| Most Wanted FBI hunts polygamist with Mancos ties | |
|
By Tom Vaughan - Mancos Times Editor Cortez Journal | |
Every major network news program Monday was exploring the FBI's Saturday elevation of Warren Steed Jeffs from the agency's Most Wanted list to a place on the Top 10 list. Jeffs may be almost as unusual a Most Wanted fugitive as Osama bin Laden, a companion on the Top 10 list. He’s not a mad bomber, bank robber or serial killer; he’s the self-styled "prophet" who rules the Fundamental ist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — a polygamous sect estimated at about 10,000 souls — with an iron hand. His elevation to the Top 10 puts a larger price on the head of Jeffs. He’s now worth $100,000 to whoever provides the information leading to his arrest and conviction. He is a fugitive from Arizona with indictments for his role in arranging illegal marriages of underage women to be the plural wives of men two or three times their age. He has also abandoned his defense in civil suits in Utah that accuse him of sexually molesting a young nephew in Sunday School, of casting young men out of the FLDS to reduce competition for young brides and of firing and blacklisting an employee of an FLDS-owned company for his apostasy. In a broader — and largely noncriminal — context, Jeffs is accused of demanding such allegiance to his interpretation of religious beliefs that his followers live in walled-off compounds that are virtual police states. Anyone who is accused of being an apostate — of not following Jeffs’ mandates or speaking out against his leadership — is threatened with eternal damnation. At the order of the prophet, men who are heads of plural families in this patriarchal denomination have been cast out, denied salvation and had their wives, children and property assigned to other men. Plural wives in Short Creek, the traditional name for the twin cities of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, are estimated to have milked the welfare programs in their respective states for millions of dollars. Property in Short Creek is held in a trust for the benefit of all members. Newer properties in Mancos, Texas and the Black Hills of South Dakota are owned in a variety of shell companies operating out of post office boxes. The trust — the United Enterprise Plan — is now in the care of a court-appointed administrator, who is trying to locate and secure the assets of the trust, as well as to determine whether, and to what extent, Jeffs has looted the UEP to develop his compounds in other states. Warren’s brother, Seth Jeffs, was arrested last fall while driving on I-25 in the Pueblo area. In his vehicle were hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, cell phones, phone cards and other assets that he is believed to have been transported to the Prophet. Seth Jeffs recently pleaded guilty and will go to jail rather than reveal his brother’s whereabouts. The tax man is after Warren Jeffs, too. The New York Times ran a major story on April 21 describing how back property taxes on UEP properties in Colorado City have mounted to $1.3 million and fingers are pointing in all directions as to who should pay it. The FLDS loyalists, once the court took over the UEP and appointed Bruce R. Winant to account for it, stopped paying into the UEP fund that pays the taxes. Winant says the UEP funds shouldn’t be depleted still further to make up for the stinginess of the loyalists. Locally, the two 60-acre parcels the FLDS purchased off County Road 39 in the northern part of the Mancos Valley are also subject to taxes. The upper property, purchased by Warren Jeffs’ son-in-law David Allred — as the Sherwood Management Group, operating out of a post office box in Mesquite, Nev. — in October 2004 for $725,000, has largely been left alone. One shed was gutted, but otherwise, there appears to be nothing happening at 1596 CR 39. The assessor’s actual value on the property has only increased $10,500, and the tax owed this year was $903.64. The 15252 CR 39 property is a different story. Allred bought the property in July 2003 for $669,000, and the FLDS owners worked day and night to close in a barn with an open understory and build two new houses, both of which are down in a canyon, largely hidden from view from CR 39. The four residences on the property now include 16 bedrooms and a like number of baths. The property that was listed at an improvement value of $142,500 in 2003 is now carried on the assessor’s books with an actual value of $1,774,930. All but about $1,600 of the increase in value is in the buildings constructed or modified in the fall of 2003. This year’s tax bill on that property was $7,324.18. As of Tuesday morning, the Montezuma County assessor’s office had not recorded payments on either tax bill. Property taxes were due April 30. | |
|
cortezjournal.com Originally published Thursday, May 11, 2006 | |
| Back | |
| For more information email: | |
