Ruh Ro!
....BREAKING NEWS....
Latest Update 12:15 p.m. CDT, Tuesday, April, 8 2008
Leroy Johnson Steed, 41, arrested during the night at YFZ compound for tampering with physical evidence .
Lawmen opened a safe in a residence at YFZ and are said to be removing evidence.
The name of the man involved in Jeffs conviction is Allen Steed; "A jury convicted Jeffs on Sept. 25 of two counts of rape as an accomplice based on a 2001 marriage he conducted between (Allen) Steed, then 19, and Elissa Wall, who was 14."
Wonder what evidence was in the safe? Birth records? "Marriage" records? Hundred-dollar bills?
Foxnews...
ELDORADO, Texas — A second member of a polygamist sect has been arrested in connection with a search of a Texas compound.
Leroy Johnson Steed is charged with tampering with physical evidence. Authorities say that Steed was arrested Monday night and was being held in a jail near the compound.
The 41-year-old Steed is the second member of the Yearning for Zion Ranch to be arrested since authorities raided the religious retreat last week after a young girl called them and reported abuse.
Levi Barlow Jeffs was arrested Sunday. He is charged with interfering with duties of a public servant.
The raid on the compound founded by jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs started with a call from a 16-year-old who alleged abuse.
Authorities were looking for evidence that the girl, who allegedly gave birth at 15, was married to a 50-year-old, and for records related to other mothers aged 17 and younger. Even with their parents’ permission, Texas law forbids girls younger than 16 to marry.
Some 133 women left the ranch voluntarily with the children and were being housed at a historic fort here while authorities conduct interviews. Dressed in ankle-length dresses with their hair pinned up in braids, the women milled about Monday as the children played on the fort’s old parade grounds.
State troopers were holding an unknown number of men in the compound until investigators finished executing a house-to-house search of the ranch, which includes a cheese-making plant, a cement plant and several large housing units. They initially had difficulty getting access to the 80-foot white limestone temple that rises out of the brown scrub.
The search continued Tuesday, Department of Public Safety officials said.
Merrill Jessop, who oversees the ranch and is a presiding elder in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, told the Salt Lake Tribune that officers conducting the search were collecting cell phones “as fast as they can find them.”
Jessop said the men were becoming worried about their wives and children because they have no Internet or television access.
“There needs to be a public outcry that goes far and wide,” he said. “What’s coming we don’t know. The hauling off of women and children matches anything in Russia or Germany.”
Carolyn Jessop, author of the polygamy memoir “Escape,” said the women dedicated so much time to raising children and their chores because the community emphasized self-sufficiency: Members believe the apocalypse is near, and they will have to start over when the world is destroyed.
They were not allowed to wear red — the color Jeffs said belonged to Jesus — and were not allowed to cut their hair.
They “were born into this,” said Jessop, 40. “They have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it.”
Children’s Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said each child will get an advocate and an attorney. But she said they would have a tough time adjusting to modern life if they are permanently separated from their families.
Tela Mange, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety, said the criminal investigation was still under way, and that charges would be filed if investigators determined children were abused.
Still uncertain is the location of the girl whose call initiated the raid. Authorities were looking for documents, family photos or even a family Bible with lists of marriages and children to determine whether the girl was married to convicted sex offender Dale Barlow.
Barlow was sentenced to jail last year after pleading no contest to conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. He was ordered to register as a sex offender for three years while he is on probation.
Authorities hoped to determine whether the teenager was among the church members being interviewed at Fort Concho, a 150-year-old fort built to protect frontier settlements.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders filed motions asking a judge to quash the search on constitutional grounds, saying state authorities didn’t have enough evidence and that the warrants were too broad. A hearing on their motion was scheduled for Wednesday in San Angelo.
“The chief concern for everyone at this point is the welfare of the women and children,” said FLDS attorneys Patrick Peranteau. He declined further comment before Wednesday’s hearing.
State troopers arrested one man on a misdemeanor charge of interfering with the duties of a public servant during the search warrant, Mange said.
“For the most part, residents at the ranch have been cooperative. However, because of some of the diplomatic efforts in regards to the residents, the process of serving the search warrants is taking longer than usual,” said DPS spokesman Tom Vinger.
Attorneys for the church and church leaders said Barlow was in Colorado City, Ariz., and had been in contact with law enforcement officials there. Telephone messages left by The Associated Press for Colorado City authorities were not immediately returned Monday.
The FLDS church, headed by Jeffs after his father’s death in 2002, broke away from the Mormon church after the latter disavowed polygamy more than a century ago.
The group is concentrated along the Arizona-Utah line but several enclaves have been built elsewhere, including in Texas. In 2003, the church paid $700,000 for the Eldorado property, a former exotic animal ranch, and began building the compound as authorities in Arizona and Utah began increasingly scrutinizing the group.
Only the 80-foot-high white temple can be seen from Eldorado, a town of fewer than 2,000 surrounded by sheep ranches nearly 200 miles northwest of San Antonio.
Jeffs is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., where he awaits trial for four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives.
In November, he was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001.
The investigation prompted by the girl’s call last week was the first in Texas involving the sect.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,348148,00.html
I’ll bet money. Lots of it.
and passports.
They “were born into this,” said Jessop, 40. “They have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it.”
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WOW
At 15 y o each at the time of the births, the grandmother would be about 45 and already a great grandmother..
These women had no lives and no hope...
Ruh Ro!