By Jessica Hopkins
Keloland.com [South Dakota]
June 11, 2006
http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail5440.cfm?Id=0,48685
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One of America's Most Wanted, who has a connection to KELOLAND may be in Arizona.
Two newspapers reported this weekend that Warren Jeffs has been performing "child-bride" marriages in Colorado City, near the Utah border.
The fugitive polygamist is believed to have followers living across the country and in the Black Hills, near Pringle South Dakota. Jeffs is on the FBI's ten most wanted list and they're determined to catch him.
Robert Mueller, the FBI Director says, "He is a fugitive. That's why he's on the 10 most wanted list. If you look at the history of the 10 most wanted list the publicity you get often leads very quickly, sometimes not as quickly to arresting the person. My expectation is we will arrest him."
A former Jeffs follower, forced to marry her cousin when she was 16, escaped from the sect in 1986. She says she's not surprised that Jeffs has been spotted, but she says catching him could be nearly impossible.
Last month, we took you near the polygamist compound in Pringle South Dakota. We introduced you to Flora Jessop, an Arizona woman who escaped from the polygamist sect when she was 16 years old.
Word that Jeffs has been spotted is not surprising to her.
In a phone interview with KELOLAND news, Jessop says, "I think that he's been in and out of all his compounds, in and out of South Dakota, in and out of Texas, Colorado. He's been in and out of Colorado City and I think he travels around freely."
Jessop says she knows what Jeffs is about... She knows he has ways of avoiding law enforcement.
She says, "I don't think they're gong to catch him. He's got the resources, the finances and 12,000 people that block for him."
But, Jessop says she's glad authorities are paying attention.
She says, "Warren Jeff's needs to be caught because the longer he's out, the more children are destroyed."
Even if he is caught Jessop says it still wouldn't be the end.
She says, "The scary part is when he gets locked up, somebody else will step into his shoes."
Jeffs is accused of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men as leader of a group called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He's wanted for child sexual abuse in Arizona and for being an accomplice to statutory rape in Utah.
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