Warren Jeffs, Rulon T Jeffs’ Son: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

When the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints succumbed to federal pressure and officially condemned the practice of polygamy in 1890, and again in 1904, Morman parishioners began to splinter off into fundamentalist sects, determined to practice their religion as it had been prescribed by the founder, Joseph Smith, a little less than a century before. One of the largest of these sects, known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, took up residence on the northern border of Arizona, in a small and desolate backwater incorporated as Colorado City and known historically as Short Creek.

The fundamentalist community at Short Creek has been run by a string of “prophets,” who are empowered by their singular status to exert control over the FLDS Church. In 2002, following the end of his father’s 18-year reign, Warren Jeffs took control of the FLDS presidency. Since then, the Church has found itself under a large and prolonged spotlight for its ongoing abuses against its members, including a host of crimes committed by Jeffs.

Here’s what you need to know about Warren Jeffs:

1. Jeffs Became the Prophet & Leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2002

From 1986 until 2002, the FLDS community was led by Rulon Jeffs, a retired, polygamous accountant and excommunicated LDS Mormon who took as many as 20 wives before his death at 92 years old. Known to his followers as “Uncle Rulon,” many in the FLDS community believed that the aging Jeffs was the “one mighty and strong… to set in order the house of God,” as promised by Joseph Smith in The Doctrine & Covenants, one of three holy Mormon texts.

Following his death in 2002, Jeffs’s son, Warren Jeffs, took control of the Church, which in turn maintained control of the school board, police department, most of the homes in Colorado City, and an estimated $112 million trust which FLDS members are religiously obligated to pay into throughout their lives. As the prophet of the FLDS Church, Jeffs has also issued as many as a thousand “revelations,” or commands from God which invariably impose strict rules on FLDS members. Throughout Rulon Jeffs’s tenure as prophet, FLDS members were not permitted to watch TV or read content other than what was provided by the church.

2. Jeffs Has As Many As 79 Wives and Has Fathered More Than 60 Children

As the president and prophet of the FLDS Church, Jeffs was the sole authority empowered to marry couples within the church. (In at least two of these cases, “couples” constituted a girl under the age of 15 and an adult man who might be decades her senior and have a house full of additional wives.)

Jeffs was also empowered to “reassign” a man’s wives and children if that man was found wanting. Upon his grandfather’s death, Roy’s father married all but two of Rulon Jeffs’s wives. In an interview with USA Today, Roy Jeffs, one of Warren Jeffs’s sons, said, “If I finally get married here in the FLDS, I will live in constant fear of my dad taking my family away because he’d done that to almost every man.”

3. Jeffs Ranked On the FBI’s Top 10 Most Wanted List in 2006

Jeffs was added to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list in early May 2006, because he was, “charged in Arizona with two counts of sexual conduct with a minor, one count of conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor, and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Jeffs was also charged with rape as an accomplice in Utah.”

At the time, Jeffs had not been seen in public since 2004.  He was apprehended during a routine traffic stop in Las Vegas in August 2006. Jeffs stood trial for his crimes in Utah in 2007, where he was convicted on two counts of rape as an accomplice. The charges were overturned for improper jury instruction in 2010, at which time Warren was extradited to Texas, where he was convicted of aggravated sexual assault and sexual assault of a child. He is now serving a life sentence, plus 20 years.

In 2019, the Jeffs’s lawyers claimed that he had suffered a mental breakdown in prison and was not fit to stand trial in a lawsuit filed against him and the FLDS trust by a woman claiming that Jeffs sexually abused her as a child. Jeffs’s mental health has remained in question for much of his time in custody. In 2007, Jeffs attempted to hang himself in a Utah prison. He had to be force-fed in jail in Arizona in 2009. In 2011, Jeffs was placed in a medically induced coma after fasting from his cell in Texas.

4. Jeffs Ran the Yearning For Zion Ranch in Texas From Prison & Oversaw a Trust Worth Roughly $100 Million

Around 2004, Jeffs facilitated the purchase of a parcel of land north of Eldorado, Texas, which would become a new stronghold of the FLDS Church. In April 2008, as Jeffs was held in prison in Utah, police raided the compound in response to what turned out to be a prank phone call, removing many inhabitants and placing more than 400 children into state custody.

During the raid, police discovered extensive evidence of child abuse and sexual assault, including an audio recording of Jeffs raping a 12-year-old girl, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. Though the evidence of sexual assault was instrumental in Jeffs’s conviction in Texas three years later, the children were returned to YFZ after a federal judge found that police had not met the burden of proof necessary for emergency removal.

Meanwhile, Jeffs exerts control over the church and its members from his cell in Texas, according to his son, Roy. In 2006, the UEP trust, worth more than $100 million, was stripped from Jeffs’s control. In 2014, the FLDS Church officially left the YFZ Ranch and the property was seized by Texas authorities. In 2017, Jeffs was ordered to pay $16 million to a former child bride, according to CNN. A second lawsuit was filed against Jeffs and the trust, spiking fear in the FLDS community that their trust will be forced to bear the financial brunt of Jeffs’s actions.

5. One of His Former Wives Leads A Cause To Help Mormon Fundamentalists Escape The Church

Briell Decker, Jeffs’s 65th wife, helped to turn the former FLDS President’s $1.2 million home into a refuge for women seeking to escape the Church, according to the Guardian. Decker grew up in a fundamentalist compound in Utah and her older sister, Colleen, was married to Jeff’s father, Rulon Jeffs, when he was in his 80s and she was 18. Upon the senior Jeffs’s death, Colleen was then married to Warren Jeffs.

Decker escaped the Church in 2012 and returned to her former home at Short Creek to help others do the same. When the state of Utah took control of the UEP trust in 2006, FLDS members and others were able to live in homes outside the control of the Church. With a sizeable discount from the state and support from a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, Decker was able to turn her dream for the refuge into a reality.