In what they’re calling the final chapter in a 5-year, multimillion dollar battle against polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs, the Texas Attorney General’s Office has filed a 91-page affidavit in support of a search and seizure warrant for Jeffs’ Mormon fundamentalist compound, the Yearning for Zion Ranch. The affidavit states that members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, lead by Jeffs, purchased the 1,600-acre, $1.3 million property back in 2003 using laundered funds and intentionally “sought a rural location where the FLDS could operate a polygamist compound where the systemic sexual assault of children would be tolerated without interference from law enforcement authorities.”
In Jeffs’ “priesthood records,” cited in the affidavit, the leader instructs FLDS members “to keep this particular property so private and sacred and secret that not even the faithful who are driven will know of this place, because this is where the sacred records are…these places must be kept secret and sacred, and those who dwell there and here must be full of the Holy Spirit to keep the hedge of protection around us. The devil knows where we are, but through our faith the wicked and the righteous can be blinded and not find this place…Everyone here is under oath and covenant to keep this place, these places sacred and secret, and everyone here is under oath and covenant to live the fullness of the Holy United Order, the Celestial Law.”