Origins The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS Church) traces its claim to spiritual authority to when
Brigham Young, then-president of the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), once visited the
Short Creek Community and said, "This will someday be the head and not the tail of the church. This will be the
granaries of the Saints. This land will produce in abundance sufficient
wheat to feed the people." In 1904, the LDS Church issued the
Second Manifesto renouncing
polygamy, and eventually
excommunicated Mormons who continued to
solemnize or enter into new plural marriages. Short Creek, located in what was then the
Arizona Territory, soon became a gathering place for these Mormons. Members of the community believed a
statement published in 1912 by
Lorin C. Woolley, of a purported
1886 divine revelation to then-LDS Church President
John Taylor, took precedence over the
1890 Manifesto, which had prohibited new plural marriages by LDS members. The community believed that in issuing the 1890 Manifesto,
Wilford Woodruff sold his right to the
Priesthood, thereby making Lorin's father,
John W. Woolley, his successor by the
One Man doctrine. After being excommunicated by the LDS Church, some of the locally prominent men in Short Creek, In 1935, the LDS Church excommunicated the Mormon residents of Short Creek who refused to sign an oath renouncing polygamy. Following this, Barlow led those in Short Creek who were dedicated to preserving the practice of plural marriage. Consequently,
Mormon fundamentalists that didn't follow Barlow separated, leading to the creation of multiple fundamentalist organizations outside Short Creek by 1954. These included the
Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) and
Kingston group through
Joseph White Musser.
Postwar development and Short Creek raid In the morning of July 26, 1953, 102 Arizona state police officers and National Guard soldiers raided the fundamentalist Mormon community of Short Creek, Arizona. They arrested the entire populace, including 236 children. Of those 236 children, 150 were not allowed to return to their parents for more than two years. Other parents never regained custody of their children. The Short Creek raid was the largest
mass arrest of polygamists in American history, and it received a great deal of press coverage. After the raid, polygamists continued to live there, and later the town was renamed Colorado City.
Leroy S. Johnson succeeded Barlow, and stress on the One Man Rule doctrine strengthened.
Rulon Jeffs succeeded Leroy, incorporating Short Creek as the FLDS in 1984 to reorganize to an
Episcopal polity reflecting the One Man authority. With no clear succession,
Warren Jeffs assumed leadership when Rulon Jeffs died.
Winston Blackmore, who had been serving in Canada as the Bishop of Bountiful for the FLDS Church, was excommunicated by Jeffs in an apparent power struggle. This led to a split within the community in Bountiful, British Columbia, with an estimated 700 FLDS members leaving the church to follow Blackmore.
Legal troubles, 2003–2006 Polygamy is illegal in all 50 states of the United States as well as Canada and Mexico. Attempts to overturn the illegality based on right of religious freedom have been unsuccessful. In 2003, the church received increased attention from the state of Utah when police officer Rodney Holm, a member of the church, was convicted of unlawful sexual conduct with a 16- or 17-year-old and one count of
bigamy for his marriage to and impregnation of plural wife Ruth Stubbs. The conviction was the first legal action against a member of the FLDS Church since the Short Creek raid. In November 2003, church member David Allred purchased for YFZ Land LLC the Isaacs Ranch northeast of Eldorado, Texas, on Schleicher County Road 300 "as a hunting retreat". The property would be known within the sect as
Yearning For Zion Ranch, or
YFZ Ranch. Allred sent 30 to 40 construction workers from Colorado City–Hildale to work on the property, which soon included three 3-story houses, each 8,000 to , a concrete plant, and a plowed field. After seeing FLDS Church critic
Flora Jessop on the
ABC television program
Primetime Live on March 4, 2004, concerned Eldorado residents contacted Jessop. Jessop investigated, and on March 25, 2004, held a press conference in Eldorado confirming that the new neighbors were FLDS Church adherents. On May 18, 2004,
Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran and his Chief Deputy visited Colorado City, and the FLDS Church officially acknowledged that the Schleicher County property would be a new base for the church. It was reported in the news media that the church had built a temple at the YFZ Ranch; this is supported by evidence including aerial photographs of a large stone structure (approximately wide) in a state of relative completion. A local newspaper, the
Eldorado Success, reported that the temple foundation was dedicated by Warren Jeffs on January 1, 2005. On January 10, 2004, Dan Barlow (the mayor of Colorado City) and about 20 other men were excommunicated from the church and stripped of their wives and children (who would be reassigned to other men), and expelled from town. The same day two teenage girls reportedly fled the town with the aid of Flora Jessop, who advocates for plural wives' escape from polygamy. The two girls, Fawn Broadbent and Fawn Holm, soon found themselves in a highly publicized dispute over their freedom and custody. Jessop sought help for the two Fawns from the Arizona Department of Child Protective Services, who assigned the girls to a foster home, but the girls fled when a judge barred them from contact with Jessop and their new address was given to their parents. Fawn Broadbent was allowed to move in with Carl Hohm, while Fawn Hohm remained in hiding. Fawn Hohm eventually moved in with a polygamist follower of Winston Blackmore. In October 2004, Flora Jessop reported that David Allred purchased a parcel of land near Mancos, Colorado, (midway between
Cortez and
Durango) about the same time he bought the Schleicher County property. Allred told authorities the parcel was to be used as a hunting retreat. In July 2005, eight men of the church were indicted for sexual contact with minors. All of them turned themselves in to police in
Kingman, Arizona, within days. On July 29, 2005,
Brent W. Jeffs filed suit accusing three of his uncles, including Warren Jeffs, of sexually assaulting him when he was a child. The suit also named the FLDS Church as a defendant. On August 10, former FLDS Church member Shem Fischer, Dan Fischer's brother, added the church and Warren Jeffs as defendants to a 2002 lawsuit claiming he was illegally fired because he no longer adhered to the faith. Fischer, who was a salesman for a wooden cabinetry business in Hildale, claimed church officials interfered with his relationship with his employer and blacklisted him. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the company and found that Fischer was not fired from his job, but quit instead. The district court ruling was overturned in part on the basis that Fischer was discriminated against on the basis of religion when he reapplied for his position and was denied employment because he had left the FLDS church. The parties eventually settled the case for an agreed payment of damages to Shem Fischer. In July 2005, six teenaged and young adult "
Lost Boys" who claimed they were cast out of their homes on the Utah–Arizona border to reduce competition for wives, filed suit against the FLDS Church. "The [boys] have been excommunicated pursuant to that policy and practice and have been cut off from family, friends, benefits, business and employment relationships, and purportedly condemned to eternal damnation", their suit read. "They have become 'lost boys' in the world outside the FLDS community." On May 7, 2006, the
FBI named Warren Jeffs to its
Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on charges of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. He was captured on
Interstate 15 on August 28, 2006, just north of
Las Vegas, after a routine traffic stop. The
mayor of Colorado City, Terrill C. Johnson, was arrested on May 26, 2006, for eight fraudulent vehicle registration charges for registering his vehicles in a state in which he was not resident, which is a
felony. He was booked into
Purgatory Correctional Facility in
Hurricane, Utah, and was released after paying the $5,000 bail in cash.
Leadership struggles, 2007–11 On September 25, 2007, after trial by a jury in
St. George, Utah, Jeffs was found guilty of two counts of being an accomplice to rape and was sentenced to ten years to life in prison. This conviction was later overturned, but he was subsequently sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years and fined $10,000 after being convicted on charges of aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault. From 2007 to 2011, the leadership of the FLDS Church was unclear. On November 20, 2007, following Warren Jeffs's conviction, attorneys for Jeffs released the following statement: "Mr. Jeffs resigned as President of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Inc." The statement did not address his position as
prophet of the church, but merely addressed his resignation from his fiduciary post as president of the corporation belonging to the FLDS Church. According to a
Salt Lake Tribune telephone transcript, there is evidence that, when incarcerated, Warren Jeffs named
William E. Jessop, a former first counselor, as his successor or, alternatively, that Jeffs had told Jessop on January 24, 2007, that he (Jeffs) had never been the rightful leader of the FLDS. Many press accounts was the
de facto leader of the church. Additionally, on January 9, 2010, documents filed with the Utah Department of Commerce named
Wendell L. Nielsen as the president of the sect. The FLDS incorporation charter does not require the church president to be the church's prophet, but previous president Rulon Jeffs had also been prophet. In 2010,
Willie Jessop, the church's spokesman, refused to name the incumbent prophet "out of fear there'd be retaliation by the government". On January 28, 2011, Jeffs reasserted his leadership of the denomination, and Nielsen was removed as the church's legal president. According to affidavits submitted by FLDS church leaders, Jeffs was acclaimed as leader at mass meetings of 4,000 church members in February and April 2011, and on April 10, 2011, a group of 2,000 male FLDS members voted unanimously to "uphold and sustain" Jeffs's authority. By that time Willie Jessop had publicly broken with Jeffs, putting himself forward as a challenger for the leadership, but he was subsequently declared an
apostate and left the church. A 2012 CNN documentary confirmed that Jeffs still led the church from prison.
April 2008 raid In April 2008, acting on a call from an alleged teen victim of physical and sexual abuse at the FLDS compound in Schleicher County, Texas, Texas
Child Protective Services and Department of Public Safety officers entered the compound to serve search and arrest warrants and carry out court orders designed to protect children. Over the course of several days, from April 3 through April 10, Texas CPS removed 439 children under age 18 from the church's YFZ Ranch, while law enforcement, including
Texas Rangers, executed their search and arrest warrants on the premises. The April 2008 events at the YFZ Ranch generated intense press coverage in the U.S., especially in the
Southwest, and also garnered international attention. On April 18, 2008, following a two-day hearing, Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st Judicial District Court ordered all of the FLDS children to remain in the temporary custody of Child Protective Services. Judge Walther's ruling was subsequently reversed by the 3rd Court of Appeals in Austin, Texas in a ruling that Texas CPS was not justified in removing every child from the ranch. The 3rd Court of Appeals granted mandamus relief and ordered the trial court to vacate the portion of its order giving CPS temporary custody of the FLDS children. CPS petitioned the Texas Supreme Court requesting that the 3rd Court of Appeals' ruling be overturned, but the Texas Supreme Court, in a written opinion issued May 29, 2008, declined to overturn the ruling of the 3rd Court of Appeals. The abuse hotline calls that prompted the raid are now believed to have been made by
Rozita Swinton, a non-FLDS woman with no known connection to the FLDS community in Texas. Nevertheless, a court determined that the search warrants executed at the YFZ compound were legally issued and executed, and that the evidence seized could not be excluded on the grounds that the initial call may have been a hoax.
Child sex assault convictions In November 2008, 12 FLDS men were charged with offenses related to alleged underage marriages conducted during the years since the sect built the YFZ Ranch. As of June 2010, six FLDS members had been convicted of felonies and received sentences ranging from seven to 75 years' imprisonment. On November 5, 2009, a Schleicher County, Texas jury found Raymond Jessop, 38, guilty of sexual assault of a child. According to evidence admitted at trial, Jessop sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl to whom he had been "spiritually married" when the girl was 15 years old. The same jury sentenced Jessop to 10 years in prison and assessed a fine of $8,000. On December 18, 2009, a Schleicher County, Texas jury found Allan Keate guilty of sexual assault of a child. Keate fathered a child with a 15-year-old girl. According to documents admitted at trial, Keate had also given three of his own daughters away in "spiritual" or "celestial" marriage, two of them at 15 and one at 14, to older men. The youngest of the three went to Warren Jeffs. Keate was sentenced to 33 years in prison. His conviction and sentence were later upheld on appeal. On January 22, 2010, Michael George Emack pleaded no contest to sexual assault charges and was sentenced to seven years in prison. He married a 16-year-old girl at YFZ Ranch on August 5, 2004. She gave birth to a son less than a year later. On March 17, 2010, a Tom Green County, Texas jury found Merril Leroy Jessop guilty of sexual assault of a child after deliberating for one hour. The court found that Jessop, 35, sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl while living at the FLDS Ranch in Schleicher County, Texas.
April 2010 raid On April 6, 2010, Arizona officials executed search warrants at governmental offices of the towns of Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. According to one report, the warrants involved the misuse of funds and caused the Hildale Public Safety Department to be shut down. According to another report, city personnel and volunteers were ordered out of the buildings while the search was being conducted, prompting protests from Colorado City Fire Chief Jake Barlow. Despite these protests, public safety did not appear to be affected, as the county law enforcement agencies involved routed calls for emergency service through the county offices. The basis for the forfeiture and seizure proceeding was cited as the use of FLDS property as "...a rural location where the systemic sexual assault of children would be tolerated without interference from law enforcement authorities", On April 17, 2014, Texas officials took physical possession of the property. In 2012, Warren Jeffs published a volume titled
Jesus Christ Message to All Nations containing various revelations, including one proclaiming his innocence and others serving as warnings to specific countries around the world. In June 2014, the Arizona Office of the Attorney General filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking to dissolve the local police forces and "the disbandment of the Colorado City, Arizona/Hildale, Utah Marshal's Office and the appointment of a federal monitor over municipal functions and services." As the basis for the legal proceeding, the Arizona Attorney General stated that "[t]he disbandment of the Colorado City/Hildale Marshal's Office is necessary and appropriate because this police department has operated for decades, and continues to operate, as the de facto law enforcement arm of the FLDS Church."
Reconsolidation efforts since 2022 Documents presented to the media and state prosecutors in 2022–23 indicate that Warren Jeffs issued a series of revelations from prison in 2022 reasserting his authority over the church and calling its members together. In one document from June 2022, Jeffs instructed that fathers seeking "restoral" should reunite with their wives and children, while warning that God "cannot allow sin living to dwell" in the church any longer; another, distributed in August, required that children be gathered back to the church over the next five years in preparation for the imminent end of the world. In June 2023, Heber Jeffs, a nephew of Warren Jeffs, was sentenced to three years' probation on a charge of custodial interference after abetting the disappearance of the daughter of a former member of the church in 2022 in accordance with the revelations of that year. By 2023, investigators stated that the members of the FLDS Church had spread out to avoid the attention of authorities, some moving north into
North Dakota, and were communicating regularly with Warren Jeffs over
Zoom. Warren Jeffs's son Helaman Jeffs had also emerged as a figure of authority within the church by this time. The revelations in 2022 were to be distributed by Helaman Jeffs, Helaman is using a
P.O. box in
Ruso, North Dakota, close to a reported FLDS compound. ==Leaders==