["Wildwood Flower" by The Carter Family playing]
[man] We're a farm and ranch community.
A little bit of oil and gas.
And it's a long way to anywhere from here.
♪ Oh, I'll twine with my mangels And waving black hair... ♪
I'm the publisher here at The Eldorado Success.
- ♪ With the roses so red and the... ♪ - [slurping]
I also am the editor of the paper and a reporter.
♪ I will charm every heart... ♪
In 2003, we had a murder trial we covered.
Uh... We had a bus wreck.
So, I thought 2003 might be our biggest year as a newspaper,
and that we would probably never have another year like it.
But it turned out, I was wrong.
[airplane whooshing]
[man 2] The first time I saw what was going on,
I was flying to Brownwood,
and when you take off and go that direction,
you're gonna fly right over the top of that ranch.
[tense music playing]
[Randy] The ranch is four miles north of Eldorado
and it had been sold.
We had heard that there was gonna be a corporate hunting retreat
at the ranch, which is not, uh... not hard to believe.
I flew around it several times and then, uh...
I started taking pictures of it.
[camera clicking]
They were building structures out there.
And then as I kept on flying,
I saw that they were pouring concrete for a foundation,
and it's like, "This is a big building."
I mean, a hell of a big building for a hunting lodge.
I didn't know what the hell it was.
[tense music continues]
[Randy] As soon as I saw the photos, I agreed.
It looked quite a bit larger than anything we would expect
in the way of a hunting camp.
[mouse clicking]
And whoever they were,
they were working around the clock, 24/7, had lights up, cranes.
They were really on a mission to get that thing built.
And then, not too long after that...
[telephone ringing]
I received a phone call kind of tipping us off about the ranch,
telling me about the FLDS,
and Warren Jeffs, and polygamy,
and things that I had thought
had been consigned to the ash heap of history.
["Feel More" by Michelle Gurevich playing]
♪ I was born for the road ♪
♪ Only after a storm ♪
♪ Can you feel the sun ♪
♪ Ooh, I wanna feel ♪
♪ More ♪
♪ Ecstasy, in the shadow of ecstasy ♪
♪ In the shadow of ecstasy ♪
♪ Ooh, I wanna feel ♪
♪ More ♪
[birds chirping]
[vehicle engine revving]
[man] Young girls, they're not married in this community beyond the legal age,
and we are not involved in that at all.
And the legal age is what?
- The legal age is 16. - Sixteen.
So, you can say with some finality that young women in this community,
if they have not reached their 16th birthday, will not be married?
I can say that...
I do not know of any and I do not think it will... there will be any.
[reporter 2] The 16-year-olds, are they married to, uh...
men older? Like,
how old?
Those are issues that I can't speak to. Uh...
We believe in Revelation.
We believe that... that...
The fundamentalist belief is that, uh,
that a man has more than one family,
and that those things are ordained of God.
[ominous music playing]
[reporter 3] You think there's criminal wrongdoing by the leader of that church?
I... I don't... I cannot talk about investigative results
that would indicate whether or not there's criminal wrongdoing.
I have... I have certainly read information which... which raises my level of concern
and suspicion to a very high degree.
[Mike] There started to be sort of a consistent drumbeat
from Utah and Arizona law enforcement.
So, Warren knows they're coming for him eventually.
The larger world is connecting the dots that lead all back to him.
I don't know if he's a brain surgeon, but he was certainly smart enough to know
that the temperature was starting to rise.
And that's the point where he sort of just dropped off the face of the Earth.
[ominous music continues]
[Sam] He'd pop up to perform marriages
and then vanish again.
We knew what he was up to.
We knew that he was trafficking girls
for sexual purposes,
was assigning them to his henchmen.
We also suspected that he was taking underage brides himself.
If you... If you want,
uh, you can call me, or I'll stay in touch.
I was driven to find a way
to end this madness.
[Mike] Building the cases, it's difficult,
because the victims never wanted to testify.
It would mean testifying against their father,
and their brothers and their uncles.
Testifying against their spiritual leader.
[somber music playing]
It's not like dealing with an outlaw biker gang or a drug cartel
where you can simply grow your hair long
and infiltrate the organization, get evidence,
and then place it before a grand jury.
This is a very closed society and outsiders just don't get in there.
[faucet running]
[Elissa] I was approaching my 17th birthday
and I'd been married to Allen for a few years.
All of these terrible things were happening to me.
Mental, and physical, and sexual abuse.
[sad music playing]
I had miscarriages when I was 15 and 16,
and I really thought that they were a message from God
that I just wasn't worthy enough to be a mother.
I had spent a better part of three years going to Warren begging for help,
contesting this forced marriage that I found myself in.
But now Warren had disappeared.
He wasn't in Short Creek.
There was this hush-hush
that had kind of become the normal whenever it came to Warren.
[suspenseful music playing]
We had no idea what he was doing.
It wasn't really talked about at that point.
We were completely closed off to the world.
I didn't have a television.
We weren't allowed to even read a newspaper.
Honestly, I didn't even know the president of the United States.
[Sam] When Warren went into hiding, it became tense in Short Creek.
He was gone, but he had undercover church security
that were everywhere watching everybody.
And they'd go into people's homes, make sure they were following the rules,
make sure there were pictures of Warren on their walls,
make sure there's no disallowed activity going on.
[suspenseful music continues]
[Isaac] Cameras started going up in the meeting hall.
We'd never had that before.
I mean, who needs a camera?
But I learned that they were using those cameras
to zoom in on people
to see if they said, "Amen."
[suspenseful music continues]
[Charlene] There were cameras all over town,
cameras on light posts,
and they had what they called the Pigeon's Nest,
where it had all these cameras,
like you see in a security room,
where you could see pretty much everywhere in town.
And so, if you left town,
they knew you left town.
[Isaac] And they started keeping records of everything.
Where you visited, where you went,
who you talked to.
[chicken clucking]
There was this guy,
him and I were friends and we got talking,
and he had a daughter that was about a year or two older than mine,
and he asked me, he says, "Well, how old are you gonna
let your daughter get before you turn her in for marriage?"
And uh, my daughter was about 11 at the time.
And I told him, I says,
"Anybody comes knocking at my door
before she's 18, they're gonna have to come through me."
[tense music playing]
And he was a little shocked that I would just blatantly say it that way,
and so he says, "Even the Prophet?" And I said, "Even the Prophet."
I says, "This is not what I signed up for."
"I was born into this."
But now there's so much different
than what I was born into that I don't recognize it.
That's when I started realizing
I was starting to have questions about Warren Jeffs,
started wondering if he really was the Prophet or not.
[Elissa] Looking back now,
I see these very strategic moments that Warren chose to display his power.
I remember this one particular meeting,
we were all in church
and Warren had kind of been leading
to the fact there was a test to the people coming.
[Dowayne] It was a Saturday morning meeting,
and I saw Warren walking through the audience.
There was an ominous feeling,
and something just tightened up in my gut. I said, "Something's not right."
[ominous music playing]
[Isaac] Warren, he hadn't been there for months,
and all of a sudden, there he was, in the flesh.
He got up and was talking,
and he says... he says,
"We're in a benevolent dictatorship," he called it.
A benevolent dictatorship.
[Alicia] There was some really prominent men in the crick.
They had a lot of power and influence there,
and Warren knew that.
[ominous music continues]
[Isaac] He said, "I'm gonna read off a list of names God gave me."
And I was one of them.
He named me and I think 20 other men.
And four of them were his brothers.
These weren't just any men in the community,
they were leading figures who had been a key part of building the community.
So, they were the only people
that could have disagreed with his position of power.
He asked us all to stand up,
and so we're all sitting there standing,
everybody in the whole audience is sitting there looking at you.
There must have been 3,500 people there at least.
And Warren,
he says that we were master deceivers, and that God had given him
a list of all the sins that we had committed.
[Elissa] He said that they had disagreed with leadership,
and by disagreeing,
that was an act of deception.
He told them they had sinned against the Lord,
they'd aspired,
that they were gonna try to wrest the kingdom from him.
He said, "You're out of the religion."
"Your wives and children are released from you."
"They belong to the priesthood."
"They need to come and turn themselves in for reassignment,"
which is new husbands,
and "You men, go home, pack your things, and leave town."
And he says, "If your families are here with you right now,
- don't even say goodbye to them." - [ominous music continues]
[Dowayne] The oxygen just went out of the air.
You could've heard a pin drop.
You could've heard a pin drop on carpet and hear the rattle.
And it was that quiet in the building.
[Elissa] There were people in the audience with tears in their eyes,
and then Warren told us,
"Everyone in agreement with the word of the Lord,
raise their hand."
[tense music playing]
And after just absolute silence,
all the hands in the community were raised.
I was caught up in all of it as well and I raised my hand.
[tense music intensifies]
[Dowayne] He established dominance in that meeting.
People saw the danger of offending Warren,
because if you'll do it to one of them, you will do it to us.
This really is a bombshell in the polygamous community of Colorado City.
Some of the most prominent men in that town,
now defrocked of their religious powers,
large families being taken apart like children's toys.
[Mike] Warren threw these prominent men out,
and all of these men had dozens of wives
and large groups of children.
He took their families and homes away, told them to get outta there.
Might as well have just lined them up against the wall and shot them.
[quad bike engine revving]
[Isaac] I went home and I told my wife, I said, "You watch."
"Certified school teachers, they're gonna be gone."
"Doctors, they're gonna be gone."
"People with any influence in town, he's gotta get rid of them
in order to do what he's trying to do."
Because Warren was taking out everybody
you know, that had any brains at all.
[dog barking]
[melancholy music playing]
[Wallace] I was kicked out by Warren, my own brother.
I had two wives and 20 children.
Seven by one and 13 by the other.
Um...
We were a pretty united family,
and when he kicked me out,
he never said why.
And he didn't just kick you out,
he kicked you out,
but he tore
your family from you,
physically and emotionally.
He completely destroys the bond
between a father and his family.
[melancholy music continues]
He told them that I was a son of Satan.
"You are not to be his children or his wives anymore."
And they believed it because I bred into them what was bred into me.
So, when you get kicked out, they don't follow you.
What you lived for 50 years
is completely ripped apart.
My brother, LeRoy, he probably had the most united family.
His family was awesome.
It also happened to them.
LeRoy is Warren's, um, oldest brother,
and I fell in love with him.
After Rulon died,
Warren wanted me to marry him
like the other ladies had,
but I felt that I belonged to LeRoy.
I told Warren,
and I knew that he was pissed.
I looked in his eyes, and it literally looked like a snake's.
He held himself together after a couple minutes...
and then he said, "Okay, I'll take it up with the Lord."
The next morning he said,
"You can marry LeRoy,
but I am still personally over you."
"I will be directing you even if you're married to another man."
[soft music playing]
Oh, man, I... I just loved LeRoy.
I was almost 26.
I never knew that kind of love.
[birds chirping]
He had a lot of wives, but I was his favorite.
I went everywhere with him.
LeRoy was fun.
He just made me laugh and laugh and laugh.
He'd sing songs to me,
and he called me his lovey-dovey all the time,
and he made a song around that.
He was so darling to me.
When I found out I was expecting, it was just like,
"Oh, my gosh." I was so happy.
When she was born,
LeRoy named her Ruleecia,
and then Rachel was born 18 months later
and we were just one big happy family.
So, so happy. [chuckles]
And then one day, Warren called me.
He says, "LeRoy's priesthood is in question."
[music becomes more ominous]
And that he was now one of the Sons of Perdition.
Sons of Perdition meant the lowest parts of Hell that you could go to,
and I just had a hard time wrapping my head around that such a sweet man
could be a Son of Perdition.
I had this incredible pain in my heart
that perhaps
I had done something to make LeRoy lose his priesthood.
When LeRoy was kicked out,
we were given to Warren's younger brother, Seth.
Warren said that Seth was our new priesthood head
and their father.
And then Warren told me to take all the pictures of LeRoy and burn them
and make sure I never even mentioned
the kids' father ever again.
[fire crackling]
I felt anger.
I felt all those feelings, and I knew I couldn't show them,
or talk to anyone about them.
I knew that if I did, I possibly couldn't go to Zion.
- [producer] What is Zion? - Zion was a secret.
[ominous music playing]
[Elissa] In the FLDS, we really believed in the end of days.
And Zion was this afterlife that was going to happen
to the righteous and the pure.
It had been ingrained in us over and over and over,
what it would look like,
the streets of gold,
everyone in a state of joy and contentment.
[soft music playing]
Zion was like...
um... heaven.
But then, Warren said that there was an actual Zion.
A real place.
[Dowayne] We were told Zion was here on the Earth.
It really surprised me, and I realized it was for real.
[Elissa] And then, all of the sudden,
there were people in the community that would just disappear.
We called them "poofers."
And they were being brought to "Zion,"
that's what we were told,
to do something for the Prophet.
[Mike] Warren was deciding
there were people he liked and trusted,
and there were people who were not so favorable.
Kicking out the 21 men, that was just the beginning.
Now... Now he had the ability to start segregating families and people.
"You can come to the Promised Land,
the rest of you stay back in, you know, the dirt and squalor."
[Sam] And he would dangle it like a carrot in front of their nose.
To be called to go to Zion
means that you are one of the elect.
[Alicia] We knew that people were leaving, and all I knew was,
I had to be so pure and clean
that the Lord whispers your name to the Prophet,
and that's the only way to go to Zion.
Nobody knew where Zion was. It wasn't talked about.
[Charlene] Nobody knew except if you were invited,
but I kind of had suspected
where it was.
I took note one day
before my husband, Lyle, left.
He didn't say where he was going.
And I wrote down the mileage on his vehicle,
and then I wrote down the mileage when he got back,
and I did a circumference on the map,
and I went, "Ah-ha. It's here, here or here."
[laughing]
Then I started noticing
the color of mud
on his vehicle.
I went, "Okay, that cancels that one out
and that cancels that one out."
"Okay. It's gotta be here."
I knew that Zion was in Texas.
[country guitar playing]
[country guitar continues]
Well, we were feeding some cattle in the pasture
next to their improvements and I noticed, uh...
quite a few people as I drove up.
Mostly young men. Lots of teenagers.
Seems like they all had plenty to do.
An industrious bunch. And you know, I just pulled up to the fence,
waved at them and said, uh,
"Hey, I'm your neighbor," you know, and I kind of...
The neighborly thing to do in Texas.
I kind of thought they'd come over to the fence and they didn't move.
And I had no idea who I was dealing with.
[country guitar continues]
[man] When you see them in the store,
you'd see more the men than anything. They were real unsociable.
They didn't like, uh, conversation.
They didn't say hi, bye or nothing. They wouldn't even look at you, really.
You never really saw the girls.
Whenever you did see them, they were dressed like Laura Ingalls.
[laughing]
I didn't know what was going on. It was real secretive.
[indistinct conversation]
[slow piano playing]
[woman] When we got called to Zion,
I just remember being so excited
and we were just jumping with joy.
It was like going to heaven.
It was like going to the most sacred place on Earth,
you know? You just feel... [inhaling]
I felt so happy to be chosen.
[indistinct conversation]
[ominous music playing]
[Lola] Uncle Merril was the Bishop from the ranch.
And, um, he was very important.
[man 2] Brother Merril is giving everything
to help Brother Warren's mission succeed.
[Lola] But Warren Jeffs,
he was the final say behind any decision that was gonna be made.
In our minds, the police and even the president of the United States
had no authority over us because
Warren Jeffs was our president. He was the Prophet.
And how could you place a human over God?
[female voices] ♪ We do what we do ♪
♪ We did what you do ♪
♪ They say what we say ♪
♪ They say what you say... ♪
[Lola] In Zion, girls had to wear pastel.
People were appointed to do certain things,
um, like run construction or work at the dairy.
[singing continues]
[Lola] I spent my days helping weed the garden,
or I would be making lunches for the guys.
♪ Can you not see? ♪
♪ What keeping sweet means... ♪
[Lola] We were pretty self-sufficient.
We grew and prepared almost everything that we had there.
We ground our own flour.
We helped my dad sort potatoes.
He had a whole potato field in his section, so...
[clicks tongue] Sort out the tiny ones.
We worked at a storehouse, helped fill orders,
cleaning up.
Actually, one of the crazy things, we dug cactus.
We were told to get all the cactus out the land 'cause it's accursed,
so we were digging up all the cactus.
♪ The actions and the words do say ♪
♪ Showing us our Father's way ♪
♪ With careful sweet obedience... ♪
[Connie] I went to school there. They had a good school.
And went through, like, second grade, all the way up to fourth grade.
[singing ends]
- [man 3] How about doing the dishes? - [all laughing]
[Sam] The ranch was literally Warren's fiefdom.
He could do anything he wanted there.
And so, it became his grooming ground
for underage brides.
Raise them like calves in the stall.
That way you're gonna have this pool of
pure clean girls that are gonna be going to these old lechers.
[intriguing music playing]
[Lola] We believed that the maturity of our girls
was higher than gentiles and apostates.
Age didn't really matter, so, like, you could be married at 14
and if God thought that you were worthy at 14,
then, you know, it wasn't a big deal.
[intriguing music continues]
[Randy] There was a wide range of sentiment here.
[bell tinkling]
As to how do we deal with the FLDS?
What does it mean to our community going forward?
[eerie music playing]
We wrote several pieces about things they had done in Short Creek,
and as it came out that there were underage marriages going on,
there was a lot of concern.
It gets all kinda scary that these people are out here.
They shouldn't be doing that kinda stuff.
I do feel bad for the... the young girls in there.
I don't think they're too popular here in Eldorado.
You know, I don't trust 'em. I just don't trust 'em.
On the other hand, there were several people saying, "Leave 'em alone."
"They're not doing anything wrong. They're not hurting anyone."
Oh, I don't know if I have any strong feelings, you know, they're...
Nobody knows that much about them.
It's... It's somebody else's way of life
and it's their own personal business and I just stay out of people's business.
They said, "It's their world, you know, leave them alone."
Uh, as the father of a daughter,
I can promise you, I... I wasn't just going to leave it alone.
[tense music playing]
And it seemed like months and months went by
that we were the only newspaper in Texas reporting on this thing.
And then we learned they were building a temple.
The thing is just huge, and it's all a monument to one man's ego.
And that's Warren Jeffs.
[tense music continues]
Suddenly, people began to think, "Well, maybe this is a real story."
Others began paying attention.
[reporter 4] The polygamist group known as the FLDS is building a new temple...
[Randy] And it became a national news story.
[reporter 5] Warren Jeffs' massive white temple is the biggest story
to ever hit the tiny town of Eldorado, Texas.
[reporter 6] Warren Jeffs has been building a secluded compound
in Eldorado, Texas.
Visitors are definitely not welcome.
The only way to see it is by air.
[tense music continues]
[Sam] As time went on,
it was becoming increasingly urgent
that Warren was caught.
Even though it was suspected he was there,
they didn't have enough evidence to get a search warrant
and start going into the ranch.
So, we were constantly trying to find victims willing to come forward.
If you don't have a victim coming forward, you don't have a case.
[dramatic music plays]
[intriguing music playing]
[Elissa] With each passing day, with each passing year,
I had to realize that no one was able to protect me from Allen
but myself.
Because of the abuse that was consistently happening
and the repeated pleas for help that were ignored,
I started to take matters into my own hands.
You know, I finally could drive
and got a job as a server at this local restaurant
that was owned and run by the FLDS.
And so I started to become more and more independent.
- [dramatic music playing] - [crickets chirping]
And then one particular night, I found myself
on the side of a road with a flat tire
in a desperate state,
and Lamont, a gentleman that was from our community,
he had taken the time to stop and help me.
[dramatic music continues]
From that meeting,
Lamont and I started a friendship,
and... we fell in love.
It was the first time
that I had ever felt safe around
a male outside of my own brothers and my father.
And I couldn't imagine a reality
or a future without that.
And then finally, it all came to a head.
I was called into the office of the acting Bishop.
My husband, Allen, was sitting there and Warren was on the phone.
Through the speaker of the phone, I could hear him.
They had a picture of Lamont and I,
and Warren explained to me
that I was an adulterous woman
and that I had committed cardinal sins.
Adultery is one of the few sins that you could not come back from.
And then he told Allen, "A job well done."
"Job well done" meant that Allen had fulfilled his commitments.
That he was considered obedient
and I was not.
[dramatic music continues]
It lit this righteous fury within me.
After everything that Warren knew,
after all the times that I had pleaded for help,
that that's the outcome,
that I was labeled the wicked, terrible one.
I left that meeting
with a very clear understanding that my life in the FLDS was over.
And I was able to finally call Lamont and say, "It's time to go. Let's go."
[vehicle passing]
Lamont and I,
we had run away to a town
close to Short Creek called Hurricane, Utah,
and we were living in a small home with other people who had also left the FLDS.
I didn't want to bring up the past, I didn't want to have to talk about it,
I didn't even want to have to truly admit it.
[tense music playing]
But then my sister, Rebecca, called me.
[Rebecca] I told Elissa, "You shouldn't have been forced to marry at 14."
"That should have never happened to you and it should not happen to anybody else."
Our two baby sisters,
they were both younger than 14,
and we all knew Warren enough to know that he would not stop.
- [tense music continues] - Rebecca started to talk to me about
what would happen if we talked to law enforcement about my story.
She said to me,
"I can't do this, only you can,"
because I had been forced to be married underage.
[tense music continues]
[Roger] I got involved in 2004,
and, by that time,
one of our goals was to see if we could help law enforcement
identify witnesses who might be able to lead
to the arrest of Warren Jeffs.
And then we heard about Elissa Wall.
Elissa was a girl
who was a little bit independent,
and that's the kind of girl that worries the church.
Elissa had finally broken out of the church.
We were aware of her,
she was aware of us,
and I knew that what Elissa Wall had to say
could bring Warren Jeffs down.
But we didn't know if she was ready to talk to us.
[Elissa] It was really overwhelming.
You don't fight the priesthood, you don't fight the Prophet.
But I really wanted to protect my sisters,
and this was one way that I knew that I could.
[emotional music playing]
[Roger] Elissa is the bravest girl I know.
Eventually, she decided that she was going to trust us,
work with us, work with law enforcement.
And so, we finally had a case
against Warren Jeffs for accomplice to rape.
This kind of a prosecution was unheard of in the state of Utah,
and the prosecuting team was very honest to me about it,
that we were navigating unseen water
and there was concern of how successful we would actually be.
[ominous music playing]
[man] I thought our legal theory, even though it was novel,
was completely legit.
Under Utah law, a person of Elissa's age cannot consent
to participate in a marriage,
so, Warren Jeffs was charged with two counts of rape as an accomplice.
But Warren had gone on the lam,
and we didn't know where he was.
I got a phone call after we filed our case
from a local FBI agent who I'd known and I was friends with,
and he said,
"We think if you'll let us track him,
we can get him on the Top Ten Most Wanted list."
I'm like, "Whoa. Okay, great."
Over the weekend, Osama Bin Laden and eight other men
were joined on the FBI's Most Wanted list by Warren Jeffs.
[Sam] Warren was a wanted man, a federal fugitive,
but he had the help of countless followers.
He had unlimited resources, and money, and vehicles,
and was very successful
in keeping hidden.
By this point, Warren's basically a seasoned fugitive
with cell phones and masks and disguises and credit cards
and prepaid phone cards, and he knew how to travel on the road.
[action music playing]
We knew he was on the run, and what we were told was
he was accused of things that weren't true.
It was all just made up lies,
and that's why he was on the Ten Most Wanted List
and they were out to get him and all of this stuff.
[Erna] I mean, we fully believed he was innocent.
"But I tell you these things that you may know that I can answer,
a clear conscience before God until this day."
[action music continues]
[Sam] It would later come out that while Warren was on the run,
- he was living the high life. - [cheering]
He went to Disney World.
He had his favorite wives with him. He wore gentile clothing.
[action music continues]
They went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
And strip clubs.
And he was watching porn in hotel rooms with his wives.
He had Harley-Davidson motorcycles that he never really learned how to drive.
[action music continues]
- [cheering] - [Sam] He was really out, living it up,
enjoying all the pleasures of the gentile world
that he's supposed to despise.
[man] Every week in the crick,
people would come and turn in their donations or tithing, et cetera,
and we would collect it,
envelopes full of cash.
The money actually just was transported in boxes to Warren.
[Erna] It began to be like, "Okay, we need money this week."
"Every one of you come up with $1,000."
"Every adult in the home, no matter what it takes."
[Jeff] And we had very little resources for even fuel and gas money to get around.
It was hand-to-mouth, paycheck-to-paycheck and worse,
maxing out credit cards to try to meet the call.
Until
his brother Seth was caught in Colorado.
[Sam] Seth was acting as a courier,
transporting money and mail
and information for Warren,
and he was arrested for aiding and abetting a federal fugitive.
Mr. Jeffs, can you say anything to us? Where is your brother?
Where were you headed? Were you headed to Texas?
[Mike] Seth got a slap on the wrist. It was one of those kinda things.
They didn't get him for very much,
but the evidence was there.
So we had to change the tactics
on how, um, the money was transported.
And we'd go to Costco
and get bulk boxes of cans,
like cans of tomato sauce,
and we would drop...
[laughing] ...$50,000 into one of those cans
and then glue it so it looked like it'd never been touched.
And when he was on the run,
we sent Warren an average of about $300,000 a week.
[music stops]
Every week.
No, not once a month. Every week.
Sometimes more than that.
[producer] Did anybody know where that money was going?
They knew it was going to build Zion.
That's what he told the people.
[soft music playing]
[female voices] ♪ Oh, my dear little angels ♪
♪ How I love you so... ♪
[Erna] One day, one of my sisters come to me and she said,
"If I had to give up my children, I just couldn't do that."
And I was like, "Where is this coming from?"
And she's like,
"There are actually mothers that are being asked to leave their children."
And then people kinda start talking about a song that was talking about
the children going to Zion without their parents,
and I just remember being shocked about that.
[female voices] ♪ You have gone to build Zion ♪
♪ And Father is there... ♪
[Charlene] I witnessed mothers waking up
the next morning to go get their child up, and ready for the day, and they're gone.
And going and questioning the husband, "Where is my child?"
"Did they get out and sleepwalk? Had they been abducted from the home?"
And have the... the father of the home say,
"Never you mind. They're in good hands."
[female voices] ♪ He will teach you and guide you ♪
♪ So don't ever fear ♪
♪ But follow... ♪
[Sam] Warren began taking really young children, toddlers,
and literally abducting them,
taking them from their mothers,
and moving them onto the YFZ Ranch.
[female voices] ♪ From morning... ♪
[Elissa] Warren had a lot of teachings around
that Zion would be redeemed by the children,
and the reason that he handpicked a lot of those children
is because it was who he could influence the very most.
He intended to teach each and every one of them
to be exactly what he wanted them to be.
[female voices] ♪ Meet again... ♪
[sad music playing]
[Alicia] In November, Seth called me.
He said he was taking the girls from me.
Rachel was two and Ruleecia was three or four.
The day they all went to Zion, I couldn't say bye.
I tried to.
I hugged them, but I couldn't look in their eyes.
I couldn't stand to see the pain.
Ruleecia went screaming,
and it was just so hard to give her up.
It was one of the hardest things I've ever done,
but I wanted so much to please the Prophet
and God, so I was going to do it,
and it took everything I had to hand her over.
After that, I just despaired.
[sad music continues]
[Charlene] It was two o'clock in the morning. I couldn't sleep.
I got up and I went downstairs,
and I saw two of my sister wives
just gathering up clothes and shoes, and... I knew with all my heart
that it was Aman and Susie that were going.
My... My two youngest children.
- [producer] How old were they? - Seven and nine.
And at that point,
my son Aman walked in.
His face lit up and he goes,
"Mother, you get to come with us?"
And I said, "No."
And he started crying.
I started crying,
which made Susie start crying.
They finished packing up.
I got to give them one last hug,
and I told them, "Be good."
[sad music continues]
[sniffling]
And they left.
- [music fades] - [crickets chirping]
[police siren wailing]
[tense music playing]
[Sam] I was in my hotel room, and at midnight,
I got a call from the FBI saying,
"Sam, we've got him."
[indistinct conversation over radio]
The trooper that pulled him over saw that his plates were obscured,
and when he asked for the driver's ID,
it came back to Warren's brother, Isaac Jeffs,
and that Jeffs name kind of rung a bell for him,
and so the trooper started questioning the passengers,
and Naomi was in the front seat, Warren's favorite wife,
and Warren was in the backseat, eating a salad.
[dramatic music plays]
[Elissa] The phone rang about three, four o'clock in the morning
and it was Brock Belnap, the prosecutor,
and he said, "Warren's been caught."
I... I was a little bit in disbelief at first and I... I remember asking,
"Are you sure it's Warren?" And when it became evident it was,
I started to get fearful,
and it all came crashing down on me,
the reality of what it all meant,
that I would have to face Warren in court.
[action music playing]
[Sam] We suspected all these things about him,
but you know, it's like going through a doorway after he's arrested,
and then, all of a sudden, all these other things come out.
[action music playing]
It was just overwhelming.
[Rebecca] Warren was in prison, and I thought, "Okay, it's over."
But it turned out it was only the tip of the iceberg.
[music stops suddenly]
[solemn music playing]