Getty Warren Jeffs mugshot
Warren Jeffs is one of the FBI’s most notorious fugitives. On the Friday, May 8, 2020 episode of Dateline: NBC, titled “Unbreakable,” anchor Keith Morrison sat down with Rebecca Musser, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as she talked to him about being married to Jeffs, having to share him with more than 60 other women, and why she chose to leave the church. So, where is Jeffs today?
Texas Tribune has reported that Jeff continues to serve a life sentence in jail.
Here’s what you need to know about what happened to Jeffs and how he ended up in the Louis C. Powledge Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison.
Jeffs Remains in Prison Today
GettyIn this handout provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), polygamist Warren Steed Jeffs is pictured on a FBI Ten Most Wanted poster. Jeffs, the fugitive leader of a polygamist Mormon sect, was arrested by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on August 28 during a traffic stop. Jeffs was wanted in Utah and Arizona on charges linked to allegations of arranging marriages between men and underage girls. (Handout by Federal Bureau of Investigation via Getty Images)
In 2005, Arizona authorities indicted Jeffs on charges of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. In 2006, he was charged with two counts of rape in Utah for arranging a marriage between then-14-year-old Elissa Wall and her cousin, then-19-year-old Allen Steed. Elissa is the sister of Rebecca, both of whom were in the FLDS church, and both of whom eventually fled that lifestyle. Elissa told her story in the 2008 book “Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs.”
When those charges were brought against Jeffs, he was in hiding and was put on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. After his eventual capture, Jeffs was tried and convicted in Utah (though that conviction was later overturned), then he was tried and convicted in Texas after a raid on the YFZ Ranch in 2008 turned up a plethora of evidence against Jeffs in connection to his marriages to underage girls. In 2011, he was convicted on two counts of sexual assault for his “celestial marriages” to a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl, the latter of which birthed his child.
He was sentenced to life in prison at Powledge Prison in Anderson County, Texas.
In 2017, a woman identified as R.H. sued Jeffs and the church’s former land trust for Jeffs’ “calculated plan” to sexually abuse underage girls, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The lawsuit listed 26 defendants in taking part in some way in sexually abusing her when she was as young as 8 years old.
The trial has spanned several years, with Jeffs’ lawyers claiming as recently as August 2019 that he has had a “mental breakdown” in prison and is unfit to testify, according to a local CBS affiliate.
Also in 2019, Jeffs’ son Roy, who was among one of the first of Jeffs’ children to come forward saying Jeffs sexually abused his own offspring, committed suicide. His half-sister, Rachel, blamed their father, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “Father didn’t love him. [Roy] knew it. All of us knew it. We all got told Roy was a bad boy.”
However, in a bit of positive news among all of the horrific tragedies, Luke W. Barnett, the pastor of Dream City Church, recently purchased the former FLDS compound in Phoenix, Arizona, and turned it into a haven for victims of sex trafficking. He was able to obtain the property with the help of Brielle Decker, Jeffs’ 65th wife, who was awarded the property in a settlement. She dreamed of turning it into a refuge for women and children escaping the FLDS.
Jeffs Supposedly Had Almost 80 Wives
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is one of the largest fundamentalist Mormon denominations in the world. Its founding members were excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in the early 1900s after they refused to stop the practice of plural marriage or polygamy (having more than one spouse), and now the FLDS operates completely separately from the LDS.
Warren S. Jeffs is the current president of the FLDS. His father, Rulon Jeffs, was named president of the FLDS in 1986, a position he held until his death in 2002, at which time Warren took over the role at the age of 47.
At the time of the senior Jeffs’ death, he had 19 or 20 wives (no one knew the exact number), roughly 60 children, and hundreds of grandchildren, according to his obituary in the New York Times.
Within a week of his father’s death, Warren had married all but two of his father’s wives — one refused to marry him and the other, Rebecca Wall Musser, left their FLDS compound. Musser eventually told her story in the 2013 book “The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice.”
According to the Biography page about Warren, he is said to have married at least 78 women and has more than 50 children. When he took over as leader of the FLDS, he ruled with an iron fist, controlling everything from his followers’ clothing to the toys children could play with. He also banned television and the internet from their compound.
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