Warrant dropped against man in polygamist retreat raid

KXAN ^ | 5/2/08 | AP

[ricks_place]

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) -- A 50-year-old member of a polygamist sect whose alleged abuse of a teenage girl triggered the raid on a West Texas religious compound is no longer wanted by state authorities, officials said Friday.

But authorities did not say when or why the arrest warrant was dropped for Dale E. Barlow, who at one time was thought to be the husband of a 16-year-old member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The teenage girl claimed she was beaten and raped at the church's Eldorado ranch in a hushed call made to a crisis center.

"It is no longer active," Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger said of the warrant for Barlow.

Barlow, who lives in Colorado City, Ariz., denied knowing the girl and said he hadn't been to Texas in many years. The girl was never found at the compound.

The April 3 raid led to state welfare workers taking 463 children living at the Yearning For Zion Ranch. A baby boy belonging to one of the sect's mothers was born Tuesday. All remain in state custody.

Rob Parker, an FLDS spokesman, said the dropped warrant shows the weakness of the state's case against residents of the ranch.

[ricks_place]

flds ping!

[paddles]

Either that or he’s an unpledged superdelegate to the democrat convention....

[TheDon]

The phone number used to call the crisis center is the same one once used by a Colorado woman, identified as 33-year-old Rozita Swinton of Colorado Springs, accused of making previous false reports of abuse.

State troopers who raided the religious retreat last month were looking for the teenage girl, her infant daughter and Barlow.

The search warrant instructed officers to look for marriage records or other evidence linking her to Barlow and the baby. The warrant authorized the seizure of computer drives, CDs, DVDs or photos.

Oh well...

[CharlesWayneCT]

Of course, once they said they had a warrant, if the people didn’t read it closely, they probably would have agreed to anything asked of them, including interviews at all the houses.

Or there could be more to the warrant than mentioned here.

Barlow wasn’t at the ranch, so this isn’t surprising. And it seemed a couple weeks ago that it was likely they wouldn’t find sarah.

AND we pretty much knew a couple weeks ago that Swinton was tied to the phone number that made the call, although there were just too many people here telling other stories and throwing around other information to make it worthwhile to try to correct THAT little piece of information.

Heck, this won’t seal the deal either. Eventually most people will accept facts as they are published, but it may take a few more weeks.

Meanwhile, this case is no longer about Sarah, or Barlow.

[2harddrive]

Waco III!

[Soliton]

Ruh Roh RelRoy!

[Tammy8]

AND we pretty much knew a couple weeks ago that Swinton was tied to the phone number that made the call, although there were just too many people here telling other stories and throwing around other information to make it worthwhile to try to correct THAT little piece of information.

I blame this on the media's lousy job of getting the facts out- many articles made it sound like the only caller was the hoax women in Colorado, and other articles made it sound like there was more than one caller to the hotline. I have been confused by this depending on how it was reported. The media is really doing a bad job, they are not clear in their reports about a lot of the issues of this case. Nothing new about reporters not doing there job though.

[weegee]

Gone fishing...

[weegee]

It was the media that made headline news of the cyanide poisoning control page from the first aid manual...

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

It’s Friday night. The best time to get out bad news.

[zerosix]

Oh yes, and Rozita Swinton is an Obama “super fan” from Colorado!!

[oldenuff2no]

As the state of Texas runs headlong to make sure they get too far into this for the courts to turn them back the bridge behind them, the original warrant, is falling down.
I've said from the beginning that this whole mess is based on a lie.
Within the laws of Texas are specifics that would have allowed them to remove the men from that compound and leave the women and children at home and together. That was not their intention or their objective. They accomplished their goal of totally destroying the lives of a large group of people that they didn't agree with. All based on a lie.
What has now been well established is that they know that the call didn't come from that compound or any female member of that compound and that the man accused was not even in the state when the crime was supposed to have happened. The authorities can not even prove that the girl who supposedly made the call ans suffered the attack even exists.
There goes the warrant....... This mess looks like someone on the cops side of the fence inspired or made that call. Who else would have had this information or willingness to call and tell these lies. I think the feds need to be investigating the Texas authorities on this one. The best one yet is that they have removed a child from a young lady who gave birth after the raid and while in state custody. Their line of thought is that the child is the result of a crime committed against her so they take her child away. It's a small bush they are running around but what they did by their own line of thought is to further victimize an innocent victim. If she is already the victim that they claim her to be why did they put further pain and grief on her by taking away her baby? Why didn't they put her into a supervised situation so she and the baby wouldn't be hurt any more??? From this act it is clear to see that their goal is to separate every child from every parent. The excuse they used for separating most of the other families is that they couldn't tell who the parents were. In this case it is very obvious who the mother is and they still took the child. So much for that BS excuse...

[firewalk]

bkmk...

[UCANSEE2]

“Meanwhile, this case is no longer about Sarah, or Barlow.”

---

Up until the complaint sent to CPS by the Abuse Hotline, it wasn’t part of the case. They had enough to justify a warrant. The Swinton call was added to the list of complaints to investigate, because it matched the names of people involved with the FLDS, and compared to descriptions of the other complaints the FLDS already had, and because under the law, they must investigate regardless to their ‘speculation’ it was false.

It never really was about Sarah and Dale Barlow.
But the media kept pushing that it was.
The media kept repeating “The raid based on a hoax phone call”, when they knew that was not the only complaint.

---

“Eventually most people will accept facts as they are published, but it may take a few more weeks.”

Well, you’re right about that.

[JRochelle]

Here is a link to the Bishop’s record from last year.

http://www.myeldorado.net/graphics/BishopsList.pdf

This was a list from last year. Seems like there were a lot more people there at the time of the raid.

If anyone remembers unibrow Merilyn, I figured out she is married to a 67 year old man, and she has 20 sister wives! I figured out who she was because she said she has a 7 year old daugher named Marva.

[JRochelle]

Sounds like Merilyn is a liar! Shocking!

Here is a link to a story where she testified in court, claiming her name is Merilyn Jeffs. Why would she now claim not to be Merilyn Nielson when she is listed in the Bishop’s record as Merilyn Nielson?

Hmm.

[Politicalmom]

You didn’t even bother to read the warrants?

The first warrant covered all buildings, and included any necessary interviews to locate Sarah Jessop.

[JRochelle]

Forgot the link!

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/18/dispatch-from-the-flds-hearing-a-mothers-story/

[JRochelle]

Forgot the link!

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2008/04/18/dispatch-from-the-flds-hearing-a-mothers-story/