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Warren Jeffs mugshot
Warren Jeffs is without doubt one of the FBI’s most infamous fugitives. On the Friday, Could eight episode of Dateline: NBC, titled “Unbreakable,” anchor Keith Morrison sat down with Rebecca Musser, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as she talked to him about being married to Jeffs, having to share him with greater than 60 different girls, and why she selected to depart the church.
Right here’s what it is advisable learn about what occurred to Jeffs and the place he’s now.
Jeffs Supposedly Had Virtually 80 Wives
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is without doubt one of the largest Mormon denominations on this planet. Its founding members had been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) within the early 1900s after they refused to cease the observe of plural marriage or polygamy (having a couple of partner).
Warren S. Jeffs is the present president of the FLDS. His father, Rulon Jeffs, was named president of the FLDS in 1986, a place he held till his loss of life in 2002, at which period Warren took over the position on the age of 47.
On the time of the senior Jeffs’ loss of life, he had 19 or 20 wives (nobody knew the precise quantity), roughly 60 youngsters, and tons of of grandchildren, in accordance with his obituary within the New York Occasions.
Inside per week of his father’s loss of life, Warren had married all however two of his father’s wives — one refused to marry him and the opposite, Rebecca Wall Musser, left their FLDS compound. Musser finally instructed her story within the 2013 guide “The Witness Wore Pink: The 19th Spouse Who Introduced Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice.”
Based on the Biography web page about Warren, he’s stated to have married not less than 78 girls and has greater than 50 youngsters. When he took over as chief of the FLDS, he dominated with an iron fist, controlling all the pieces from his followers’ clothes to the toys youngsters may play with. He additionally banned tv and the web from their compound.
Jeffs Has Been In A number of Run-Ins With the Regulation
GettyOn this handout supplied by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), polygamist Warren Steed Jeffs is pictured on a FBI Ten Most Wished poster. Jeffs, the fugitive chief of a polygamist Mormon sect, was arrested by a Nevada Freeway Patrol trooper on August 28 throughout a visitors cease. Jeffs was wished in Utah and Arizona on costs linked to allegations of arranging marriages between males and underage women. (Handout by Federal Bureau of Investigation through Getty Photographs)
In 2005, Arizona authorities indicted Jeffs on costs of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. In 2006, he was charged with two counts of rape in Utah for arranging a wedding between then-14-year-old Elissa Wall and her cousin, then-19-year-old Allen Steed. Elissa is the sister of Rebecca, each of whom had been within the FLDS church, and each of whom finally fled that way of life. Elissa instructed her story within the 2008 guide “Stolen Innocence: My Story of Rising Up in a Polygamous Sect, Changing into a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Freed from Warren Jeffs.”
When these costs had been introduced in opposition to Jeffs, he was in hiding and was placed on the FBI’s Most Wished Checklist. After his eventual seize, Jeffs was tried and convicted in Utah (although that conviction was later overturned), then he was tried and convicted in Texas after a raid on the YFZ Ranch in 2008 turned up a plethora of proof in opposition to Jeffs in connection to his marriages to underage women. In 2011, he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault for his “celestial marriages” to a 12-year-old woman and a 15-year-old woman, the latter of which birthed his little one.
He was sentenced to life in jail at Powledge Jail in Anderson County, Texas.
In 2017, a girl recognized as R.H. sued Jeffs and the church’s former land belief for Jeffs’ “calculated plan” to sexually abuse underage women, in accordance with the Salt Lake Tribune. The lawsuit listed 26 defendants in collaborating in a roundabout way in sexually abusing her when she was as younger as eight years outdated.
The trial has spanned a number of years, with Jeffs’ legal professionals claiming as just lately as August 2019 that he has had a “psychological breakdown” in jail and is unfit to testify, in accordance with a neighborhood CBS affiliate.
Additionally in 2019, Jeffs’ son Roy, who was amongst one of many first of Jeffs’ youngsters to return ahead saying Jeffs sexually abused his personal offspring, dedicated suicide. His half-sister, Rachel, blamed their father, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “Father didn’t love him. [Roy] knew it. All of us knew it. All of us obtained instructed Roy was a nasty boy.”
Nevertheless, in a little bit of constructive information amongst the entire horrific tragedies, Luke W. Barnett, the pastor of Dream Metropolis Church, just lately bought the previous FLDS compound in Phoenix, Arizona, and turned it right into a haven for victims of intercourse trafficking. He was capable of get hold of the property with the assistance of Brielle Decker, Jeffs’ 65th spouse, who was awarded the property in a settlement. She dreamed of turning it right into a refuge for girls and youngsters escaping the FLDS.
Dateline: NBC airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT and Saturdays at eight p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
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