Have you guys heard of this cult? Warren Jeffs, Fundamentalist LDS?

[Maddy McCall]

He's "The Prophet" of a fundamentalist Latter Day Saints group. He had been located on the border of Arizona and Utah, from what I recall, but last year bought 1600 acres near Eldorado, Texas, where his members have constructed their own quarry and concrete plant and built a huge log temple and a three-story dormitory. People in Eldorado are afraid that Jeffs and his cult will try to take over city and county politics, since the population of the town is only 2,000, and Jeffs' cult followers number 10,000. His group took over county office in the border Az/Ut town and Jeffs appointed cult members to even the school board, where they mismanaged funds.

Anyway, it's a fascinating story. People in Eldorado are walking the razor's edge between Constitutional freedom of religion and soon being dominated by a very strange, polygamous cult, the leader of which has amassed a huge arsenal of assault weapons and who predicted that the world would end on April 6 of this year. When it didn't, he told his followers that they weren't holy enough.

Pundits say that the eventual showdown between Jeffs' cult and law enforcement will make Waco look like a cakewalk. :scared:

Edit: Great link to read about this at SPLCenter http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=878

edit: Corrected locale of old location.

[Hamlette]

1. Read Under the Banner of Heaven by Krakauer

he talks a lot about the Jeffs cult and polygamists in general.

They are a scary lot, we've lived with them in Utah for years. My biggest bitch is they "bleed the beast" which means ripping off the government for as much as possible.

[Maddy McCall]

4. I've added that book to my reading list.

Going to check the library and see if it's available. Thanks for recommending it. :D

[freethought]

9. Just about done with it!

Wait until you read about a guy named Kenyon Blackmore!

:scared: :scared: :scared:

[Maddy McCall]

11. Gotta do a google.

You have my curiosity piqued. :D

[Maddy McCall]

13. OMG. He married his biological daughter when she was 12!!!!

Why have these people NOT been prosecuted????

[freethought]

15. That's not the half of it!

She was eventually rescued and sent to live with relatives. There are
some little sisters still stuck with this sick f__k. And nobody knows where they are. They were last known somewhere in Central America.
I would encourage you to read "Under the Banner of Heaven". Get it out of a library, buy it or borrow it.
I'd rather not say more.

[Maddy McCall]

16. Gonna pick it up tomorrow, even if it means buying it.

Thanks for the rec. :D

[Hamlette]

27. they have been prosecuted, it was a disaster

in the 1950s the gov of AZ had the polygamists arrested and prosecuted. he was defeated for re-election. People apparently felt sorry for the women and children who were left to fend for themselves when the men went to prison.

A few years ago in Utah, the district attorney named David Leavitt (his brother was governor Mike Leavitt, now secretary of HHS) prosectued a polygamist named Tom Green. He was "singled" out because he went on the talk show circuit saying how wonderful the polygamist life was, how he did not accept any public assistance. he has 5 current wives and was receiving over $60K per year in public assistance. Prosecutors got mad because Green was rubbing our noses in it. he was prosecuted for criminal non-support and statutory rape (one of his 30+ children was born to one of his wives while the wife was underage). He's in prison and David Leavitt, the prosecutor was defeated for re-election.

For the same reasons I suppose people vote for Bush, they don't support prosecution of polygamists. A good part of it however is a lack of information. I went to a conference of attornies unrelated to the issue of polygamy and asked them what they thought about the case when it was in tha national news. These lawyers (should be educated and informed, right) all said we should leave the polygamists alone, they don't hurt anyone and its a freedom of religion issue. The news about how much public assistance Green had received (over $600K over 10 years) or that one of his wives was 15 years old when he married her had not filtered down to this group, probably not to Utah voters either. (I'm a lawyer in the welfare office in Utah. I can tell you how much Green got in public assistance because it is public record because of his trial. I can't tell you about other polygamists though. But read Krakaur's book and guess, you'll probably understand the problem.)

Oh, I have stories. . . we've had meetings (public) with polygamists and the non polygamist communities in the Hilldale Utah, Colorado City AZ communities.

[anitar1]

14. I read that book too. Scary off-shoot Mormon cults.

But no more scary than kristain kults.

[XOKCowboy]

28. Great but very scary book...

I'd read Krakauer's books about Mt. Everest and the guy lost in Alaska but Under The Banner of Heaven is his best. His descriptions of Mormon fundamentalism is very well researched well written. It will tell you a lot about what happened to Elizabeth Smart and the seedy underground sects of the RLDS. A lot of history about the LDS religion also.

Everyone needs to read it so that they can understand more about the Fundies in American and how you can't take them lightly.

[gumby]

2. Allowing my prejudices to flow......

that guy clearly looks like a child molester.

[Maddy McCall]

3. He is.

Not only does he perform "private ceremonies" during which he weds preadolescent girls to adult men (some in their seventies), but he also has been sued for molestation of one of his nephews.

According to that article and others I have read, everyone in Jeffs' cult looks so similar, as far as physical appearance, because they are so inbred. Supposedly, there is a massive cemetary just for infants because so many die due to genetic problems from inbreeding.

I'd be freaking if this guy and his clan were moving near my hometown. :scared:

[phusion]

5. AZ & Colo. don't really border :)

I think you mean AZ and Utah and I think you're referring to Colorado City. We were in the area last summer and my friend wanted to "drive through the city" just to see what it was like. I told him that I wasn't touching that place with a ten-foot pole. I hear the Sheriff is corrupt, too.

Anyway, thanks for the link. Very interesting stuff...

[Maddy McCall]

7. Correction.... I think it is Utah.

Yes, the Sheriff is one of the cult members.

[LostinVA]

31. The Sheriff, Mayor, and many cops are polygamists, too

So, they chase down "runaways" and take them back, where they are basically tortured and then married off as young as 12. DSS does little or nothing to protect the kids, and sent back on 14-year-old girl KNOWING she was going to be married to her UNCLE.

[MissB]

6. I vaguely recall hearing something about this.

I was planning on reading that Under the Banner book as well. It is fascinating stuff.

Cults always spark my interest, mostly because I just don't "get" them. I don't get how people are drawn to them.

[Maddy McCall]

8. Yeah...I know what you mean.

What gets to me is that women so willingly place their salvation in the hands of their husband. In other words, they are to "build up" their husbands, totally submit to him, so that he can get to heaven, and then pull them up to heaven when they die.

That's not faith in God, that's faith in hubby. But it works to keep women in a place of complete submission. So sad for the girls in the cult...and for the little boys.

[LostinVA]

32. They don't willingly do it

They are literally brainwashed, and told they are lower than men, and they will literally burn in hell if they don't submit.

God! I learned something from Dr. Phil!!!

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

10. Even the National Enquirer called them sick, law-breaking freaks...

...in an article a few years back - the first time I had heard of Warren Jeffs and his cult. You can find quite a bit about this racist, homophobic, child-molesting swine online.

[BiggJawn]

12. Eldorado needs to research the Rise and Fall of The Bhagwan.

Cultists CAN be defeated.

[funflower]

25. The people of Antelope, Oregon eventually got their town back

AFTER the cultists engaged in germ warfare against them by poisoning the local salad bars right before election day and bussing homeless people in from Portland to vote against the locals in their county elections.

[BiggJawn]

29. Yeah, it was messy, but they prevailed.

Jeffs is impatient. He should do it like the Dominioinists are doing it to the rest of us, quietly...

That way, when he rolls into town to take over, his people are already in the local government, and the rest of the town just goes "WTF???"

[Enquiringkitty]

17. Suppose we'll have another "Waco" type thing coming in the future?

[Maddy McCall]

18. If you read the SPL Center article...it seems almost inevitable.

Perhaps the only reason that it hasn't happened yet is foreign policy gets so much more media attention than domestic.

I stay up with the news, and I wasn't even aware of this situation until I happened upon it today at the Southern Poverty Law Center website.

According to people who are very familiar with the cult, what could potentially happen in Eldorado would make Waco look like child's play.


:scared:

[Enquiringkitty]

19. Maybe we should all email the MSM networks asking about it so they will

feel pressured to report on it. Think that might work?

[democracyindanger]

20. Wow, that's creepy...I coulda sworn I posted in this thread...

[Maddy McCall]

21. I had started it in the lounge.

Should have started it in here to begin with. Did you respond in the lounge?

[democracyindanger]

22. Maybe that's it, but

even in 'My Posts' the links end up nowhere.

Creepy.

[Maddy McCall]

23. I bet mods deleted the one in the lounge when I started this one.

I had alerted asked them to move the one in the lounge to GD right after I posted it. After a while, I just started another thread in here.

Sorry for the confusion. :D

[Minstrel Boy]

24. Heard of FLDS's unmarked "Babyland" graves?

From my blog a few days ago.



"Most unsettling is the revelation of countless numbers of unmarked baby graves in the canyonlands attached to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' polygamy cult headquartered on the Utah-Arizona border. Local residents call it 'Babyland' and law enforcement's response to human rights activists questioning the graves has been that unmarked graves are not illegal."

Here is an example of the activists' attempt at intervention:

Friday, March 05, 2004

To: FBI Phoenix Arizona

From: Child Protection Project, Flora Jessop and Linda Walker

Re: 56 unmarked child graves in Colorado City, Arizona

We request that you open a formal investigation into the dramatic situation that exists for children in Colorado City. We want the graveyard known as the "Baby Graveyard" in Colorado City to be designated a crime scene and the bodies exhumed to find out who is buried in them and why so many children are dead. It is located in the Colorado City compound close to the Isaac V. Carling cemetery. I, Linda Walker, documented with a video cam 46 unmarked graves in the baby graveyard and another 10 + in the Isaac V. Carling cemetery for over 56 unmarked baby graves. I also documented all the graves with markers for a total of 425 graves, 227 are children and the rest adults.

Anyone can tell these are children's graves because they do not bother to remove the extra dirt and so there is a mound left that is about the size of a small child or casket.

I am faxing you the hard copy of all the information I have compiled so far.

We also know that people are burying their children in the canyons and in home burial plots. Evidently there are no laws against this in Utah but I have not checked the laws in Arizona. These polygamous white supremacy compounds straddle the borders of both states and so this is the FBI's venue. Despite many apparent oversights in the law, there are no circumstances under which people can bury children with no notice whatsoever to any officials. Death certificates are required. Yet, this is what they have done and in large numbers.

Simply adding up the numbers and ages of the people we know are buried in the baby graveyard and the Isaac V. Carling cemetery gives us this profile:

425 graves

56 entirely unmarked child graves

227 child graves all together for a total of 53% children under 10

...

Activists think that young boys (11-20 yr olds) are being killed. The death rate for them is very high and the reasons for death that we do have listed as accidents could easily be evaluated as homicides. Unfortunately, lapse law enforcement (law enforcement we have endeavored to get decertified because they are committing felonies) never seems to think so. I understand accidents are common with children but this is far from the norm.

[Maddy McCall]

26. Something is going on...

I never thought about the male:female ratio that must be necessary for polygamy. If each man has to have three brides to get to the highest plane of heaven, and if as many males as females are born, then that would mean that two thirds of the boys will not have adequate females for brides. So would that mean that 2/3 of the males are being killed?

I know this is especially morbid, but why would they wait to kill the boys until they are 11. Seems to me that there would be a high rate of male infanticide.

Whatever is happening, it is disgusting, and it's amazing that nothing more is being done about this. People get all riled up over abortion. What about children who have been born and who are being forced to live in this cult? Disgusting and sad. :cry:

I bookmarked your blog. Will read it often. :)

[LostinVA]

33. Read my post #26 about what they do to boys n/t

[LostinVA]

30. Dr. Phil had a show about this last week

I was home sick, and watched it. I admit it! I knew about them, of course. It was a good show,a nd has whetted my appetite to read about them, but there doesn't seem to be a book about just them.

And, yeah... they are all inbred.

AND, every year they run off hundreds of young boys and men, so Jeffs' favorites (usually old men) can have the females. They are called "The Lost Boys," and alot of them just get driven to Vegas and dumped.

They marry their own daughters, nieces, etc... and most are underage. And they are on public assistance.

The scariest thing? They have their own school where they teach girls nothing but domestic stuff, teach men never went to the men, dinosaurs never existed, and blacks are evil (that last one is actually official Mormon doctrine). BUT, they are in control of the local PUBLIC school system! They pocket money, keep real science from being taught, etc.

[blondeatlast]

36. They are making a freaking fortune off public assistance, and of course,

they manage to get it from both AZ and UT.

Again, I suggest anyone interested look into Jana Bommersbach's continuing reports in Phoenix Magazine.

[blondeatlast]

34. AZ's other border problem; but these are White folk, heavily armed.

In Arizona, we are all too familiar with it. It's no accident that they live on the AZ-UT border, either.

They are minting money off of welfare. This is the cult that was the subject of the book "Under the Banner of Heaven." But don't end it there; some of our local press has done outstanding work in exposing the cult.

If you want to read more about this hideous excuse for a human, Phoenix New Times has published numerous stories about the cult, here's just one of dozens.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/issues/2004-01-29/sidebar.html

Also search Jana Bommersbach's OUTSTANDING work in Phoenix Magazine. She should be national, she's terrific, but we're very happy she's one of ours.

Edit: SL, more praise for the incredible Jana Bommersbach.

[AngryAmish]

35. Anyone ever hear of Ervil LeBaron?

Years ago I read this book called "Prophet of Death" about fundamentalist mormons. This guy Ervil LeBaron was killing folks back in the 70s. This is sick stuff. Responsible for 20-30 murders.