I want you to try and visualize something with
me. Imagine you're driving through the American
Southwest. You've got that incredible, vast scenery,
the red sandstone cliffs, the deep blue sky,
that stark, beautiful desert landscape right
on the border of Utah and Arizona. It's breathtaking
out there. It really is. It's the kind of place
people go to get away from everything. And then
right there, straddling the state line, you come
across these two towns, Colorado City. Arizona,
and Hilldale, Utah. And they are, I mean, technically
two towns on a map, but for the people who live
there, it's just one community. They call it
Short Creek. Right, Short Creek. But as you're
driving through, you realize pretty quickly that
this doesn't look like your typical American
small town. It feels off. Very off. You start
seeing these massive homes. And I don't mean
mansion in the Beverly Hills sense. I mean these
big, boxy, almost... industrial -looking structure.
Unfinished, a lot of them. Yeah, they look unfinished.
Some of them are 8 ,000, 10 ,000 square feet.
But they don't look like they're built for a
mom, a dad, two kids. They're built like barracks.
That is a very deliberate architectural choice.
Those houses are designed to hold dozens and
dozens of people, multiple wives, scores of children,
all under one roof. And then there's the other
thing you notice, the thing that really stands
out. The walls. The walls. are everywhere high
walls privacy fences that go up six eight maybe
ten feet and they aren't just there to mark property
lines they are designed to create a complete
visual barrier to keep the outside world out
to keep the outside world completely out and
maybe more importantly to keep the inside world
the family hermetically sealed in you can't see
what's happening behind them and then there are
the people if you happen to catch a glimpse of
someone walking down a dusty street It's like
you've stepped through a tear in the fabric of
time. It really is. You see women and young girls,
and they're all dressed almost identically. These
pastel prairie dresses. Long sleeves, high necks,
hems right down to the ankles. No patterns, usually.
Just solid colors. Pinks, light blues, purples.
And the hair. Oh, the hair is incredibly distinct.
It's often done up in these very elaborate coiffed
styles. You see braids and swoops and this sort
of wave at the front that almost defies gravity.
It creates this incredibly striking, almost jarring
visual. You have modern SUVs driving down the
street, but the people inside them look like
they've just stepped out of the 19th century.
And that visual isolation, that deliberate strangeness.
It's not an accident. It is the physical manifestation
of a psychological reality they've built. Absolutely.
You mentioned Colorado City and Hilldale, which
is sort of the historic heartland of this movement.
Yeah. But the geography is actually much wider,
isn't it? We also have to look at places like
the Y of Z Ranch in Texas. Yes, exactly. And
the Y of Z Ranch wasn't just another town. It
was a fortress. It was built in the middle of
nowhere, specifically to escape any and all scrutiny.
And that is exactly where we're going today.
We aren't just talking about a quirky religious
group or some historical footnote. We are doing
a deep dive into the fundamentalist church of
Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints, the FLDS.
And it is a heavy, heavy topic. It is. But our
mission here is to really unpack how this happened.
Because it's so easy to look at the headlines,
you know, the arrests, the Netflix documentaries,
and just see the sensationalism. But I want to
understand the system. The mechanics of it. Yes,
the mechanics. This is a case study in what they
call one -man rule. How does a community become
a world unto itself? How does one man convince
thousands of people that he and only he is the
mouthpiece of God on earth? That is the central
question, isn't it? It all comes down to authority,
absolute, unquestionable, unchecked authority.
So before we dive into the history and the doctrines,
we really need to do some housekeeping because
names matter here and definitions really matter.
I know there's a lot of confusion about who these
people actually are, especially in relation to.
The Mormons we might know, our neighbors, our
co -workers, the missionaries you see on bikes.
Yes, we need to make a very, very crucial distinction
right up front. The FLDS is not the mainstream
church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints,
which most people know as the LDS Church. So
if I meet a Mormon missionary in Salt Lake City,
they are not part of this group. No, not at all.
In fact, they would be vehemently opposed to
everything the FLDS stands for. The mainstream
LDS church officially prohibited polygamy over
a century ago. With the 1890 manifesto. Exactly.
The 1890 manifesto, which we'll definitely get
into today. The mainstream church strictly excommunicates
anyone who practices or even advocates for plural
marriage. They've actually stated very clearly
that they consider the term Mormon to be incorrectly
applied to the. FLDS. OK, so when we say FLDS,
we're talking about a fundamentalist breakaway
group, a sect, a sect, a spinoff. And in many
contexts, both legal and sociological, it really
fits the definition of a cult or a high control
new religious movement. And just to give people
a sense of scale here, we aren't talking about
10 guys in a bunker somewhere. No, not at all.
At its height, we are talking about roughly 10
,000 members. And it's a transnational network.
You have the headquarters on the Utah -Arizona
border, but they have had major compounds in
Pringle, South Dakota. Pringle, okay. A very
significant and controversial presence in bountiful
British Columbia in Canada. They've had colonies
in Mexico for generations. It is a very sophisticated
and well -funded organization. So let's go back.
Let's start at the beginning of the split. How
did this happen? You mentioned the 1890 Manifesto.
I'm assuming the FLDS didn't just wake up one
day and decide to ignore their church leadership.
They have a specific reason, a theological argument,
for why they think they are right and the entire
mainstream church is wrong. Right. And to understand
the FLDS, you have to understand the immense
pressure the Mormon church was under in the late
19th century. The US government was, for all
intents and purposes, crushing them. This was
the war on polygamy. It was. Congress had passed
laws like the Edmunds Tucker Act, which effectively
disenfranchised polygamists. They were seizing
church assets, millions of dollars worth. Church
leaders were in hiding, living on what they called
the underground. It was a genuine existential
threat to the institution. So the government
basically gave them an ultimatum. Stop practicing
polygamy or we will completely destroy the church.
That's a perfect summary. So in 1890, Wilford
Woodruff, who was the president of the LDS church
at the time, issued the manifesto. It was a public
declaration that officially ended the practice
of plural marriage. It was a strategic move to
save the institution and pave the way for Utah
to finally achieve statehood. OK, so that's the
official history. The mainstream church says
God told us to stop. So we stopped. But the fundamentalists,
they don't buy that for a second. They do not.
They view. The 1890 manifesto as a political
capitulation, a surrender to the United States
government, not a commandment from God. But,
you know, you can't just reject the prophet unless
you have a rival source of authority. You need
your own story. You need your own story. And
this is where the 1886 revelation comes in. This
is the absolute cornerstone of all FLDS theology.
The 1886 revelation. I've read about this and
it really feels like a scene from a movie. Can
you paint the picture for us? So the story, and
this is according to fundamentalist tradition,
takes place in center. So he's on the run. This
is a high tension, middle of the night kind of
situation. Got it. Now, Lauren Woolley, years
later, it's important to note claims that on
one specific night in September, while President
Taylor was in his room praying, a light was seen
under the door. Voices were heard. And Lauren
Woolley claimed that Jesus Christ and the deceased
founder of the church, Joseph Smith. appeared
in the room to john taylor wow so a direct visitation
a direct divine visitation and what did they
supposedly say what was the message they supposedly
told taylor that plural marriage was an eternal
principle that could never be abandoned by the
church the text of this revelation which the
flds treats as holy scripture says things like
i have not revoked this law nor will i Nor will
I. That is about as definitive as it gets. So
if you believe that happened, if you believe
Jesus Christ himself showed up and said that,
then Wilford Woodruff coming out just four years
later and saying, actually, we're stopping. It's
like apostasy. It looks like heresy. That is
exactly the logic. They believe the mainstream
church went astray, that their leaders broke
a direct covenant with God just to please the
government. And here's the crucial part, right?
The transfer of power. This is the linchpin.
Lauren Woolley claimed that before John Taylor
died, he secretly set apart a small group of
men, including the Woolies, and gave them the
authority to keep the principle, as they call
it, alive, regardless of what the main church
did. So they believe there was a secret transfer
of power. Like the corporate church went one
way, but the true priesthood authority was passed
down to this secret parallel group. Precisely.
They believe the actual priesthood authority,
the keys to heaven, were transferred to this
separate line of men. This is why they call themselves
the remnant. They believe they are the only ones
left holding the true original keys of the kingdom.
So this group of holdouts, these fundamentalists,
they start gathering somewhere and they pick
Short Creek. Why there? Of all the places in
the desert? Isolation. Pure and simple. It was
the Arizona Strip. Incredibly remote, harsh,
hard to get to. In the early 1900s, it was the
perfect place to hide from the law and from the
mainstream church. But there was also a prophecy,
wasn't there? Something about Brigham Young.
Yes, that gave it a divine sanction. Brigham
Young had visited the area decades prior and
reportedly said that Short Creek would one day
be the head and not the tail of the church and
the granaries of the saints. So they felt like
destiny was pulling them there, that this was
the appointed place. It was their promised land.
And originally, this wasn't a dictatorship. When
they first set up shop, it was run by a council,
correct? Yes, the Council of Friends. It was
originally comprised of seven high priests. And
while it was very strict, there was a sense of
shared governance. You had debate. to reach a
consensus. It wasn't one man calling all the
shots. But that didn't last. No. Power tends
to consolidate. Over the decades, specifically
under a leader named Leroy S. Johnson in the
mid 20th century, and then really accelerating
under Rulon Jeffs, the entire structure shifted.
We moved from a council to the doctrine of one
man rule. One man rule. It sounds like a political
term, but for them it's a core theological belief.
It is the defining doctrine of the modern FLDS.
The belief is that God is a house of order, not
of confusion. Therefore, God speaks to one man
on earth at a time, the prophet, the president
of the priesthood. Which means if you disagree
with the prophet... You're not just disagreeing
with a man. You're disagreeing with God himself.
Exactly. It creates a theological funnel. Every
decision, every revelation, every single bit
of truth comes through one specific individual.
It makes dissent... impossible because dissent
is immediately reclassified as blasphemy. If
the prophet says the sky is green and you look
up and say, no, it's blue, you are structurally,
theologically wrong. That is terrifying. It removes
any kind of safety valve, any checks and balances.
And that brings us to the modern dynasty. The
Jeffs family. Let's talk about Rulon Jeffs. He
took over in the 80s. Yes, Rulon Jeffs. Uncle
Rulon, as many called him. He was really the
bridge from the old fundamentalism to the extreme
isolation we see today. And the numbers associated
with him are, well, they're difficult to even
comprehend. I saw the number 46. 46 wives. At
least 46 wives that have been documented. And
the number of children is estimated to be over
60. Just... Pause on the logistics of that for
a second. I mean, 46 wives. How does that even
work structurally in a family? How do you remember
everyone's name? You don't run it like a family.
You run it like a corporation. You have schedules,
rotations, assigned duties, sister wives in charge
of other sister wives. It is not marriage in
the romantic or companionate sense we would recognize.
It's an organizational chart. Rulon was the undisputed
CEO. But he was often seen as sort of this grandfatherly
figure. He was. He presented a much softer, more
benevolent face compared to what was coming.
But when he died in 2002 at the age of 92, the
mask came off the organization. His son, Warren
Jeffs, took over. And this transition wasn't
exactly a smooth democratic process. Oh, no.
There was chaos. Some people within the community
questioned Warren's claim to be the next prophet.
There were other high -ranking men who felt they
had a right. For instance, Winston Blackmore,
who ran the huge group up in bountiful Canada,
he had a legitimate claim. So there was a succession
crisis. There was. But Warren was absolutely
ruthless. He excommunicated Blackmore and his
followers. He excommunicated anyone who posed
even a remote threat. He consolidated power almost
instantly through fear. And then he did something
else that I think shocked even some of the lifelong
members. He married his own stepmothers. Yes.
This is a practice that sounds almost medieval
to modern ears. Shortly after Rulon died, Warren
Jeffs took several of his father's widows as
his own wives. Is there a theological justification
for that or is it just a raw power move? It's
both. The stated logic is about caretaking. The
widows, you know, providing for them, keeping
them within the highest level of the priesthood
family. That's the justification. But the practical
effect. The practical effect is a massive assertion
of dominance. It sends a message to everyone.
I have literally stepped into my father's shoes.
I own his legacy. I own his family. I own his
wives. It's the ultimate power play. Owns feels
like the right word there. Because under Warren
Jeffs, the control over people's lives went from
just strict to completely totalitarian. And nothing
illustrates this better than how they handle
marriage. We have to talk about placement marriage.
This is absolutely critical to understanding
the system. In the FLDS, you do not date. You
do not fall in love and propose. Marriage is
an assignment. It is handed down directly by
the prophet. So let's walk through this. I'm
a young man in the FLDS, turned 19 or 20. I don't
go out and look for a girlfriend. I just wait.
You wait. You work. You prove your loyalty. And
you wait for the prophet to deem you worthy.
of a wife and then one day he might call you
into his office or make an announcement and he
reveals who your wife will be and it could be
anyone it could be a girl you've known your whole
life it could be a total stranger from another
compound it could be someone much older than
you or terrifyingly much younger and the woman
has absolutely no say in the matter whatsoever
her consent is not part of the equation and for
the men There is a massive theological hook,
right? It's not just about having a wife and
family. It's about your eternal soul. That's
the leverage. That's the ultimate control. The
FLDS theology teaches that to reach the celestial
kingdom, which is the highest level of heaven
where you can become a god yourself, a man needs
a minimum of three wives. Three is the minimum
entry fee for the highest level of heaven. For
the highest glory, yes. So women become a form
of spiritual currency. If you want salvation,
you need wives. And the only person who can dispense
that currency, the only person who can give you
wives, is the prophet. Which means the prophet
holds your eternal soul in his hand. If you displease
him, he doesn't just, you know, fire you from
your job. He can cut off your access to heaven.
And he can take them away, too. That's the other
side of the coin. Reassignment. You can break
up a family. On a whim. If a man is deemed unworthy,
maybe he questioned a decision. Maybe he didn't
pay enough in tithes. Maybe the prophet just
wants his wife for himself. Warren Jeffs would
dissolve his marriages. He would take the man's
wives and his children and reassign them to another,
more worthy man. Just try to imagine the psychological
terror of that, waking up every single day knowing
that your entire family, your whole world, could
be dissolved by a text message or a phone call
from the prophet's office. It created a culture
of total abject fear and snitching. Everyone
was watching everyone else trying to prove their
loyalty, terrified of being next. But it gets
even darker. And I'll be honest, this part was
genuinely hard to read about during the research
phase. The seed bearer doctrine. This came out
in legal documents later from witness testimony,
right? Yes, specifically from the testimony of
a woman named Charlene Jeffs, who was married
to Lyle Jeffs, Warren's brother. This doctrine
is, it is effectively ritualized, state -sanctioned
rape within the marriage. Explain how it works.
Because the name itself, Seed Bearer. sounds
so weirdly agricultural and detached. It is.
It's dehumanizing. The doctrine, as it was alleged,
stated that some men, even faithful, loyal men,
were not worthy to produce children for the priesthood.
Their bloodline wasn't pure enough or their spiritual
standing wasn't high enough in Warren's eyes.
So the prophet would just decide this about you?
He would. And so he would designate a seed bearer,
one of the elect men, usually someone high up
in the leadership. So... The husband is married
to the wife. They live together in the same house,
but he isn't allowed to be with her intimately.
Correct. He's denied that. When it was determined
to be time for the wife to conceive a child,
the seed bearer would be brought into their home.
And the testimony described a horrific ritual
where the husband was required to be in the room.
He had to hold his own wife's hands while the
seed bearer performed the sexual act. I don't
even have words for that. It's not just about
controlling reproduction. It is about the ultimate
humiliation. It is the ultimate degradation.
It strips the husband of his manhood in their
eyes. It strips the wife of any last shred of
bodily autonomy. It reduces everyone involved
to the level of livestock. You are just breeding
stock for the prophet's kingdom. It really emphasizes
that one man rule means one man. Everyone else
is just an object, an extension of his will.
And speaking of erasing women's autonomy, we
have to touch on the law of Sarah. Right. Now,
in historical Mormon theology, the law of Sarah
generally referred to the principle that the
first wife had to give her consent to her husband
taking on plural wives. But under Warren Jeffs,
it was twisted into something unrecognizable.
It became a code for absolute unquestioning submission
of women. It was used as a theological justification
to force women to perform sexual acts on each
other for the pleasure of the men or to force
them to accept being redeemed, which meant being
sent away from their families and reassigned.
It was a catch -all justification for any kind
of sexual abuse the leadership wanted to perpetrate.
So you have this total control over people's
bodies, their families, their salvation. But
you can't run a town on theology alone. You need
money, you need resources, and the FLES had a
very specific, very effective way of handling
problems. property. The United Effort Plan, or
the UEP. This started way back in the 40s, right,
as a sort of communal trust. Yes. The concept
on paper is consecration, a religious principle
where you give everything you have to the church
for the building of the kingdom of God. So if
you join the FLDS and build a house in Colorado
City, you don't put the deed in your name, you
sign it over to the UEP trust. Which sounds kind
of noble and communal on the surface. We all
own this together. But in a dictatorship, we
always means him. The prophet has total control
over the trust. So if you decide to leave the
FLDS, or more likely if you get kicked out. You
don't just lose your church, you lose your house.
You lose your house, your business, your car,
you lose everything. You walk out of town with
the clothes on your back and nothing else. The
tractor you just bought. It's UEP property. The
house you spent 20 years building with your own
two hands, it's UEP property. It is a massive
economic barrier to exit. It traps people. But
they also needed cash flow from the outside world.
And this is where the hypocrisy just becomes
breathtaking. The concept they had of bleeding
the beast. This is a fascinating bit of mental
gymnastics. The FLDS theology views the U .S.
government as the beast from the Book of Revelation.
It is corrupt. It is worldly. It is the enemy
of God's people. they'd want nothing to do with
it no contact no government handouts you would
think but the doctrine says that because the
government is evil plundering it is actually
a virtuous act they felt they were entitled to
the money of the wicked and they found a massive
glaring loophole in the american welfare system
the single mother loophole exactly in the eyes
of the state of arizona or utah a man has one
legal wife Maybe. If he has 10 other spiritual
wives, the state doesn't recognize those marriages.
Legally, those 10 women are single mothers. And
a single mother with five, six, seven or more
children qualifies for a lot of government assistance.
A huge amount. Food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, cash
assistance. They utilize this systematically.
The women would be coached on how to apply as
single mothers to claim they didn't know where
the father was or that they were abandoned. The
welfare checks would come in and the money would
often be pooled or funneled. directly back to
the church leadership. So they are publicly denouncing
the government as the devil while privately cashing
millions upon millions of dollars in government
checks. By 2003, one report showed that Colorado
City, a relatively small, isolated town, was
receiving about $6 million a year in public funds.
They were literally funding their rebellion with
the enemy's money. It's incredibly cynical, but
you have to admit, it's efficient. Now, I want
to shift to who was allowed in this community.
Because we've talked about the seed and bloodlines
and purity. And unfortunately, that leads us
directly to the issue of racism. It does. The
FLDS maintained and in fact amplified some 19th
century theological concepts about race that
the mainstream LDS church has long since disavowed
and apologized for, specifically the curse of
Cain. This is the old, awful idea that black
skin is a literal mark of a curse from God. Yes.
And Warren Jess was extremely explicit about
this. He taught that the black race was the vehicle
for the devil on earth. They rely on this bizarre
interpretation of the Old Testament where Cain
kills Abel, gets marked by God, and then that
lineage supposedly survives the great flood through
Noah's son Ham and his wife, Egyptus. It sounds
like twisted mythology, but the real world impact
is just straight up hate. Which is why the Southern
Poverty Law Center designated the FLDS as a hate
group. Jeff's taught that what he called Negro
blood makes a person unworthy of the priesthood.
Interracial relationships of any kind are strictly
forbidden. It is white supremacy baked directly
into their core theology. And while they are
actively excluding people based on race, they
are also purging their own children. We have
to talk about the lost boys. This is the part
of the story that I think just breaks the heart
of anyone who hears about it. It is the inevitable
mathematical tragedy of polygyny. It's simple
biology. Nature produces boys and girls in roughly
50 -50 numbers. Right. For every 100 girls born,
there are about 100 boys. Exactly. But the FLDS
theology says a worthy man needs at least three
wives. The leaders, like Warren Jeffs, have 50,
60, 70 wives. If one man takes 50 women out of
the dating pool, that means 49 other men will
have zero women. The math is just impossible.
So you have a massive surplus of young men. They
are competition. They are competition for the
older, powerful men who want to accumulate more
wives. So the leadership began systematically
looking for reasons to get rid of them. They
targeted boys, usually between the ages of 13
and 21. And the reasons they were kicked out
were just trivial, right? We're talking about
boys committing serious crimes. Not at all. We
are talking about listening to a rock song on
a hidden radio. Wearing a t -shirt with short
sleeves, talking to a girl you weren't assigned
to, being a rebel, these were all just pretexts.
The real goal was to cull the herd. To remove
them from the equation so there were enough women
to go around for the elite. So just imagine for
a second you are 14 years old. You've grown up
entirely behind these walls. You probably don't
know who the president of the United States is.
You've never handled money. You have no real
job skills. And then suddenly your father tells
you you're wicked and you're put in a van and
dumped on the side of a highway in St. George
or Las Vegas with nothing. It is catastrophic.
They are called lost boys because they are truly
lost between two worlds. They don't have the
social or education. skills to survive in the
modern world, but they're forbidden from ever
going home. Many of them fell into drug addiction,
crime, homelessness. It was a brutal, systematic
culling of their own sons. So for decades, this
is all happening. The abuse, the welfare fraud,
the culling of young men. And the outside world
kind of knows, but mostly stays away. But eventually
the law did come knocking. And we have two major
pivotal events, the raid in 1953 and the raid
in 2008. And the contrast between those two events
is a perfect lesson in how modern policing works
and how it can fail spectacularly. Let's start
with 1953, the Short Creek Raid. This was a massive
operation. The governor of Arizona at the time,
Howard Pyle, ordered the National Guard and state
police to storm the town at dawn. We're talking
102 officers. They rounded up and arrested almost
the entire adult population. And he took the
kids. They took 263 children into state custody.
They put them on buses and drove them away to
Phoenix to be placed in foster care. Now, looking
at all the crimes we just discussed, you'd think
the public would be cheering. Finally, they're
saving the kids. You would think that. But this
is 1953. The optics were absolutely terrible.
The newspapers and magazines ran these heart
wrenching photos of crying mothers reaching for
their children as they were being dragged onto
buses by armed men. It didn't look like a rescue.
It looked like government overreach. It looked
like religious persecution. So it completely
backfired on the state. Completely. It destroyed
Governor Pyle's political career. The public
outcry was so great that the families were eventually
reunited after years of legal battles. But more
importantly, it taught the FLDS a powerful lesson.
The world is out to get you. It validated every
single paranoid sermon they had ever heard. So
the raid, which was meant to break them up, actually
made the walls higher. It strengthened their
resolve for 50 years. It became a foundational
myth. We survived the raid. God is on our side.
It made them more secretive, more defiant. Okay,
so now fast forward 55 years. It's 2008. The
YFZ Ranch in Texas. This was a different beast
entirely. Completely different. First of all,
the location. The YFC Ranch, which stands for
Yearning for Zion, wasn't a public town. It was
a private, fortified compound. And the catalyst
for the raid was very strange. It started with
a phone call to an abuse hotline from someone
claiming to be a 16 -year -old girl named Sarah
trapped inside. Who said she was being abused
by her much older husband? Right. Now here's
the plot twist. It turned out to be a hoax. The
caller was a woman in Colorado named Rosita Swinton
who had absolutely nothing to do with the ranch.
She was a known serial prank caller with a history
of mental illness. Wait, wait. So the biggest
law enforcement raid in Texas history was...
started by a completely fake call. It was, but
the call was specific enough that it gave them
probable cause to get a warrant. And when law
enforcement went in, what they found was very,
very real. They ended up removing 439 children
from the compound. And this time, the public
sentiment didn't swing back to the FLDS. This
time, people were horrified. Why the different
reaction? Because of the evidence. In 1953, the
debate was about a lifestyle choice, about polygamy.
In 2008, investigators found the temple. They
found the vault. They found the records. They
kept records of the crime. Oh, obsessively. They
kept meticulous records. They found spiritual
marriage certificates written in the prophet's
own hand, sealing 12 -year -old girls to 50 -year
-old men. They found photos of the ceremonies.
They found audio recordings of Warren Jeffs dictating
these marriages. The sheer volume of physical
documentation proving child sexual abuse was
undeniable. So you couldn't spin it as religious
freedom anymore? No. This was unambiguously crimes
against children. And that was the beginning
of the end for the leadership. Warren Jeffs,
who was already on the run, became a top fugitive.
He made the FBI's 10 most wanted list. He did.
He was a ghost for a while moving between safe
houses. And how he eventually got caught is almost
anticlimactic. It wasn't some dramatic shootout
at a compound. No, not at all. It was a routine
traffic stop on Interstate 15 in Nevada in August
of 2006. A state trooper pulled over a Cadillac
Escalade because the license plate wasn't visible.
And inside, he found Warren Jeffs surrounded
by over $50 ,000 in cash, burner cell phones,
laptops, wigs, and disguises. A traffic stop.
The banality of evil. He was eventually extradited
to Utah and then Texas, where he was convicted
of sexual assault of a child. He was sentenced
to life in prison plus 20 years. and that opened
the floodgates. Other leaders like Meryl Jessup,
Raymond Jessup and many others also face convictions.
The legal system finally stopped treating it
as a religion and started treating it as what
it was, a sophisticated criminal enterprise.
You know, we've talked about the legal walls,
the psychological walls that keep people in.
But there is one more consequence of this intense
isolation that we have to discuss. And it's not
something you can see in a court document. It's
written in their DNA. It's in their blood. This
is the truly tragic biological legacy of the
FLDS. It's a textbook. of something called the
founder effect. Can you explain that for us?
What is the founder effect? So, because the entire
community was founded by a very small group of
men, principally two patriarchs, Joseph Smith
Jessup and John Ye Sparlow, and because they
have practiced intense endogamy, which means
marrying within the group for over a century,
the gene pool is incredibly small and concentrated.
Everyone is cousins. Everyone is related to everyone
else multiple times over. And when that happens,
rare recessive genes, which are harmless in the
general population, population can suddenly show
up at a rate that is statistically impossible
anywhere else on Earth. In this case, it's a
devastating genetic disease called fumarase deficiency.
And what does that do to a person? It is catastrophic.
It causes severe intellectual disability, profound
brain malformation, frequent seizures, and an
inability to speak or walk. In the general global
population, this disease affects maybe one in
millions. In the Short Creek area, it is shockingly,
tragically common. So in their attempt to create
a pure and separate... they actually created
a genetic crisis. Biology does not care about
your theology. If you close a genetic loop that
tight for that long, you will eventually break
the code. It is a slow -moving humanitarian disaster
that the community is still dealing with today.
So here we are in the 2020s. Warren Jeffs is
in prison for life. He is never getting out.
You would think the spell would be broken. You'd
think the members would look around and say,
OK, our prophet is a convicted child predator.
This is all a terrible mistake. Let's pack it
up. But that is not how high control groups work.
In fact, in a bizarre and terrifying way, Warren
Jeffs has continued to rule his church from behind
bars. How is that even possible? He's in a maximum
security prison in Texas. He uses proxies and
communication channels. For a long time, it was
his brother, Lyle Jeffs, who ran things on the
outside. Then, when Lyle messed up or got arrested
himself, the power shifted to others. Warren
would smuggle out letters, which are treated
as revelations. He'd make phone calls. In 2011,
from his prison cell, he managed to purge 45
high -ranking leaders from the church just with
a letter. And recently... It seems to be ramping
up again. There's this talk of a gathering for
the end times. Yes, this is the current very
alarming chapter. Since roughly 2022, there has
been a major resurgence. Warren's son, Helaman
Jeffs, has taken on a more visible leadership
role on the outside. New revelations have come
out of the prison claiming that the end of the
world is imminent. And the central demand of
these new revelations is to bring the children
back into the fold. Yes. The edict was that God
cannot allow sin living to dwell. and that all
fathers seeking to get back in the prophet's
good graces must gather their wives and children
who may have left. There is a five -year timeline
mentioned for the end of the world. And this
isn't just talk. We are seeing actual kidnapping
charges being filed. Right. We've seen cases
like Keeper Jeff's, another one of Warren's sons
facing federal kidnapping charges. Mothers who
escaped the cult years ago with their kids are
suddenly reporting that their children are missing,
fearing they've been snatched by relatives to
be taken back and be part of this gathering.
And they're on the move again. Investigators
are tracking them to North Dakota, of all places.
Yes, rural North Dakota, tiny, isolated places
like Russo. They're buying up large tracts of
land, setting up remote compounds, communicating
via Zoom calls with the faithful. They're trying
to recreate the isolation of the 19th century
Arizona Strip in the 21st century. It's like
a never -ending game of whack -a -mole. You raid
the compound in Texas. They move to South Dakota.
You arrest the leader. His son takes over. And
when the center weakens, even a little, splinkers
form, which is why we have to mention a figure
like Samuel Bateman. Oh, this guy. This is a
perfect example of the virus mutating, isn't
it? It is. Bateman was a devoted follower of
Jeff's who broke off around 2019. He started
his own small splinter group near the Arizona
border. He claimed that Warren Jeff's had lost
the prophetic mantle and that he was now the
true prophet. And the details that came out when
he was arrested were just as horrific as the
main group. Maybe even worse in some ways, he
was arrested in 2022. He had accumulated 20 wives,
many of them underage girls, and he allegedly
was seeking to marry his own teenage daughter.
It shows that the structure of one -man rule
is the fundamental problem. It attracts predators.
As long as you have a theology that says one
man holds all the power and can take whatever
women he wants, you will always have men stepping
up to fill that role. So let's try to synthesize
all of this. We started with that visual of the
twin towns, the unfinished houses, the prairie
dresses, the high walls. We've walked through
the history of the split, the rigid theological
hierarchy, the abuse disguised as salvation,
the systematic fraud, the genetic tragedy. It
is a tragedy in every single sense of the word,
from the theology to the biology. And for me,
the biggest takeaway from all this is the sheer
power of the narrative they created. They built
a world where fraud was a virtue. Bleeding the
beast wasn't theft. It was a holy act. Abuse
wasn't rape. It was a placement marriage for
God. They completely inverted morality. That
is the ultimate success of a system like this.
It completely rewrites reality for its followers.
If you can convince someone that the outside
world is not just different, but fundamentally
evil, and that their eternal soul depends on
staying inside the wall you've built, you can
get them to do absolutely anything. Which leads
me to the question I want to leave everyone listening
with. Warren Jeffs is in a maximum security prison.
The secrets are out. The evidence of his crimes
is on the internet for anyone to see. And yet...
Right now, as we speak, there are families packing
up U -Hauls and driving to the freezing cold
in North Dakota because a convicted child predator
in a prison cell told them to. It completely
defies logic. So if prison and evidence and the
destruction of your own family can't break the
spell, what possibly can? Is there any way to
reach someone who has been taught their entire
life that listening to an outside voice is a
mortal sin? That is the question that keeps former
members and law enforcement and families with
loved ones still inside awake at night. And I
honestly don't think we have the answer yet.