The Eldorado Success newspaper

Three years ago this week, Eldoradoans awoke to find their town overrun with reporters and the courthouse square surrounded by satellite TV trucks. The headline on that week’s edition of The Eldorado Success asked the question that was on everyone’s mind, “Corporate Retreat, or Prophet’s Refuge?”

Since that day, locals have learned that the 1,756 acre ranch, now known worldwide as the YFZ Ranch, was never intended as a corporate hunting retreat, but instead was meant to house the most faithful of Prophet Warren Jeffs’ polygamous flock as they sought to flee the increasing glare of public scrutiny shined on them by a ravenous national media and anti-polygamy activists like Flora Jessop.

In fact, it was a phone call from Jessop, a woman who escaped from the polygamous lifestyle within the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS),  that sounded the alarm that Jeffs and his followers were on the move. She explained to Success publisher Randy Mankin on the evening of March 15, 2004, that the man who fronted the purchase of the YFZ Ranch, David Steed Allred, was actually a cousin and close lieutenant of Warren Jeffs. And, it was Jessop who came to Eldorado, with several TV news crews in tow, to bring the first national attention to the YFZ Ranch.

Warren Jeffs reportedly told his brother Nephi Jeffs that he is not the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, according to a story Tuesday in the Deseret Morning News.

In the story reporter Ben Winslow quotes a law enforcement source as saying, “He said he is the greatest of all sinners and, in so many words, worked his way to be ladder and prophet when he knew he wasn’t called of God to be a prophet.”

Jeffs’ conversation with his brother happened when the younger sibling visited the FLDS leader in the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, Utah, where he awaits trial on charges of Rape as an Accomplice.

Jail officials reportedly tape Jeffs’ visits and phone calls.

Attorney Richard Wright filed papers last Friday in a Nevada federal court in which his co-counsel, Walter Bugden, asked to postpone a hearing concerning evidence seized when Warren Jeffs was arrested during a traffic stop near Las Vegas on August 28th of last year.

The lawyer petitioned the court to stay any upcoming hearings while a Federal judge in Utah considers new issues related to the evidence.
The motion seeks to prohibit the release of “confidential and privileged religious records” under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Wright filed motions in Nevada shortly after Warren Jeffs was arrested asking for the return of evidence seized at the time of his arrest. Jeffs’ lawyers are now asking that a federal judge in Utah rule on the new emergency motion. If that happens, the earlier Nevada petition will probably be dismissed.

In part, the motion says, “The government’s retention of these sacred materials offends the most basic principles of the FLDS religion and violates Mr. Jeffs’ rights under the First Amendment and (Religious Freedom Restoration Act).”