Another polygamist bites the dust!

“Last I heard in South Dakota this summer, these people (or a similar group) had started a little cul... err... community somewhere between Custer and Pringle. As I recall, I think they were thinking Jeffs might be there.



LAS VEGAS - A polygamist Mormon sect leader who was on the FBI's Most Wanted List has been arrested and faces sexual misconduct charges for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men, authorities said Tuesday.

Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, was taken into custody after he and two other people were pulled over late Monday by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, FBI spokesman David Staretz said.

The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was wanted in Utah and Arizona on suspicion of sexual misconduct for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men.

Since May, Jeffs has been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, with a $100,000 reward offered for information leading to his capture.

The other two people in the vehicle were identified as one of Warren Jeffs' wives, Naomi Jeffs, and a brother, Isaac Steve Jeffs, both 32, Staretz said. They were being interviewed by the FBI in Las Vegas but were not arrested.

Jeffs was in federal custody in Las Vegas pending a court hearing on a federal charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, Staretz said. It was not immediately clear if Jeffs would face extradition to Arizona or Utah.

Jeffs was indicted in June on an Arizona charge of arranging a marriage between a 16-year-old girl and a married man, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He is charged in Utah with two felony counts of rape as an accomplice, for allegedly arranging the marriage of a teenage girl to an older man in Nevada.

The FLDS Church split from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the mainstream Mormon Church disavowed plural marriage more than 100 years ago.”

“I have always wondered how anyone could have enough time, money, energy, or patience for more than one woman at a time - mostly patience.”

“One of your ex'es Lizs?”

“If joe blow turns this guy in, he gets $100k. If a cop catches him doing his job does he get the $100k or is he SOL?”

“SOL....thats the way it is”

“i'm headed to south dakota in 3 weeks. custer and pringle you say?”

“wheres buck to say that with the pluralists falling, the pig-fookers, incestors, and gay marryers are next?”

“I think the constand political nitpicking is what drove Buck away.”

“ya, the fuego threads always skeered buck”

“They aren't scary, but the nitpicking is a pain in the butt.”

“maybe buck = sarge


i kid”

“s-rge loved to nitpick. he lived for it”

“Maybe Buck is busy with his little buckeroo and lovin' life too much to get with a buncha stinkers like Sacco..............and the rest of us.”

“I still can't get the multiple women thing. I have heard that multiple women in an environment will eventually change their "pattern" so they are all having the "visitor" at the same time.

Dang can you imagine three or four going through it at the same time?”

“XL, that's why you go on your monthly backpacking trip. duh”

“What a joke.

A polygamist wanted for -sexual misconduct- on the FBI ten most wanted.

Meantime we have children being killed by drive-by shooters on both coasts (LA. NYC).

We have corrupt politicians setting up multi- million dollar slush funds from the public purse.

Perhaps chasing after illegal gun peddlars, drug peddlars, street gang leaders, are all too dangerous for the FBI and a 50 yr old polygamist is the most dangerous creature they are prepared to chase.”

“to be fair, it wasnt the polygamy but the underage bit that put him in the top 10, but, yea, even so, wtf? maybe he is under suspicion for dozens of other arranged underage marriages”

“The underaged bit ??

Oprah Winfrey did a show on teenage prostitution at truck stops.

I guess renting underaged girls is OK, but marriage was the big no-no!!”

“I had heard in a briefing that most of these clowns keep the women in virtual isolation. When they are of age they don't KNOW any better.
Strangely as sick as this nut job is ...has any other Christian Minister come out against them publically? I mean we are #&%!$ing about the Moslem Clerics remaining silent...this sounds like a good subject for Pat Robertson or whoever to yell about.”

“no, the fact that he arranged marriages to underage girls was what got him in trouble with the fbi (i'm assuming)”

“Sure the guy wasn't cutting the FBI in on the action”

“i wanna know whats up with him and his brothers big long heads. its creepy”

“xl, christian ministers preach against polygamy all the time, what is your beef?

the muslim clerics do not preach against terrorism, that is the difference

personally, i think all of humanity should be banned from multiplying until we learn to live as one with mother earth, but that is just me”

“Thank you moonglo, I live in harmony with the earth, yes there is the sound of the coyotes as the Drag line starts up to do a bit of strip mining before dinner.

And there is nothing like the beauty of what you can make from a tree....a bat, a table (like ALGORE's Environmental Get together table made of mahogany) or Houses and Decks from Redwood (like Paul Erlich)....or my favorite, the stock of a really beautiful rifle with a nice scope on it>.....”

“i sense a bit of hostility”

“And you are off in that (LOL)...I think the raving hypocrisy of the Envrio Wackos is hilarious. THe best part is the left is dropping in reproduction ....call it the Roe effect....you guys go with ZPG we will back you on it.”

“Maybe you guys need to read "Under the Banner of Heaven" by Jon Krakauer (yes, of the Everest-gone-wrong expedition). I read it maybe three years ago...

Anyhoo, here are two reviews of that book that get into the problems with Mormon fundamentalism, from this Amazon page:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385509510/104-6764408-1723146?v=glance&n=283155

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In 1984, Ron and Dan Lafferty murdered the wife and infant daughter of their younger brother Allen. The crimes were noteworthy not merely for their brutality but for the brothers' claim that they were acting on direct orders from God. In Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer tells the story of the killers and their crime but also explores the shadowy world of Mormon fundamentalism from which the two emerged. The Mormon Church was founded, in part, on the idea that true believers could speak directly with God. But while the mainstream church attempted to be more palatable to the general public by rejecting the controversial tenet of polygamy, fundamentalist splinter groups saw this as apostasy and took to the hills to live what they believed to be a righteous life. When their beliefs are challenged or their patriarchal, cult-like order defied, these still-active groups, according to Krakauer, are capable of fighting back with tremendous violence. While Krakauer's research into the history of the church is admirably extensive, the real power of the book comes from present-day information, notably jailhouse interviews with Dan Lafferty. Far from being the brooding maniac one might expect, Lafferty is chillingly coherent, still insisting that his motive was merely to obey God's command. Krakauer's accounts of the actual murders are graphic and disturbing, but such detail makes the brothers' claim of divine instruction all the more horrifying. In an age where Westerners have trouble comprehending what drives Islamic fundamentalists to kill, Jon Krakauer advises us to look within America's own borders. --John Moe

From Publishers Weekly
Using as a focal point the chilling story of offshoot Mormon fundamentalist brothers Dan and Ron Lafferty, who in 1984 brutally butchered their sister-in-law and 15-month-old niece in the name of a divine revelation, Krakauer explores what he sees as the nature of radical Mormon sects with Svengali-like leaders. Using mostly secondary historical texts and some contemporary primary sources, Krakauer compellingly details the history of the Mormon church from its early 19th-century creation by Joseph Smith (whom Krakauer describes as a convicted con man) to its violent journey from upstate New York to the Midwest and finally Utah, where, after the 1890 renunciation of the church's holy doctrine sanctioning multiple marriages, it transformed itself into one of the world's fastest-growing religions. Through interviews with family members and an unremorseful Dan Lafferty (who is currently serving a life sentence), Krakauer chronologically tracks what led to the double murder, from the brothers' theological misgivings about the Mormon church to starting their own fundamentalist sect that relies on their direct communications with God to guide their actions. According to Dan's chilling step-by-step account, when their new religion led to Ron's divorce and both men's excommunication from the Mormon church, the brothers followed divine revelations and sought to kill, starting with their sister-in-law, those who stood in the way of their new beliefs. Relying on his strong journalistic and storytelling skills, Krakauer peppers the book with an array of disturbing firsthand accounts and news stories (such as the recent kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart) of physical and sexual brutality, which he sees as an outgrowth of some fundamentalists' belief in polygamy and the notion that every male speaks to God and can do God's bidding. While Krakauer demonstrates that most nonfundamentalist Mormons are community oriented, industrious and law-abiding, he poses some striking questions about the closed-minded, closed-door policies of the religion-and many religions in general.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.”

“Lizs - I just picked up a book called "Sins of Scripture". It addresses many of the same issues you describe in your post. I'd recommend it, but I don't want to worry your pretty little head...j/k.”

“Liz, I read Krakauer's book several years ago and greatly enjoyed it. Ironically, I was visited by some fresh-scrubbed pimply faced LDS missionairies about the same time and I reccomended they read it too! Having lived in a very Mormon part of Utah for a couple of years, I was already aware of much of the history he covered in the book. My landlord there had over 100 grandchildren! Can you imagine! My two cents - These ultra - fundalmentalist of every religious persuasion can all eat shizza and go to hell. Nuff said.”

“I wonder if he'll get married again in prison?”