FLDS PROPHET WARREN JEFFS IMPLICATED IN ANOTHER MISSING PERSON CASE, AND ANOTHER ALLEGED CASE OF SEXUAL CONTACT WITH A MINOR
 
Jon Krakauer
Press Release
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 12, 2004

On Thursday evening a missing-person report was filed for 17-year-old Janetta Jessop, a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) based in the adjoining border communities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. The report was submitted to the Washington County (Utah) Sheriff’s Office by Janetta’s 26-year old sister, Suzanne Jessop Johnson.

Notable for being the largest polygamous sect in North America, the FLDS Church is led by an exceedingly secretive 49-year-old man named Warren Steed Jeffs. A self-proclaimed prophet, Jeffs claims to be God’s mouthpiece on earth and is believed to be married to more than 70 women, several of whom were wed to him when they were teenagers. He demands absolute, unquestioning obedience from his estimated 10,000 followers, whom he forbids to have any unnecessary contact with outsiders. Jeffs has repeatedly prophesied that the Lord will soon unleash a scourge of "pestilence, hail, famine, and earthquake" upon the earth, destroying all of humankind except the most zealous of his true believers.

Suzanne Johnson says she discovered that her sister Janetta Jessop had abruptly vanished in August 2003 when Suzanne went over to the family home in Colorado City to deliver a plate of cookies immediately after Janetta’s 16th birthday. According to Suzanne (who became estranged from her family two years ago after being "cut off" from the FLDS Church), Janetta was unexpectedly absent from the home, as were all her possessions. "There was no sign of her. All of a sudden it was like Janetta had never existed." says Suzanne. When she inquired what had happened to Janetta, their mother "just kind of looked at me with this blank stare and says back, ‘Well, I don’t know.’"

Suzanne heard nothing from her sister for fifteen months—until last Friday, November 5, when she received a phone call from Janetta "out of the blue." According to Suzanne, "I could tell right away something was wrong. Her voice was trembling. She was talking really quiet. I asked her right off the bat if she was in trouble and needed help…. She started telling me over and over, ‘I have to get out! I can’t take this any more! I have to get out! Can you please help me?"

When Suzanne replied she would do anything to help her, Janetta said she would immediately pack her belongings, then call Suzanne back "in a few minutes" to let Suzanne know where to pick her up.

But that was the last Suzanne heard from her little sister. Janetta never called her back. Instead, their mother drove over to Suzanne’s house in Hildale 24 hours later to say that Janetta had called her with a message for Suzanne. "I don’t know what’s going on or what," the mother explained, "but Janetta told me to tell you, ‘Never mind.’

When Suzanne asked why Janetta hadn’t called her to tell her this directly, instead of using their mother as an intermediary, the mother grew evasive and started talking about Warren Jeffs (to whom she, unlike Suzanne, is fiercely devoted). The mother said, "Well, you know Warren has to be in hiding right now. It just has to be this way for a while."

Suzanne regarded this non sequitur as confirmation that Jeffs had taken Janetta as a plural wife—something Suzanne had long surmised. At least two (and possible three) of Suzanne’s other sisters are married to the prophet. Suzanne speculates that Janetta was married to Jeffs in the prophet’s sprawling Hildale compound immediately after the girl’s 16th birthday. Jeffs was 47 at the time.

According to Suzanne, "The first thing that crossed my mind when Janetta called me asking for help was that Warren or somebody was doing something really bad to her, or making her do things that she didn’t want to do, and it was scaring her. It scared her enough that she was willing to risk calling me after all that time and ask me to help her get out of her situation."

If Suzanne is correct, and Jeffs has indeed taken Janetta into his marital bed, the fundamentalist prophet has committed a criminal act. According to Utah law, when sexual contact occurs between an adult and a 16- or 17-year-old, if the adult is ten or more years older than the minor, a felony has been committed unless the couples are legally married—and in Utah it happens to be illegal to be married to more than one spouse.

By no means would Janetta be the first minor with whom Warren Jeffs has allegedly had felony sexual contact. Last July a nephew of Warren Jeffs filed a civil claim against the FLDS prophet alleging that Jeffs "repeatedly sodomized and otherwise sexually abused" him when the nephew was a five-year-old student at the Alta Academy—a private FLDS school in Sandy Utah that is no longer in existence. Warren Jeffs was the principal of the school at the time. The abuse was said to have occurred in a basement lavatory during Sunday church services. The nephew was told that the abuse was "God’s work," and that if he ever mentioned the abuse to anyone he would be damned by God for eternity. Warren Jeffs has been in hiding ever since this lawsuit was filed.

In March 2003, reporter John Dougherty of the Phoenix New Times unearthed a birth certificate indicating that Jeffs is the father of a girl named Millie Jeffs, born in Hildale on July 7, 2000. The certificate lists the mother as Millie Anne Jessop, born March 20, 1982—which suggests that the mother was at 17 years and seven months old when the baby was conceived (assuming a nine-month gestation).

According to Utah-based private investigator Sam Brower, who has been investigating Jeffs on behalf of the aforementioned nephew and other plaintiffs in civil actions against the FLDS prophet, "Warren claims, through his attorney, that he’s innocent of all these very serious charges. But by going underground he’s made himself appear guilty as heck. It’s also made him look like a coward—a guy who’s afraid to face his accusers and proclaim his innocence in the light of day."

In August 2003, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff declared, "I don’t mind telling Warren Jeffs that I’m coming after him…. We have seen compelling evidence that crimes are being committed, children are being hurt, and taxpayers are footing the bill." Although Shurtleff’s office continues to investigate Jeffs very actively, thus far no criminal charges have been filed against him in Utah. Nor have criminal charges been filed against Jeffs in Arizona, Texas, British Columbia, or anywhere else where the FLDS prophet has allegedly committed felonies.

The missing-person report on Janetta Jessop is expected be posted soon with the National Criminal Identification Center. In recent weeks missing-person reports have also been filed for two other members of the FLDS Church: Fred Jessop—an ailing, 95-year-old bishop whom Warren Jeffs regarded as a rival for ecclesiastical power—abruptly disappeared in December 2003; and 23-year-old Susie JoAnn Blackmore Johnson vanished from her home in Hildale-Colorado City in May 2004 under circumstances disturbingly similar to the disappearance of Janetta Jessop.

Ex-members of the FLDS Church have speculated that Janetta Jessop, Fred Jessop, and Susie Johnson are being held against their will in a new FLDS stronghold discovered last month in the foothills of the San Juan Mountains near Mancos, Colorado, or in a huge enclave that’s sprouting with astonishing speed on 1,691 acres purchased for Warren Jeffs one year ago outside the isolated West-Texas burg of Eldorado. Others have suggested the missing individuals will eventually be found in Bountiful—a shadowy polygamist outpost in southeastern British Columbia; or at the Harker Ranch—an even more clandestine FLDS settlement in Utah’s Escalante Desert; or at a top-secret compound rumored to be somewhere in Mexico—which, if it really exists, has been concealed so effectively that no outsider even knows its exact location.

This press release was written by Jon Krakauer, based in part on an interview with Suzanne Jessop Johnson on November 11, 2004

FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

SAM BROWER, PHONE (435) 701-1501
 
Jon Krakauer
Press Release November 12, 2004
 
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