Stolen Innocence (50 page)
Authors: Elissa Wall
As I sat in my living room in St. George watching the evening news that night, I realized that I had to overcome my fears and forge ahead. Having the charges announced publicly meant there was no turning back. At that moment, it became painfully real to me that I was going to have to again face Warren Jeffs.
The work of justice could not be destroyed; if so God would cease to be God.
—
BOOK OF MORMON
T
he very same day that criminal charges against Warren Jeffs were announced, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest. Prior attempts to locate the FLDS prophet in connection with other pending legal matters had failed, and I doubted he’d ever be caught. Being part of such a closeted community, he had thousands of people willing to help him and tons of money at his disposal. It was quite possible he could remain under the radar forever.
When a month passed and efforts to bring Warren to justice continued to yield no results, federal prosecutors filed a charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution, and Warren was officially listed as a fugitive from justice. That May, his name was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted list and a reward of $10,000 was offered for information leading to his arrest. With his face plastered on posters around the state, people in our circle began to suspect who had come forward against him, and Lamont and I both began to experience the pressure from what I’d done.
At the time, Lamont was working as a construction-site manager, and many of his subcontractors were active FLDS members. Allen was on some of his jobs.
“No friend of mine is going to fight Warren Jeffs,” one man said within earshot of Lamont. Lamont heard the message loud and clear. By June, men were walking off a job if Lamont was on it. I felt terrible about how he was being treated, but I wasn’t ready to pull out from my commitment.
Incidents like this created concern for our safety among my attorneys, Roger and his brother Greg, as well as the prosecutors in Washington County, and they reached out to me in early June. Agents from the Utah office of the FBI offered us protection. Brock and others thought it might be a good idea. A meeting was organized to discuss the possibility of Lamont and me entering the Federal Witness Protection Program, which would entail us literally disappearing from our lives, receiving new identities, and relocating.
“I’ve barely put my family back together,” I said, growing emotional. “I’m not going to leave them now.”
A long debate ensued and alternative plans were entertained. It was decided that we’d enter a less severe witness protection program, which included being relocated and going into hiding. None of us were comfortable with the arrangement. But I was six months pregnant with our second child, and Lamont and I feared for the safety of our small, growing family. There seemed to be little choice. I was distraught as we packed up our house that July for our big move north. We’d been living in a rental on a quiet cul-de-sac in Hurricane, and my friend Sarah and her husband, Terril, were now our neighbors. We’d grown close over the months and had begun to socialize with other families on our street. It was fun to be like “regular” people and do things like host barbecues in our backyard. That summer had marked another historic event for me. Ten of my family members had reunited for a Wall family camping trip. I had finally been able to reopen communication with my family. Justin, Jacob, Travis, Kassandra, Teressa, Caleb, Brad, Dad and Audrey, and one of their son, spent three days in the mountains learning to be a family again. All of us had experienced so much hurt and pain from the past. Still, we realized that no matter what it had taken for us to survive, there was one thing that could not be taken from us: our bond as a family.
Once in Salt Lake City, Lamont and I put our few worldly belongings into storage and headed for the motel where we’d be staying until appropriate housing could be secured. With fall rapidly approaching, I grew lonely and desperately missed my life in southern Utah. Lamont and I were to keep a low profile, and neither one of us could get work because we were in the process of getting new identities. We were living our days in the small hotel room, trying to make do, but with a one-and-a-half-year-old who’d just begun to walk and a baby on the way, it wasn’t easy.
As August drew to a close, Warren had been on the run from the criminal charges for more than four months, and authorities had been looking for him in connection with other legal matters for nearly a year. Already, several of his supporters had been arrested, and one, his brother Seth, was even thrown into jail for refusing to divulge his whereabouts. Seth had been picked up the previous October during a routine traffic stop in Colorado when police mistook him for Warren. Once they realized who he was, they demanded information about his brother’s whereabouts. When Seth refused to cooperate, he was placed under arrest. According to news accounts at the time, during a search of his vehicle, police found $140,000 in cash, prepaid phone cards, and a bag of letters addressed to the prophet. Authorities later informed us that one of those letters was from the police chief of Colorado City, asking Warren’s advice on how to handle the missing-persons report that Kassandra had filed on Mom and the girls back in February 2005.
It was three o’clock in the morning on August 29, 2006, when the phone in our hotel room startled me awake. It was Brock Belnap from the district attorney’s office in Washington County. “Warren’s been caught,” his soft voice informed me. “In Nevada.”
A shiver ran through my body. “Warren’s been caught,” I whispered to Lamont, hoping not to wake up my sleeping son.
Lamont and I spent most of the day in front of the TV transfixed by the news. A mix of fascination and trepidation filled me as I listened to the Nevada state trooper who’d taken Warren into custody being interviewed for the cameras. He said he’d pulled over the shiny red Cadillac Escalade because the vehicle’s temporary Colorado license tags were partially obscured and grew immediately suspicious when he saw how strangely the occupants were acting. Warren’s brother Isaac was at the wheel, and Warren was munching on a salad in the backseat, wearing a T-shirt and shorts. He was acting extremely nervous and wouldn’t make eye contact. The vein in his neck—the carotid artery—was visibly pulsing, which immediately tipped the officer off. In the way back of the truck sat Naomi Jeffs, the former wife of Rulon and current wife of Warren, whose convincing testimony to all of us had helped make Warren the prophet.
The trooper explained that what had given the men away was their conflicting stories when separated and questioned individually. Warren told the officer they were en route to Denver, while Isaac said they were heading for Utah. The officer radioed for backup, and later the FBI. He was incredulous when Warren provided him with the fictitious name of John Findlay, then produced a receipt for a pair of contact lenses that had been purchased in Florida as proof of his identity. As other officers arrived on the scene, one of them recognized Warren. Eventually, when members of the FBI arrived, Warren realized that the jig was up and admitted who he was.
In the red Cadillac, officials confiscated twenty-seven stacks of $100 bills worth $2,500 each, totaling $54,000, fifteen cell phones, walkie-talkies, two GPS units, a police scanner, a radar detector, laptop computers, several knives, some CDs, two female wigs, one blond and one brunette, women’s dresses, sunglasses, three iPods, three watches, a stack of credit cards, seven sets of keys, a photograph of Warren and Rulon, a Bible, and a Book of Mormon. Authorities also found a duffel bag stuffed with unopened envelopes and suspected they might contain even more cash.
It turned out that the envelopes were tithing letters from the FLDS people. They had been opened just enough to extract the money inside but not enough to have read the letters. All Warren wanted was their money; he didn’t even care enough to read their letters. We’d heard about one from a five-year-old boy, telling Warren that he and his mother only had the five dollars that he’d enclosed but he prayed it would be enough to send back his father, who had apparently lost the priesthood and had had his family taken away. It broke my heart to think of Warren so callously ignoring a young child’s plea, but it didn’t surprise me.
Attempts to question Warren proved futile. FBI agents reported that he was “cordial” but “uncooperative,” insisting that he was being subjected to “religious presecution.” As I sat on the edge of the bed in our small hotel room that day, isolated from my friends and family, I thought how ironic it was that Warren had been arrested and taken into custody in Nevada, the very state in which he’d committed his first crime against me.
T
he thought of Warren in the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas gave me a certain amount of pleasure. For nearly four years, I’d been held prisoner in a marriage that I didn’t want to a man I didn’t love. Just as he had decided my fate, now others would decide his.
A few days later they moved him from Nevada to Utah, and he learned that I was the one bringing criminal charges against him. It was his constitutional right to know. To ensure my continued safety, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office stepped up security, installing cameras outside our place of residence and at the law offices of Roger and Greg Hoole, where I was spending a good chunk of my time. All at once, I faced the notion that the people I grew up with were going to learn to hate me. I was going against their prophet and going against my mom’s wishes.
It had been nearly eighteen months since I’d last heard from my mother, and I knew that she might try to contact me in the coming days. Now that Warren knew my identity, there were concerns that church elders would encourage her to dissuade me from testifying against Warren. The forewarning came to fruition just seven days after Warren’s arrest. My sister Kassandra called to alert me that Mom had just contacted her; Kassandra was certain that I’d be next. “They know who you are, and they are going to be looking for you,” she cautioned.
I could see the concern on Roger’s face, but I was committed to not taking Mom’s calls. I was in the middle of a legal meeting at his office when my cell phone ring. The room fell silent as I pulled it from my purse and placed it on the conference table. We all knew who it was; Mom’s calls always showed up as “unknown caller.” Watching my cell vibrate on the conference table, I felt lured to answer it. But I fought the urge and let it go to voice mail.
Dialing in to retrieve the message, I pushed the speaker button and placed the phone on the table.
“Hey, Elissa,” Mom’s voice rang out. “This is your mother. I just wanted to call to say hello.” Listening was extremely painful, and my stomach twisted, but along with my anxiety was my anger at Mom for letting a year and a half go by without getting in touch. All eyes were upon me as I tried not to cry, but I was unable to hold back once the voice of my baby sister came on the line.
“Elissa, I love you and miss you,” Ally said. At that moment, I realized that there was no way that I could talk to them. I knew what Mom was going to say if I phoned her back. She’d use my heart against me, and I wasn’t sure I could stay that strong.
Over the next seven days Mom continued to test my willpower. It was difficult to ignore her repeated calls, and at the end of the week I allowed Roger to change my phone number. The timing of the calls was particularly awkward. That week, I was preparing for my wedding to Lamont. A bishop from the mainstream Mormon Church had agreed to marry us, and while it sounds bizarre, the only people who could attend the ceremony were members of law enforcement and lawyers.
I was very pregnant at the time and did my best to look the part of a blushing bride in a white blouse and skirt that Greg’s wife helped me put together. Brock and his associate Jerry Jaeger from the Washington County District Attorney’s Office drove up for the ceremony. I later learned that Brock and Jerry had spent the morning driving to jewelry stores with Lamont and Roger to find me a wedding ring. In the end the three lawyers helped Lamont pick out a ring that I absolutely loved. So many people had gone out of their way to make this a special day for us, but it was hard and lonely not to have family there. Still, there was something noteworthy about having all of these attorneys who were now my trusted friends at my wedding. I’d been taught to fear people like them my whole life, but in such a short time all that had changed.
I am not the prophet.
—
WARREN JEFFS
A
s November rolled around, the prospect of testifying at the preliminary hearing on the twenty-first loomed large on the horizon. Over the weeks I’d had at least five attorneys offering explanations of how the legal system worked, and what the defense attorneys would be allowed to do. I was nervous, and made more so by the fact that my due date was just two weeks away, and I feared I was going to go into labor in the middle of my testimony. It wasn’t just the typical anxiety and settling into a new system that most newlyweds experience. Lamont and I struggled with our son’s loneliness as he was forced to say good-bye to his friends from home. We also had doubts about how to proceed and wondered if we were making the right choice for our family and our future.
I was still having moments when I doubted whether I could go through with it at all. In early October, I’d learned that the sexual abuse I’d suffered at the hands of Allen hadn’t been the first time I’d been taken advantage of by a man. Fearing that in Warren’s lawyers’ efforts to dig up my past a dirty family secret would surface, Kassandra revealed that I had been molested when I was two years old by a young man who was a friend of the family and an FLDS member.
