RedHanded - FROM THE VAULT - Warren Jeffs & the FLDS (Part 2)

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

With Netflix's new documentary on the modern fundamentalist Mormon church coming out today – we thought it was the perfect time to revisit our episode on Warren Jeffs's FLDS, to give some much-needed context... Last week, we looked at the formation of the ultra-obedient, bigamist Mormon cult, the FLDS – in which plural marriage to pregnant preteen girls is just the tip of the fundamentalist iceberg. In this second part, we look at how its new prophet, Warren Jeffs, took his so-called religion to ever stricter and more terrifying depths. With followers so beaten down that they were banned from even laughing; the prophet on the lam, living it up at Disneyland; and a team of ex-faithfuls and dogged investigators closing in – something had to give. But not before the full extent of his evil was laid bare in front of a stunned courtroom.--Patreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesYouTube - Full-length Video EpisodesTikTok / InstagramSources and more available on redhandedpodcast.com

I'm Surruti, I'm Hannah, and welcome to Red-Handed, where we are going to dive headfirst back into the disgusting human being that is Mr. Warren Jeff's. Boo! Boo! So last week, if you listened to the episode, which if you haven't, I would highly recommend that you go back and listen to Part 1, because last week we went through the blessed bonkers and bigamy loving beginnings of the Mormon Church. and how a massive, massive, massive, love for multiple marriage birthed its fundamentalist offshoots. We saw how the weird, lanky, 14th son of its prophet,

Roulon Jeffs, ended up out of 65 siblings, swooping in to replace him. This time, we're charting the dramatic rise, savage totalitarian rule, an eventual downfall of one of history's most powerful cult leaders. We'll see how Jeff's lived it up in New Orleans, while all joy and even laughter was outlawed among his thousands of followers. And we'll also hear some shocking, depraved revelations from the courtroom,

which were beyond anything, anyone at the time, could ever have imagined. In 2002 with Warren Jeff's at the helm, things in FLDS went from obedient to completely fanatical. Everything in the lives of the faithful became gradually stricter. and more joyless. One choice, Jeff's quote from this particular time was, work hard for the privilege of working harder. Sounds a bit Nazi-ish to me.

It sounds like how you're going to homeschool your children. Listen, I'm all for fun and games, but we're here to work. As we said last week, all of the followers, businesses, every penny of their savings, absolutely everything they had, was handed over to the church. The colour red was banned Because apparently Jesus would be wearing red upon his return I don't think it says that anywhere

Doesn't need to say anything anywhere It's just what I Warren Jeff's say And what I decide today He's just on one This is just like petty inconsequential things But it's just to see what he can get away with And it's just for his own sheer enjoyment Absolutely previously women in the church

could wear any colour that they wanted just as long as they were covered from head to toe. Hands and head only is what you're allowed to see. But under Warren Jeff's regime, red was banned, denim was banned, patterns were banned. We need to talk about their hair as well. Women and girls would spend literally hours plaiting each other's hair just to be able to leave the house. Warren Jeffs put all of the women in the community on Prozac to make them more done. docile and obedient. Times were hard in Colorado City, which is, by the way, what they renamed Short Creek to distance it from the infamous 1953 raids we discussed last week. Warren Jeff's iron grip

on its people seemed only to be getting tighter. But he hadn't counted on coming up against someone called Sam Brower. Sam Brower was, and still is, a bounty hunter. Orrower. Or, a private investigator, depending on who you ask. Sam spent seven years dedicatedly investigating this particular case, racking up hundreds of miles, driving around, literally chasing leads. Sam wrote a book charting the full story of Warren Jeff's called Prophets Prey, spelt like Predator Prey. That's such a good title. It is good as well done Sam. I really, really, really appreciate that. prophets pray, go buy it, go read it. And this book was also made into a bleak but fascinating documentary. And during his time investigating the church, Sam advocated for a number of people who had been

affected by Warren Jeff's. And for one family trying to extricate themselves who couldn't afford representation, Sam charged them just one dollar for his services, and he lent them that dollar. The first Sam had ever heard about the FLDS was from a story in the newspaper. He read that hundreds of young boys were being unceremoniously kicked out of the church, which makes a lot of sense, because the bigamy sums just don't really add up. Think about it. Young girls are routinely being married off to older men, each of whom is anything from three to dozens of wives.

That equation doesn't leave much room for the young men. Many of them were therefore being sent off to do manual labour for one of the church's many construction companies. Since their pay went directly to the church, this was cut and dry slave labour. But many of the rest of the boys were just being excommunicated. Some were caught smoking or drinking up at a spot out of town that they called the edge of the world.

Some were found kissing girls or watching movies. But for many others, Jeff would just drum up some excuse or other, sinful thoughts or anything, some sort of imagined wicked action just to boot them out. Boys' youngest 13 were sent out alone to live on the streets of Las Vegas, St. George or Salt Lake City. And these boys became known as the Lost Boys, forced to fend for themselves, and with years of pent-up adolescent rebellion ready to fly, many turned to drugs, violence, and sex work. And it's also not just that they're incredibly young.

It's also that they have no experience of the real world. Yeah. It's like there's a documentary about Hasidic Jews called One of Us. Yeah. It's really interesting. And one of the things that is explored in that is that when people leave, the majority of them will come back and a lot of them have drug problems. Yeah.

And it wasn't just young boys that were being lost. On January the 4th, 2004, Jeff's turned up to a morning. prayer service. It'd been more than a year since he'd taken the top job, but he hadn't been seen in Colorado City for months. And the 1,500 plus people in the congregation could sense something ominous. When Warren Jeff's reached the pulpit, he exploded into a fiery rant about how they had let their god down, and worse, him down. This tirade lasted for more than half an hour, and Jeff's just got more angry and more intense as he went on. He said that because of the failures of the community,

God had told him 21 names of master deceivers that were in the community. He's just following the classic, not even cult leader, the classic despot handbook. He called out these 21 men by name, told them to stand up, and he excommunicated them. And in a few sentences, Warren Jeffs not only kicked them out of the church, but wrenched their whole lives from them. These men were divorced from their wives and separated from their children. The families were reassigned to other men.

Warren Jeffs asked these men to raise their right hands if they believed what he was saying was the word of God. And the 21 excommunicated men lifted their hands. Then Warren Jeffs asked the congregation to do the same, and one by one, 1,500 people lifted their hands too. In a thick silence, the 21 men made their way out of the church without a word to their families that many would never, ever see again. And the excommunication hit even harder, because these were prominent figures in the church and community.

The list of men who'd been excommunicated included the Barlow brothers, who had been instrumental in spreading Warren Jeff's ultimate God-given power in the FLDS. It also included the mayor of Colorado City and four of Warren Jeff's own brothers. And this is the thing, this is why I mean when I say it's classic despot style. You don't get rid of the lowest. That doesn't prove anything. You get rid of high-ranking people around you,

A, to show that anybody can go, and be to make sure there's nobody in those upper echelons of power in your own community who could plot against you to overthrow you. Nobody should feel so. And he just instinctively knows that. So one of his four brothers that Warren Jeff's kicked out of the church, Wallace Jeffs, had two wives and 20 children, all of whom were told that Wallace was the son of Satan.

And Wallace never saw any of his family ever again. Two weeks after the banishment, Jeffs gave a sermon. He said, if your feelings can be disturbed, you simply need more of you. of the spirit of God. To earn more of that sweet spirit, you must pay the price. The price is sacrifice. Focus your mind, your desires.

You're all on keeping sweet. Jeff's had demonstrated his ultimate control to the people, not only on their lives, their families and their homes, but on their emotions too. And by removing those in positions of power, who had sway over the community, Jeff simply expanded his own control. Sam Brower dug deeper.

He went to Colorado City and saw an entire community being terrorised by just one man, one man who hand-selected every police officer, all of whom reported to him. A man who owned all of the homes and kicked families out on a whim. Sam Brower heard of girls married and pregnant as young as 14,

and then locked into a life of servitude before they'd even reached adulthood. Physically, they could leave, but they had nothing, no money, no assets, and absolutely not a clue how the outside world worked. All they knew about the non-FLDS society was how wicked it was. So to leave your family and everything you know

with no support network is a really tall order. But still, incredibly, some women did. Some had brothers on the outside, who had been excommunications, and forced to rebuild their lives. And Brower, along with reporter, Mike Watkiss and author John Croweco, who we met last week, got in touch. And between them they found even more victims and documented Warren Jeff's crimes. One of the people they found was Ruth Stubbs.

She'd been 16 years old when she was made to marry someone called Rodney Holm, a Colorado city police officer. She was his second wife and was pregnant before she was 17. And the trial of this polygamous policeman made headlines. And although this man received no punishment, he was found guilty, so that's at least a start. Finally, a chink was appearing in Warren Jeff's armour. A subpoena was issued for Jeff's, related to a child bigamy case. Child bigamy.

That's the wrong phrase. Multiple child abuse, I would say, but there you go. So Jeff started spending less and less time in Colorado City. He had a network of hiding houses across the southwest. He'd occasionally pop up in the middle of the night to perform a marriage before quickly stealing away again. He sent orders and enforced rules through his network of faithful cronies. Jeff started to express doubt about the city,

saying that it had been desecrated, by which he really means that Utah's laws were too harsh on bigamy and he wanted to run away to somewhere more lax. So Jeff's sent his people out to look for a new HQ. Before long, the church purchased almost 1,700 acres of land just outside El Dorado, Texas. High up FLDS members left Colorado City and started to build a village there. Every week, a new structure appeared. A meeting hall, a cheese factory, huge 30,000 square foot houses,

and soon enough, a giant, bright white limestone temple. FLDS scripture says, with the laying of the last stone of the temple, the people shall be raised up to Zion. And so when the new village was completed, the complex was named the yearning for Zion Ranch. Now Zion is used by Mormons to mean quite a lot of things, but generally it refers to a perfect chosen land,

which the faithful would inherit. So when families were called from Colorado City to Zion, it was the greatest honour. But life wasn't much better for most. Many men had to go to work every hour of the day. And if they got tired, they just had to ask the Lord for the strength to keep going. After all, the main goal of life on earth

was to prove your worthiness for the afterlife. If you worked hard enough, God would recognise your sacrifice. And maybe, just maybe, whisper your name to the prophet to give you another wife. Maybe he would grant you a higher-up position in the church. It was the only way to get the super-exalted afterlife you'd always dreamed of.

The yearning for Zion settlement had the infrastructure to support 2,000 people. When Jeff started to move his wives down to Texas, rumours swirled that he was planning to transfer the entire FLDS church down to El Dorado. Not least because punishments for underage marriage and bigamy are quite a lot softer in Texas than they are in Utah. and the legal age of marriage at that time in Texas was just 14. Plus, Texas law enforcement had more reason than most to be wary of lawless groups out in the desert. The failed raid of the Branch-Dividian compound in Waco just a decade previously

had put them off the idea of another raid. So the police were slightly looser on that too. And while the dictator profit was thriving, life just got harder in Colorado Cesar. city. In addition to the 10% of their earnings that they were already tithing to the church, the people who lived there now had to cough up an extra thousand dollars a month. That's crazy. What? Well, get a load of it. We know that he banned music, band dancing. He also banned toys, pets, schooling, reading sports and laughter. And many, many children and adults just carried on, blindly obedient. But not all of them.

My God, please everyone just take this as a lesson. Like, just think, just think long and hard about everything that anybody asks you to do or believe, please. So on the 23rd of January 2003, FLDS member Ross Chatwin stood in front of his Colorado City home and gave a press conference. It was the first press conference in the history of the FLDS. A few days earlier, just weeks after the 21 men had. had been excommunicated. The church had decided that Chatwin's wife, Laurie, was to be reassigned. But unlike those 21, Laurie and Ross Chatwin refused. In a statement to the nation's press, Ross publicly denounced the prophet. And this is what he said. My family and I do not plan on

leaving our home any time soon. I am pleased to report that my wife has submitted to stay by my side. it is difficult for me to find the words that can express to her how much I appreciate her. Ross then referred to Jeff's as Hitler-like. FLDS members, on the whole, were obedient and didn't know any different. But when you start tearing families apart, there's only so much that people can accept. At the same time, many of the lost boys, who had been sent from the church, had found their feet, and realised they had cause for lawsuits. Being kicked out of your home for listening to Whitney Houston

is not exactly legal, especially not if you're caught doing it by the police and then punished by the church. Stories were spreading in nearby towns of teenage marriages and pregnancies. In response to all the attention, Colorado City became even more insular, watched closely by the press and law enforcement alike. None of the townsfolk would cooperate, of course, with investigators.

They just shut their curtains and even boarded up windows to try and avoid prying eyes. But the network of those people outside of the church were just getting stronger. One of them was Flora Jessup. She had been raised in Colorado City in the FLDS under Roulon Jeff's. And she was one of 28 siblings and was abused as a child. and Flora remembers very clearly Warren Jeff's constantly trying to touch girls and boys. At just 14, Flora filed a sex abuse charge against her own father, but it was dismissed by a judge.

Flora's family said that if she didn't marry the man she was assigned, she would be sent to a mental hospital. So she married the man and then ran away at 18. She drifted for a while, topless dancing to make ends meet, and to fuel her cocaine addiction. But then Flora had a daughter, she got clean, and she got married,

and went increasingly public with her accusations. She heard that her sister Ruby had been forced to marry her older stepbrother at the age of 14. Ruby was raped on her wedding night and almost bled to death. And Flora decided that something had to be done. So she founded an organisation to help women and children escape the church. She even began to sneak into Colorado City in the middle of the night

to rescue women and children herself. Hidden meeting points were set up nearby to ease the transport of people who were running away from the town. Incredibly, Flora was characterised by some local press as an attention seeker who was taking children away from their families. Public opinion was mixed.

Some people were concerned about the rumours that they were hearing, but many thought that the FLDS should just be left to their own devices. And then a judge told Flora. to stop. But stop, she did not. All she did was inspire loads of others, and a small revolution began. Meanwhile, Warren Jeffs was on the run. The heat on him was rising, and in January 2004, two vehicles left Colorado City. They carried Warren Jeffs, his wife Naomi, his brother

Leroy, and John Weyman, who dealt with all of the church's money. Jeff's travelled the South in Gentile clothes and carried burnophones with only a few specific numbers. He installed his brother Lyle Jeffs as the bishop and sent orders through him. Every week the struggling FLDS community would bring envelopes of cash and post them into boxes. And that cash went straight to Warren Jeff's.

And despite being on the run, he wasn't exactly lying low. They did all sorts of ungodly shit, this group of his. driving Holly Davidson's going to strip clubs and watching porn in his hotel rooms. They even went to Disneyland and to New Orleans to live it up for Mardi Gras. It's the most un-Mormon event. Yep.

And all the while, Jeff's told his entourage that God had sent them to these wicked places to be witnesses to the immorality of the Gentiles. Side note, Hurricane Katrina hit just six months after they went to New Orleans and Jeff's, egotistical as ever, was convinced that he had called on God to destroy it. Fuck you, you piece of shit. So while Jeff's travelled, he had virtually unlimited money because he's scamming it out of all of the people that are in his bloody church.

He also had piles and parts of disguises, prepaid credit cards and a team of people employed to keep him untraceable. And police knew that he spent a lot of time at the yearning for Zion Ranch. But there still wasn't enough evidence against him to get a search warrant. It was difficult even to know what charges to bring against him. All they had was word that underage marriages were happening, but no church member had come forward who was willing to testify firsthand. And most plural marriages weren't legally binding. They would only register the first in order to get the food stamps.

The others were just spiritual unions. In 2005, Utah was. attorney Roger Hall heard from an ex-FLDS member called Elissa Wall. Just like Flora at 14, she was made to marry her cousin. He was much older than her and not a nice guy. Very soon into their marriage, Elisa was subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse. She had multiple miscarriages, all of which were blamed on her disobedience. But she developed a friendship with another member of the community, someone called Lamont. Lamont reassured Alyssa and made her feel safe.

And then, before they knew it, they'd fallen in love. A picture of the two of them together made it to the bishop, and Elissa was called into his office. And once she got into the office, Warren Jeff's disembodied voice barked out from a phone. He called her adulterous, and he praised her husband for his dedication to the church. And that, for Elissa, was the last straw. She fucked off immediately. She and LeMont ran away.

They stayed in Utah with a few other ex-FLDS members. Elissa got a phone call from her sister Rebecca who'd left the church years before. Rebecca had got married at 19, but knew that Elissa's story could be perfect to bring to court if she was prepared to do it. And she'd already come this far, so Alyssa said yes.

Roger Hall, the attorney and police investigators, had their angle. There was a provable case to be made against Warren Jeff's as an accomplice to rape. That charge had never been brought before. But it would be enough to bring Warren Jeffs down, so they decided to run with it. And just in time, because their investigation was just about to get another massive leg up. In May 2006, investigators heard from the FBI. The FBI had been watching the case closely and said they wanted to get Warren Jeff's put on their most wanted list.

The top 10 most wanted list is firstly, yes, a very real thing, and it tracks the most dangerous fugitives being hunted by the FBI at that time. When Warren Jeffs joined this list, he shared top billing with a sum of bin Laden. Hannah, can you name me any of the current top 10 as we are recording this on the 9th of June 2023? Julian Assange. No. Oh.

I don't recognise any of these people. I'm probably fucked then. I think, yeah. No, there's very little chance that you will name any of these people. Looks very gangy. Oh, interesting. But yeah, it's a real thing. Wow. And the FBI also got in the man himself, Sam Brower, to help.

with the investigation. Yep, he is that good that the FBI are literally like Sam, we need your help. Now it wasn't long before Warren's brother, Seth, was found in Colorado and arrested for aiding and abetting a federal fugitive. They found that an average of £300,000 every week was going to Warren Jeff's. And this was nothing new. This church was built on shady financial practices, money laundering and large-scale fraud. Just like Joseph's. They would routinely set up shell corporations to hide property and cash from the government. They owed millions of dollars to lending institutions. They called it Bleeding the Beast.

Oh God. It's like drain the swamp. Yeah. They considered the government to be an evil cabal of demons. So they absolutely rinsed it for all it was worth. The government funded a new $2.8 million airport in Colorado City. The city got a $1.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to pave the streets and improve the fire department and water system. And Arizona State paid them over $12 million a year for health insurance.

Most of those on the Arizona side of the border were also claiming food stamps. So altogether, this community got about eight times the welfare of other towns, while barely paying anything in tax. For the FLDS Church, and especially for Warren Jeff's, everyone and everything was an enemy that deserved to be bled dry in the quest for eternal salvation. And Jeff's approach was even more fundamentalist than his father's was. But it was absolutely about more than faith. There was something much more insidious going on. Warren Jeff's has been strongly linked by quite a lot of people to narcissistic purpose.

personality disorder and possibly sociopathy, and both of those diagnoses would fit with his ruthless quest for power. He caused a lot of pain, he never showed any regret, and I don't think he's ever even heard of the word empathy. And he held onto his power by excommunicating any potential threats and painting them as demons in the community, which is pretty telling. Even the later revelations of systemic child abuse throughout his life

could say more about his desire for power over the most vulnerable than it does about his actual sexual desires. Sam Brower has also made a case in his book that he believes Warren Jeff's is a schizophrenic. It was a common disease in his family on his mother's site and that Jean-Pool is small. And reports of Jeff's interrupting conversations to listen to voices were common too.

In what he called his heavenly sessions, Warren Jeffs would claim to speak to both God and his dead father. At any moment, Warren Jess could be suddenly struck with a session, and sometimes he claimed to have physically been walking and talking with God. These heavenly sessions could continue for hours. Jeffs had grand, dramatic and paranoid visions of foreign invaders, and he was convinced that hired assassins were on his tail. When Warren Jeff's had taken over the church from his father,

he also decided, as cult leaders very often do, that every word he said was brilliant and worth noting down. So he chose his favourite of his brides, Naomi, to be his first scribe. And the writing is truly insane, but it is very, very detailed. And these diaries reveal grotesque truths about the way Jeff's thought about his young wives. This is a quote or an excerpt from these writings. These young girls have been given to me to be taught how to come into the presence of God from their youngest years before they go through teenage doubting and boy troubles.

Naomi also wrote how she would train a new heavenly comfort wife. She said that it was important to stand back in silence when their new husband went into a heavenly session. unless that is things turned sexual. In one entry from the 11th of April 2005, Warren suddenly sits up and says, Wow, whatever you say, yes, sir. And he reported that God had told him to collect a, quote,

pure, innocent girl. So obviously Warren Jeff's is just following orders. Oh, yeah, absolutely. And God had identified that this pure innocent girl that Jeff's was defined was Brenda Fisher. Brenda was just 12 years old. Whatever combination of revolting things were happening in Jeff's brain, however much he actually believed, made him uniquely dangerous.

And he was able to manipulate large numbers of people to a frankly incredible degree. But it couldn't last forever. On the 28th of August 2006, a highway trooper was driving 20 miles north, of Las Vegas when he saw a car with obscured license plates. The trooper pulled the car over and asked for ID. The driver was none other than Warren's brother, one of his many brothers, but a brother all the same, Isaac Jeff's. And the trooper thought that the surname did ring a bell,

so he started to question the other passengers in the car. In the front seat was Naomi, and there was a man in the backseat, eating a salad. and that man was Warren Jeff's. The more the trooper had a look at Warren Jeff's, he noticed a vein throbbing in the man's neck, and he knew that something had to be very wrong. Everyone in the car gave a different story about where they were going.

They were carrying four computers, 16 cell phones, three wigs, 12 pairs of sunglasses, and more than $55,000 in cash. Fishing. and so the state trooper arrested them all. Warren Jeff's was finally in custody. And then a trial date was set and he was extradited from Nevada

to the very poetically named Purgatory Jail in Utah. The FLDS community prayed every day for their profit to be released and while dictating a message for the congregation to an FLDS visitor, the prophet said something that absolutely no one expected. Not the FBI, not Sam Brower, and certainly not his thousands of followers.

This is what Warren Jev said. I have been a liar. The truth is not in me. I am not the prophet. I never was the prophet. This is not a test. Panic button, really, it seems. Yeah.

But very, very unusual. Yes. But no one back in Colorado City, nor any one. anyone at yearning for Zion believed him. After all those decades of obedience, what, he was just some guy all along? I don't think so. They thought it must have been the devil speaking. That old chestnut.

Yeah, I mean, this is the thing. It's like if you followed this guy unwaveringly for years, you know, allowing him to bloody rape your children and destroy your families and make you do all of this crazy shit and hand over all of your money and belongings to him, imagine suddenly being told by him that none of it was real. I think on some level you can't allow yourself to believe that. You have to believe that it must be something even more crazy like the devil has now possessed him.

So on the 11th of September, Warren Jeff's trial finally came, surrounded by TV crews, cameras, and even a SWAT team and snipers. Now the police knew how important this man was to his community and the lengths they would go to for salvation. But he was charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice.

The defence, predictably enough, focused squarely on freedom of religion and referred to any attack on Jeff's as religious persecution. They also said plainly that there had been no rapes since the girls had all wanted it to happen, which I guess is all they had, really, to say.

But the prosecution, of course, hit right back. Obviously, that it was nothing to do with religion and so-called consent given by children doesn't matter because they were talking about sex with a child. And, you know, that can be hard to prove sometimes. But not when all of your child brides are pumping out kids left right and centre. There really aren't two ways to look at it. And Alyssa stood bravely in the dock

and told the court that Warren Jeffs had arranged for her to get married when she was just 14. She remembered going to the prophet and saying that it did. didn't feel right. And he just told her that her heart was wrong. Elissa also detailed the abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. And after she'd finished her testimony, the court heard a tape. The defence team had tried to bar this tape from being admitted as evidence because it was too inflammatory, they said. But the judge agreed that you can't ban evidence just because it makes you look bad. So the tape was played. The tape was a recording of the

The Rape of Mary Ann Jessop. Mary Ann was the 12-year-old bride of Warren Jeffs, whose story opened last week's episode. When Mary Ann was just nine, Warren Jeffs commanded her father to bring her to Texas, to begin her training as a heavenly comfort wife. And when Mary Ann was 12 years and 24 days old, she married Warren Jeff's.

Two weeks after the ceremony, she was brought to the bright white ceremonial bed. And, assisted by two other wives, Mary Ann was ritually assaulted. The recording is just about as bad as you can imagine. It's a lot of Jeff panting mixed in with some ritual chanting and cries about God's revelations. And with the extent of Warren Jeff's evil ringing through the courtroom,

the trial was over. The jury deliberated for a quite frankly unbelievable 16 hours over three days. Like what is like to discuss? I don't know. But eventually they did return a guilty verdict. But since the charge was only for rape as an accomplice, Warren Jeff faced a minimum sentence of just five years for each charge. As he awaited his sentence, Warren Jeff stewed in a prison cell.

He refused to eat. so much so that he was fitted with a tube that ran through his nose and into his stomach. Sometimes he would stand staring at himself in the mirror for 40 minutes at a time, or stand in the middle of the room staring at the floor, frozen for over an hour. Day by day he grew thinner and pastier. But his powers on those in the outside seem to have stayed just as strong. His sermons and instructions were communicated throughout the community, and thousands were hanging on his every word.

Inevitably, his incarceration only martyred Jeffs, turning him into living proof that the Gentiles and the apostates were trying to take down God's chosen people. Every week, he would use his phone to make a sermon over speakerphone to a full church of people. Warren Jeffs had been given just 10 years for rapers and accomplice. But just months after his conviction, he was extradited to Kingman, Arizona.

There he faced four counts of sexual misconduct with a minor, four counts of incest, and one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. And whilst he waited for that trial, things in Colorado City reached breaking point. In 2008, child protection services heard from a 16-year-old mother pregnant with her second child. She was being abused and she wanted out.

I guess that's the thing, isn't it? Because before they couldn't get a search warrant because warrant Jeff wasn't there all the time. That's why he went into his little hidey holes all over the country. But now they have a credible phone call from somebody inside asking for help so they can go, and that's when they see all of this. And police raced down to look for the girl. But the people of yearning for Zion made it impossible.

While they waited, though, they came across the journals of teenage girls telling story after story of underage, marriage, sex and pregnancy. And they saw pregnant girls who were blatantly underage. And with children in very clear and present danger, the investigation ramped up a notch. They've already got the FBI. Now it's the big boys.

On April 4th, the police and SWAT teams stormed Colorado City. A judge had ordered all of the young children. to be taken away. 416 of them. All of the children were taken in a series of buses to compounds and disused fairgrounds with blacked out windows. They were screaming and crying, because they'd just been wrenched from their mums.

And that's kind of the angle that quite a lot of the news went with. And you might remember the 1953 raid we spoke about last week, where more than 200 children were taken from polygamous families in Short Creek and put into foster care. Well, back then, the media outcry against children ripped from their mother's arms was enough to get them all returned. So the FLDS tried it again and ran a targeted media campaign to reunite the families. FLDS women appeared on Oprah and Larry King,

saying definitively that they had never heard of underage marriages or pregnancies in the church. Like, how can you even say that? There's a 16-year-old that's pregnant for the second fucking time. How did that happen? and Warren Jeff's hired expensive lawyers who he instructed directly to lie because all of this was of course bollocks especially since families had been ripped apart for decades

on the whim of their profit but not knowing any of this information not knowing anything about what had been going on behind closed doors the public were horrified and 28 weeks later sensitive to public pressure the authorities backtracked and returned all of the kids, just like they had done in 1953.

What didn't help was that the original call to child services had been traced, and it turned out to have been a hoax. Oh my God. Still, during the raids, 12 men had been arrested, and 11 were convicted, so it doesn't matter that that particular call was a hoax. They found evidence that this kind of thing was happening. And that's not all, because authorities also found a treasure trove documents, pictures and priesthood records.

And suddenly, things looked even worse for Warren Jeff's. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the sheriff David Doran, the incredible courage of survivors speaking out against intense intimidation and years of research by Sam Brower, Mike Watkiss and John Crowker, and countless other key investigators. Finally, the investigation got access to the temple. And there they found. up a set of winding stairs, a gaping, bright white room

that held the custom-built ceremonial bed on which Warren Jeff's assaulted his new brides. And in the back of that room, they found a vault. Here, in Jeff's own words, and the words of his followers, was every single minute detail of his abuse over the years. There were computers with terabyte after terabyte of information. There were pictures of him kissing young girls, pictures of young girls with their newborn babies, and even church records detailing marriages and births.

And there was proof of him assaulting children as young as five, boys and girls, including his own nephew. Jeff's Arizona charges had been reversed by a judge. But in August 2011, Warren Jeffs was extradited to Texas to face a jury yet again. This time the charges were sexual assault of a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child under the age of 14, and bigamy. All of these are first-degree felonies, each with a potential life sentence.

So finally, now we're fucking talking. The tape was brought out again and played to a jury of ten women and two men. They saw pictures of the gangly middle-aged prophet with a string of child brides. They saw DNA evidence he had fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl, and they were told in detail about the conditions of the FLDS under his leadership

and the 300-plus families he had broken up for disobedience. And having dismissed several teams of defence lawyers, Jeff's did the classic thing and defended himself. He read from a statement that he had prepared, and this is what he said. I will rest your power. I shall judge you. I shall let all people's know your unjust ways. I will send a scourge upon the counties of prosecutorial zeal to be humbled by sickness and death.

What? Sure. Sure, Jeff. Honestly, he's just on another planet. His own planet, his own Mormon planet. Quite. Quite. Jeff's would also stop for long periods of silence to be instructed by spirits on how to proceed with his own defence.

and after fumbling his way through a completely bizarre trial, Jeff's turned to the jury and said, I am at peace. Well, good for you. You're the only one. After just 40 minutes of deliberation this time, the jury found Warren Jeff's guilty on two counts of rape, one of a 15-year-old and one of a 12-year-old.

At the punishment phase, U.S. attorney, special prosecutor Angela Goodwin brought yet more evidence to the table. and this evidence showed that Warren Jeff's conducted marriages of 67 underage girls to FLDS men. It also showed that the 55-year-old Jeffs had 78 wives, 24 of them being underage. And so, Warren Jeffs received a life sentence for aggravated sexual assault plus 20 years, and a fine of 10,000 pounds, and that fine was for the sexual assault of a child. I don't feel like a fine is enough. No.

Ten years on, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is still going strong. By some estimates, there are still more than 10,000 FLDS members, but the yearning for Zion Ranch was raided and shut down. However, new settlements have been built in Pringle, South Dakota, yes, Pringle, South Dakota, Mancos, Colorado, Mino, Minot, sure, North Dakota, and Grand Marius, Minnesota. Some of these FLDS people have cross-borders

and settled in Mexico and Canada. Warren Jeff's today is still behind bars in Palestine, Texas. America is made up. There is not somewhere in Texas called Palestine. That is nuts. There's everything. It's so big. And last year he even released a book of prophecies

that came to him while he was apparently in his cell. Called Jesus Christ, message to all names. And Jeff's, despite everything, is still considered to be a profit by many. But it's unclear who, if anyone, is still fully in charge of FLDS. The last reported president was Wendell Nielsen, who had also been convicted and jailed. Last year was reported that 46-year-old Samuel Bateman declared himself profit. He is said to have had more than 20 wives, many of whom were under 15. And just like the rest of them, he claimed,

that he believed it to be God's will to engage in sexual acts with them. Bateman led a splinter group of FLDS supporters to the Utah-Arizona border. He has since been arrested by the FBI, charged with 51 felonies and jailed. Now, all of the 10,000 strong FLDS faithful just need to wait for a sign from God to tell them who to follow next. I just can't believe it's still happening. They're still there. Yep. God, that's awful.

So there you have it. Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints. Mormstorm for you. That is it. I mean, it is the mormiest of morms with Warren Jeff's. There you go, guys. Two parts are done. I never want to talk about this man again.

Disgusting human being. I won't make you. No, but I'm glad he's in prison. At least that is something. Yes. Yeah, they got him. Yeah, they got him. So that's it, guys.

And if you know, that was quite upsetting, I completely understand. And to make yourself feel better, you can head on over and listen to the shorthand that we released this Tuesday, exclusively on Amazon music, on the topic of rabies. Oh, fun. So why not? Go check that out, and we'll see you next time. Bye.