Prophet's Prey

In 1830, Joseph Smith formed

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

During his lifetime, God delivered

more than a hundred commandments to Joseph.

One of these commandments,

recorded by a scribe on July the 12th, 1843,

nearly destroyed Joseph's new religion in its infancy.

Plural marriage was part of what Joseph Smith called

the most holy and important doctrine

revealed to any man on Earth.

Each Mormon male would need at least three wives

to reach the celestial kingdom.

Joseph himself married approximately 40 women.

Thousands of believers followed Smith

on a forced migration across the eastern United States

in search of the American Zion,

eventually settling in Nauvoo, Illinois.

In 1844, Joseph Smith was indicted and jailed for treason.

The governor of Illinois

personally guaranteed his safety,

but a mob stormed the jailhouse

and shot Joseph in the back.

As he fell to his death, Joseph shouted,

"Oh, Lord, my God!"

Brigham Young assumed leadership of the church

and led 15,000 saints across the Rocky Mountains

to their new Zion,

a swath of wilderness that belonged to Mexico

but would soon be annexed to the United States

as Utah Territory.

Over the next 30 years, federal agents visited

almost every town in Utah to arrest polygamists.

Giving in to the increasing pressure from the government,

the LDS church renounced polygamy in 1890.

Disgruntled Mormons,

unwilling to abandon Joseph's most holy principle,

splintered off from the mainstream LDS church.

In 1986, a single family, the Jeffs family,

gained control of the Fundamentalist Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,

or the FLDS,

and Rulon Jeffs became the Prophet.

Rulon took more than 50 wives.

Merilyn Steed, his favorite wife,

gave birth to five sons.

Her second son, Warren Steed Jeffs,

was determined to become the Prophet himself.

Summer of 1999, I was on a climbing trip,

and I'd never driven across this really remote road.

It goes across southern Utah.

Blistering hot day.

There was a gas station,

mini mart at the side of the road,

nothing on this highway, little town off in the distance.

And I pulled in, and it was really strange.

The girl at the counter, when I went to pay for my Gatorade,

you know, was dressed like in this pioneer dress

and completely covered.

It was 103 degrees.

And I look around, and there's like, I don't know,

more than a dozen other girls dressed like that.

And I was at my car, about to leave,

and they walked away,

and they're being escorted by this old guy

with a long-sleeved shirt, button collar.

And, whoa, what's going on?

And then I paid more attention to this town,

and these huge buildings.

It's like a mile off the road, so I drove down there

and, man, these are big fuckin' houses.

And pretty soon there's a car behind me,

and wherever I go, he's right on my tail

and really aggressive.

So I got the hell out of there,

and he stayed with me all the way to the highway.

And I was pretty freaked out.

So I kept heading east towards Colorado,

and I saw a National Parks Service truck and a ranger,

and it was the closest thing to a cop I could find.

So I was kind of all freaked out and--

"Man, I was just chased,

and there's this weird, really agro--

And Colorado City."

And he's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah. No, it's just Colorado City.

That's the polygs.

You know, that's the biggest community of polygamists

in the United States."

My head was spinning.

And what I didn't know at the time

was I was just seeing the tip of the iceberg.

Things were way stranger and way creepier

than I ever could have imagined.

For your own children's sake,

raise them up as calves in the stall,

protected from evil influences.

Our young people

need to be surrounded by the celestial law

in their growing years,

to give them the advantage of loving God,

so that when they must face evil,

they already have a natural love for the truth.

Warren's mother, Merilyn,

was the sixth wife of my father.

She came to Father's family

through a family that's called the Steed family

that was taught to believe that their bloodline

was a royal bloodline

and that, through their bloodline,

an individual would be brought forth

that would become a great person

and become a leader of the world.

Merilyn was very protective of Warren.

Whenever he did something wrong,

she would blame other people

or bring up other people's faults

to try to cover up what he did wrong.

I got to know Warren when I was 19 years old.

We were thrown together in school.

We were thrown together in a lot of things.

His father promoted it.

Rulon saw that it was an advantage to have me around,

for both himself and for his sons.

I was basically vice principal

of Alta Academy for 19 years.

During those 19 years, I was also in security.

I put in the security system.

I knew when doors were opening and shutting.

I had pressure-sensitive mats in it.

I had cameras.

I had phone equipment

that recorded all incoming and outgoing phone calls.

Originally, Rulon Jeffs started the Alta Academy

for his own huge family.

He had scores and scores of children,

and pretty soon the word started getting out,

and it became a school for all the FLDS faithful

from both Salt Lake and Short Creek.

I first came here to visit the Alta Academy back in 2004.

I had to see the place where Warren got his start.

When Warren graduated from high school at 17,

he was placed in as a teacher in the Alta Academy.

Within a couple years,

he was made principal of the Alta Academy.

So now he was running the school.

The school was set up for just grades one through eight.

That's all Warren thought they needed.

And the curriculum was very specific.

It wasn't-- They didn't teach us regular U.S. history.

They taught us Priesthood history,

which is the history of the church, you know,

not Abraham Lincoln and George Washington

and all these things, you know?

It was about the history of the church and Joseph Smith

and all these things.

He was an expert at teaching the Priesthood history,

and that was the only history these people needed to know.

And once you get to the eighth grade,

you really don't need to go any further than that, really.

School is not your top priority.

It is your preparation

to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

That is the most important labor you have,

individually

and in your families.

We are here,

as the people of the prophet Joseph,

to live the law of celestial and plural marriage

and the holy United Order

so that we can be that favored people

the prophet Joseph can use in redeeming Zion.

The brainwashing that went on--

Even being little kids,

the brainwashing would start, you know.

You gotta start-- You gotta start the footsteps

of, you know, you're gonna be, you know, a father one day,

you're gonna be a husband one day,

and you need to be perfectly obedient to ev--

all of your teachers, and your father,

and all the church leaders.

And, you know, that is what they beat into us

every single day of our lives.

Anyone that stepped outside of the bounds

of what he set for everyone, we were targeted,

and that was me.

I was always one who stepped outside of the circle

and questioned things,

and he didn't like that one bit.

Warren's office is down here on the end.

It's not like it's some big, grandiose office.

In fact, you know, you have the valet from the roof

coming down in here and everything.

But this is where he wanted his office to be

because he could get up

and watch all the children on the playground

and know when somebody was doing something wrong.

He would bring--

Like, a lot of the young girls that I talked to,

he was like the dress code cop.

Warren pretty much made the dress code himself.

He did that as a means