July 26, 2021 • 40 mins
Texas Monthly Senior Editor Katy Vine reports on the controversial criminal trial of Warren Jeffs, the polygamous prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Written, researched, and hosted by Kate Winkler Dawson/producer Alexis Amorosi/sound designer Andrew Eapen/composer Curtis Heath/web designer Ilsa Brink/additional research Ella Middleton
Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/4dsqzI1
Subscribe to my newsletter: tenfoldmorewicked.com Buy my books: katewinklerdawson.com
If you have suggestions for historical crimes that could use some attention, email me: info@tenfoldmorewicked.com Follow me on social: @tenfoldmore (Twitter) / @tenfoldmorewicked (Facebook and Instagram)
2021 All Rights Reserved
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Waren is pretty interesting, as horrible as he is.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
When you're watching history unfold, you know, when you're sitting
in a courtroom watching somebody this was history in the making.
This was a crazy chapter in Texas history.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked On Exactly Right. I've
traveled around the world interviewing people for the show. I've
interviewed some people in person and some from my home
studio over zoom, and they are all excellent writers. They've
had so many great true crime stories, and now we
(00:52):
want to tell you those stories with details that have
never been published. Wicked Words is about the choices that writers.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Make, good and bad.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's a deep dive into the stories behind the stories.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
My name is Katy Vine and I'm a staff writer
at Texas Monthly.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Katie Vine reported on a religious sect that broke away
from the Mormon Church called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I wrote two stories about the FLDS during the short,
tumultuous time that they were in Texas, one that asked
if the kids were safe there and another that covered
the Warren Jeff's trial. I did pitch this story myself.
I think I had just read about it in the
paper as events were unfolding, and then when the media
sort of went away, that's when I went in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And how did they respond at Texas Monthly? I mean,
did they think this is? It was sort of a
see what you can get?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
At the time. The FLDS was very closed off. It
seemed like I probably wouldn't get anything from them, but
that there was enough, even without the FLDS participation, that
there was a story to tell about how safe the
kids were after the state put them back with the families.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Can you on a pause for just a second, can
you tell me the difference between LDS versus these I mean,
what is because I do think with stories like this,
with the Jeff's case, they just get lumped together and
we know that's not the case.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Oh, definitely right. So what would be the major different break?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yes, Well, the FLDS still practices polygamy. The LDS does not.
They abandoned that practice long ago. The FLDS has their
own separate president and profit. They're a small sect that
broke away from the mainstream LDS church.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I don't remember when, but it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I mean, there are other offshoots like this, like the FLDS.
Maybe for those who don't know the story, I can
back up and tell a little bit more about Warren Jeff's.
Warren was this sort of pimply kid favored by his father,
Rulan Jeffs, who was the president and prophet of the
FLDS that's the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints that was then
centered in the twin towns of Hilldale, Utah, and Colorado City,
(03:09):
Arizona that's collectively known as Short Creek. And he's this
sort of skinny kid, privileged status under his dad, a
tattle tale with the reputation as a peeping tom. Before
he's twenty one, he becomes principal of the church's private school,
Alti Academy, which sort of deemphasized science and current events,
and rewrote course work to reflect the interpretation of FLDS theology.
(03:29):
Then his father falls ill and Warren positions himself as
the president and prophet. Two days after his father died
in two thousand and two, he announced to the men,
hands off my father's wives, and he begins marrying them
all himself. I think in the end he had seventy
eight wives, twenty four of which involved children under age seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
How was this received by his group? I mean by
these people once his father dies.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It was sort of a gradual thing. They got a
little bit younger, a little bit younger. He's the president
and prophet, and so some of them I think privately
questioned it, but would never publicly question it. That's just
not something that was done. He was also arranging marriages
president and profit does in that church between I think
sixty seven marriages between other men and underage girls. He
(04:17):
facilitated a total of five hundred big of mismarriages. They're
ten thousand people in the church. In the end, he
dismantled I think three hundred families because he can sort
of rearrange at will and take someone's family away from
them and move them in with somebody else's family. Utah
began prosecuting the flds for bigamy and unlawful sex with
(04:40):
underage wives around two thousand and three, I think, and
Warren just figured he needed to do something. So what
happened was and how Texas kind of came into the
picture is in two thousand and four, Texas law said
that at age fourteen you could get married with a
parent's permission.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wait what, Yeah, how is that even possible?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
After the FLDS motire, they moved it to sixteen because
I think they My guess is that the intention was
so that if somebody got pregnant young, they could be married,
so that you could try to have a solid family
base there is I think that was probably the original intention,
but then when they noticed hearing about the underage wives,
(05:20):
they moved that pretty quickly. And from what I understand,
that doesn't mean a judge has to approve it. It's
just parents' permission. Or they bought about seventeen hundred acres
of land just outside Aldoredo, Texas, which is kind of
near San Angelo in West Texas. Warren took the most
elite members of that ten thousand in the church and
rewarded them with admittance to this ranch, which he called
(05:40):
the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And that YFZ. That's it.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, the unworthy would remain back in Short Creek, and
those are sort of folks who he thought were lying
or not doing exactly as they were told. He starts
excommunicating men whom he finds disobedient, sending them to repent
from afar, casting out young men, arranging marriages between the
wives of kids of excommunicated with the more faithful men.
(06:05):
Anyone slightly disloyal is expelled. So he had this sort
of iron grip on them already.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There was no opposition, there's no rebellion building. I mean,
they're literally doing what he wants them to do.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
For the most part.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I mean, I'm sure that there were instances of people
who disagreed, but they would be expelled. So in April
two thousand and six, he was indicted on criminal charges
rape as an accomplice for arranging a marriage between a
fourteen year old and her nineteen year old cousin. And
he went on the lamb, hiding out in various places,
I think, and totally spent one hundred and fourteen days
(06:40):
on the FBI's most wanted list. And then trouble started
in Texas in two thousand and eight in late March,
when a crisis center in San Angelo got a phone
call from a girl who said she was sixteen, that
she had a child, she was living on the YFC
ranch and was abused by her husband and wanted out.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
There's a lot that story. That caller had.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
A history of making hoax phone calls. I actually tracked
her down at one point, but she gave such a
confusing interview I couldn't I couldn't make heads or tails
of it. On April third, the Texas Rangers and some
local law enforcement went onto the ranch property with some
workers from Child Protective Services looking for this underage girl,
initially specifically looking for her, but then they start interviewing
(07:26):
girls who spoke of underage marriages and pregnancies. And at
this point, the authorities have severely underestimated the number of
children who were living there.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I think they thought there was a total of two.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Hundred and fifty people out there, but they found I
don't know how many adults there were over four hundred kids.
This is not something they had considered. The first night,
CPS took a handful of girls, and over the next
few days they took them all. There may have been
boys outside the property when the raid took place, and
that might account for the disparity between teenage boys and girls.
(07:59):
Other about twice as many teen girls as boys, but
all told, the state removed four hundred and thirty seven children,
plus some additional women believed to be children at that time.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Can you set the scene for that? Is there any
retribution happening? Are they the members letting it happen?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Is it tactical gear? Do you know what that scene
was like? It depends on who you ask.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I think law enforcement was concerned there was going to
be a wake go situation.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I mean, you're taking people's kids away, hundreds of kids.
It terrified the kids.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
There were stories about law enforcement coming into homes with weapons,
traumatizing the kids just by their presence. I think everybody
would argue it was awful, particularly for the kids.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
One hundred and thirty.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Nine women went voluntarily to be with their kids, and
I think sixty or seventy.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Men and elderly women stayed on the property.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Even the social workers actually are haunted by memories of
that time.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
You remember what happened in Florida or I was at
a news station when they took away Elion on Gonzales,
and that photo of him being pulled out of a closet,
I think by this guy in full tactical gear and
a huge gutment's horrifying. And that photo was printed so
many places, and it just symbolized what that means, being
ripped away from your family, So I imagine that's kind
(09:16):
of the same imagery.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
There was press all over this thing.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Fourteen days after the removal, there was a chaotic hearing
for all the kids, and the district judge in San Angelo,
Barbara Walther, decides the kids are in immediate danger. State
keeps the kids in temporary custodies, sending them all over
the state to various homes and facilities. The case quickly
rises to the Texas Supreme Court, and then the children
(09:40):
are sent back to the YFC ranch in West Texas.
I had at that time been sort of watching it
in the news, and I thought, I don't want to
be one of these hundreds of reporters. I'm just going
to get the same thing as everybody else. I'm just
going to wait. Most people stopped paying attention by like
May two thousand and eight, when the children were retre
turned to the ranch, and a lot had sort of happened.
(10:03):
By that point. Some people had quit the Department of
Child and Protective Services, making them more available to speak freely.
Twelve men from the ranch had been indicted for underage marriages,
and to me, just from a storytelling perspective, documents had
been released, in particular Warren Jeff's writings that showed what
had been going on. So things like this is a quote.
(10:24):
So send me the list of the older unmarried daughters
of brother Meryl Jessup and brother Wendell Nielsen, who their
mothers are and their exact ages. Inform me if there's
anyone in the family that does not know their duty
to perform. Also, if they're being too social in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Being too social in the kitchen, what does that mean?
He's just a control freak. Control freak? Yeah, another one,
he says. The Lord showed me that my wife Becky
withheld her confession. As I was leaving yesterday, I asked her,
where's your letter and she said she wrote it but didn't.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Want to give it to me. I asked her, why not,
I said, write it quickly. So she wrote me a
letter that said nothing except I want to do better
today today. I was impressed of the good spirit to
call her and say, you have had bad feelings? Have
you withheld your confession? And I saw she was fearful
to tell me, and she acknowledged she had many bad feelings.
So I told her to pack up her things and
she would be leaving in an hour to go back
(11:14):
to Short Creek. She reacted wrong, she didn't pray, almost
accusing me of not loving her. It just sort of
showed how he had been kicking people out of places.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And just as a reminder, Short Creek is the banished.
It's like Siberia. It's for the people who were not
following the rules. Yeah, yeah, so I read.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I can't remember how many pages of dictations that he gave.
These are dictations, I call them writings. Actually, he had
other women around him constantly writing down his thoughts, his
every thought, and sometimes they would have to sit next
to him while he was sleeping in case he had
thoughts in the middle of the night, or if he
had a dream, they would have to make sure they
wrote that down because it might be some kind of
(11:54):
a revelation. Anyway, I asked the unofficial spokesman at the time,
Willie Jessup if I could come to the YFC ranch
in Elaredo, and to my surprise, he was open to it.
I think the church believed that they won and that
the state would leave them alone. More surprising was that
when I got there to the ranch, I brought a
photographer with me. Sarah Wilson and Willie drove us around
(12:17):
the ranch and mentioned that one of the girls who'd
been married to Jeff's his youngest wife, mary Anne Jessup,
was on the property and asked if we wanted to
meet her. I was like, are you kidding me? Mary
Anne is here? She was by that point fifteen. She
had been twelve when she was married to Warren. The
photo of Warren carrying her in his arms on their
wedding night got out into the press years earlier and
(12:41):
really freaked people out.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
For good reason.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
She is tiny in that photo, a sixth grader. Warren
is a tall, grown man, and they're embraced in a kiss.
He's holding her like.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Like he's cradling her like, cradling her like a baby.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And then you know, kissing her full on the mouth.
Her mother and guardian came out with her and they
spoke with us, agreed to have her portrait taken. We
have a very unusual circumstance, right.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
She was fierce funny.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
She indicated that the state of Texas just didn't understand FLDS.
All she would really say in response to my questions
was the truth will prevail again. Her mother and legal
guardian and the man who was a spokesman were standing there,
so who knows what she might have said otherwise, but
I got the impression she probably would have said the
same thing in private at that time. She agreed to
(13:26):
be photographed with everyone's consent, everyone's standing there, and her
face didn't betray any wavering from her words.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So the photograph is very striking in the Really magazine.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And she seems well beyond her years, very confident. And
is that just the reinforcement of FLDS.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't know, you know, having only met her and
spent what maybe fifteen minutes with her, I just don't know.
I know. Afterwards, we really wrestled with naming her, you know,
because it's common practice not to name mine in these
situations because they'll be stigmatized. But what it came down
to was, you know, the whole stories about how underage
(14:06):
married girls in the community aren't stigmatized. They don't keep
the marriage a secret. They believe the state just doesn't
get it. So I still wrestle with whether that was
the right call, but we did so at the end
of the first article, which ran in October two thousand
and nine, I was still wrestling with the question of
are the kids safe now, which was sort of tricky, right.
(14:27):
You have to wonder whether just what outcome you're hoping
for If you have a teenager and you think she's
in danger her parents have performed underage marriages and she's
not married, but you think she could be, and what
would result is what some women who've left flds described
not just as forced sex, which is bad enough, but
forced pregnancy, which would keep them bonded to the community.
(14:50):
But thus far, she hasn't been in danger, nothing's happened
to her. Judges were having to weigh this is kind
of like, well, the parents haven't done anything with this child,
so why would you take that away based on some
potential and other people were arguing that the most faithful
at this place have done every single thing that this
leader has told them to do. And he's doing crazy stuff.
(15:14):
If they can't even in some cases sign a document
saying that they will not marry off their daughter under
a certain age, is that kids safe. The Department of
Family and Protective Services identified twelve girls ranging from age
twelve to fifteen who'd been victims of sexual abuse with
the knowledge of their parents. Two or twelve when they
were married, three were thirteen, two were fourteen, five or fifteen.
(15:35):
Seven of them had one or more children, and all
of them were what they call non suited, just given
back to the families except for Marianne. Marianne and another
fifteen year old became the subjects of the criminal trial
against Tom rang Jeff's that was in twenty eleven, and
so that became the second story that I did. This
happened at the courthouse in San Angelo, overrun with news trucks,
(15:59):
and it was a big deal. The room was packed
one hundred degrees outside. It lasted ten days, and while
I guess it shouldn't have really surprised any of us
or on, Jeff's decided to release his attorneys pretty quickly,
I think within the first couple hours of the trial,
and he decided he was going to address the court.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So this is what I wrote in the story.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Jeff slowly stood up to make what would then be
his first ever public speech, as a courtroom of people
craned their necks to get a good view of him,
the wood benches creaked. Jeff's is a tall, thin man,
and he was dressed on that day in a dark
suit and sensible black shoes. His graying hair was cut short.
He stooped over as if, at age fifty five he'd
had an early onset of osteoporosis. With his hands folded
(16:41):
in front of his waist, he began speaking in a slow,
deep nasal monotone. I have released all my council I
had desired to represent myself, he said. He paused for
a few seconds, and I would like my own motion.
I think, for most of us in the courtroom, one
of the strangest things we'd ever seen.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
He would repeat these awkward phrases over and.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Over, like greater understanding, truth to be preserved, and true justice,
sort of randomly thrown into sentences. On the second day
of the trial, he offered an objection that lasted over
an hour, and at one point pulled some paperwork out
of a Manila envelope and recited a purported revelation from God.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
He said, I, the Lord, God.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Of Heaven, call upon the court to now cease this
persecution against my holy way.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Let it stop now, and sent a.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Scourge upon the prosecutorial zeal to be humbled by sickness
and death, which really pissed off the judge. I think
it was day four that Rebecca Mussler, who left the
FLDS after Warren Jeff's father, Rulan died. She had been
married to Rulan and she didn't want to marry Warren.
She left and she testified. She came in wearing a
(17:52):
red shirt, which is a forbidden color in the FLDS,
and a tight black skirt, spike heels, hair ironed, and
I think a described as having the confidence and friendliness
of a cruise ship director. She explained how the church worked,
described the victims who were not going to be present
in the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And just built the case.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
But it was Jeff's own words from that priesthood record
that really sealed his fate. It was so detailed, you
got a real insight into every move he made, how
he would bring young women into his room and the
state introduced an audio tape in which he is instructing
a dozen of his wives, including the fifteen year old
who was part of this trial, to have group sex
(18:33):
with him, and the prosecutor then showed other records like
DNA that showed that Jeff's had a baby with this girl.
So that sort of wrapped up the first the fifteen
year old part of the case. Then they had to
turn to the twelve year old and that's the aggravated
sexual assault charge. And they showed the photographs of the
marriage between Warren and Mary Anne, and then played an
audio recording.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
He apparently recorded a lot, and in this case.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Had a reding of himself having sex with Marianne and
saying her full name and her responding and the parents
are there and everything.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So that's played.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
The reaction in the courtroom I remember was it was
just like stunned.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I think what of the people, the devout people in
the courtroom who were standing with him. Was that a
similar reaction or was it just sort of it doesn't
really matter.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
They left, They were not there during that when the
recording was played.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Was there a warning from the judge or something beforehand?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
No, anything that was really incriminating to Warren. I seem
to remember that they were not there. I assume that
Warren just told them today, don't come or something similar,
you know, But I don't think it would have changed
anything for them. Everybody knew what was going on.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It's still hard for me to understand how that can
be justified in the church, how they justified it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I think it's similar to the way that anybody
will follow a leader who they feel it has.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Is the mouthpiece of God.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I think if you have a certain background and you're
just told never to question that, even when it's really
harmful if you disagree. Obviously, there were people who did
leave of their own accord. Some weren't expelled, they'd left
and escaped. But a lot of times it's hard to
escape because you have to get not just yourself out,
but a bunch of kids or a sibling, and.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Then what are your resources? You don't have a job.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Well, now, there is at least one group that I
know of up around Short Creek for people who leave.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So he is representing himself still, which is interesting because
I think the chord insists that you have somebody sitting
with you, so there's no problem with appeals and stuff.
But you can't go back and say, well, I changed
my mind and I didn't tell anybody, and I should
have had an a journey. Yeah, okay, so he had
somebody who probably was just keeping his mouth.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Shit. I'm assuming closing arguments, I think, or no, or sentencing.
Maybe it was sentencing when the lawyer came back on
the scene.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
What was Warren like in court?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Would we describe him as this charismatic No, the opposite.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I think that was part of it.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You always hear about how a leader like this has
a lot of charisma and it's very charming, and he was.
He had none of that going on, absolutely none.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Just to catch you up, I'm talking with Texas Monthly
magazine reporter Katie Vine about a remarkable story in Texas.
She covered the twenty thirteen trial of Warren Jeff's, the
president and prophet of the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Jeff's was charged with
the aggravated sexual assault of a twelve year old and
the sexual assault of a fifteen year old. Meanwhile, his
(22:09):
family and the faithful sit nearby.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I sat next to his brother Lyle in the courtroom.
I think it was during closing arguments. Warren just sort
of stood there for a long time, maybe thirty minutes,
maybe longer, and then said, I think I am at peace.
I turned to Lyle and I said, what's going on?
And he's gotten into trouble himself over the past couple
of years. But he just shrugged and then he fell asleep.
(22:33):
So you hata that was just sort of a mysterious
part of the experience. He had brought in a faithful
member and put him on the stand and asked if
he was happy. The guy looked to me sort of
scared to death because a lot of the questions that
Warren was asking could have gotten him into trouble the law.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Look, what was he asking?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Things like getting close to asking questions about do you
have underage wives kind of thing, or.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Have you married off?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I mean, there were just so many instances where a
lot of us were kind of like, where is this going?
Like you really don't you still don't get it that
this is illegal, that this is a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
What was he trying? I don't think that's English that
he was not. This was not a pole that people
could leave if they wanted to. People are happy.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
They like me, Yeah, this is good, and I have
the answers. I think he believes that he is the chosen.
There is video of him talking with one of his
followers and he tells the follower, I'm a fraud basically.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So he has moments where I think he must know,
but then the rest.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Of the time he's just boosting himself up and saying like, yeah,
I'm the mouthpiece of God and I have all the answers,
and I should not question my judgment.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And we saw that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
I think even in the courtroom, I think he thought,
I mean, he hasn't had many challengers in his lifetime,
and so to stand in a courtroom.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think he thought that he still had this power.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
What I was going to ask was I'm actually surprised
that he even was willing to acknowledge the court in
any way, you know where. I think that there are
instances where people who are cult leaders who just kind
of say, this is not my realm. I don't mean
to listen to you. He obviously knew he had to
play the game.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
And I think whether the drama was intentional or not,
there was big drama in the way that he presented
the court, with the long periods of silence at some
times and then other times just talking for an hour
in these sort of halting phrases. Just bizarre, but it
kept the jury's attention, the judge's attention, and certainly the
(24:49):
rest of the court room. We were all just wondering,
does he know what this looks like? And I couldn't say.
I think he has been surrounded by his followers for
so long that he maybe doesn't have a firm grasp
on how other people perceive him. And I don't think
he was playing the game necessarily. I think he just
(25:10):
I don't think he gets it. I think probably any
narcissistic personality. And then we got the sentencing. Twas awful
because that's when you really got the full scope of
his misdeeds. You think you've heard so many awful things
up to this point that you figure that's maybe the
extent of it. But then his nephew took the stand
and said Jeff's raped him when he was five. One
(25:32):
woman testified that Jeff's molested her when she was seven,
and there were witnesses to other criminal activity. I remember
thinking back to when they first moved to Texas, and
folks thought that they were maybe like the Amish.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I mean, what a joke.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, he's a monster. So he got life in prison.
He's in East Texas. I followed up a little bit
on all this. My understanding from the investigator in short Creak,
Sam Brower, is that Lawren still calls the shots from prison.
He told me quote, he has broken down the family
structure of the FLDS in the past few years, so
that there are no more marriages in the FLDS. Husbands
(26:10):
and wives have been dissolved and children have caretakers. Now,
procreation takes place in a ritual by one of the
twelve high priests assigned to impregnate women. Husbands and wives
can shake hands, but for no more than three seconds.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
They've left Texas.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, they've left Texas and are now scattered around the country.
I think a third Sam told me, had been kicked out.
But they're in just various sort of houses of hiding
around the US and maybe beyond.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I don't know, is there any hope that he'll get
out or is this a horror.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
He's getting Outdel's a hunger strike every once in a while,
but I don't think he's ever.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
What's his demand with the hunger strike.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
That the door's open and he be released right and
then he's there for life.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I wonder how he's received by other inmates. And did
you try to interview him or no? I'm assuming you did, sure,
but you're not going to get to him.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
No. I approached when he was on the bench outside
the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It wasn't much of an interaction.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
In the array of stories that you've covered, I mean,
how long have you been doing this journey?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Three years?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
In the twenty three years, where does this story fit
in into your kind of portfolio? I mean, what did
you want people to know from your story? Because you
did several of them.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I do sort of read anything that comes out about
them generally because I just remain interested in the people involved.
Every story's different, but this one had more unexpected twists
and turns. All I knew going in was that four
hundred some children had been taken from their parents and
(27:54):
then returned, and that's kind of all I started with.
So everything that came out with these dictations and other allegations,
the whole world that he had set up seemed too
horrible to be real to me, I think then you
had to acknowledge that it was real. I mean, there
were things that I was hearing in the beginning about
(28:16):
this temple bed that he wanted constructed, and I'd seen
his requirements for the temple bed on paper, how it
was to be built and what it was going to
be used for, and it was for impregnating his wives
so that there would sort of a quorum around him
at the time. And I just thought, this sounds like
(28:38):
some horror fantasy that someone is having, right. I was skeptical,
and then it turned out that that was absolutely true.
So I guess the lessons for me were, yes, be skeptical,
but I wasn't prepared for things that awful to be true.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
They seemed so far out.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
You know, you hear about other groups and which terrible
things have happened Waco. I guess this is sort of
what happens sometimes where you just think, well, that seems
like somebody's got a lot of time in their hands
and it's just sort of making things up, But well,
that's real.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Who were the most interesting people in the story?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
For you?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Orn is pretty interesting as horrible as he is. When
you're watching history unfold, you know, when you're sitting in
a courtroom watching somebody. This was history in the making.
This was a crazy chapter in Texas history and in
FLDS history, so him Mary Anne. As brief as that
encounter was, it was surprising, although maybe I shouldn't have
(29:36):
been surprised. And her mother and caretaker, everybody was so
bubbly and happy to see me, and I just thought
that was so strange, or you know, we visited the
creamery where there was a young woman who was in
charge of making the cheese, and she was listening to
choral music over the speakers, and she just seemed so happy.
(29:58):
You know. I wanted to to be as fair to
them as possible, I think, and try to see it
through their eyes. I know that the lawyers who represented
the mothers definitely have a different perspective from a lot
of others who thought that the children needed to be
taken away permanently, and including the boys from families who
had shown that they had kicked out other sons. I
(30:20):
think the argument being what will prevent you from not
kicking out all the boys in your family and marrying
off the girls, and not just marrying them off, but
impregnating them. It would be like somebody deciding I want
my daughter to have my neighbors my seventy year old
neighbor's child, and so she will now do that with
my permission. There were people in the courtroom whom I
(30:43):
met who said, we all have different traditions. But to me,
I mean, just from a human the rights perspective, when
you are impregnating somebody, you are sort of chaining them
to that spot for sex is bad enough, But it
seems to me that the impregnation from my perspective, was
something that made it different.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, certainly traps them right. Did you have a sense
for what day to day life was in this situation, FLDS,
what day to day life for.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
A young woman might have been and the WIFC. Yes,
they worked. You mentioned a kream. What is the ranch
even like?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Oh, it was fantastic, was beautiful, It was big. They
had a big orchard, They had beautiful gardens, giant wooden
homes that they had built. Their amazing with construction. There
was a big white temple. The day to day I
mean I think they they worked a lot. The young
boys too, did a lot of construction workout When you
(31:38):
were driving around. There would be a ten year old
driving a forklift kind of thing. They worked.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Did they produce products? Like where money? What did money
come from? It was a lot of construction.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
They were very well known for construction in the area,
and they got a lot of construction jobs, which I
think bothered their competition because in some cases they were
basically using child labor, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, so they would get contracts. They never had state contracts,
I'm assuming, but they would just get contracts from other businesses. Wow, Okay,
did anybody ever trace funding for them? I'm assuming the
government did at some point.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Utah because Utah has been kind of wrestling with them
longer than Texas did. They found a lot of issues
with food stamps scandal and other kind.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Of tax issues. They were desperate. It could have been
like an al capone in Utah.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I think they really nailed them that pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, Like financially took a big hit.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So the day to day life you were saying that,
you know, everybody were and there was probably daily church.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
They looked incredibly healthy. Everybody talks about this. Why the
women who were taken into custody were considered underage because
they only eat organic food that they grew and made.
They live in this sort of country setting, and nobody's
really overweight because working. And you know, that was one
of the things that came up when the children were
taken away and they were given hot dogs or something
(33:06):
like that, or sloppy Joe's, and they would get like
terribly upset stomachs because they were used to eating food
that they'd made.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Not process Wow. So that was a big adjustment.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And then how long were that You might have said this,
but as a reminder of how long were the kids
out of custody before they were returned, I could look
it up because that's Siri or wherever was it foster
care that they would go into froster care and group homes.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
That must have just been such a culture shock for them.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I can't even imagine. Yeah, especially the older ones.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Okay, so it looks like May twenty ninth, and they
were taken April, so a month April third, May twenty ninth,
so two months.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
It's a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
It's a long time to have a different to be
in such a different culture. I mean, that's incredible. Yeah,
that must have been so traumatizing for the kids. So now,
do we have an idea of how many members are
still active members of FLDS.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
I mean, Sam Brower, the investigator, told me that a
third had been kicked out of the ten thousand. Of
those ten thousand, I don't know how many are still
at Short Creek and how many of the sort of
chosen are in houses of hiding around. So I don't
(34:25):
know what that breakdown is, but so maybe you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Know sixty five hundred or something like that.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
In stories like this as a reporter, is it difficult
to process the I could write murder stories all day long,
even husband's killing wives. But the child aspect of this
is very upsetting for me. Is that hard for you?
I mean, I don't remember if you have kids or not,
it'll be hard. Yeah, I mean is that as a mom?
(34:53):
Is that hard for you as a parent? Or do
you have to check that at the door because this
is a story you have to cover.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
There were definitely times when I could think of it
as a story. There were times in the courtroom when
audio evidence was being played, for example, or when witnesses
were discussing their own experiences with Warren. That was that
I did not have, let's say, a professional reaction.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
It was a very personal reaction to yourself or to
anybody else just sitting there. Yeah, it was very upsetting.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I find it very hard to be unbiased or objective
in cases like that.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
I am glad that I got to see the YFC
ranch for that reason. I mean, to have their perspective
to try to understand, because I of course really did
want to try to understand where they're coming from. This
is not the first time a group like this has
landed in Texas, and it won't be the last time,
and so I think it's always important to try to
(35:56):
understand what's going on.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
But there's no doubt out it was. Yeah, there were
times when it was extremely upsetting.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Are there lessons learned from this? Do you think, either
for you or for just the country? I mean, I
think it's hard to know what's best sometimes. I think
we have for me, I think we have this sort
of set of standards that not everybody adheres to. And
how can you predict what's going to happen with someone
with a group and where they're going to head and
(36:28):
can we do preemptive strikes? And Yeah, I think it's
a it's a really difficult story to cover.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
And I think any.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Case where you have children religious liberties and some potential danger,
and I mean, I'm sure that there are circumstances with
you know, very sick children and certain religions that don't
want medical interference. Right, those are hard calls, but in
(36:55):
the end, usually the state besides, you can let this
child just die.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, but it's difficult because that wasn't necessarily the case here, right,
they had to return them. And I'm sure that must
have been difficult for so many of the people in
CPS or you know, these different agencies. That must have
been really heartbreaking to try to figure out the right
thing to do well.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
And I think part of it was trying to understand
the family unit. Usually you as a caseworker, you know,
you identify who are the parents and who are the children,
and I think in this situation it was much more complex.
Whether it was fabrication or true, probably a mix of both.
(37:39):
There were kids who were living with people who were
not their parents and saying these were my parents. I
think sometimes they were maybe covering for underage mothers. And overall,
I think that really freaked out the investigators who were
interviewing the children and wondering like, what is the family
(37:59):
unit struck here? I can't get a handle on it.
We've got to make a decision. The sun is going down.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Where's this kid going? If we leave?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Now they are leaving and we'll never see these children again.
I think there was a lot in play there. The
perception at the time was that the state overstepped, and
now there are you know, in hindsight, there are plenty
of people who say that was one hundred percent the
right call because a million reasons, but.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
That taking the kids away was the right call.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, And then you have you're supposed to work at
case by case, child by child, right, is this child
in danger?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Is it not?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
In bulk? Of course, never do that, but take a
child by child and try to figure out each kid's situation.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
And they just didn't have time to do that.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
On the next episode of Wicked Words, all of them
were beaten around the head.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
It was as horrid a description as you can possibly imagine.
And they talked about blood in that bedroom, especially being
halfway up to the ceiling and covering everything. And then
there's at least one of them is killed in another room,
so there's a pool there.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
If you love historical true crime.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Please check out my books American Sherlock and Death In
the year this has been an exactly right tenfold more
Media Production Alexis and Morosi is our producer, Andrew Epan
is our sound designer. Ellen Middleton is a researcher for us.
Curtis Heath does the composition, Nick Toga did the artwork,
and Ilsa Brink designed the website. The executive producers are
Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Daniel Kramer. Follow Wicked Words
(39:47):
on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on
Twitter at tenfold more. If you are an advertiser interested
in advertising on our show, go to midroll dot com
slash ads and if you know of a historical true
crime story that could if you some attention from the
crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at
Tenfoldmorewicked dot com. Listen, subscribe and leave us a review
(40:08):
on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
This story contains adult content and language, along with references
to sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Waren is pretty interesting, as horrible as he is.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
When you're watching history unfold, you know, when you're sitting
in a courtroom watching somebody this was history in the making.
This was a crazy chapter in Texas history.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
true crime podcast tenfold More Wicked On Exactly Right. I've
traveled around the world interviewing people for the show. I've
interviewed some people in person and some from my home
studio over zoom, and they are all excellent writers. They've
had so many great true crime stories, and now we
(00:52):
want to tell you those stories with details that have
never been published. Wicked Words is about the choices that writers.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Make, good and bad.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's a deep dive into the stories behind the stories.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
My name is Katy Vine and I'm a staff writer
at Texas Monthly.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Katie Vine reported on a religious sect that broke away
from the Mormon Church called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
I wrote two stories about the FLDS during the short,
tumultuous time that they were in Texas, one that asked
if the kids were safe there and another that covered
the Warren Jeff's trial. I did pitch this story myself.
I think I had just read about it in the
paper as events were unfolding, and then when the media
sort of went away, that's when I went in.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
And how did they respond at Texas Monthly? I mean,
did they think this is? It was sort of a
see what you can get?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
At the time. The FLDS was very closed off. It
seemed like I probably wouldn't get anything from them, but
that there was enough, even without the FLDS participation, that
there was a story to tell about how safe the
kids were after the state put them back with the families.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Can you on a pause for just a second, can
you tell me the difference between LDS versus these I mean,
what is because I do think with stories like this,
with the Jeff's case, they just get lumped together and
we know that's not the case.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Oh, definitely right. So what would be the major different break?
Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yes, Well, the FLDS still practices polygamy. The LDS does not.
They abandoned that practice long ago. The FLDS has their
own separate president and profit. They're a small sect that
broke away from the mainstream LDS church.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I don't remember when, but it's been a while.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
I mean, there are other offshoots like this, like the FLDS.
Maybe for those who don't know the story, I can
back up and tell a little bit more about Warren Jeff's.
Warren was this sort of pimply kid favored by his father,
Rulan Jeffs, who was the president and prophet of the
FLDS that's the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints that was then
centered in the twin towns of Hilldale, Utah, and Colorado City,
(03:09):
Arizona that's collectively known as Short Creek. And he's this
sort of skinny kid, privileged status under his dad, a
tattle tale with the reputation as a peeping tom. Before
he's twenty one, he becomes principal of the church's private school,
Alti Academy, which sort of deemphasized science and current events,
and rewrote course work to reflect the interpretation of FLDS theology.
(03:29):
Then his father falls ill and Warren positions himself as
the president and prophet. Two days after his father died
in two thousand and two, he announced to the men,
hands off my father's wives, and he begins marrying them
all himself. I think in the end he had seventy
eight wives, twenty four of which involved children under age seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
How was this received by his group? I mean by
these people once his father dies.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
It was sort of a gradual thing. They got a
little bit younger, a little bit younger. He's the president
and prophet, and so some of them I think privately
questioned it, but would never publicly question it. That's just
not something that was done. He was also arranging marriages
president and profit does in that church between I think
sixty seven marriages between other men and underage girls. He
(04:17):
facilitated a total of five hundred big of mismarriages. They're
ten thousand people in the church. In the end, he
dismantled I think three hundred families because he can sort
of rearrange at will and take someone's family away from
them and move them in with somebody else's family. Utah
began prosecuting the flds for bigamy and unlawful sex with
(04:40):
underage wives around two thousand and three, I think, and
Warren just figured he needed to do something. So what
happened was and how Texas kind of came into the
picture is in two thousand and four, Texas law said
that at age fourteen you could get married with a
parent's permission.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
Wait what, Yeah, how is that even possible?
Speaker 3 (05:00):
After the FLDS motire, they moved it to sixteen because
I think they My guess is that the intention was
so that if somebody got pregnant young, they could be married,
so that you could try to have a solid family
base there is I think that was probably the original intention,
but then when they noticed hearing about the underage wives,
(05:20):
they moved that pretty quickly. And from what I understand,
that doesn't mean a judge has to approve it. It's
just parents' permission. Or they bought about seventeen hundred acres
of land just outside Aldoredo, Texas, which is kind of
near San Angelo in West Texas. Warren took the most
elite members of that ten thousand in the church and
rewarded them with admittance to this ranch, which he called
(05:40):
the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
And that YFZ. That's it.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
Yeah, the unworthy would remain back in Short Creek, and
those are sort of folks who he thought were lying
or not doing exactly as they were told. He starts
excommunicating men whom he finds disobedient, sending them to repent
from afar, casting out young men, arranging marriages between the
wives of kids of excommunicated with the more faithful men.
(06:05):
Anyone slightly disloyal is expelled. So he had this sort
of iron grip on them already.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
There was no opposition, there's no rebellion building. I mean,
they're literally doing what he wants them to do.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
For the most part.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
I mean, I'm sure that there were instances of people
who disagreed, but they would be expelled. So in April
two thousand and six, he was indicted on criminal charges
rape as an accomplice for arranging a marriage between a
fourteen year old and her nineteen year old cousin. And
he went on the lamb, hiding out in various places,
I think, and totally spent one hundred and fourteen days
(06:40):
on the FBI's most wanted list. And then trouble started
in Texas in two thousand and eight in late March,
when a crisis center in San Angelo got a phone
call from a girl who said she was sixteen, that
she had a child, she was living on the YFC
ranch and was abused by her husband and wanted out.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
There's a lot that story. That caller had.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
A history of making hoax phone calls. I actually tracked
her down at one point, but she gave such a
confusing interview I couldn't I couldn't make heads or tails
of it. On April third, the Texas Rangers and some
local law enforcement went onto the ranch property with some
workers from Child Protective Services looking for this underage girl,
initially specifically looking for her, but then they start interviewing
(07:26):
girls who spoke of underage marriages and pregnancies. And at
this point, the authorities have severely underestimated the number of
children who were living there.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
I think they thought there was a total of two.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Hundred and fifty people out there, but they found I
don't know how many adults there were over four hundred kids.
This is not something they had considered. The first night,
CPS took a handful of girls, and over the next
few days they took them all. There may have been
boys outside the property when the raid took place, and
that might account for the disparity between teenage boys and girls.
(07:59):
Other about twice as many teen girls as boys, but
all told, the state removed four hundred and thirty seven children,
plus some additional women believed to be children at that time.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Can you set the scene for that? Is there any
retribution happening? Are they the members letting it happen?
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Is it tactical gear? Do you know what that scene
was like? It depends on who you ask.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
I think law enforcement was concerned there was going to
be a wake go situation.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
I mean, you're taking people's kids away, hundreds of kids.
It terrified the kids.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
There were stories about law enforcement coming into homes with weapons,
traumatizing the kids just by their presence. I think everybody
would argue it was awful, particularly for the kids.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
One hundred and thirty.
Speaker 3 (08:43):
Nine women went voluntarily to be with their kids, and
I think sixty or seventy.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Men and elderly women stayed on the property.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
Even the social workers actually are haunted by memories of
that time.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
You remember what happened in Florida or I was at
a news station when they took away Elion on Gonzales,
and that photo of him being pulled out of a closet,
I think by this guy in full tactical gear and
a huge gutment's horrifying. And that photo was printed so
many places, and it just symbolized what that means, being
ripped away from your family, So I imagine that's kind
(09:16):
of the same imagery.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
There was press all over this thing.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Fourteen days after the removal, there was a chaotic hearing
for all the kids, and the district judge in San Angelo,
Barbara Walther, decides the kids are in immediate danger. State
keeps the kids in temporary custodies, sending them all over
the state to various homes and facilities. The case quickly
rises to the Texas Supreme Court, and then the children
(09:40):
are sent back to the YFC ranch in West Texas.
I had at that time been sort of watching it
in the news, and I thought, I don't want to
be one of these hundreds of reporters. I'm just going
to get the same thing as everybody else. I'm just
going to wait. Most people stopped paying attention by like
May two thousand and eight, when the children were retre
turned to the ranch, and a lot had sort of happened.
(10:03):
By that point. Some people had quit the Department of
Child and Protective Services, making them more available to speak freely.
Twelve men from the ranch had been indicted for underage marriages,
and to me, just from a storytelling perspective, documents had
been released, in particular Warren Jeff's writings that showed what
had been going on. So things like this is a quote.
(10:24):
So send me the list of the older unmarried daughters
of brother Meryl Jessup and brother Wendell Nielsen, who their
mothers are and their exact ages. Inform me if there's
anyone in the family that does not know their duty
to perform. Also, if they're being too social in the kitchen.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
Being too social in the kitchen, what does that mean?
He's just a control freak. Control freak? Yeah, another one,
he says. The Lord showed me that my wife Becky
withheld her confession. As I was leaving yesterday, I asked her,
where's your letter and she said she wrote it but didn't.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Want to give it to me. I asked her, why not,
I said, write it quickly. So she wrote me a
letter that said nothing except I want to do better
today today. I was impressed of the good spirit to
call her and say, you have had bad feelings? Have
you withheld your confession? And I saw she was fearful
to tell me, and she acknowledged she had many bad feelings.
So I told her to pack up her things and
she would be leaving in an hour to go back
(11:14):
to Short Creek. She reacted wrong, she didn't pray, almost
accusing me of not loving her. It just sort of
showed how he had been kicking people out of places.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
And just as a reminder, Short Creek is the banished.
It's like Siberia. It's for the people who were not
following the rules. Yeah, yeah, so I read.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
I can't remember how many pages of dictations that he gave.
These are dictations, I call them writings. Actually, he had
other women around him constantly writing down his thoughts, his
every thought, and sometimes they would have to sit next
to him while he was sleeping in case he had
thoughts in the middle of the night, or if he
had a dream, they would have to make sure they
wrote that down because it might be some kind of
(11:54):
a revelation. Anyway, I asked the unofficial spokesman at the time,
Willie Jessup if I could come to the YFC ranch
in Elaredo, and to my surprise, he was open to it.
I think the church believed that they won and that
the state would leave them alone. More surprising was that
when I got there to the ranch, I brought a
photographer with me. Sarah Wilson and Willie drove us around
(12:17):
the ranch and mentioned that one of the girls who'd
been married to Jeff's his youngest wife, mary Anne Jessup,
was on the property and asked if we wanted to
meet her. I was like, are you kidding me? Mary
Anne is here? She was by that point fifteen. She
had been twelve when she was married to Warren. The
photo of Warren carrying her in his arms on their
wedding night got out into the press years earlier and
(12:41):
really freaked people out.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
For good reason.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
She is tiny in that photo, a sixth grader. Warren
is a tall, grown man, and they're embraced in a kiss.
He's holding her like.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
Like he's cradling her like, cradling her like a baby.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
And then you know, kissing her full on the mouth.
Her mother and guardian came out with her and they
spoke with us, agreed to have her portrait taken. We
have a very unusual circumstance, right.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
She was fierce funny.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
She indicated that the state of Texas just didn't understand FLDS.
All she would really say in response to my questions
was the truth will prevail again. Her mother and legal
guardian and the man who was a spokesman were standing there,
so who knows what she might have said otherwise, but
I got the impression she probably would have said the
same thing in private at that time. She agreed to
(13:26):
be photographed with everyone's consent, everyone's standing there, and her
face didn't betray any wavering from her words.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
So the photograph is very striking in the Really magazine.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
And she seems well beyond her years, very confident. And
is that just the reinforcement of FLDS.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
I don't know, you know, having only met her and
spent what maybe fifteen minutes with her, I just don't know.
I know. Afterwards, we really wrestled with naming her, you know,
because it's common practice not to name mine in these
situations because they'll be stigmatized. But what it came down
to was, you know, the whole stories about how underage
(14:06):
married girls in the community aren't stigmatized. They don't keep
the marriage a secret. They believe the state just doesn't
get it. So I still wrestle with whether that was
the right call, but we did so at the end
of the first article, which ran in October two thousand
and nine, I was still wrestling with the question of
are the kids safe now, which was sort of tricky, right.
(14:27):
You have to wonder whether just what outcome you're hoping
for If you have a teenager and you think she's
in danger her parents have performed underage marriages and she's
not married, but you think she could be, and what
would result is what some women who've left flds described
not just as forced sex, which is bad enough, but
forced pregnancy, which would keep them bonded to the community.
(14:50):
But thus far, she hasn't been in danger, nothing's happened
to her. Judges were having to weigh this is kind
of like, well, the parents haven't done anything with this child,
so why would you take that away based on some
potential and other people were arguing that the most faithful
at this place have done every single thing that this
leader has told them to do. And he's doing crazy stuff.
(15:14):
If they can't even in some cases sign a document
saying that they will not marry off their daughter under
a certain age, is that kids safe. The Department of
Family and Protective Services identified twelve girls ranging from age
twelve to fifteen who'd been victims of sexual abuse with
the knowledge of their parents. Two or twelve when they
were married, three were thirteen, two were fourteen, five or fifteen.
(15:35):
Seven of them had one or more children, and all
of them were what they call non suited, just given
back to the families except for Marianne. Marianne and another
fifteen year old became the subjects of the criminal trial
against Tom rang Jeff's that was in twenty eleven, and
so that became the second story that I did. This
happened at the courthouse in San Angelo, overrun with news trucks,
(15:59):
and it was a big deal. The room was packed
one hundred degrees outside. It lasted ten days, and while
I guess it shouldn't have really surprised any of us
or on, Jeff's decided to release his attorneys pretty quickly,
I think within the first couple hours of the trial,
and he decided he was going to address the court.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
So this is what I wrote in the story.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Jeff slowly stood up to make what would then be
his first ever public speech, as a courtroom of people
craned their necks to get a good view of him,
the wood benches creaked. Jeff's is a tall, thin man,
and he was dressed on that day in a dark
suit and sensible black shoes. His graying hair was cut short.
He stooped over as if, at age fifty five he'd
had an early onset of osteoporosis. With his hands folded
(16:41):
in front of his waist, he began speaking in a slow,
deep nasal monotone. I have released all my council I
had desired to represent myself, he said. He paused for
a few seconds, and I would like my own motion.
I think, for most of us in the courtroom, one
of the strangest things we'd ever seen.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
He would repeat these awkward phrases over and.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Over, like greater understanding, truth to be preserved, and true justice,
sort of randomly thrown into sentences. On the second day
of the trial, he offered an objection that lasted over
an hour, and at one point pulled some paperwork out
of a Manila envelope and recited a purported revelation from God.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
He said, I, the Lord, God.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Of Heaven, call upon the court to now cease this
persecution against my holy way.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Let it stop now, and sent a.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Scourge upon the prosecutorial zeal to be humbled by sickness
and death, which really pissed off the judge. I think
it was day four that Rebecca Mussler, who left the
FLDS after Warren Jeff's father, Rulan died. She had been
married to Rulan and she didn't want to marry Warren.
She left and she testified. She came in wearing a
(17:52):
red shirt, which is a forbidden color in the FLDS,
and a tight black skirt, spike heels, hair ironed, and
I think a described as having the confidence and friendliness
of a cruise ship director. She explained how the church worked,
described the victims who were not going to be present
in the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And just built the case.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
But it was Jeff's own words from that priesthood record
that really sealed his fate. It was so detailed, you
got a real insight into every move he made, how
he would bring young women into his room and the
state introduced an audio tape in which he is instructing
a dozen of his wives, including the fifteen year old
who was part of this trial, to have group sex
(18:33):
with him, and the prosecutor then showed other records like
DNA that showed that Jeff's had a baby with this girl.
So that sort of wrapped up the first the fifteen
year old part of the case. Then they had to
turn to the twelve year old and that's the aggravated
sexual assault charge. And they showed the photographs of the
marriage between Warren and Mary Anne, and then played an
audio recording.
Speaker 2 (18:53):
He apparently recorded a lot, and in this case.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Had a reding of himself having sex with Marianne and
saying her full name and her responding and the parents
are there and everything.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So that's played.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
The reaction in the courtroom I remember was it was
just like stunned.
Speaker 1 (19:16):
I think what of the people, the devout people in
the courtroom who were standing with him. Was that a
similar reaction or was it just sort of it doesn't
really matter.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
They left, They were not there during that when the
recording was played.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Was there a warning from the judge or something beforehand?
Speaker 3 (19:35):
No, anything that was really incriminating to Warren. I seem
to remember that they were not there. I assume that
Warren just told them today, don't come or something similar,
you know, But I don't think it would have changed
anything for them. Everybody knew what was going on.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
It's still hard for me to understand how that can
be justified in the church, how they justified it.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, I think it's similar to the way that anybody
will follow a leader who they feel it has.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Is the mouthpiece of God.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
I think if you have a certain background and you're
just told never to question that, even when it's really
harmful if you disagree. Obviously, there were people who did
leave of their own accord. Some weren't expelled, they'd left
and escaped. But a lot of times it's hard to
escape because you have to get not just yourself out,
but a bunch of kids or a sibling, and.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Then what are your resources? You don't have a job.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Well, now, there is at least one group that I
know of up around Short Creek for people who leave.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
So he is representing himself still, which is interesting because
I think the chord insists that you have somebody sitting
with you, so there's no problem with appeals and stuff.
But you can't go back and say, well, I changed
my mind and I didn't tell anybody, and I should
have had an a journey. Yeah, okay, so he had
somebody who probably was just keeping his mouth.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Shit. I'm assuming closing arguments, I think, or no, or sentencing.
Maybe it was sentencing when the lawyer came back on
the scene.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
What was Warren like in court?
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Would we describe him as this charismatic No, the opposite.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I think that was part of it.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
You always hear about how a leader like this has
a lot of charisma and it's very charming, and he was.
He had none of that going on, absolutely none.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Just to catch you up, I'm talking with Texas Monthly
magazine reporter Katie Vine about a remarkable story in Texas.
She covered the twenty thirteen trial of Warren Jeff's, the
president and prophet of the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Jeff's was charged with
the aggravated sexual assault of a twelve year old and
the sexual assault of a fifteen year old. Meanwhile, his
(22:09):
family and the faithful sit nearby.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I sat next to his brother Lyle in the courtroom.
I think it was during closing arguments. Warren just sort
of stood there for a long time, maybe thirty minutes,
maybe longer, and then said, I think I am at peace.
I turned to Lyle and I said, what's going on?
And he's gotten into trouble himself over the past couple
of years. But he just shrugged and then he fell asleep.
(22:33):
So you hata that was just sort of a mysterious
part of the experience. He had brought in a faithful
member and put him on the stand and asked if
he was happy. The guy looked to me sort of
scared to death because a lot of the questions that
Warren was asking could have gotten him into trouble the law.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Look, what was he asking?
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Things like getting close to asking questions about do you
have underage wives kind of thing, or.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
Have you married off?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
I mean, there were just so many instances where a
lot of us were kind of like, where is this going?
Like you really don't you still don't get it that
this is illegal, that this is a problem.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
What was he trying? I don't think that's English that
he was not. This was not a pole that people
could leave if they wanted to. People are happy.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
They like me, Yeah, this is good, and I have
the answers. I think he believes that he is the chosen.
There is video of him talking with one of his
followers and he tells the follower, I'm a fraud basically.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
So he has moments where I think he must know,
but then the rest.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Of the time he's just boosting himself up and saying like, yeah,
I'm the mouthpiece of God and I have all the answers,
and I should not question my judgment.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
And we saw that.
Speaker 3 (23:50):
I think even in the courtroom, I think he thought,
I mean, he hasn't had many challengers in his lifetime,
and so to stand in a courtroom.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
I think he thought that he still had this power.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
What I was going to ask was I'm actually surprised
that he even was willing to acknowledge the court in
any way, you know where. I think that there are
instances where people who are cult leaders who just kind
of say, this is not my realm. I don't mean
to listen to you. He obviously knew he had to
play the game.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think so.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
And I think whether the drama was intentional or not,
there was big drama in the way that he presented
the court, with the long periods of silence at some
times and then other times just talking for an hour
in these sort of halting phrases. Just bizarre, but it
kept the jury's attention, the judge's attention, and certainly the
(24:49):
rest of the court room. We were all just wondering,
does he know what this looks like? And I couldn't say.
I think he has been surrounded by his followers for
so long that he maybe doesn't have a firm grasp
on how other people perceive him. And I don't think
he was playing the game necessarily. I think he just
(25:10):
I don't think he gets it. I think probably any
narcissistic personality. And then we got the sentencing. Twas awful
because that's when you really got the full scope of
his misdeeds. You think you've heard so many awful things
up to this point that you figure that's maybe the
extent of it. But then his nephew took the stand
and said Jeff's raped him when he was five. One
(25:32):
woman testified that Jeff's molested her when she was seven,
and there were witnesses to other criminal activity. I remember
thinking back to when they first moved to Texas, and
folks thought that they were maybe like the Amish.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
I mean, what a joke.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
You know, he's a monster. So he got life in prison.
He's in East Texas. I followed up a little bit
on all this. My understanding from the investigator in short Creak,
Sam Brower, is that Lawren still calls the shots from prison.
He told me quote, he has broken down the family
structure of the FLDS in the past few years, so
that there are no more marriages in the FLDS. Husbands
(26:10):
and wives have been dissolved and children have caretakers. Now,
procreation takes place in a ritual by one of the
twelve high priests assigned to impregnate women. Husbands and wives
can shake hands, but for no more than three seconds.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
They've left Texas.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
Yeah, they've left Texas and are now scattered around the country.
I think a third Sam told me, had been kicked out.
But they're in just various sort of houses of hiding
around the US and maybe beyond.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I don't know, is there any hope that he'll get
out or is this a horror.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
He's getting Outdel's a hunger strike every once in a while,
but I don't think he's ever.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
What's his demand with the hunger strike.
Speaker 3 (26:50):
That the door's open and he be released right and
then he's there for life.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I wonder how he's received by other inmates. And did
you try to interview him or no? I'm assuming you did, sure,
but you're not going to get to him.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
No. I approached when he was on the bench outside
the courtroom.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It wasn't much of an interaction.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
In the array of stories that you've covered, I mean,
how long have you been doing this journey?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Three years?
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Wow?
Speaker 1 (27:20):
In the twenty three years, where does this story fit
in into your kind of portfolio? I mean, what did
you want people to know from your story? Because you
did several of them.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
I do sort of read anything that comes out about
them generally because I just remain interested in the people involved.
Every story's different, but this one had more unexpected twists
and turns. All I knew going in was that four
hundred some children had been taken from their parents and
(27:54):
then returned, and that's kind of all I started with.
So everything that came out with these dictations and other allegations,
the whole world that he had set up seemed too
horrible to be real to me, I think then you
had to acknowledge that it was real. I mean, there
were things that I was hearing in the beginning about
(28:16):
this temple bed that he wanted constructed, and I'd seen
his requirements for the temple bed on paper, how it
was to be built and what it was going to
be used for, and it was for impregnating his wives
so that there would sort of a quorum around him
at the time. And I just thought, this sounds like
(28:38):
some horror fantasy that someone is having, right. I was skeptical,
and then it turned out that that was absolutely true.
So I guess the lessons for me were, yes, be skeptical,
but I wasn't prepared for things that awful to be true.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
They seemed so far out.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
You know, you hear about other groups and which terrible
things have happened Waco. I guess this is sort of
what happens sometimes where you just think, well, that seems
like somebody's got a lot of time in their hands
and it's just sort of making things up, But well,
that's real.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Who were the most interesting people in the story?
Speaker 1 (29:14):
For you?
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Orn is pretty interesting as horrible as he is. When
you're watching history unfold, you know, when you're sitting in
a courtroom watching somebody. This was history in the making.
This was a crazy chapter in Texas history and in
FLDS history, so him Mary Anne. As brief as that
encounter was, it was surprising, although maybe I shouldn't have
(29:36):
been surprised. And her mother and caretaker, everybody was so
bubbly and happy to see me, and I just thought
that was so strange, or you know, we visited the
creamery where there was a young woman who was in
charge of making the cheese, and she was listening to
choral music over the speakers, and she just seemed so happy.
(29:58):
You know. I wanted to to be as fair to
them as possible, I think, and try to see it
through their eyes. I know that the lawyers who represented
the mothers definitely have a different perspective from a lot
of others who thought that the children needed to be
taken away permanently, and including the boys from families who
had shown that they had kicked out other sons. I
(30:20):
think the argument being what will prevent you from not
kicking out all the boys in your family and marrying
off the girls, and not just marrying them off, but
impregnating them. It would be like somebody deciding I want
my daughter to have my neighbors my seventy year old
neighbor's child, and so she will now do that with
my permission. There were people in the courtroom whom I
(30:43):
met who said, we all have different traditions. But to me,
I mean, just from a human the rights perspective, when
you are impregnating somebody, you are sort of chaining them
to that spot for sex is bad enough, But it
seems to me that the impregnation from my perspective, was
something that made it different.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Well, certainly traps them right. Did you have a sense
for what day to day life was in this situation, FLDS,
what day to day life for.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
A young woman might have been and the WIFC. Yes,
they worked. You mentioned a kream. What is the ranch
even like?
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Oh, it was fantastic, was beautiful, It was big. They
had a big orchard, They had beautiful gardens, giant wooden
homes that they had built. Their amazing with construction. There
was a big white temple. The day to day I
mean I think they they worked a lot. The young
boys too, did a lot of construction workout When you
(31:38):
were driving around. There would be a ten year old
driving a forklift kind of thing. They worked.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
Did they produce products? Like where money? What did money
come from? It was a lot of construction.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
They were very well known for construction in the area,
and they got a lot of construction jobs, which I
think bothered their competition because in some cases they were
basically using child labor, you know.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
Yeah, so they would get contracts. They never had state contracts,
I'm assuming, but they would just get contracts from other businesses. Wow, Okay,
did anybody ever trace funding for them? I'm assuming the
government did at some point.
Speaker 3 (32:15):
Utah because Utah has been kind of wrestling with them
longer than Texas did. They found a lot of issues
with food stamps scandal and other kind.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
Of tax issues. They were desperate. It could have been
like an al capone in Utah.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
I think they really nailed them that pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, Like financially took a big hit.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
So the day to day life you were saying that,
you know, everybody were and there was probably daily church.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
They looked incredibly healthy. Everybody talks about this. Why the
women who were taken into custody were considered underage because
they only eat organic food that they grew and made.
They live in this sort of country setting, and nobody's
really overweight because working. And you know, that was one
of the things that came up when the children were
taken away and they were given hot dogs or something
(33:06):
like that, or sloppy Joe's, and they would get like
terribly upset stomachs because they were used to eating food
that they'd made.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
Not process Wow. So that was a big adjustment.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
And then how long were that You might have said this,
but as a reminder of how long were the kids
out of custody before they were returned, I could look
it up because that's Siri or wherever was it foster
care that they would go into froster care and group homes.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
That must have just been such a culture shock for them.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
I can't even imagine. Yeah, especially the older ones.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Okay, so it looks like May twenty ninth, and they
were taken April, so a month April third, May twenty ninth,
so two months.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
It's a long time.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
It's a long time to have a different to be
in such a different culture. I mean, that's incredible. Yeah,
that must have been so traumatizing for the kids. So now,
do we have an idea of how many members are
still active members of FLDS.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
I mean, Sam Brower, the investigator, told me that a
third had been kicked out of the ten thousand. Of
those ten thousand, I don't know how many are still
at Short Creek and how many of the sort of
chosen are in houses of hiding around. So I don't
(34:25):
know what that breakdown is, but so maybe you.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
Know sixty five hundred or something like that.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
In stories like this as a reporter, is it difficult
to process the I could write murder stories all day long,
even husband's killing wives. But the child aspect of this
is very upsetting for me. Is that hard for you?
I mean, I don't remember if you have kids or not,
it'll be hard. Yeah, I mean is that as a mom?
(34:53):
Is that hard for you as a parent? Or do
you have to check that at the door because this
is a story you have to cover.
Speaker 3 (35:00):
There were definitely times when I could think of it
as a story. There were times in the courtroom when
audio evidence was being played, for example, or when witnesses
were discussing their own experiences with Warren. That was that
I did not have, let's say, a professional reaction.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
It was a very personal reaction to yourself or to
anybody else just sitting there. Yeah, it was very upsetting.
Speaker 1 (35:30):
I find it very hard to be unbiased or objective
in cases like that.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
I am glad that I got to see the YFC
ranch for that reason. I mean, to have their perspective
to try to understand, because I of course really did
want to try to understand where they're coming from. This
is not the first time a group like this has
landed in Texas, and it won't be the last time,
and so I think it's always important to try to
(35:56):
understand what's going on.
Speaker 2 (35:59):
But there's no doubt out it was. Yeah, there were
times when it was extremely upsetting.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Are there lessons learned from this? Do you think, either
for you or for just the country? I mean, I
think it's hard to know what's best sometimes. I think
we have for me, I think we have this sort
of set of standards that not everybody adheres to. And
how can you predict what's going to happen with someone
with a group and where they're going to head and
(36:28):
can we do preemptive strikes? And Yeah, I think it's
a it's a really difficult story to cover.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
And I think any.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Case where you have children religious liberties and some potential danger,
and I mean, I'm sure that there are circumstances with
you know, very sick children and certain religions that don't
want medical interference. Right, those are hard calls, but in
(36:55):
the end, usually the state besides, you can let this
child just die.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, but it's difficult because that wasn't necessarily the case here, right,
they had to return them. And I'm sure that must
have been difficult for so many of the people in
CPS or you know, these different agencies. That must have
been really heartbreaking to try to figure out the right
thing to do well.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
And I think part of it was trying to understand
the family unit. Usually you as a caseworker, you know,
you identify who are the parents and who are the children,
and I think in this situation it was much more complex.
Whether it was fabrication or true, probably a mix of both.
(37:39):
There were kids who were living with people who were
not their parents and saying these were my parents. I
think sometimes they were maybe covering for underage mothers. And overall,
I think that really freaked out the investigators who were
interviewing the children and wondering like, what is the family
(37:59):
unit struck here? I can't get a handle on it.
We've got to make a decision. The sun is going down.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Where's this kid going? If we leave?
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Now they are leaving and we'll never see these children again.
I think there was a lot in play there. The
perception at the time was that the state overstepped, and
now there are you know, in hindsight, there are plenty
of people who say that was one hundred percent the
right call because a million reasons, but.
Speaker 2 (38:28):
That taking the kids away was the right call.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah, And then you have you're supposed to work at
case by case, child by child, right, is this child
in danger?
Speaker 2 (38:35):
Is it not?
Speaker 3 (38:36):
In bulk? Of course, never do that, but take a
child by child and try to figure out each kid's situation.
Speaker 2 (38:43):
And they just didn't have time to do that.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
On the next episode of Wicked Words, all of them
were beaten around the head.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
It was as horrid a description as you can possibly imagine.
And they talked about blood in that bedroom, especially being
halfway up to the ceiling and covering everything. And then
there's at least one of them is killed in another room,
so there's a pool there.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
If you love historical true crime.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Please check out my books American Sherlock and Death In
the year this has been an exactly right tenfold more
Media Production Alexis and Morosi is our producer, Andrew Epan
is our sound designer. Ellen Middleton is a researcher for us.
Curtis Heath does the composition, Nick Toga did the artwork,
and Ilsa Brink designed the website. The executive producers are
Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and Daniel Kramer. Follow Wicked Words
(39:47):
on Instagram and Facebook at tenfold more Wicked and on
Twitter at tenfold more. If you are an advertiser interested
in advertising on our show, go to midroll dot com
slash ads and if you know of a historical true
crime story that could if you some attention from the
crew at tenfold more Wicked, email us at info at
Tenfoldmorewicked dot com. Listen, subscribe and leave us a review
(40:08):
on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Kate Winkler Dawson
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.