Posted on 05/15/2008 4:55:48 PM PDT by Flo Nightengale
ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — In just five years, the West Texas polygamist sect transformed 1,700 acres of scrubland purchased for $700,000 into a bustling ranch with a blazing-white limestone temple, sprawling three-story log cabins, woodworking shops and a dairy.
Assessed value of the property now: $20.5 million.
How did members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints do it?
Sweat equity was clearly one factor. The men quarried limestone themselves from the hard ground and built the enormous homes with their own hands, using skills learned at construction companies close to the sect's main base of operations, on the Arizona-Utah line.
But as for where they got the money for building materials, dump trucks, rock-cutting equipment and other supplies, that is still something of a mystery.
"Who funded it? We're investigating. That's for dang sure," said Jeff Shields, a court-appointed lawyer studying the sect's finances.
Some suspect the FLDS supplied money to Eldorado from a $114 million trust fund that once included all the homes and land in the side-by-side FLDS towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Money may also have come from construction businesses and other ventures run by sect members, including an aircraft wheel and brake manufacturer in Nevada that holds a $1.2 million Pentagon contract, and an engineering firm that landed $11.3 million in work from Las Vegas water authorities.
Questions about the source of the sect's money have been swirling around the FLDS since Texas authorities raided their Yearning for Zion ranch last month and seized more than 460 youngsters because of evidence that the sect has been marrying off underage girls to older men.
The renegade Mormon splinter group bought the property for $412 an acre in 2003 and rapidly turned it into a self-contained home for roughly 700 people, with rows of planted vegetables and other farming enterprises, a dairy that produces milk and cheese, and shops for cabinetmaking and other woodworking — all to supply the ranch, not to turn a profit on the outside.
Enormous homes went up in a matter of weeks, and when the temple was built, at least 200 men swarmed to the property to cut rock from the soil and assemble the gleaming 80-foot house of worship, said J.D. Doyle, a pilot who has taken hundreds of photos of the ranch's development from his small plane. With the natural clay soil useless for farming, sect members brought in black dirt to grow vegetables.
"They worked around the clock. They can put up a 21,000-square-foot house in 2 1/2 weeks. Move in and have it perfect," Doyle said. "It was amazing to us to watch them do this."
The sect paid $424,000 in property taxes last year, or about 18 percent of Schleicher County's annual revenue. It is the third-biggest taxpayer in the county, behind two pieces of land that produce oil. Although FLDS is a church, it never sought tax-exempt status in Texas or in other Southwest states in which it operates.
Judge Johnny Griffin, the county's chief executive, said that as far as he knows, ranch residents paid their tax bill on time and without complaint.
FLDS spokesman and attorney Rod Parker said he doesn't know how the ranch and equipment were purchased or why the insular group never sought tax-exempt status.
The four men listed on Yearning for Zion corporate documents have no listed phone numbers in Texas, and the numbers for the Utah businesses controlled by David S. Allred, the member who scoped out the property first, have been disconnected.
Court-appointed accountants are trying to figure out if some of the money came from a trust fund now under government control.
The trust, set up in the 1940s, covered essentially everything in Hildale and Colorado City. In 2005, however, a Utah judge appointed an accountant to dissolve the trust after state attorneys argued that the sect's prophet, Warren Jeffs, and other leaders were using the assets for their own benefit.
Jeffs was arrested in 2006 and is serving up to life in prison after being convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to an older man.
Shields, an attorney on the trust case, said there has never been a full accounting of the trust assets because church leaders refused to turn over documents or answer questions. Even the identities of the trustees are a mystery; more than half are listed as "unnamed" in court documents.
The court-appointed lawyers overseeing the trust have subpoenaed any financial records state troopers may have seized in the April 3 raid on the Texas ranch.
"We have good cause to believe there's something relevant to what we're doing up here," Shields said.
Parker called such links "fantasies" and denied any trust money was used to fund the ranch.
The sect has other sources of money beyond the trust. Former members and experts on the sect say it encourages members to sign over any earnings from outside jobs to church leaders. In return, the church gives followers housing, clothes and food.
Within FLDS, "nobody owns anything. Everything is owned by the prophet, even your dress. You don't own the dress. You're allowed that article of clothing based on his mercy," said former member Carolyn Jessop, who lived in Hildale.
The outside ventures include New Era Manufacturing, an aircraft parts maker and defense contractor whose chief executive has been identified as an FLDS leader and close associate of Jeffs.
Meaning WHAT?
No balls.
LG named names!
(Good ones; too! ;^)
When all else fails (such as documentation, proof, etc.), bring in the clowns...nice plan.
Meaning I am an atheist : )
Are you including the LDS in the FLDS? LOL Don't you think that is a very fine point?
Funny.
You can go round and round and round. I named one person, basically telling her to look in the mirror. That was enough and lost in the process of their stupidity. All they have to do is hit their antiMormon ping list and all of them will show up. They think people don’t see what they are. One even has (can’t remember who), their profile page pasted with private mails from admin moderator admonishing them for using daily threads as a reason to bash Mormons, and then basically says that they won’t be here much anymore because of the fLDS threads and the distrust for government here and the inability to associate with us rape defenders. Oh, and I remember seeing that if you don’t love and cherish your government and all they do, then you don’t love your country.
Blech
Additionally, those oh so clever government loving Mormon bashers, like to think that little capital letter thing is lost on people. They have other snide little (little known) remarks they throw in that reference you or others as Mormons while they accuse you of this that and the other thing then like children go out back behind the school yard to snicker about how clever they are.
At least we are sure what you are! Liars and polygamists. Mormonism defined with two simple words. Joseph Smith was a confidence man, and you must have bitten his fruit!
Some of us just want others to know that Mormonism is not part of the Christian Church, no matter how many times they try and say it...
Not a Mormon no matter how much you would like to think so. And if you think it offends me you are wrong. Now, what am I lying about since you called me a liar?
You were supporting Mormonism, why? Do you have a dog in this "fight"?
And if you think it offends me you are wrong.
Glad you got that out of the way. I wouldn't think of offense, when it comes to you! But, you did respond... (hmmm, what would Dr. Freud have to say about that?)
Now, what am I lying about since you called me a liar?
If you are not a Mormon, then the shoe doesn't fit? Tell me the truth! Have you ever lied?
You ask the most stupid questions I have ever seen a poster ask on this website ever. I wonder why that is. Freud - good grief. Are you still drunk or maybe just delirious from no sleep?
Where do I support Mormonism? I frankly don’t like the bashing of good conservatives that might be Mormons which is a different story because we need all the good conservatives we can get in the future elections.
So are you going to apologize for calling me a liar?
Again, you can’t find me on an FLDS thread.
Who said I was looking?
No one. I simply said you can’t find me. You seem to be lumping everyone together and so I answered.
Well, if you follow things, there is a method to my madness at times. Guilt by association is something individual liberty frees us from in the judicial system. In real life, sometimes we are lumped in by the associations we keep. I see that whole situation as an example of government civil and criminal entities trying to push the envelope of guilt by association. That conviction by rumor and press is tendered here by people who either succumb to the emotional impact statements via propaganda or by those harboring a sinister reproach towards conservatives that practice the Mormon faith.
If you are not part of the crew, good for you. Seems like it is quite a small grouping anyway and unfortunately chasing away conservative bedrock voters isn’t necessarily in our best interests if conservatives and Republicans matter to folks. Some only see religion as a driving force and that force is to put down anyone not practicing their religion because they feel it is the only true gospel. Not the most Christian approach imo.
I see, so you were trying to make a point.
I wasn’t on this thread until I was pinged by a certain party that likes to go around sowing “guilt by association.”
I was here to defend myself.
Now I’ll be gone, unless someone else wants to come along and accuse me of something I haven’t done.
I am not a liar, polygamist or a Mormon. Obviously you are ignorant and I am feeling charitable this morning, so I won't pick on you : )
LOL that does say it all. Your accurate little comment really did stir them up.
I guess I am a little different, as a child I enjoyed stealing honey from bees. The best part wasn't the honey, the best part was figuring out how to do it without getting stung.
I think the impulse is similar with the anti Mormon Cabal members. They are so focused on attacking Mormons and Mormonism that they seem to be oblivious when someone makes them look like fools.
The movie ‘The Sixth Sense’ reference as the cabal sees it:
I see Mormon people....
Posting around like regular people. They don’t see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don’t know they’re Mormon.
Honestly, some of them think they are doing the Lord’s work if you can believe it. Must be religion I am unfamiliar with, since it doesn’t seem quite Christian to me, to save people from themselves by denigrating their religions.
I know that at least three of them are ministers. Although it is extremely hard to squeeze any information about what they believe out of them.
I have come to believe that their religion is anti-Mormonism. They define themselves by what they aren't and have no core beliefs themselves. They have learned that attacking and pointing out faults in the Mormon religion makes them feel morally superior. They are no different than MADD members, NARAL, NOW, etc. Their cause gives them meaning in life and they are oblivious to the rest of the world.
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