CHAPTER 10
Rulon Jeffs was an imposing figure: tall, supremely confident, charismatic and commanding. “If we had ten men like you with us, we would turn this world upside down,” the old prophet John Y. Barlow had written to his protégé almost forty-five years earlier. With dark hair that he combed back in a suave pompadour, Rulon was also fastidious and vain, spending long periods before a mirror, re-knotting his tie over and over to get it just right before stepping outside of his home.
Following the death of Uncle Roy in 1986, Rulon was the sole authority over everything in the FLDS—the “Keyholder, the Prophet, and Mouthpiece of God.” In the FLDS, being recognized as the mouthpiece of God on earth automatically quelled any dissent, for who can argue with God? The blind obedience that was hammered daily into the membership, combined with his financial savvy, allowed Jeffs—unlike his followers—complete freedom to do as he wished. But as the British historian Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was a perfect description of Rulon Jeffs. Simmering just beneath that smooth surface, the prophet was a philanderer, a fraud, and a drunk.
He made sure that alcohol was usually nearby. Several of his grandchildren and people close to him told me that during family get-togethers, kids were warned, “Don’t touch Grandfather’s water!” Of course, that only heightened their curiosity and compelled them to sneak a sip. Most never went back for a second sampling. The ever-present “glass of water” was actually a tumbler of vodka. At dinners, he frequently would consume glasses of wine. As his secret drinking became more noticeable, the prophet sought to condone it by redefining a long-standing Mormon doctrine known as the Word of Wisdom. Rulon declared the Word was only a guide, and that drinking, in moderation, was acceptable. That allowed him to put his stamp of approval on his own alcoholism. I was surprised to discover that many FLDS members have followed his example, resulting in a culture of closet drunks who deceitfully hide their alcoholism from their neighbors.
Fueled by alcohol and unlimited power, Rulon Jeffs began to indulge his deviant urges with abandon. During his sermons, he would focus his attention on a pretty girl out in the congregation and later, while everyone filed out at the close of services, he would give her hand three gentle squeezes. That was the signal for her family to prepare this daughter for marriage to him. Eventually, he would have between fifty and sixty brides.
The families did not object. Most young girls considered it an honor to marry the prophet, and it meant added prestige for her mother and father. Truly fortunate families might have several daughters in Rulon’s stable. Any hesitancy on the part of the inductee or her family would be looked upon as questioning the will of God and would result in severe reprisals, not only by church leaders but also by neighbors, friends, and other members of the extended family.
But even the easy harvesting of new wives to do his bidding was not enough to tame Rulon Jeffs’s compulsions.
A ranking member of the church who eventually left the FLDS described for me what happened when he caught one of his daughters with a neighbor boy in the back of his van. What had been taking place was apparent by their lack of clothing. The distraught father believed that in order to confess and repent, the youngsters should seek the counsel of the prophet. “Rulon first spoke with my daughter, alone, then summoned the young man to hear his version of the transgression,” the father recounted to me. “I had never imagined him using such language, graphically referring to body parts and sex acts unnecessarily by their common names and trying to extract all of the sordid details, over and over again.” The flustered parent listened in astonishment as Rulon quizzed the children, asking for explicit details about sexual positions and intimacies that the parent himself didn’t even know existed, having been raised with the church’s strict teaching that sexual contact was solely for the purpose of procreation. As the interview progressed, Rulon became more and more excited, “as if he was on drugs or something,” and had a wild look in his eyes, “like he was on a high.” The father’s sadness over his daughter’s sexual transgression turned to disgust at the lewd interrogation, and his own faith wavered. He began exploring thoughts of leaving the church rather than follow such a perverted prophet.
No matter what Rulon did, he was able to rationalize his disturbing behavior to his obedient followers; it was he who was really the one suffering—sacrificing himself before God in order to protect and prepare them for the imminent day when the world would end. They could either be lifted up with the righteous or burn with the wicked. “We are living in that great and dreadful day, the great day of the Lord when all the prophecies will be fulfilled concerning the last days, the dreadful day because of the judgments that must come, and will come to try our people,” he would bellow, looking straight into their fearful hearts. “They are coming upon the House of God first.” Such prophecies of doom often poured from “God’s mouthpiece.”
In addition to performing hundreds of marriages, Rulon started reshuffling FLDS families. He would take wives from men whom he deemed unworthy and place them instead with men he decided had the ability to lead new concubines to the celestial kingdom. He performed this pimping and pandering for his favorites without fear or hesitation. He did not ask the people involved what they thought. Even Warren was amazed. “We had never seen anything like it,” he said.
A shift in the center of power was taking place within the FLDS. Although people not born into the faith were never welcome, the church had grown substantially over the years through the multiple wives who kept producing children. In Salt Lake City, when the flock became too numerous to continue meeting in Rulon’s living room, they met in the more spacious rooms of the Alta Academy.
Although the Jeffses remained in Salt Lake City, the population was growing even faster down in Short Creek, and the faithful there built the LeRoy S. Johnson Meeting House, a sparkling structure of 42,000 square feet with an ornate pulpit area and an organ to supply the music for up to four thousand people.
The splinter group finally took a name in 1991, when leaders of the First Ward congregation founded a corporation, and chose a name that virtually parroted that of the mainstream Mormon Church, creating a great deal of confusion that continues to this day.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the mainstream LDS Church—has nothing to do with the polygamous sect. Nevertheless, the breakaway group made some minor changes to the name and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the FLDS, was born.
In many other religions that have broken from an established church, such as when Martin Luther led his followers away from Catholicism, the new movement attempts to separate itself from original ideology or doctrine. However, the ragtag group of excommunicated fundamentalists in Short Creek did just the opposite. The adherents to polygamy considered themselves to be living according to a higher spiritual calling than the regular Mormon faith. They claimed the mother church had drifted from its true purpose, leaving the FLDS as the true Mormons. At one end of the spectrum, the fundamentalists try to convince people that they are Mormons, thus riding the coattails of LDS legitimacy. At the same time, they denounce the mainstream church as being filled with heretics. On any given day, whether they claim to be true Mormons or Mormon-haters depends upon what agenda they happen to be promoting at the time.
By the time of Rulon’s ascension in 1986, the FLDS was firmly under one-man rule. The advisory council created in the formative years to put checks and balances on the actions of the president had been reduced to a “First Presidency” made up of the president (Rulon) and his first and second counselors, Parley J. Harker and Fred Jessop. The two ancient men held no real power.
Unofficially and behind the scenes, Rulon’s son Warren had become his father’s closest advisor, although he held no office within the church. He was merely the school principal in Salt Lake City, but he held the confidence of the prophet.
Others spoke. Warren listened. He knew the people, the inside workings of the church, and could spout scripture and give trainings with the best of them. He carefully followed his father’s path and step-by-step became the power behind the throne while his father savored the good life.
Rulon’s appetites were insatiable. He had dozens of women, indulged freely in alcohol, and he was also a glutton, making almost daily trips to the home of his friend Ron Rohbock, who laid out feasts of rich foods accompanied by overflowing glasses of homemade wine from Rohbock’s excellent vineyards. The aging patriarch began to put on weight, and by the time he realized his health was in trouble, it was already too late.
In 1997, Uncle Rulon suffered a series of minor strokes, and the following year, he was incapacitated by a major one. That same year, First Counselor Parley Harker died, and Warren readily stepped into that vacated leadership position. With his father crippled, Harker dead, and Second Counselor Fred Jessop old and compliant, Warren grabbed the reins. Many members who lived down in the Crick, primarily in the large Barlow clan, grumbled about this usurpation of power, but none stepped up to contest Rulon’s favored son up in Salt Lake City.
After all, the prophet wasn’t dead, so he was still the prophet. They remembered how Uncle Roy had been laid low for years by illness, only to return to power. Rulon might recover.
It took only about a month before Warren publicly flexed his new muscle by announcing with cold certainty, “My father has the mental capacity of a child. I am now my father’s mouthpiece.”
Although his statement carried no legal standing within the church, it served to cap an audacious coup that could only have worked among a subservient people trained in total obedience.
Since everyone in the faith already acknowledged that Rulon was “God’s mouthpiece on earth,” and Warren was now his father’s mouthpiece, sitting on his bed and talking with him daily, the implication was clear: God was now communicating directly with Warren through the broken vessel that was Rulon.
The great Uncle Roy had declared that, “Only one man at a time holds the keys and power of the sealing power, and those who act during his administration are only acting under a delegated authority.” That provided Warren with plenty of cover to exert control without actually having to fight for leadership. After all, he was only helping his ailing, revered father. He remained polite and respectful in his dealings, and still did what he wanted, bulldozing his way through all obstacles by claiming that “Father” was still calling the shots. He actually took over Rulon’s big desk, leaving no question about who was really in charge.
Rulon required constant care, and the handling of those personal needs was up to his doctors and his many wives. Warren decreed that seclusion was necessary to protect his father from the troubles and burdens of daily life and leadership. He had become an invalid confined to his bed, with great trouble articulating words, and then dementia set in due to brain damage caused by the stroke. Warren would translate for him.
From Rulon’s bedroom, the first counselor issued a series of dire pronouncements that guaranteed the followers would look to him for guidance: The world was coming to an end!
God would lift up the FLDS faithful, scour the world with fire, and then replace the chosen ones back down safely in the holy city of Zion, Warren declared. The date was set for September 1998, but when that came and went without incident, it was reset for October, which was another failure. A new forecast naming December as the time of reckoning also did not work out, but that did not stop Warren from continuing the drumbeat of doom, insisting the predictions came from his father. With the FLDS penchant for anniversaries, another, more certain end-of-the-world date was set for June 12, 1999, which would mark the 111th birthday of the late Uncle Roy.
It was a big day in Short Creek, and at dawn, thousands of the faithful crowded into the meeting house for a special service. After a prayer circle, they trekked over to Cottonwood Park. All day long they waited, along with the groceries that were to sustain them during the unknown temporary time that they would be up in heaven. Nothing happened. Warren said his father was disappointed that the believers still were not strong enough in their faith to deserve this blessing.
There was hope, however, because God was ready to grant them yet another chance. The close of the twentieth century was at hand, so they had been given another six months to sort out their behavior. If they strengthened their beliefs, the new millennium could really be the end of the planet, spelling death and destruction for everyone who was not a member in good standing of the FLDS church. This series of cataclysmic pronouncements was successful in one sense, however: it distracted the faithful from anything as insignificant as worrying about the ambitious Warren. They apparently never saw the pattern.