Nearly Six Months Later, What Have We Actually Learned About Warren Jeffs?
 
The Eldorado Success
 
It's been nearly six months since Eldoradoans awoke to the news that a religious sect had acquired more than sixteen hundred acres of land just outside of town and that members of the group were already erecting large dormitory-style buildings on the property.

Since that day the people of Eldorado and Schleicher County have found themselves living in the eye of a media hurricane as dozens, if not hundreds, of print and broadcast journalists have made their way town, each of them looking for a different angle on a story that seems to change on a daily basis.

And, oh, what a story it has become, complete with religious devotion, official corruption, power grabs, political intrigue and, yes, even a little sex.

Few here in Schleicher County knew much if anything about Mormon fundamentalism when The Success broke the story on March 25, 2004, that a group of buildings, under construction on the YFZ Ranch, were meant to house followers of FLDS Prophet Warren Jeffs. But very soon, most hereabouts found themselves reading everything they could get their hands on about Jeffs and his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Polygamy, or, as the FLDS faithful prefer to call it, plural marriage, was and is the heartbeat of the story that still brings journalists to town. Last week, Texas Monthly writer Skip Hollandsworth was in Eldorado working on a story. This week, a news crew from the Fox News Channel came calling.

"Every time I think this thing is dying down something happens in Utah or Arizona to spark public interest," Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran told The Success this week. He estimates that he has given more than fifty newspaper, radio and TV interviews since the YFZ story broke.

This week was no different. Douglas Kennedy, a Fox News reporter, brought his camera crew to town. After a video taped interview at the YFZ gate, Doran found himself on the phone with a reporter from the Canadian Broadcasting Network, followed promptly by a Canadian newspaper reporter.

Others in town have had much the same experience as reporters and news crews have sought out local citizens for "man on the street" interviews. The Success newspaper office has become the clearing house for information on the YFZ Ranch with journalists from across the nation calling or coming by on an almost daily basis.

Still, with all that has been reported about the goings on at the YFZ Ranch and farther away on the FLDS home turf in Colorado City, Arizona, one has to stop and ask, what do we actually know about Warren Jeffs, what he believes and what he teaches his followers?

In an effort to answer those very questions The Eldorado Success will present a series of articles on the beliefs and teachings of the FLDS prophets, including Warren Jeffs and his father Rulon Jeffs, taken directly from their own writings and audio tapes of their own sermons and teachings.

The first in the series, dealing with the Doctrine of Blood Atonement, will appear in next week's edition of the Success. Subsequent articles will focus on the Principle of Plural Marriage, a policy called Bleeding the Beast, the Doctrine of One Man Rule, Repenting from a Distance, and the Restoration of the City of Enoch.
 
MyEldorado.net
Originally published September 30, 2004
 
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