[narrator] In 1830, Joseph Smith formed
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
During his lifetime, God delivered
more than a hundred commandments to Joseph.
One of these commandments,
recorded by a scribe on July the 12th, 1843,
nearly destroyed Joseph's new religion in its infancy.
Plural marriage was part of what Joseph Smith called
the most holy and important doctrine
revealed to any man on Earth.
Each Mormon male would need at least three wives
to reach the celestial kingdom.
Joseph himself married approximately 40 women.
Thousands of believers followed Smith
on a forced migration across the eastern United States
in search of the American Zion,
eventually settling in Nauvoo, Illinois.
In 1844, Joseph Smith was indicted and jailed for treason.
The governor of Illinois
personally guaranteed his safety,
but a mob stormed the jailhouse
and shot Joseph in the back.
As he fell to his death, Joseph shouted,
"Oh, Lord, my God!"
Brigham Young assumed leadership of the church
and led 15,000 saints across the Rocky Mountains
to their new Zion,
a swath of wilderness that belonged to Mexico
but would soon be annexed to the United States
as Utah Territory.
Over the next 30 years, federal agents visited
almost every town in Utah to arrest polygamists.
Giving in to the increasing pressure from the government,
the LDS church renounced polygamy in 1890.
Disgruntled Mormons,
unwilling to abandon Joseph's most holy principle,
splintered off from the mainstream LDS church.
In 1986, a single family, the Jeffs family,
gained control of the Fundamentalist Church
of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
or the FLDS,
and Rulon Jeffs became the Prophet.
Rulon took more than 50 wives.
Merilyn Steed, his favorite wife,
gave birth to five sons.
Her second son, Warren Steed Jeffs,
was determined to become the Prophet himself.
[man] Summer of 1999, I was on a climbing trip,
and I'd never driven across this really remote road.
It goes across southern Utah.
Blistering hot day.
There was a gas station,
mini mart at the side of the road,
nothing on this highway, little town off in the distance.
And I pulled in, and it was really strange.
The girl at the counter, when I went to pay for my Gatorade,
you know, was dressed like in this pioneer dress
and completely covered.
It was 103 degrees.
And I look around, and there's like, I don't know,
more than a dozen other girls dressed like that.
And I was at my car, about to leave,
and they walked away,
and they're being escorted by this old guy
with a long-sleeved shirt, button collar.
And, whoa, what's going on?
And then I paid more attention to this town,
and these huge buildings.
It's like a mile off the road, so I drove down there
and, man, these are big fuckin' houses.
And pretty soon there's a car behind me,
and wherever I go, he's right on my tail
and really aggressive.
So I got the hell out of there,
and he stayed with me all the way to the highway.
And I was pretty freaked out.
So I kept heading east towards Colorado,
and I saw a National Parks Service truck and a ranger,
and it was the closest thing to a cop I could find.
So I was kind of all freaked out and--
"Man, I was just chased,
and there's this weird, really agro--
And Colorado City."
And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's just Colorado City.
That's the polygs.
You know, that's the biggest community of polygamists
in the United States."
My head was spinning.
And what I didn't know at the time
was I was just seeing the tip of the iceberg.
Things were way stranger and way creepier
than I ever could have imagined.
[children's choir] ♪ A precious child ♪
♪ Sent from above ♪
♪ Given a mission ♪
♪ A work of love ♪
♪ God will walk beside you ♪
♪ He will hold your hand ♪
♪ He is there to guide you ♪
♪ He will understand ♪
♪ Each time you whisper ♪
♪ Or kneel in prayer ♪
♪ He sends His spirit ♪
♪ To show He is there... ♪
[Warren Jeffs] For your own children's sake,
raise them up as calves in the stall,
protected from evil influences.
Our young people
need to be surrounded by the celestial law
in their growing years,
to give them the advantage of loving God,
so that when they must face evil,
they already have a natural love for the truth.
Warren's mother, Merilyn,
was the sixth wife of my father.
She came to Father's family
through a family that's called the Steed family
that was taught to believe that their bloodline
was a royal bloodline
and that, through their bloodline,
an individual would be brought forth
that would become a great person
and become a leader of the world.
Merilyn was very protective of Warren.
Whenever he did something wrong,
she would blame other people
or bring up other people's faults
to try to cover up what he did wrong.
I got to know Warren when I was 19 years old.
We were thrown together in school.
We were thrown together in a lot of things.
His father promoted it.
Rulon saw that it was an advantage to have me around,
for both himself and for his sons.
I was basically vice principal
of Alta Academy for 19 years.
During those 19 years, I was also in security.
I put in the security system.
I knew when doors were opening and shutting.
I had pressure-sensitive mats in it.
I had cameras.
I had phone equipment
that recorded all incoming and outgoing phone calls.
Originally, Rulon Jeffs started the Alta Academy
for his own huge family.
He had scores and scores of children,
and pretty soon the word started getting out,
and it became a school for all the FLDS faithful
from both Salt Lake and Short Creek.
I first came here to visit the Alta Academy back in 2004.
I had to see the place where Warren got his start.
When Warren graduated from high school at 17,
he was placed in as a teacher in the Alta Academy.
Within a couple years,
he was made principal of the Alta Academy.
So now he was running the school.
The school was set up for just grades one through eight.
That's all Warren thought they needed.
And the curriculum was very specific.
It wasn't-- They didn't teach us regular U.S. history.
They taught us Priesthood history,
which is the history of the church, you know,
not Abraham Lincoln and George Washington
and all these things, you know?
It was about the history of the church and Joseph Smith
and all these things.
He was an expert at teaching the Priesthood history,
and that was the only history these people needed to know.
And once you get to the eighth grade,
you really don't need to go any further than that, really.
[Warren] School is not your top priority.
It is your preparation
to be filled with the Holy Ghost.
That is the most important labor you have,
individually
and in your families.
We are here,
as the people of the prophet Joseph,
to live the law of celestial and plural marriage
and the holy United Order
so that we can be that favored people
the prophet Joseph can use in redeeming Zion.
The brainwashing that went on--
Even being little kids,
the brainwashing would start, you know.
You gotta start-- You gotta start the footsteps
of, you know, you're gonna be, you know, a father one day,
you're gonna be a husband one day,
and you need to be perfectly obedient to ev--
all of your teachers, and your father,
and all the church leaders.
And, you know, that is what they beat into us
every single day of our lives.
Anyone that stepped outside of the bounds
of what he set for everyone, we were targeted,
and that was me.
I was always one who stepped outside of the circle
and questioned things,
and he didn't like that one bit.
Warren's office is down here on the end.
It's not like it's some big, grandiose office.
In fact, you know, you have the valet from the roof
coming down in here and everything.
But this is where he wanted his office to be
because he could get up
and watch all the children on the playground
and know when somebody was doing something wrong.
He would bring--
Like, a lot of the young girls that I talked to,
he was like the dress code cop.
[Wallace] Warren pretty much made the dress code himself.
He did that as a means
to bring girls into his office alone.
[Brent] I remember seeing kids
constantly being pulled into his office
and the door closed,
and seeing them come out with this look on their face.
I know what the look is, you know,
the look of--
For me, it felt like
your soul being ripped out of your heart,
out of your body. You have nothing left.
Behind closed doors, he is a predator.
He's abusing these kids,
and nobody knows about it.
And he's putting such a fear of God in these kids,
that none of them will ever say anything.
[Ron] Well, my daughter, my oldest daughter,
was sent to Warren's office numerous times.
Warren did rape her as well.
She didn't tell me about it till years later,
but, yes, this was going on.
[Warren] You can tell right now if you're passing the test.
If you're keeping sweet no matter what,
you're a person ready to give up your own will
and just obey the priesthood over you.
[attorney] Did there come a time when your father
had some strokes,
a series of strokes?
[Warren]
[attorney] And did there come a time
when you became your father's mouthpiece?
In other words, you communicated on his behalf
with the FLDS people?
When he saw that he could be
the next one in line to take his father's position,
I think that's when Warren went really off the edge.
I really do.
He started first by taking charge of Father's wives.
He would tell them that he was Father's caregiver
and that everything that they did with Father
had to go through him.
He began taking over
all of my father's appointments
and dictating to him who he would see.
He was basically telling my father
what he needed to say and what he needed to do.
All I want to say is,
to prepare for the judgments...
and establish Zion.
You know what I mean?
[people] Yes.
[Ron] Warren put into his father's head
that the end of the world was coming,
and Rulon started to believe it.
I mean, he really did. He started believing
that computers were gonna crash in 2000,
power was gonna go down, there was gonna be havoc,
nuclear war was inevitable.
All of this stuff that Warren was feeding him
made him believe that, by the year 2000,
it was going to be over.
[Warren] Soon a day of judgment will be upon us.
The prophets described it would be
an entire separation
of the righteous from the wicked.
It will be such a judgment
that will usher in the great millennial reign
and only a faithful remnant will stay on this land.
The year 2000, the Lord's gonna come down
and wipe the Earth clean,
and we're gonna be lifted up on some spaceship thing,
and we're gonna be sent back down,
and it's all gonna be good.
And all of a sudden, the year 2000 comes.
Nothing happens.
Well, then he would come back up in front of the people and say,
"Well, you guys weren't good enough.
The Lord felt like that you guys needed more time
to perfect yourselves and be more like Him."
And so he would just move on to the next thing.
[Warren] Do I have to send a scourge upon us
to remove those who cannot endure His presence?
Is that what we're demanding of God?
[Wallace] We all moved to Short Creek
in January and February of 2002,
just before the Olympics.
We were told the Olympics were going to come
and that Salt Lake was going to be destroyed.
So, we were supposed to move to Short Creek to save our lives.
To welcome the world into Zion,
which is supposed to be pure and holy and so forth,
is like saying, "Sinners, evil doers,
you're all welcome here."
And that's the way they viewed it.
And so, we had to separate ourselves from them.
And if we did not, then we would be-- we would be damned.
[Sam] And they picked this spot out purposely
because it's geographically isolated.
On one side, these vermilion cliffs.
On the other side is desert and the Grand Canyon.
They wanted to be isolated
because their beliefs were illegal.
The practice of polygamy was illegal.
There's a street going through the middle of town.
It's called Uzona,
and on one side of the street, you're in Arizona.
The other side of the street, you're in Utah.
They did that on purpose
because, if something happens on one side of the border,
they can just cross the street
and they're in a different jurisdiction.
As we come into town,
you can start to see cameras
all over the place, on all these buildings.
Church security and the town marshals
already know we're here.
They probably picked us up out by Canaan Gap.
And, in fact,
there's church security right here.
On our right is Phase Concrete.
This is where Ben Thomas used to work.
It's one of the prominent businesses in town.
Like nearly all the businesses in Short Creek,
it's run in the shadows by the FLDS hierarchy.
So one way the Phase would help funnel money to the church was:
Let's say the men working, they worked 400 hours.
So we could actually bill that contract,
a general contractor, for 400 labor hours.
Then, we would talk to the guys and say,
"You know what? We need to donate."
And they would say, "Okay, I'll donate my time."
And so, out of that 400 billable hours,
we only paid maybe 200 of those hours out in payroll.
[Sam] They don't put it on paper,
and they don't put it on paper on purpose.
The businesses are put out there
to fall on their sword
and take the heat for the church,
but the church gets all the money.
This isn't just a recent problem.
FLDS-operated businesses
have been bleeding the American economy for decades.
In fact, one of the earlier examples
even has ties to NASA.
I had been instructed
by the president of the priesthood
to get into something different
than what I was in with that engineering company
because I was traveling way too much to have a big family.
I left Fenway Engineering and started HydraPak.
We sent Thiokol the first set of O-rings.
At that time, the Space Shuttle program
was at a complete halt
because they couldn't put the shuttle together.
And they said, "Well, you're the only one
that knows how to make these things.
Do you wanna get into business?" We said, "Sure."
And the--
[chuckles]
the first set of O-rings was built in my kitchen.
We had had over 5,000 hot shots with our O-rings,
and no failures, so we were quite confident
that we knew that there was not an O-ring problem.
I regret that I have to report
that, based on very preliminary searches of the ocean
where the Challenger impacted this morning,
these searches have not revealed
any evidence that the crew of Challenger survived.
Somehow,
there was some blame with HydraPak,
who manufactured those O-rings.
I think there's controversy over that to this day.
But it was an FLDS-owned company.
The businesses here
are set up to distance themselves,
but the church owns them.
In fact, that's a covenant--
to turn your business over to the church,
and all the assets.
Everything you make belongs to the church.
[Ben] I was working for Phase.
I would monitor the jobs,
from Seattle down to Gallup, New Mexico.
Huge commercial concrete projects.
My jobs involved Walmarts.
I did a hospital. We did the Family Dollar.
[Sam] Western Precision is
one of the very big manufacturing companies.
It's been around for years, and it's still operating.
They manufacture aerospace parts.
They manufacture gun parts, you name it.
[Ben] When I first started working here,
we were required, as elders,
to donate $1,000 a month plus the tithing.
And then, when Warren Jeffs or Lyle,
whoever started the United Order,
it was basically turn everything over.
One of the companies, Reliance Lighting,
is one of the largest, if not the largest,
lighting distributor and manufacturer in the west.
They do millions of dollars' worth of lighting fixtures
in casinos and hotels
and commercial buildings all over the country.
And they bring in not small amounts of money,
millions of dollars a month.
All that money goes straight into the church's coffers.
It's not like any other job.
Lots of people take pride in their work
and want to do a good job.
But your salvation depends on you succeeding.
And your status and stature within the church,
and how you grow within the church,
depends on how well you succeed in your businesses.
[children's choir] ♪ How blessed I am ♪
♪ I look around ♪
♪ And here I fly ♪
♪ I'm growing in His love ♪
♪ Each bright new day... ♪
The Jeffs compound's right here on our right.
This is where Rulon Jeffs lived,
and then Warren after Rulon died.
This encompasses a whole block, a whole city block.
♪ A chance to give... ♪
On the right, this is the meeting house.
That's the kind of command post
for all these cameras that are set up all over town.
We found out that that's where they monitor them at.
[Jon] They gave up all these businesses,
turned over the assets to Warren.
By the time they all moved down to Short Creek,
the assets of the trust that he controlled
were worth $110 million,
a boatload of money, and it's all his.
[Wallace] We did over 250 truckloads of furniture
for families in 30 days,
from Salt Lake to Short Creek.
And he did that so that he could control the people easier
by concentrating them in one location.
When we moved down, I had 18 children and two wives,
and I had a half-million-dollar home in Draper,
I had a very successful business here in Salt Lake.
And I just walked away from it.
It was a way to concentrate the finances
so they could control the finances of the people.
In other words, Warren's telling you
you have nothing to lose.
-Right. -Yeah.
It doesn't matter.
You're not gonna have to pay it back
'cause the destructions are gonna kill everybody.
So, max out everything, get all the money you can,
give it to me, and you'll never have to pay it back.
And our last truckload left
the day before the Olympics started.
That's how they control the people,
is through these deadlines.
If you don't do this, the Lord is going to punish you
and you're gonna die in the destruction.
This was all done because Warren knew
that his father wasn't gonna live for long.
And he was setting himself up as the next king.
[Sam] As time went on,
Warren regularly kept marrying
more and more young girls to Rulon,
and the ages kept getting younger and younger.
And in one of Rulon's lucid moments,
he pounded the desk and said,
"Why are you marrying all these young girls to me?"
The reason Warren was doing it
was to set up a harem for himself after his father died.
And one of the wives became pregnant
before Rulon had a chance to die.
Rulon could not have children, okay?
So it was definitely Warren's child--
children.
It was twins.
So, Rulon had to die.
He had to.
All they had to do was feed him the wrong things,
which they did.
[Wallace] The fact that he always felt
that he could cover up everything that he did wrong,
he definitely would have...
taken father's life to cover that up.
[Warren] I want to remind you
what the prophets have taught us:
that whenever a man of God
is commanded to kill another man,
he is never bloodthirsty.
But a righteous man never loves to kill.
Instead, I'll tell you what a righteous man does.
He goes humbly,
and he is asking the Lord to strengthen his hand
so he can do the Lord's will,
and keep sweet, even in doing that.
When Father died,
Warren never declared himself the Prophet.
But he said that he was in contact with Father
on the other side
and that Father was still running the people
from the other side through Warren.
But then he eventually slowly stopped saying that,
and he started saying, "This is what the Lord wants.
This is what the Lord has revealed to me."
[Warren] I know the Lord, through his prophet,
has the right to rule,
and we have the right,
privilege and duty to obey.
When he asked me to marry him at 16,
I honestly believed that that's what God wanted.
Basically, my mom just woke me up and says, you know,
"Hurry. We got to get you dressed.
You have an appointment with the Prophet."
And my dad took me down there to talk to him.
And I kind of knew what was coming.
I knew, 'cause I'd never had an appointment,
first off, with him.
So I kind of knew what he was going to ask me.
Not him specifically,
but I kind of knew that I was going to get married.
Basically, I just went in there,
and I sat in front of him,
and he asked me straight out, "Will you marry me?"
And, honestly, I was still a kid.
I didn't understand what it means, what it truly means.
I feel like being married at 16...
took away my entire life.
Giving all that up at 16,
I feel like... I just,
at that point-- from that point on,
my entire life has been chaos.
[Warren] Dear wives,
realizing happiness is only being a part
and a strength to your husband.
Get close to him.
Confide in him.
Turn to him with a full heart,
and give him the opportunity to lead you right.
At night, we'd all get in a line
and give him a kiss goodnight.
It's almost like-- I don't even know how to explain that.
It's really weird to think about it now.
It's really weird. It's like being in prison.
Instead of getting your food,
[chuckling] you're giving him a kiss.
[Wallace] He wanted to remove any man
who would be a threat to his power or his influence.
So he called a meeting--
it was a Saturday work project meeting--
and he got up and read
what he called a revelation from God:
that certain men,
who were leaders among the people,
no longer held priesthood,
were not worthy of their families.
And he started casting out
anybody that he felt was a threat
to his power or his authority.
When his father died and he took over,
I think he felt like whatever decisions he made,
whatever he did,
no one should question.
And if they did, there were severe consequences,
they would lose their family.
And he made sure that they understood that.
[Warren] A man can only have and hold a woman as his wife,
if he has the priesthood.
If he loses the priesthood,
his family is automatically released.
[Ron] I was sent away
simply because I had some serious liability issues,
as far as Warren was concerned.
And I was the only one that really knew enough
that could probably destroy
his taking over his father's position.
My third wife was Warren's full sister.
She had been molested.
And she says it was by one of her brothers,
but she couldn't tell me who it was
'cause she was under an oath.
And she says, "But you can guess."
She suffered some tremendous trauma.
I was sent out, and he told the whole church--
He says, "If any of you sympathize with Ron,
you will have the same thing happen to you and your family."
[Elaine] Nearly 40 years in the religion,
things started to change
once Warren took over
and started imposing
all kinds of tyrannical, mind-control things
on the congregation and my children.
So, I left
without my children, because I was deemed not worthy.
And so, I remained very discreet
because I did not want Warren to have any excuse
from this apostate
to break up their families.
[Warren] An apostate is one
who has altogether turned from the Prophet.
If you have a willful connection with apostates,
you will not survive.
[Jon] You know, when Prozac became popular,
Warren prescribed Prozac
to probably most of the women in the religion,
and I'm not exaggerating.
They're all depressed. You better believe it.
And it was a way to sort of, you know, quell their anxiety--
he believed-- and, you know, make them more docile.
We believed that it's disrespectful to wear red
because they believed that, when Jesus comes down,
when he comes back,
he'll be dressed in a red robe.
So, it's disrespectful if you are to wear red.
So, I would wear red.
And I'm like-- Sometimes I'd do it on purpose
because I thought someone would come out of the sky
and kill me, literally.
No kidding.
The FLDS had always followed their leaders blindly,
but things were really different under Warren.
The lives of the faithful
were much more constrained, much more restricted.
So he started taking away television.
[Jon] Basketball hoops were taken down.
No more toys. You couldn't play any games.
[Sam] Going to the movies,
reading the newspaper, getting on the Internet.
[Jon] No pets. No dancing.
Stop celebrating Pioneer Day.
Stop celebrating Christmas.
You know, all these things,
taking bits of people's lives away,
you know, just one inch at a time,
and seeing how much they would tolerate.
[Jon] He just kind of removed all the joy from Short Creek.
It was just, he just hated people to be happy.
[Sam] This is a people
that are used to obeying authority.
[Jon] You know, paradoxically,
it made the faithful more loyal than ever to Warren.
The more afraid they became, the more threatened they felt,
the more they bonded to Warren.
They believe in the Prophet,
and they believe in blind obedience.
So, they were willing to do whatever Warren told them.
The more they feared him, the more they depended on him,
the more he controlled them.
He's an expert at mind control,
and all mind control is through fear.
He wanted them to be miserable.
And he did it, and it was no exceptions.
You kowtow, or you're out.
People within the FLDS,
a few of them had enough and have found the courage
to come forward and tell their stories.
[reporter] Ross Chatwin is striking back
against the Prophet who stripped him of his priesthood,
ordered him to leave his home and leave his family.
We are being told to leave, leave our home here.
And we want to make a firm stand that we do not plan on leaving.
[reporter] The edict means wife Lori
must take the couple's six children
and leave their father, her husband,
something she just can't do.
When you tell a family...
they can no longer love their father,
that you've got to create something cold inside of you
to no longer love your husband or your father.
You know, we knew that there were certain things
that had to happen.
One of those was take away
Warren's control of people's homes here.
And we knew, as long as Warren controlled the homes,
he would control the people.
We need your help and support
to help stop Warren S. Jeffs
from destroying families, kicking us out of our homes,
and marrying our children
in some kind of political, dollar, Brownie-point system.
[Sam] It blew people's minds here
that somebody was standing up to Warren Jeffs.
Nobody had done that kind of thing before.
And so, word started getting out.
And some of the people that were out there
started finding out that I was a private investigator,
and that I had been doing work down here,
and I was hired on the Lost Boys case
and Brent Jeffs' case against his uncle Warren.
[Brent] There was a bathroom down in the basement
when we would have these Jeffs family meetings,
these special Jeffs meetings,
when Warren would be up on the stand with Rulon.
And then Rulon would start to speak,
and the class would separate,
and the children would all go downstairs into the classrooms.
Well, Warren would disappear off the stage,
and this is when he would have his chance to walk around,
somehow sneak down into the basement.
And he'd pull 'em into the bathroom,
and this is where he would molest the kids.
And then he would go right back upstairs on top of that stage
and preach the word of God to these people.
And I don't know how many other kids he did this to.
When Warren was molesting me,
he would say, you know,
"This is the word of God. This is God's will.
If you say anything to anybody,
you're turning your back on God.
You're gonna burn in hell for that."
[Warren] An apostate goes away
accusing, blaming others for their apostasy...
that all these things aren't right with the Prophet
or those around him.
Don't be tricked.
These were courageous young people
who were willing to-- urging the state to press charges.
And they were taking huge risks, but they decided to do it.
And once they did it, the floodgates opened,
and more and more people started coming forward,
telling their stories and how they'd been abused.
In July 2004, on the steps of the capitol,
Mark Shurtleff announced,
"I want Warren Jeffs to know I'm coming after you."
And he created this polygamy task force.
He started using these methods
that had been used against the mafia to put them in prison--
you know, racketeering laws, the RICO laws.
It was, "We're gonna get you
for interstate trafficking, for fraud."
Those were the things that could bring down the church.
And, thanks to Sam's work
and the attorney general's statements,
you know, finally it looked like the tide had turned
and now, you know, this was gonna be taken seriously.
[Brent] I started this.
And then, soon after my lawsuit,
there was these kids that were out of the church as well,
wanted to file a lawsuit against Warren.
And then another lawsuit with Elissa Wall followed.
I mean, it was just like this huge ripple effect started
and people finally getting enough courage
to finally go after him.
[Sam] At 14 years old,
Elissa Wall was placed with her 19-year-old cousin
by Warren Jeffs.
She was married to him in a ceremony.
She was an unwilling participant.
She was scared to death.
So, Elissa went through a long period
of abuse and horror.
It wasn't a slam dunk.
They didn't have the goods to get Warren
for rape of a child themselves,
but it was an accomplice to rape,
which is a serious charge in Utah.
And Sam helped get all these witnesses,
and that was the case.
Can we prove that Warren Jeffs is responsible
for this girl being married off to this guy
and being raped?
When I was young, my mother taught me
that evil flourishes when good men do nothing.
This has not been easy for us.
The easy thing would have been to do nothing.
[Jon] Sam is really obsessive.
I mean, I'm obsessive, but not like Sam.
And he was on this case, and he was not gonna let it go.
[Warren] They talk to the Gentiles,
and the whole world gets angry at us,
calling us wicked.
We have a strength
stronger than all the anger
the world could bring upon us.
[Jon] Sam was smart.
He knew local law enforcement was worthless.
They were all FLDS.
They were all in Warren's pocket.
They weren't gonna do shit. He had to go further than that.
And the goal was, we gotta get him
on the FBI Ten Most Wanted list.
And he had good connections with the FBI.
And I spoke to some of these FBI agents,
and it worked.
It took some luck,
and it took a lot of agents sticking their neck out,
but they got him on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list
with Osama bin Laden.
I mean, he was in the big time, and that changed everything.
So, now Warren has a target on his back.
The feds are after him.
He knows he's gotta go on the run, he's gotta go underground.
[Warren] I am not safe here.
There is not a oneness drawing from the heavens,
the protection needed to keep me here.
And now the Lord has declared that my only protection
will be to go into hiding among the wicked.
Think of it.
Warren Jeffs set it up before he was caught,
a structure to carry out his orders
in case he did get caught or he had to go underground.
And so, Lyle Jeffs, his brother,
has been put in charge.
Father is his little patsy to do whatever he wants done.
After Warren had moved out of town
and was hiding from the law,
then he became the bishop.
And he's been loyal to Warren
as long as I've known him.
Even up to the day that I left,
he was perfectly loyal.
Whatever Warren wanted to happen,
didn't matter what it was, he would do.
The people there that follow Warren Jeffs
have taken it upon themselves to do everything Warren says,
to be completely obedient.
And Warren has told them to give him their paycheck,
everything they make.
Not a portion of it, all of it.
The only things they have, including food,
is what the bishop, Lyle Jeffs, says they can have.
So they're in a real predicament.
[Warren] There is only one man
on the Earth at a time,
who holds the keys of power...
and all other priesthood bearers
only have authority to do the Prophet's will.
Warren's being pursued
by law enforcement all around the country,
but that doesn't mean we're just gonna sit on the couch
and wait around for him to be caught.
Sam was out beating the bushes-- more tips, more information.
And every time we got a tip, you know, he and I were on it.
I had found out about this compound in Mancos,
and that's when Jon and I decided
that we needed to go check this place out.
[Jon] He called me up and said,
"You're not gonna believe this story.
This young girl, Janetta Jessop,
you know, disappeared from her family in Short Creek,
and she was married off to be one of Warren's wives."
I got to where I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat,
I couldn't focus, I couldn't think.
So I broke the rules on purpose.
I just used the phone, that's it.
And another sister, who had already left the religion,
you know, was trying to rescue her.
And Sam said, "We gotta do something.
Here's the details."
I told her, "I'm somewhere I don't want to be,
and I need your help.
I want to get out of here, you know."
So, you know, he drove from Utah,
and I drove from the front range of Colorado.
And the next day, we went out to check out
this weird and these beautiful mountains.
I mean, Warren has really good taste in real estate
and he picks good places.
He's got unlimited money.
It's this beautiful place below the San Juan Mountains,
and he built these, you know, really attractive log homes.
Our secrecy was blown by a television reporter
who told us, you know, he'd wait until we checked it out.
[reporter] Nestled at the base
of the majestic Rocky Mountains,
in the southwest corner of Colorado,
the tiny town of Mancos rocked today
with talk about the new folks in the community:
the polygamists who recently bought
about 60 acres just outside of town.
[Jon] Warren Jeffs was there at the time.
Janetta Jessop was there.
It was an opportunity we lost.
When one of the other ladies found me, she told me,
she says, "If you don't tell him what you did,
then I will."
And she was serious. I'm like, "Okay, then I'll tell him."
So, that night I told him,
and that night he sent me home to my parents.
And the very next day, the very next day,
that's when Child Protective Services came.
And they took me down to St. George without my parents
and questioned me.
And 20 questions, you know.
But Warren Jeffs told me, he says,
"If you tell them what they want to know,
then, because you're not 18,
they'll put you into foster care."
[Warren] Outwardly,
you're all beautiful.
You dress right.
You learned to do your hair right.
But, inwardly,
some of you ladies are so far distant from me,
you don't even comprehend what oneness is.
Your condition of a lack of oneness
is driving me away.
And over a period of time, we start finding out
that, my gosh, Warren's spreading out, you know,
which is really disconcerting,
you know, from a criminal justice standpoint.
[Jon] This place is important.
It looks like they're building a deep bunker.
They built a concrete batch plant
'cause they're gonna be pouring so much concrete.
It looks like, if I had to guess, this could be a bunker
where the elite will ride out, you know, the apocalypse.
[Sam] Is that-- What is that, a hole in the ground?
[man] Yeah, there's--
I mean, there's like three football fields there.
Three football fields? Wow.
I'll bet it is.
[Rick] I mean, this is as remote as it gets.
-It's quiet down there. -Yeah.
The girls are always quiet.
You hear kids, but very seldom now.
Before, we used to hear the kids.
Yeah. Have you seen any-- like those big Conex boxes,
sea containers, coming in or anything like that?
[Karl] Well, that comes in on the flatbed,
if not once a week, every other week.
-Oh, yeah? -There's a semi that comes in,
and it's usually about six o'clock, seven o'clock, at dusk.
[Sam] They're not static. They're dynamic, you know.
And they're at the whims of a madman.
So, anything can happen at any time.
[Jon] This is beautiful this morning,
but it's kind of the least attractive.
You know, Colorado. It's Mancos.
And the beautiful woods below the San Juan Mountains,
and South Dakota.
-It's in the Black Hills and-- -Yeah.
It's really, uh... [chuckles]
I guess when you got unlimited money to spend and--
But this is where he built a new church--
Jerusalem-type.
-Yeah. -Zion. This is Zion, yeah.
[Jon] You know, they bought this 1,800 acres or whatever
four miles down the road from what turned out to be
this brilliant and dogged reporter, you know,
one-man newspaper,
who, uh... [chuckles]
-I know. -who didn't just blow it off.
Mm-hmm.
You know, ten years ago,
we had never heard of Warren Jeffs or the FLDS,
or didn't even think polygamy still existed in America.
So, when we first learned about this,
we were afraid
we were gonna blow this story out of proportion,
that we were overreporting it,
and that we weren't gonna do service to the story.
So, you came into town
just as we were putting out our very first paper.
And I walked in.
Kathy and I had not met you yet.
And you kind of put us at ease and explained to us
that you thought we had gotten the story about right.
[Jon] It must've even freaked you out when they came here
and you found out that they'd bought 1,200 acres,
-or something like that. -More like 1,600.
[Kathy] No, 1,691.
-1,691 acres. -1,691 acres.
Wow. I mean, that's a big ranch.
Back in 2004,
our local newspaper editor, Randy Mankin,
made a phone call to me at my house.
So, that's the first that I actually had heard about it.
By then, you know, the newspaper had already done
an article on it and what it was possibly linked to.
So, there was a lot of interest.
There was a lot of fear in the community--
what they may be about, what they could be about.
When it was confirmed
that they were Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints,
that's basically what we had, you know, to overcome,
a huge learning curve,
in order to find out about this group,
'cause we, frankly, didn't know anything about 'em.
-JD? Good to see you. -How're you doing, buddy?
[Jon] Randy arranged for me to fly with JD in his plane,
and we got up at dawn and took off through the fog.
And, you know, just through our first pass--
you know, we're moving fast, and I had a telephoto lens--
I saw people and cars on the right side of the temple.
So, I just start clicking.
And, you know, I didn't really know what I was seeing.
And did another pass, and clicking, clicking, clicking.
And by the third pass, they were all gone
and there were a couple of SUV's zooming away.
So, we landed, and I went to Randy's office
and downloaded my digital camera and--
"Holy shit. Look at this."
There's a tall, skinny guy surrounded.
When we first flew over, they were kind of a loose group.
And then they all huddled around him,
like to protect him like penguins or something.
And I looked at this picture
and, man, that's Warren, I think.
And there's like 70 people,
and they're all dressed in their Sunday best.
[Randy] Once we saw
the enlarged version of this photo,
we were fairly certain
that it was, indeed, Warren Jeffs who was here.
Something fairly important was going on.
As it turned out, we learned that
that was the temple dedication.
And so, we knew then that was not just--
it wasn't just gonna be a cluster of little houses,
that they were, indeed, gonna build something grander.
Yeah, it was gonna be the world headquarters
of the FLDS church right here.
Of Warren Jeffs' theological empire.
Right here in Schleicher County.
[Randy] Right. That was a breakthrough photo.
[Jon] We knew that this is where they're coming,
and we had suspicions that this is the big place,
this is the Zion, this is the new--
this is Zion.
[Thomas] You know, I was in my truck,
watching 24 , season six, I remember.
I was right in the middle of it,
and Father called me up
and says, you know, "What are you doing?"
And I'm just like, ah, "Oh, nothing really.
Just kind of just, you know, cleaning up the shop."
Just trying to evade, you know, being caught.
And he says, "Well, come over to my office and talk to me."
And I thought, "Oh, man... I am caught.
I'm in big trouble."
You know, so I went over there and we chatted for a minute,
and he says,
"Well, the Lord has whispered your name to the Prophet,
and you get to go down on the ranch.
So, pack your bags."
And I was just like, "Really? Is that what all this is about?"
I thought I was-- for sure I was in trouble.
But he--
You know, it was, like, okay.
So, you know, I left there, and you know what?
I'm not gonna get another chance to watch a movie,
so I'm gonna go finish this.
So, I went and finished that season.
And then, of course, I packed bags
and moved down on the ranch.
[Warren] To go on with me in the redemption of Zion,
you must be filled with the heavenly fire,
or you will be damned
and you will lose your place.
How much more straight do I have to talk?
I was sent away in December of 2010...
because I was, supposedly, immoral.
I don't know why.
I was actually put in charge of the dairy down there.
My schedule was pretty darn full.
I mean, I had to wake up at 2:30, go milk cows.
After that, it was prayers
and had to go straight into working construction.
Working, doing whatever project they had going on.
And they only gave you two hours of sleep.
I went to bed at midnight, one o'clock.
Had to get back up at 2:30 in the morning, every morning.
All the men--
I mean, even the boys were supposed to work those hours.
I mean, boys that are,
you know, 13, 14, all the way up to--
Even the old men.
I mean, men that are, you know, 60-plus years old,
they had to be out there working, too.
So, it was really just a slave camp, to say the least.
You could see in a lot of the people's eyes
where they... they didn't feel good,
but they had to keep pushing.
I mean, if-- The way he put it is,
you work until you're tired,
and you ask the Lord for strength to continue on,
and you keep pushing.
[Sam] If you're a young man
and you want to try and distinguish yourself somehow,
you want to do well in the church.
About the only way to do that
is to contribute more money.
If you can bring in more money, you can get a wife.
If you can get a wife, you can have children.
If you can have children,
you can start placing these children,
you know, if they're girls, in prominent homes
and maybe with church leaders.
And you can start getting more wives.
And your sons can go to work,
and you can have lots of labor
and build up your business, and make more money,
and contribute more,
and get more wives, and have more children.
And that's the cycle of things within the FLDS.
The currency is,
without question, women and children.
That's what makes this society,
this... this..
syndicate, run.
Man, a couple of times, we thought, "We got him.
He's in our grasp."
But it turns out he was always a step ahead of us.
You know, he was a fugitive from justice through the FBI.
So, that was, you know, through the whole United States.
But he was being looked for in Utah.
He was being looked for in Las Vegas, Nevada,
and up in that area where he was known to travel a lot.
They actually did pretty good, I'd say,
as far as evading the FBI.
You know, they kept the burner phones.
That's what we called them.
It's the cheap pre-paids.
He kept just each different circle,
and those phones in that circle
did not call outside that circle.
And, really, that's kind of how
they kept away from the law for that long.
[attorney] Let me call your attention to Exhibit 7.
It says there: "No person, no court,
no government, no people on the face of the whole Earth
has the right or authority to bring God into question
what He has His prophets do in the celestial law."
[Jon] He went on this kind of tour of America
where he got his people he trusted most,
and they dressed in civilian clothes,
and he went to some of the famous places in the LDS history
because the FLDS think they're the true church.
The Mormon Church was perverted when it gave up polygamy,
you know, in the nineteenth century.
It was not about him running,
although that's the impression he gave the people.
It was about him being able to live the good life
and drive big, fancy cars,
and go to the beach, and go to Disneyland,
and live this double life,
and then come back and be this pious prophet.
I don't know how many times
he might've been pulled over for speeding,
or he was pulled over when he was riding a motorcycle.
He had definitely been in the clutches.
He didn't have his I.D. saying "I'm Warren Jeffs."
He'd give a fake name.
But because he was on the Ten Most Wanted list,
he happened to be pulled over
20 miles north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15
by a cop who was aware.
Warren Jeffs' name stuck in the back of his mind.
There was Warren and one of his wives
and his brother in the car,
and they were carrying all this cash.
They had all these computers.
[Sam] And then he looked in the backseat,
and Warren was in the backseat,
and he was eating a salad,
and he wouldn't even look at the trooper.
He just kept eating the salad.
But the trooper said, in his testimony,
that when he looked at Warren,
he could see the jugular vein on his neck
throbbing and going back and forth,
and he said that was a sure sign something was wrong.
So, he had them all get out of the car.
[Jon] He stopped them because they had a temporary plate.
It was legal, but it was kind of obscured.
And he separates them and starts asking questions,
and they all give the cop a different story
about where they're going, what they're doing,
and he can just smell it.
And finally he asks, "Are you Warren Jeffs?"
And Warren says, "Yes."
And once they realized it was Warren, word spread.
It was like, "My God, they got him."
[officer] I'd like to announce the arrest
of FBI Top Ten Most Wanted fugitive Warren Steed Jeffs.
I saw on TV that he had been caught down in Las Vegas.
You know, all these years, he preached about,
you know, not being worldly,
which meant not dressing like the people in the outside world,
and the color red is forbidden
and, you know, all these things.
And how perfect that he got caught
basically, you could say, with his pants down
and in such a stupid, little traffic stop.
I mean, it was just perfect how everything went down.
[Elaine] I can only imagine
that there was some kind of devastation
that he even got caught, in the first place.
I think he imagined that he was so far above the law
and that he could get away with anything.
[Jon] He went through a period, when he was on trial,
where he started telling the closest people to him--
his brothers, his wives,
his bishops, his lawyers--
that "I'm a fraud."
It was sort of the one moment when he was lucid
and honest and seeing reality.
But, you know, whenever he'd tell this to people,
they said, "No, no, no, this is just the devil speaking."
The people still believed that he was the Prophet.
They didn't believe that that was even true.
They said that, "Well, he was drugged"
or "It was a stunt double."
Eventually, he realized,
"Huh, you really can fool some of the people all the time.
I was just testing you. You know, I was just--
It was just, Satan came to my cell and told me this,
and then I realized it was Satan making me say this."
And then he went back to:
"No, I'm the dude, and you better listen."
You have to be willing
to pass the tests that come upon you.
And the test will always be:
Will you love Heavenly Father and his prophets
more than your own selfishness?
While Warren was on trial
in southern Utah for the Elissa Wall case,
back in Texas things were developing fast.
I'll give David Doran credit for this.
I think he had a plan on the shelf that had been worked out
with the Texas Department of Public Safety,
with the Texas rangers.
They had a plan ready to go in case something happened,
and that something happened in April of 2008.
[Warren] All around us,
there are forces and powers
determined to enter in and destroy us,
our lives, our virtue, our faith.
[David] Child Protective Services
received numerous calls that there was a young lady
that was being abused on the ranch.
And the counselor there had felt it was a legitimate call,
and she felt there was a need
to call law enforcement and call CPS.
[Jon] And this is not that far from Waco.
So, hanging over this whole thing is,
-That cloud. -we got all these kids.
We cannot have another Waco.
[automatic gunfire]
So anytime you get a group in your community
that has communal living, you can't help but think,
"Hey, we have a potential problem here like Waco."
The situation got a little more tense
when we were serving
the building-to-building search warrants.
In one of the areas was the temple.
They physically surrounded the walls of the temple.
And from our understanding at that point in time,
they were actually praying for our destruction
before we went in.
The children knew nothing.
[Randy] CPS got in the ranch.
They saw all these little girls that were either pregnant
or had already had a child, or both,
that were clearly underage.
What do you do?
Well, they started taking the kids off the ranch,
thinking there were just a few and they were gonna sort it out.
By the time the sun came up the next morning,
the state had a tiger by the tail.
And what do you do?
So, eventually, the judge, Judge Walther, said,
"Just get 'em off the ranch, and we'll sort it out."
At that time, we still only thought
there were only a handful of kids out there.
And when they started coming off the ranch,
they just kept coming and kept coming and kept coming.
A hundred, 200, 300.
I have three daughters in there
with little children still,
and I have five children that were my sister's,
and she passed away.
I'm the legal guardian.
And then I have six of my own, besides that,
that are still there,
and I don't know what's happening with them.
But I am-- I feel responsible for all those children,
and they took 'em away.
The appeals court ultimately ruled
that the district court had overstepped its bounds
in ordering all the children off the ranch,
and they ordered the kids to go back.
And the supreme court upheld the appeals court ruling.
The kids were all sent back.
We know now that a lot of the children
were returned to people who were not their parents.
It was just a fiasco.
[Sam] There were CPS investigators
that felt like they were doing the right thing.
They were there on the ground. They saw what was going on.
And they made a really tough decision
to pull all the children off that ranch,
because they were all in danger.
They had 'em here, and then they gave 'em back.
[Jon] But the raid wasn't a bust.
I mean, some good things came from the raid, right?
[Sam] Yeah. You know, there were 12 men arrested.
There were 11 convictions.
And it produced a treasure trove of documents, pictures,
and the Priesthood Record, which was used as evidence,
even now, and it will be for years to come.
They did find evidence of underage marriages.
They found evidence of pregnant underage girls,
and that led into the Texas rangers
doing a subsequent criminal investigation
in where they identified the suspects
and they identified, you know, Warren Jeffs, as well,
being implicated in this crime,
in the crime of sexual abuse of a child.
I mean, we always knew how sick Warren was.
We'd have people tell us some of the things he'd done.
But we never really knew the magnitude of it--
how sick he really was, how young the girls were.
There were so many insights into Warren's character
and his deviancy and his insanity,
that now here was the proof in his own words.
[attorney] Do you remember dictating
on November 24, 2003:
"The Lord is showing me the young girls of this community
will be taken care of at a younger age.
As the government finds out about this,
it will bring such a great pressure upon us, upon me,
and also upon the girls who are placed in marriage."
When Warren went to trial in Washington County,
there was a little bit of evidence, a recording,
of the rape of 12-year-old Merrianne Jessop.
And the tape portrayed just the most vile,
disgusting,
um, twisted...
scene you could ever imagine.
That tape was discovered,
and it was not admitted into evidence
because it was determined by the court
that it would be too inflammatory
to introduce it as evidence.
I want to congratulate the victims of Warren Jeffs,
who first were willing to come forward
and tell their stories to law enforcement,
who had the courage to go up against a man
who everybody around them believed to be
the representative of God on Earth,
if not God himself on Earth.
It took great courage for them to come forward.
All this hard work. Utah, tough case.
The prosecutors did a brilliant job.
You know, the case looked like they were losing,
and the prosecutor gave this tremendous closing argument.
You know, saved the day, conviction, jury votes,
convict this guy, send him away forever,
you know, we hoped.
[reporter] Jurors deliberated
for about 16 hours over three days
before returning with a guilty verdict for Warren Jeffs,
seen here on the far left of the screen.
He showed no emotion as the verdict was read.
He was convicted,
and then it was appealed to the state supreme court of Utah,
and it was overturned by a judge who had an agenda.
You know, it was-- it was very depressing.
[female reporter] Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs
getting a new trial after the Utah supreme court
reversed the convictions against him,
the court ruling the jury members
received the wrong instructions when they made their decision.
The court announced its decision on the very morning
Jeffs was supposed to have his extradition hearing
for charges he faces in Texas.
Once the raid happened, suddenly Texas charges
were much more serious than those Arizona or Utah had,
and those two states
were willing to step back and let Texas take the lead.
When I first met Warren, what struck me is
he was kind of like a guy that was in his own bubble,
in his own world.
There was times that we'd observe him on camera,
that he would just--
Well, right here, he would just sit there,
and he would stare in the mirror.
I mean, he would stare at himself in the mirror
for 30, 45 minutes.
Just sitting there, staring at himself.
Or he may stand in the middle of the room,
and he may just be looking down at the floor.
And he would freeze in that position,
sometimes up to an hour.
And I believe that was his way of receiving revelation,
or whatever may be going on in his head at the time.
He watched the news religiously every day-- CNN, Fox.
Anytime there was any kind of a natural disaster,
we noticed he started putting that out in letter form
to the people that he mailed letters to.
Like the incident, the tidal wave that hit Japan.
He talked about that and how he brought that on.
[Warren] Our prophet has told us
there would be a great destruction.
The wicked were swept off by earthquake,
storms,
tidal waves.
Within three hours,
millions of people were killed
and the Lord kept his word.
And every time there was a disaster
or a natural disaster,
he had some kind of revelation about it
that he would put forth to people in his letters.
[Thomas] There was many more, you know, tsunamis
that were supposed to happen.
There was hurricanes. There was...
many more destructions.
Um, there was supposed to be
a massive windstorm to come through Texas,
and we were supposed to prepare for it.
So, you know, of course, we tied down everything
to get ready for this big windstorm,
and he said it would happen the next week.
The next week went by, and there was no windstorm.
[Sighs] You know.
♪ How many roads ♪
♪ Must a man walk down ♪
♪ Before you call him a man? ♪
♪ The answer, my friend ♪
♪ Is blowin' in the wind ♪
♪ The answer is blowin' in the wind ♪
[children's choir] ♪ Each bright new day ♪
♪ Another gift ♪
♪ A chance to serve... ♪
[Sam] This is the UEP community farm,
and we also call it the launchpad.
It's one of the places that Warren--
When the end of the world was coming,
Warren had everybody gather out in this field
and wait for the end to come.
And they came out here at like 6:00 in the morning,
anticipating being lifted up
and ushering in the millennium.
And when it never happened, about 6:00 at night,
Warren came out and told them
that God had forsaken them
because they were not righteous enough
and that they needed to try harder.
[Warren] Were it not for the transgressions of my people,
they might have been redeemed, even now.
But behold, they,
the priesthood people,
have not learned to be obedient
to the things which I required at their hands.
And my people must need be chastened
until they learn obedience.
In fact, that's the reason Warren's in prison,
is because he's... atoning for their unrighteousness.
And that accomplishes a couple things.
It keeps the people really loyal and obedient,
but it also puts him on the level of deity,
of a god.
[children's choir] ♪ And blessed I am... ♪
[Randy] He tried to fire his lawyer
right at the last moment.
Judge Walther made them stay in the courtroom
to be available to him.
He offered no defense
except for the long, rambling religious dissertations
very similar to some of his revelations
and proclamations that he releases now.
Uh, but when he would be doing those,
[deep voice] he would invoke his God voice.
He kept saying the same things over about,
um, "You're trampling on sacred documents"
when they would present something,
and that we were defiling that by viewing it.
[attorney] Mr. Jeffs, isn't it true
that this has nothing to do with religious persecution?
Doesn't all this boil down
to your desire to have sex with little girls?
[attorney #2] I instruct my client not to answer that,
invoke his Fifth Amendment privileges.
[attorney] Are you gonna follow that counsel?
We all certainly believe in freedom of religion.
That's what our country--
the principles of our country's based on,
and you always want to respect that.
But, at the same time,
anybody could use that as a defense for any crime.
I mean, a murderer could say, "That's my religion.
I believe in killing people."
It just doesn't-- It doesn't fly.
[Warren] The world so far outnumbers this people.
But by logic and reason,
the world justifies themselves as being right
and we are wrong.
But we have a personal witness
that all the world does not have,
that God lives,
the Prophet of God on the Earth,
and this Prophet tells only the truth.
[Mary] The hardest part was listening to the victims.
You could tell they were trying to hold back their emotions.
And then, as they were telling their stories,
all of a sudden the emotions would just explode,
and, um, it made you wonder, you know,
"Is this just the tip of the iceberg?
Is there-- Is there more?"
There was never any doubt in anyone's mind.
After all of the mountains of evidence that were presented,
there was no doubt in anyone's mind
that he was guilty.
The tape sealed it.
I mean, that was just-- You couldn't deny it.
[heavy breathing]
[sighs]
[Randy] From that moment forward, that trial,
for all intents and purposes, was over.
And in the closing arguments,
Warren Jeffs stands up, and for 45--
Do you remember how long it was, Kathy?
Forty-five minutes, something like that,
without saying a single word, just standing stark still.
[Mary] He went down the row of all the jurors.
He went from one person to the next one, to the next one,
and paused for just a moment or two at each one,
and kind of tried to stare us down, I guess.
And then at the end, he turns to the jury and says,
"I'm at peace."
And he sits down.
And the jury returned a very quick verdict of guilty
and a very quick sentence
of life plus 20 years.
He was too big of a coward
to even be in the same room as me,
and asked to be taken out of the courtroom
and placed into a room outside,
in another room in the hallway.
But to be able to stand up in front of everybody
and tell them my story,
and... testify against him,
and have everything that I say
and everybody else that testified,
you know, shape this whole entire thing against Warren
and have justice to be served
was the most liberating
and amazing experience I've ever had.
[Elaine] I wanted to see him, in person, get it.
[chuckles]
Yes.
I'd been angry with him for years
for keeping my son and daughter and my grandchildren from me,
and dictating that they could not communicate with me
or even let me in their home anymore.
I'd have been--
I'd have been really upset if they hadn't convicted him.
[Brent] These awesome, awesome Texas marshals
that were my buddies down there at the time,
they had Warren in shackles and everything.
And when we had left the courtroom,
I was out in the hallway by the elevator.
And, wouldn't ya know it,
they had brought Warren up that elevator,
and out came Warren in shackles and an orange jumpsuit.
And I got to walk straight up to him and stare him in the eyes
and say, "You got what you deserved.
Justice has been served."
And I just felt ten feet tall to be able to say that to him
and put this monster away where he belongs.
[female attorney] Mr. Jeffs, we've heard a lot of evidence
that is, frankly, shameful,
and it's odious to every decent human being.
And, for that reason, a jury convicted you
of heinous crimes against children,
and you've been sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years.
Do you feel any remorse for what you've done?
Actually, Warren has everything he wants.
You know, he's been martyred.
He's more popular than ever among the faithful because--
He's just proven all his points.
"The evil state, you know, is afraid of me,
and they're trying to bring me down."
In some ways, he has more control than he's ever had.
But we've all been wounded by this
because it was just this--
this overarching sense of dread
that just hung over this county for ten years,
and it's not just been suddenly lifted.
It's just kind of easing up,
and then we're left with these lingering questions
of what do we do, and how do we handle it,
and where do we go from here.
I'm left with the question of:
What's going to happen to those children?
'Cause even though that group of children--
a lot of those are now grown up and adults--
they're being followed by others.
And what's happening in Mancos, Colorado?
What's happening in South Dakota?
What's happening in Short Creek? Is anybody paying attention?
[Ben] I don't know what was bugging me that day.
The voicemail came over the phone, telling me
to cancel off school for a week and send my kids down here.
I think it was cold.
[phone ringing]
[man] Good afternoon.
This is a message from the bishop's office.
This is a call for all schools
to take the rest of the week off of school
to help with the nut harvest,
and families and school groups, while supervised,
to meet at the Foothill School at eight o'clock in the morning.
We need all the available 15-passenger vans
to also be brought to the Foothill School.
[reporter] We received a tip that Warren Jeffs,
the imprisoned leader of the polygamist FLDS sect,
had ordered all schools closed for a week
so children could go to work
picking pecans off trees at a private ranch.
Obviously, they didn't have the employees
to cover this size of field in a week,
and they would just get the free labor
from the mothers and the kids.
It was my oldest daughter.
She would be in charge of our kids while they came down here,
kind of keep track of where they were.
[Sam] When we pulled up out here
and we saw all these children,
I mean, obviously, they didn't want to be seen.
And we heard somebody yelling, "Run! Run!"
And they took off
way down to the end over there.
And it was chaos.
Kids were running back and forth,
and there were just children as far as the eye could see.
[Warren] The Lord is with our prophet,
and he still leads us right.
He is being renewed and strengthened,
and his renewal
will bring fear upon the enemy...
and also fear
in the hearts of any of us...
who have not prepared.
[attorney] You're still operating the church, correct?
Isn't it true that you meet with lawyers on a periodic basis
and give them instructions which they write down and record?
And those instructions go to your brother Lyle, right?
I know he knows the truth
about most of the stuff about Warren.
And...
I don't appreciate how he's--
he's really just continued to lie to the people.
And I'm really ready to see
that even Father be brought to justice
for continuing to lie to the people
and keeping them under Warren's...
rule, really.
My mom is my dad's first and legal wife.
He's got nine wives in all,
I guess excluding Mom now
because she's turned
and considered fighting the priesthood.
So, it's really been hard on her.
March is when my mom left,
and she went after the kids
and has gotten full custody of two of 'em.
Two out of the ten were underage.
All the others are 18 or older.
The two youngest, they treat her like dirt.
They won't talk to her. They say, "If we talk to you,
then we're breaking our covenants."
My dad, he's in a lot of trouble. I know that.
That's what the Department of Labor is coming after him for,
which he did show up to a couple court cases,
and now he's held in contempt for not showing up
because he couldn't provide them
with the answers that they needed.
My current status with the church is,
I was cast out in January of 2010.
I was told I could not return,
that I had sinned a great sin--
which they never told me what it was--
but that I could not return,
that I was not worthy of my family,
that I was to leave my family in Lyle and Warren's care.
I had to file a lawsuit to find out where my family was.
They were all in hiding.
We received a phone call from the FBI
saying that they had located
my daughter Sherilyn
and that she was in a trailer house
and had been so for as much as two years.
The reason they put 'em in trailers like that
is because they are too mouthy,
they have their own opinions or something of the kind.
And so she was being corrected.
They called and asked us
if we were interested in taking her into our home
and basically receiving her as my child,
and I said, "Of course."
I had to contact the FBI,
the Washington County sheriff's office,
and we had to physically go to Short Creek,
to Lyle's home.
They were able to gather the children out of the home.
We met at a park.
[Ron] They basically told us
that we needed to disappear for a little bit
until they got some things put together.
[Ron's wife] She didn't have anything
except for the prairie dress she was in,
and the undergarments, and a pair of shoes.
And we were in jeans,
and that's what we wore for four or five days.
When I met the four girls at the park...
they all told me that I was not their father...
that they did not want to go with me.
They wanted to stay with Lyle in the church.
They said they hated me.
[Ron's wife] I had taken her into T.J. Maxx
and got her a skirt
and a black top and a long jacket...
-And she loved it. -so she would be comfortable.
She actually loved it, and she looked so cute in 'em, too.
And she did.
You could see that she really enjoyed
the time that we spent together.
[Ron] And she put her arm in my arm,
walking on the beach several times,
and kind of snuggled up to me,
and calling me Dad and things of that kind,
which is very unusual because she was very...
-Programmed. -programmed,
brainwashed, whatever you want to call it.
[Wallace] I told them, I said, "I've got to do this.
You don't realize it, but you're truly in danger,
and I'm doing this to protect you."
They would plug their ears if I tried to tell them
anything about Warren,
or the truth about Warren,
or the truth about the church.
[Ron] Her phone basically was locked,
and she only had four people that she could call.
That was it.
When I looked in the phone,
I could see it was like every 15, 20 minutes
she had to report in.
[Ron] We were called by the FBI
and told that they needed us to come back,
and they had a warrant to go through the phone
and get all the information out of it and so forth.
She was in the car.
She had slid over to the other side of the car and gotten out,
and I walked over.
I wasn't more than 15 feet away from her
when a white pickup pulled up.
They just basically grabbed her, pulled her in...
-and took off. -She was gone.
They were gone.
They were burning rubber all the way down the driveway
as I was running behind them, talking to the FBI agent,
giving them the license plate number.
[Wallace] My daughters just sit in their room and paint,
comb their hair, read.
They do a lot of reading.
Life with them is very strained.
There is little or no communication.
Whenever they want something, they give me a note
of what they need-- food or clothing.
I say, "Let's go to the store and do it together,"
but they refuse every time.
We have been told by the FBI
that her, her mother, her brother and her sisters
have been all gathered up and taken to Mexico.
In their estimation, they're buried,
they've gone underground.
I probably will not have the opportunity
to see them ever again.
Warren always has to take it to the next level.
He's never gonna be satisfied with his latest edict.
The people, the most zealous people,
they feel like they're--
one step at a time, one little baby step at a time--
passing the test.
So, when Warren requires that a mother
take her 11-, 12-year-old daughter by the hand
and give her to some lecher,
that's her test.
That's what's being required of her.
Throughout the week, people will stop by and donate food.
And so we collect it,
and then we go make sure that it's given to somebody
that's going hungry in the church.
So, everybody's doing what they can
to help counteract the hunger that is going on.
And the clothing, you know, coats--
We're starting to collect coats now
because we know winter's gonna be coming.
So, I've got a lot of donations that I'm starting to collect,
so we can forward it to the people
that are needing them.
Sometimes we'll get a call saying,
"Hey, a grandmother just got kicked out.
It's winter time.
It's almost five degrees outside.
And she's sleeping in her car."
So, we'll get up in the middle of the night,
and we'll drive around, trying to find a person
that has been-- that doesn't know where to go.
And as soon as we find 'em,
or however we can locate 'em,
we'll get 'em appropriate help as quickly as possible.
You have to appreciate how isolated
and how much they've been taught
for how many generations that this is your life, you know.
This is all they know.
[Sam] You know, we talk about brainwashing,
but it's not brainwashing.
The level of devotion comes from an ingrained cultural thing.
It's indoctrinated with them from birth.
All they have is what they grew up with.
They don't know what the outside world is like.
All they know is what their grandparents have done
and their great grandparents and their parents
and what their mother has--
who stays at home 24/7 indoctrinating them--
tells them.
Well, my mom's known as the flower lady at home.
People would come to our home all the time
and get starts from flowers
'cause her entire yard was covered.
So I thought, well, if I get a job at Star Nursery,
I'll bump into her, you know.
So, when I got a job there, I did bump into her once.
I had my little boy with me and...
It's weird, because he had never even met her,
and he gave her a big old hug.
And she-- she hugged me.
She told me she loved me.
And I said, "Mom, can I have your number?"
She told me no.
To me, she chose religion over her children.
And so, you have a guy who's, by any measure, is crazy.
He's, you know, he's not-- he's not a rational person,
and he has this megalomania,
and that, you know, is disturbing.
But what was really disturbing is
how all these other thousands of people
buy into it and don't question it.
He's able to persuade them that "No, this is the truth,
I really do speak to God,
and your salvation depends on me."
And he does terrible things to them.
He takes away their families. He takes away their fortune.
He sends them out to repent.
And they still must turn over their income.
And they still believe him and continue to believe him.
And that's what-- that's mind-boggling.
And it speaks to something disturbing
about, you know, human nature,
or how once you believe something,
you know, once you've been brought up to believe something,
it's very, very difficult to give that up completely.
I got your license plate number.
[Sam] That's great.
I'd like to know who you are and what I can do for you.
Well, my name's Sam Brower. You can't do anything for me.
Sam Brower?
[Jon] Like so many things in life, nothing is simple.
Nothing--
You know, it's always four steps forward, three steps back.
And if you're lucky,
eventually you end up further ahead than behind,
but there's no guarantee that happens
in the short-term or even the long-term.
How're you doing today, Sam Brower?
[Sam] I'm doing great. How are you doing?
Good.
It's nice to...
see your vehicle.
[Jon] You know, it's just...
You just got to keep pushing the rock up the hill.
And it rolls back down, and you push it up again.
And that's kind of how I view this.
And I'd be happy if the rock stayed up there
and I could go do other things, but, you know--
I think Sam feels the same way.
We're not going to quit now.
You know, we've had plenty of reasons to quit
when all seemed futile, and we've kept at it.
So, I'm sure we'll keep on the case.
[Warren] The Lord will tell me first
when the judgments are coming,
and those judgments are going to be furious.
All of you are not going to survive.
I worry most of all
that he is going to incite some sort of bloodshed,
either inadvertently or intentionally.
Intentionally probably.
He has no reason not to do that.
It would be a way to show his power.
He's certainly capable of it.
So, that's what I worry about.
He prays for my destruction.
Well, if I was religious, I would pray for his destruction
because, you know, I would have no qualms about--
I hope that fucker dies right now.
The fear of people following Warren to the grave
has always been something that's been a worry.
I know for a fact that they are completely obedient.
The ones-- the FLDS, the United Order FLDS--
are completely obedient.
And if Warren told them to, for instance,
die at their posts over some kind of standoff,
they would die at their posts.
And the worry is, you have this madman
running the church from his prison cell in Texas.
And if he decides he wants to go out with a bang,
or make some sort of statement,
or prove to the world how loyal his people are
and have them do some kind of crazy thing
like happened in Jonestown or Waco,
that's surely a possibility.
In fact, it's wise and prudent
not to discount that possibility.
[female attorney] You can't change the past.
You can't undo what you've done with these young girls.
But are you willing to do something
to help the people in the future?
[male attorney] I'm gonna object.
That question is confusing.
I'm not sure I get the connection
from the way it was phrased.
[female attorney] Mr. Jeffs, did you understand my question?
I suspect he did. Did you understand my question?
Do I need to restate it?
Do I need to restate my question, Mr. Jeffs?
I'm sorry. What?
Well-- [chuckles]
I need to restate it if you didn't understand it.
Did you understand it?
Well, all I can say, Mr. Jeffs,
is you still have the opportunity
to turn your life around
and have something worthwhile to present to the Lord
before you go to meet your maker.
I'm finished.
[Warren] Obey the Prophet when he speaks,
and you'll be blessed.
Disobey him,
it is death.
[Warren] This is another "keep sweet" lesson
with an eternal vision,
in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
[rock music playing]
[woman] ♪ Little girl won't play ♪
♪ Looks the other way ♪
♪ Staring at the past ♪
♪ Her eyes have turned to glass ♪
♪ Oh, glass eyes ♪
♪ She's lost ♪
♪ All her dreams to dust ♪
♪ On her wedding day ♪
♪ Don't know how to play ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ Gold on her finger ♪
♪ Giving her blisters ♪
♪ She don't look eager ♪
♪ And he don't act younger ♪
♪ The first sin with thee ♪
♪ Equal as they'll be ♪
♪ Most of you ladies ♪
♪ Most of you ♪
♪ Frida ♪
♪ Your life's a miracle ♪
♪ And you are... ♪