Prophet's Prey (36 page)

Picture Section

Warren Jeffs with his twelve-year-old bride Merrianne Jessop, daughter of the bishop of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, Merril Jessop. Merril gave at least nineteen of his daughters and granddaughters in marriage to FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs.

Merrianne Jessop on her wedding day, just over a month before her new husband, Warren Jeffs, was captured.

A recently married and newly pregnant Veda Keate, the thirteen-year-old daughter of convicted child molester Allen Keate. Shortly after Allen gave Veda in marriage to Warren, he took an underage bride of his own. He is serving thirty-three years in Huntsville State Prison in Texas.

Ora Bonnie Steed posing with underage sister wife Veda Keate. Warren wrote that both conceived their babies during the same "heavenly session" with him. Veda also appeared in a photo in a
National Geographic
cover story on the FLDS, along with her daughter Serena. The caption in the magazine identified them only as two of the children taken in the raid on the YFZ Ranch.

Fourteen-year-old Loretta Jane Barlow and Warren Jeffs. Loretta is one of Bishop Merril Jessop's granddaughters, and the daughter of Rulon Barlow, who was excommunicated for asking Warren Jeffs to hand him some nails while working on the temple.

Fifty of Warren Jeffs's eighty-plus wives, including underage brides Merrianne Jessop, Veda Keate, Brenda Fischer, and Loretta Barlow, posing beneath a photo of their husband and prophet at the YFZ Ranch compound in Eldorado, Texas.

Forensic technicians examining the temple bed on the YFZ compound. Jeffs consummated many of his marriages to underage brides in bizarre group sex rituals on this specially made bed.

Temple at the YFZ Ranch. Also depicted are the temple annex and a couple of the typical H-homes common in FLDS compounds. (Photo by Kathy and Randy Mankin.)

El Cap section of the Vermillion Cliffs, as seen from Maxwell Park, Short Creek, Utah. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

The real Short Creek, where chickens peck on dirt roads roamed by large plyg-rigs and most people live in squalor. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

Ross and Lori Chatwin with three of their children at a family reunion in Cottonwood Park, Hildale, Utah. (By permission of Ross Chatwin.)

Giant cottonwoods in Cottonwood Park, Hildale, Utah. (Photo by Sam Brower.)