotel, and they all wanted to stay in nearby rooms. She told the caller that Mr. Brower would be given Room 233. When Dee Jessop showed up, he asked for Room 232, but when he learned it was already booked, he instead took Room 234.

It was enough of a threat for the FBI to book me into another hotel under an assumed name and keep a lookout for Dee during my stay in San Angelo. It was frustrating that no crime of any substance had been committed, because he identified himself properly to the desk clerk, and the other “Sam Brower” was an anonymous caller. I had a stalker, I knew his name, and I would take appropriate precautions in the future.

During the court hearing the following day, the FLDS attorneys became annoyed at my presence and decided to rustle up an impromptu subpoena to try to compel me to return to Texas in a few months for a deposition. To do so would give Dee Jessop or some other FLDS nut case another chance at me. In my opinion, it was pure harassment. It would have been foolish to play their game, so I filed an affidavit back in Utah saying that it would be unsafe for me to travel to Texas if the FLDS had advance knowledge of my presence. The court dismissed the subpoena. From then on, it was imperative for me to take special precautions to keep my whereabouts secret while traveling. I never discovered for sure how they had known about my trip in advance.

Ever since I had first begun searching for Warren Jeffs and investigating his cult, the FBI had been helpful—not always in the public eye, but always seeming to be around at the right time, such as when they served their own search warrants during the YFZ raid, elevated Warren to their Ten Most Wanted list, and showed up when the prophet was arrested. They had the resources, manpower, and technology to do things that no one else could.

So I was happy to help out in May when a joint task force of federal agencies prepared to conduct massive simultaneous raids on scores of church-affiliated businesses and safe houses. I went down to Short Creek to help agents locate and identify the homes and companies in which they were interested. A few weeks later, more than two hundred agents were fully briefed, had their gear prepared, and were primed to carry out what would be one of the largest federal criminal operations in recent history. Dozens of arrests of FLDS leaders were anticipated.

We were all waiting in anticipation for the storm to break. Then, only days before the operation was to launch, an e-mail was received from a higher-up that said, in an abbreviated version:

I'm not sure how best to phrase this, but the bottom line is that … Washington, D.C., has essentially quashed the FLDS case and will not allow us to seek search warrants for the businesses and individuals that we submitted to you. Accordingly, please withdraw all search warrants and apologize to your magistrate judges … I apologize for your wasted efforts.

We were stunned. The guys in the field believed they had a strong case that would be complicated but also a slam dunk, but the guys behind the desks in the nation's capital couldn't get past their fears of stirring up public opinion by going after members of a controversial religion. Some members of the task force left work early that day, so distraught at the stand-down order that it made them sick. I felt the same way, but I was far outside of the federal loop, and they didn't owe me any explanations. All too often I had seen similar events primed and poised to go, then called off without any plausible explanation. I wanted the battle to go on, and I worried that Washington had lost its nerve.

The criminal trials in Texas began at the very end of October 2009, and the first man up was Raymond Jessop, accused of one count of sexual abuse of a fifteen-year-old girl. He had been one of the grooms in the three-ring-circus marriages. When Willie Jessop saw me enter the courtroom, he became visibly upset and complained to the lead FLDS attorney, who apparently explained there was no law preventing Sam Brower from attending the trial. At a recess, Willie darted over to a state trooper who was the court bailiff and protested that he had a restraining order against me. The trooper asked where the order had been issued, so he could check to see if it existed. Willie stammered, “In Utah, and he isn't supposed to be within 500 feet of where I am.” I had gotten to know the trooper, who was aware there was no such order. Willie insisted that I be taken not only out of the courtroom, but tossed out of Schleicher County, too.

The trooper replied with a deadpan expression and a slow drawl, “Well sir, we're not in Utah. This is Texas, so we are not going to be able to help you, unless he scares you, sir. Is that it? Does he scare you? If so, we can escort
you
safely out of the courtroom … sir.” Willie's moon face turned bright red as he returned to his seat.

It was an amusing moment, but the best part of the trial came when the jury returned a verdict of guilty. After that, additional evidence was presented about Raymond's other child brides and his lack of remorse for being a serial pedophile. The jury decided to send Raymond Merril Jessop to prison for ten years. In Texas, child molesters complete an average of eighty-five percent of their time before being paroled. In the case of a zealous church member who will in all likelihood return to the exact same lifestyle he lived before being sent to prison, chances are very good that Jessop will be required to complete all ten years.

The next man up was fifty-seven-year-old polygamist Allen Keate, who was tried in December and ran into a buzz saw. The DNA testing positively proved that he was the father of many of the children taken at the ranch, including one from an underage “spiritual wife” he had taken when she was only fifteen.

Keate was in deeper water, too. He also was the father of Veda Keate, whom he had given to Warren Jeffs as a bride when she was just a fourteen-year-old child. During the trial, a Texas Ranger testified that in exchange for Veda being placed with Warren, Keate was later given two young brides, one of whom had previously been married to Warren's brother Leroy and at the age of fifteen was reassigned to Keate after Leroy had been booted out of the church. Allen Keate was now on trial for that sweetheart deal. The clear connection of an FLDS barter system in underage brides drew an audible intake of breath from the Texas jurors. Keate was found guilty and sentenced to a prison term of thirty-three years.

After that, the march of the self-proclaimed martyrs went like clockwork and averaged a trial every two months. Even those who made negotiated plea agreements drew lengthy prison terms as the jurors looked through the smoke-screen arguments of religious persecution and saw flagrant child abuse.

The mystery of Rozita Swinton had bothered me for a long time. She had not only ignited the entire Texas saga, but she had jarred us in Utah and Arizona with her calls to Flora Jessop, which I had overheard. Then came the simultaneous, unexpected exchange of e-mails with Candi Shapley.