Where's leader of sect?
 Polygamist last seen in Nevada; law officers wary
 
By Mark Shaffer
The Arizona Republic - Flagstaff Bureau
 
Law-enforcement officials in Arizona and Texas said Monday that they aren't yet willing to take action to get indicted polygamist leader Warren Jeffs into custody.

In large part that's because they say they don't know the whereabouts of the 49-year-old president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

"The last reported sighting of him we had was in Mesquite, Nev., four or five weeks ago," said Mohave County Attorney Matthew Smith. Smith announced Friday that Jeffs had been indicted on one count each of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor in Colorado City from March to June 2002.

Jeffs isn't accused of having sexual contact with the unidentified 16-year-old victim himself. He was charged under a recent state law that makes it a felony to sanction forced marriages of teenagers with much older men.

Colorado City is near Hildale, Utah, where the church sect is located.

David Doran, sheriff of Schleicher County in western Texas, where the polygamist sect bought land and built several buildings last year, said in a prepared statement that he had been in contact with those living on the YFZ ranch, near the town of Eldorado, since the warrant was issued.

"There is no evidence or information indicating that Jeffs is on the property," Doran said.

Doran also said that his department would not be treating the out-of-state warrant for Jeffs' arrest any differently than the many other such warrants it has.

In other words, Doran said, there would be no raids on the ranch and his department wouldn't take Jeffs into custody unless there was an extenuating circumstance, like a traffic stop.

"We're just waiting to see if he (Jeffs) turns himself in. He surely knows about the warrant by now," Smith said. "If he doesn't, he's going to be arrested."

Flora Jessop of Phoenix, an anti-polygamy activist who grew up in Colorado City, said it's important that Jeffs be taken into custody to "release his stranglehold on the people so we can get in and start educating them."

Utah officials also are looking for Jeffs because he has been named as a defendant in two civil suits alleging sexual impropriety in that state.

If convicted of the Arizona charges, Jeffs could face a prison sentence of between four months and two years.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.
 
azcentral.com
Originally published June 14, 2005
 
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