Cultish: Interview w/ Warren Jeffs' 65th Wife

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00:05

Are you Warren Jeffs? Yes. All right. Mr. Jeffs, you're being held as a fugitive, and there are two fugitive holds for you, one from Utah, one from Arizona.

00:16

I'm going to explain to you very quickly what your rights are in regards to being a fugitive from justice. Yes. Okay.

00:22

What would you like to do? You want to waive your rights in regards to extradition and go back as quickly as they can come pick you up?

00:36

Yes. All right. All right. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the

00:42

Kingdom of the Cults. My name is Jeremiah Roberts. I am one of the co -hosts here. I am here with Andrew, super sleuth

00:48

Andrew, the super sleuth of the show. How are you, man? I'm doing well, man. Thank you. I hope you're doing well as well.

00:54

So, as always, I say I'm super psyched, super excited for this episode, particularly because I am of the opinion that there are four horsemen of the last 100 years, as far as notorious cult leaders go.

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Jim Jones, Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Warren Jeffs.

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Those are the people, when you think of cult, that's what comes to mind. When you play, when you, when you ever, you probably twice a year,

01:26

Time Life Magazine, or one of those magazines you'll see on the grocery shelf, they'll have some magazine about cults, and usually it's those four that you see.

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It's actually one of our logos on Cultish. I think on the banner cover for our Facebook page, we have those four cult leaders.

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So, this is, we are here with Brielle Decker. How are you?

01:46

I'm doing good. And so, we are here today really to be flies in the wall.

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You are, you grew up in the FLDS, and you were, we talked a little bit on the phone, you were married to Warren Jeffs at the age of 18, and you were wife number 65.

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Yes. Okay. I'm going to be a fly on the wall. Go ahead. The floor is yours. Okay.

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So, my parents, when they, when they were 18, they went through the line.

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In our churches then, they believe that God, the leader, there's one man that holds the keys of the priesthood that is the leader of the church.

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And after church, we would walk, everybody in the whole congregation would walk through and shake his hand. And when my father went through, this is a story they told me, when he went through, they pulled him aside.

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And then my mother, they pulled her aside. And then they told them they were going to get married.

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And they had only heard of each other. They had never met. Oh, wow. And so, my point is, is that appointed marriage is a big deal in the

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FLDS, which is the group that I was raised in and that Warren Jess now leads from prison.

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So, I was a product of appointed marriage. And I remember going to school in Alta Academy where Warren Jess was the principal.

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He started being, he started that, I mean, he was 17 when they asked him to be the principal of that school.

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And he was the only principal ever of Alta Academy. I, when

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I started in first grade, his first wife was my teacher. And later she, yeah.

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Anyway, I don't want to give away everything. So, I remember going to class every morning.

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We had to be there by eight o 'clock in the morning. And we listened to church doctrine, Warren Jess interpretations, because he was a principal.

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Right. And one of the things that he taught us very in detail was that we had a choice.

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We all have a choice. At the wedding, we can say yes or no. And I remember really young questioning, but I didn't dare tell anybody that I questioned.

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Just silently in my mind, I just remember thinking, if they've never heard of each other, how do they know if they should say yes or no?

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And then I had, when I was six years old, so it was shortly before I, I think it was during this first year.

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First, when I was in first grade, like that, it was around six and seven.

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My oldest brother and my oldest sister got married in an arranged marriage. And my oldest brother had a wife that was severely diagnosed with a mental illness that she wouldn't take care of.

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And it had really bad consequences for the children later and so many things. And as I grew up from seven to eight years old,

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I remember questioning even more. You know, if it's not choice because you've never heard of each other, then it must be trust.

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But I don't really trust these guys because I don't see any reason why my brother should have gone through that. And I remember thinking that in my mind.

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I'm like, I don't really trust them because they say that, you know, we can, there's always an excuse of not being good enough.

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We need to atone for our sins somehow. But I didn't think that applied to my brother.

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Like he didn't deserve that. It was his first wife. He always didn't really feel like he had hope of qualifying for more because he couldn't even perfect what he had.

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And you have to have at least three in the FLDS to be able to make it into the highest degree of glory in the celestial kingdom.

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But you have to qualify. It's like a, and it was almost impossible, especially for the boys because they were competition,

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I believe. They never say that, but they usually said they were priesthood bearers. So they had every right to have a harder.

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They were the ones that made the rules in the house. And the ladies were like just supposed to keep sweet.

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Everybody's supposed to keep sweet, but the ladies for sure had to keep sweet because they didn't get to make any decisions.

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So who appointed these marriages? Like the leader, the leader had full say.

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But when I was really young, I don't really know what age then.

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I think I was a year old when Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs' father became the leader. And so I don't remember when that happened.

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And then he had a stroke like when I was really young. So all I remember of Rulon Jeffs was that he was handicapped kind of.

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And Warren Jeffs was the spokesman and the one that made things happen through him kind of.

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You know, we used his name and stuff. So he was speaking on his behalf. Yeah.

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He spoke a lot on his behalf and took care of him. And he actually taught us in our school, because he had in -depth training on history, which was church history.

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We never had world history in our schools. And in this church history lesson, he went over how the regular

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LDS church split, how the split happened.

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And he described it as how, so there was three leaders that were,

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Joseph Smith was the start, the first one. Brigham Young was the next and then John Taylor. And those are still leaders of the

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LDS mainstream church. And then he claimed that there was a secret meeting that John Taylor had called the eight hour meeting, that he set apart eight people to carry on polygamy no matter what.

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And then he passed away without telling everybody about the meeting. And so there was less the, in the past, like before him, the next leader,

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Brigham Young was after Joseph Smith. He was the highest, in the highest position, appointed position in the church at the time.

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So he kind of got the authority. And this is how Warren just described it. He said Wilford Woodruff was in that position.

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And so everybody voted him in. The church members decided to vote him in. And he said that that was all done wrong because God chooses who the leader really is, whose heart is right.

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And so that's kind of how he also usurped authority to become the leader is because he said,

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God chose. You don't get any say in it. God just decides. And then you either follow or you don't.

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Well, that kind of reminds me of like the arranged marriages you're talking about. Like he says, you have a choice, but really you don't. Because if you don't choose what the prophet says, now you're disobeying

08:57

God. Right. In a sense. Right. The whole time it was like what we were allowed to hear was only what the church allowed us to hear.

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And they taught us that if we heard news or media or anything from a different source, it was tainted with lies.

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And, you know, the devil will tell a hundred truths to slip in one lie. So we couldn't have television after, like,

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I was nine years old when that got outlawed. We couldn't have any movies of any kind. We couldn't have...

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Wouldn't they call it Gentile? He would always call this is like the Gentile media or Gentile this, Gentile that.

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Or apostates, even like on the news and stuff. He didn't want people hearing outside sources at all.

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He had already told us that music wasn't okay before I was...

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I don't even remember when that happened. I think it was before I was born. Because I don't ever remember listening to outside music.

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Like, unless somebody was just like breaking the rules. Like, I knew they were breaking the rules when I heard the beat and, you know, different things.

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Yeah. And then television was outlawed when I was about nine. And then internet was outlawed when

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I... We called it outlawed. When I was in Warren Jeff's family and there was something else.

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I can't remember the other thing. It will come to me. But, yeah, all of those things.

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So books, books too. He got to where they all had to be handmade. They couldn't have pictures that weren't taken by you and stuff like that.

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And the music was all made by the church too. We had music. It was just piano.

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They couldn't have a drum or anything in it. I've actually listened to some of Warren Jeff's, him singing with the piano.

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So I kind of know just a little bit. Yeah. I wish I heard that. I never heard that. Yeah, I think it was one of the videos you sent me.

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But, yeah, there's definitely... I can only imagine what it must be like. And, again,

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I'm a movie connoisseur. But there's an M. Night Shyamalan movie that came out. It was back in 2004,

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The Village. And the whole aspect is there's this... And you haven't seen it by now. I'm sorry. Spoiler. You should have seen it.

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It came out in 2004. I think I might have saw The Village. But, yeah. I think so. You see these people in the whole movie.

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You think you're living in the 1800s. And what you find out, it was actually this isolated community.

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And even above where they were, there was a no -fly zone. So there were no planes flying over. So people literally thought they lived in the 1800s.

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And it wasn't until you find out at the end of the movie... No, it's not the case. They're living in the modern day.

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There's this whole... Whatever the agenda was. But, yeah, I just... Real quickly,

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I just remember... As much as I can remember seeing the news when this happened...

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You can go back in the story. But just seeing people that looked at... Who were dressed... And they looked like something... Like a set piece out of Little House on the

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Prairie. Like a pioneer. Yeah. And even using the language outlaw. And I love it, too.

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I grew up loving Westerns, too. That's definitely like 1800s Western language. But I love it.

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But, anyways, go ahead. Yeah, our language is a lot different. Even the interpretations that the

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Bible has... Like grace in the Mormon church means mercy.

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And grace in the Bible is not mercy at all. So I've learned some of the different interpretations of the same word.

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That's just... It intensified to a major extreme in warring dress group.

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That not everybody is aware of. But, yeah, they are so extreme in every way.

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So, like... Anyway, I'll keep going with the story. No, go for it. So, anyway,

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I went to school. I learned about constant indoctrination.

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Like every day. Every day. And one of the things he taught us was about when our turn came for our arranged marriage.

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We could never date. We could never even... They would separate the girls and boys in, like, fourth grade.

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If we even thought a bad thought, then we had to confess it.

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We were taught to confess or tattle on people if they told you instead of the leader.

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And it was, like, a punishable sin that you could actually be sent away, lose your family and everything forever.

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Oh, wow. Yeah. It was, like, really one of the... It was, like, almost like...

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There's a verse in the Doctrine and Covenants, I think, that talks about...

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I don't know if it's in the Bible. But it talks about if you even think of thought about somebody else, that isn't good.

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Right. Then it's somehow a punishment.

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Anyway, so they applied everything to the extreme. Yeah. And even children, like...

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Because at eight years old, even in the Mormon church, they believe that you get baptized at eight years old.

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And in their interpretation of baptism, it's not the same as Christianity. Their interpretation of baptism is that once they are baptized, then

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Jesus stops atoning for them and they have to earn it after that. And I didn't know that until after I was baptized, of course.

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Like, my parents sit me down and tell me, OK, now you get to earn it. And I would have never done it. I really understood.

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But I was young, too. Right. So that was a big deal at eight years old.

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So once you turned eight and you were baptized and Jesus stops atoning for you, if you do something that isn't right or in any way, then there's consequences.

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And they say you should start teaching your children really young so that by the time they're eight, they have some idea what the consequences are.

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And what are they? So, like, if it's a simple thing, like, I mean, if it's just like they stole something or something, then it would be like maybe sit on the chair, you know, for 15 minutes or, you know, they always have consequences.

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If it's something like. Like I've even heard of eight year olds being dropped off on the side of the road.

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Wow. So do these consequences as opposed to put them in favor with God, like it's a form of atonement for doing something wrong in a sense?

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It's it's it's to teach them that it's it's better to be good than it is to be bad.

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OK. So they say that if you don't understand there's a

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Doctrine and Covenants quote that says if you don't understand the scriptures by the time you're eight years old, which is really young.

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Yeah. Then the sin goes on the head of the parent. So that's why the parents are so determined to baptize their kids.

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Wow. They don't want to carry that weight. Wow. That's heavy. That's too heavy. Eight year old.

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Yeah, that's too heavy. It's impossible. So I want to hear something like take take me back to your childhood. Like, was there ever a time where the modern world like just got thrown into your to your world?

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Like, say, like there's a car driving through your town with the windows rolled down and there's like music blasting that you've never heard before.

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Like, is there anything like that that happened? Like, where did you grow up? I grew up in Salt Lake. So I was in the

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FLDS. Gotcha. I was born around. The world was all around. OK, OK. We just had pine trees.

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We had almost an acre lot. And we had pine trees all around the border. And there was we always saw people and stuff in my world.

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But I did notice like later when Warren Jeffs got really strict, the children didn't have that luxury.

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And when the raid happened in Texas, there was seven year olds. I'd never seen somebody with a different color skin like they didn't even know they existed.

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And they were really traumatized. Yeah. They're taught that they're they're they're bad. Essentially, people have.

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Yeah. With different color skin. He would hide things from him. You know, like they had never been outside of the walls of the city.

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So of his little compound thing. So they they were they actually thought they were gorillas.

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Like, wow. Yeah, it was pretty sad. When it came to your educate, especially with your upbringing, a lot of times cult members will especially growing up.

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You're isolated from the outside world. But then as far as like your education goes and learning skill sets, whatever they are, for how to actually deal with the world.

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A lot of times that's not as well, because typically you might be doing some sort of like labor or work or things like that.

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There's a lot of times where that's affected people, for example, who grew up in Scientology, where they're going through the

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Scientology learning courses. And they're part of maybe a lot of times they're part their parents are part of the C org. And so they're in some sub school.

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And when something happens, a lot of them have left. They end up just being sort of thrown into this world that they're just not prepared for.

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Because all they've ever known is this. As far as education goes, maybe you could talk about that generally.

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And then I talk about yourself as a girl growing up in the FLDS. What was that like? Yeah. So they tried to scare us away from the truth.

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Now I know that. I know that when I was being raised in there and all I could hear was what they had to say.

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But now that I know the difference and I've experienced the difference, I know that they had a lot of tools and tactics to blindside us to do what they wanted us to do instead of what was logical or what might actually be better.

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So an example of that is like one of my sister wives had a really sad story one day.

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So she grew up in a ranch with just her brother and sisters. Her family was the only people there.

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She knew the church. She was in the church her whole life. She knew people. But she didn't daily interact with people other than her family.

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So it's like a really prairie. And then she marries Warren Jeffs later.

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And she had a hard time because he corrected her father. And she gets up one day and he told her to tell us this story about how he called.

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She was having a hard time with it for like a month. She wouldn't talk to him when he called her. And so he punished her.

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And what he did is he called the caretaker, the person who was watching the household, buying the groceries and everything.

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She was struggling. He had a house in hiding that she was living in. He had the caretaker go and buy some clothes that were like gentile clothes.

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And told her to like put them on, wear them. And he drove her all the way to Vegas.

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And it was the middle of the night, like 10 o 'clock at night she said. They gave her one little phone and told her to walk down the street in the middle of the dark in Vegas.

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And watch. He said, I want you, Warren Jeffs told her, I want you, because he talked to her on the phone. And he's like, I want you to stare at all of the graffiti and all the stuff.

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And just see what you will be like if you don't stay faithful to the church. Oh my goodness, he's terrifying her.

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And she's telling us the story. So it's putting all of us into like this contrast shock.

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He's vicariously speaking to you through her. It's a traumatic experience that he put her through. Yeah. Wow.

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And that was life -threatening. In Vegas, like in the middle of the dark, all alone.

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And so she walked down the street and she kept crying. She said she was crying and crying. And then he would call every once in a while.

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And she would say, is it over? Is it over? And he's like, no. And he would just hang up.

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It was really cruel. And in the end, he didn't let it be over for like a whole other day.

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He sent her to a hotel and told her to watch TV. It's not how the world is at all.

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And so the way that they portray it is not accurate.

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There's a lot of good people in this world. I know that now. But they do tell you it's a scary, dangerous, bad place.

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And another thing about the Bible, they don't explain so much detail about how love versus works is.

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And that's a really big deal. Because if you really knew the

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Bible, there's so many solutions. Right. But they hide it all from you.

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And they know that they're hiding it from you. And they get to study.

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They have leaders who are appointed to study what's really going on out in the world.

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And stuff like that. Just so they can protect themselves and keep themselves in check.

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But not everybody is allowed to do that. So, yeah, they know.

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Yeah, of course. There's like three different options if you're someone claiming to be a prophet. It's either that you're mentally disturbed thinking that you're talking to God.

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Or that you're talking to maybe a spirit that's an evil spirit. Could be deceiving you.

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Or the third option is that you know that you're not a prophet. And you're doing these things to control and manipulate people.

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And you get pleasure from it. That's terrifying. Yeah, he was...

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He did like to... It seemed like he liked taking hope away from people really slowly and painfully.

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And there's so many people that suffer from that, you know. It's devastating, the trauma.

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He would find out what you liked and then just use it against you. Another thing too, because you talked about being put on the outside of the road.

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And we talked on the phone. This is more a different vantage point. But this is something that was a prominent story that came up with Warren Jeffs.

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Is that there were boys who, from my understanding, would continue to show up in Salt Lake.

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Or in other places in Utah. Because they had been kicked out. Because from my understanding, Jeff saw them as they get older as competition.

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And he didn't like that. And so a lot of them would get just kicked out.

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Because they violated some rule for a particular reason. That was always vague and arbitrary. It was just, this is how it is.

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On the profit, you've sinned. You're now a Gentile. You're out. And these people were illiterate.

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And with barely any education at all. Yeah, so like I was telling you how the boys had the rules that were stricter.

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It was really easy to make them so strict that they couldn't do it. I mean, that happened so much.

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People don't even realize as often as it happened. And it started to get to be parents.

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Especially later when Warren Jeffs became the leader. And he didn't like teaching parents because they have the option to leave.

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He wanted to, and he's a pedophile too. So he likes children. And also he traps them in until they're 18.

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Like he had the parents sign away their rights to the church.

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For the children saying everything belongs to God. Sign this paper. It's legal. And it's not legal.

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But the parents don't always know that. And so they sign their children over to the church.

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And then he calls them up and tells them, you aren't worthy of your kids. You need to go and repent. Go to a house far away and send me money.

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And they do it because they just want to someday see their kids again. As far as the theology,

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I want to just get your thoughts on something. Because this is going to go on a couple different avenues. At least what

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I'm going to try and do is that polygamy. Initially that was something that was started by Joseph.

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And then Brigham really kind of brought that to the forefront. And then it wasn't until where the

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Mormon church was threatened to be exiled into Utah. When they then had a revelation to get rid of polygamy.

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But section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants has never been removed from the LDS scripture. It's still part of the canon.

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So I've always seen there's this conflict between what's being said.

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And even the argument that subsects of the current Mormon church.

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Could make the argument against them. That they're the ones who have apostatized. And that we're the ones who need to restore it.

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Would people in the FLDS, they believe in polygamy. That was a central aspect of their doctrine.

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Or of the gospel of Jesus Christ. But would they also talk about the current

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Mormon church? That they were an apostate? What's your perspective on that from their vantage point?

26:27

So actually Warren Jeffs, I only know Warren Jeffs' interpretations really. Because like I said, he ruled his father.

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And then he was the one that became the leader next. And he actually compiled all the books of all the leaders in the

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FLDS. So even if somebody else said it, he chose if it got to be put in the book. So what

26:48

I would say about Warren Jeffs' interpretation of the LDS church is. His father actually was a convert from the

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Mormon church. But he said when, because they're really racist.

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When the Mormon church updated their doctrine and got away with racism.

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Then that was when they apostatized. So it was Spencer W. Kimball who got the revelation.

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And that's when Rulon Jeffs left? That was Warren Jeffs' father, right? No, Rulon had already been a convert for years.

27:23

I don't know when he became a convert. But I think it was before that. Okay. I don't know any of the groups, branches off of the

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LDS church that aren't racist. All of them pretty much have their twist on racism.

27:47

On the fence sitters? Yeah. It's crazy. I have some ideas because of what

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I went through. But it's kind of far -fetched. I'm going to put it in my book because I need the sequencing.

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To be able to explain some of the concepts and stuff. There's certain things that if you saw how the indoctrination got so intense.

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It's easier to understand. For sure. In my story, when

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I went to school. I was just constantly being indoctrinated with what they wanted me to hear.

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I remember being told about when our turn came to be married.

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There would be three different routes. The leader would go to be able to decide who your partner was.

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One of them was he would just tell you. Your partner so -and -so. What happened to my parents? He told us this.

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He had a whole book on polygamy called The Enlightened Truth that he wrote. Jeff's did.

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Warren Jeff's, yeah. There was another route that he would ask you if you had an impression from God.

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Yourself. Of who you were supposed to marry. If you lie, then there's a consequence.

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The other route was. The last route was. If he says you need to go away.

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Pray. Figure out. Come back to me and ask me if you think so -and -so is supposed to be your partner.

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Then I'll tell you yes or no. All of them, he has the ultimate say. As a child,

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I remember I would get premonitions.

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I don't know if you guys know. I don't know who believes in premonitions. I know that's what it's called.

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When I would dream, I would dream that the room was darkly lit.

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That Warren Jeff's would turn to me and he'd say. Do you have an impression of who you're supposed to marry?

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I remember waking up every time at that point. I would just wake up out of a dead sleep. Even as a little girl.

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I got teased my entire life. In a situation where you don't have any choice.

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You're not dating. It's a different kind of tease. Everybody's looking at the leader to decide what he's acting like.

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My whole life, I was teased about marrying Warren Jeff's. I was terrified of that.

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I didn't want to marry Warren Jeff's because I didn't have the status.

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I didn't have the life experiences that would help me advance in his family. Higher. Would there be different as many wives as he had?

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There would be certain wives that would obviously have favor or the other. I think

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Rachel Jeff's talked about this in her book. That within that whole community there is very difficult.

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Even if you were sort of the favorite. Because all the other wives, there'd be jealousy. There'd be a lot of competition.

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That would be the case? Yes. With me, I wasn't the favorite. I knew I never would be.

31:32

I would be more of a servant. Wow. That didn't sound very exciting to me. I was more terrified.

31:39

I remember as a teenager, I had a best friend who was the favorite family.

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She was talking one day about Warren Jeff's. I said, I get teased all the time about marrying Warren Jeff's. She says, if I did,

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I would love that. I remember looking at her like, you would? I wouldn't love that.

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Then I realized the difference. She was in the favorite family. She probably would be advanced.

32:03

Wow. In my situation, I knew I would be more of a servant. It's like a caste society in a sense.

32:11

People have their roles. We all had roles. It was even harder in his family.

32:18

Now that I look back and I know emotion and stuff now. I had to keep sweet no matter what in there.

32:23

I could never express anything. I could never do anything like this. Now that I recognize,

32:31

I remember feeling. I just didn't identify it at the time. I didn't struggle as hard as most of them because I didn't love

32:40

Warren Jeff's at all. I was like, you guys can have him. I went overboard with that.

32:46

That's what made him ultimately really mad. I would just give him away. He's like, you can't do that every single time.

32:54

I'm like, I'm living the doctrine to the T. Love one another. You guys can have him.

33:01

He thought I was playing hard to get. The reality is

33:06

I didn't really ever bond. I never wanted to.

33:16

His family, with polygamy, he had a favorite wife for sure.

33:23

She was all the time with him. She was his secretary. She did most of all of his work.

33:31

He was basically a monogamist. I've heard the number from somebody who has the

33:37

Texas records. It's like 79 ultimately when he got caught. I don't know if he's had some spiritually sealed since.

33:47

That happens sometimes. He basically was monogamist.

33:56

He did have his power trip stuff and his things that he would decide he wanted to do.

34:07

Most of us didn't have any say. I remember after I went to Texas and I got introduced to some of the stuff that he was doing.

34:19

Actually, I got introduced. The very first training I got after I married him was a really shocking training.

34:28

When I went into the ceremony to get married, it happened exactly like my premonitions.

34:34

Except for I didn't wake up. I was already there. I actually went into shock. It felt like a trap because he's the one that groomed me basically.

34:44

He was my principal. He was my... Just a question real quick. Just totally adding on to what you're saying.

34:53

With the FLDS believing in polygamy, and that being one of their primary examples, it wasn't until Warren Jeffs took over that he introduced underage marriage, correct?

35:07

Well, he took it to an extreme. He took it to a really strong extreme.

35:13

The highest extreme that you could possibly take. That's what it did with everything. I guess my question would be with him when he was the principal, he really worked his way to be in power.

35:24

He had planned this for a long time. In the same way that he was playing his cards to get to the top and to take a rule on Jeff's place, going back to the beginning of the podcast when you talked about being in class, and you talked about you can either say yes or no, those sort of conversations that would be grooming, conditioning you for this time to where you are now.

35:52

Yes. I get into the room and it's identical like my dreams.

35:57

Like it was a warning. I had a friend who at 14 just all of a sudden...

36:06

She was a really good girl. She was loved by her family. As far as I knew,

36:12

I went over to her house a lot. She was my age. At 14, she just upped and left. She said she felt like she was going to marry

36:19

Warren Jess. She was scared too. She didn't want to. I remember my family laughing about that and just playing these games.

36:27

She was never getting it. She just had that in her brain. I remember thinking, well,

36:32

I need to find out if this is true, but I don't really want to. In my brain, it was like part of the grooming too.

36:39

My family participated in that grooming as well to a great degree. I had all my sisters and brothers.

36:47

I'm number 11 of 14. All my sisters and brothers had a cedar chest when they turned 18, full of hope chest stuff, dishes and stuff for when they had this arranged marriage.

36:58

They would all of a sudden have to be like a household. I didn't have even a cedar chest.

37:05

I believe that my mother was planning for me to be a plural wife, which I wouldn't need that. It played a lot into my story as well.

37:16

It was like grooming from Warren Jess down. They were watching him. I was in a really tight spot.

37:24

I didn't know how to fight him. I can't fight somebody who's that high in the church.

37:32

Or else just leave. That would be the ultimate thing. I wasn't ready for that.

37:38

Leave all my family and everything. At 18, when I go into the room, it's exactly like my premonitions were or whatever, those dreams.

37:48

He asked me, has

37:54

God given you an impression of who you're supposed to marry? I remember thinking, if I say no, he's going to give me a punishment because that would be lying.

38:03

Because he groomed me. If I say yes, then that isn't what

38:10

I really want. I had to choose between either never getting married, probably, or just submitting.

38:16

I didn't know enough about it. I probably would have not done it if I would have known more. I just said,

38:23

I wondered if I was supposed to go in the family with my sister, who was in his family already.

38:30

He piped up right then and said, you have such a strong testimony of God. He approved of it.

38:37

He had the ultimate say. I went into shock that night.

38:46

I remember him sending me home that night with my father, because I wasn't responding after he sent everybody out of the room.

38:57

We're taught our whole life to resist boys and everything about them. Then overnight, you're just supposed to be so married.

39:05

I didn't even know how to. He got mad and he sent me home.

39:15

I thought it was a blessing. I didn't even register that it was a punishment until four months later.

39:21

I was just like, oh, this is great. I get to come home. That was the night of your marriage?

39:28

That was the night of our wedding. I think it just goes to show how distorted that world was.

39:34

Even growing up in the FLDS, the night of your wedding and you being sent away, you're so oblivious to the fact.

39:45

In the real world, that would be like, wait, what happened? What's wrong here? Usually, that's very different in the real world as far as a wedding night goes.

39:56

Here, this happens and you get kicked out. You're totally oblivious to the fact that you were being punished.

40:02

It just shows you to go how left is right and everything is upside down.

40:08

They literally went in the opposite direction of all the studies that are out here. They did the opposite thing.

40:15

The very first training, I was getting to this, the very first training he gave me after two weeks. That day, he told me to go and show up at this meeting that was going to be in the morning that usually only the men went to.

40:30

Our family, only the men went to. It was a work project meeting for donations and stuff.

40:36

He said, I want you there. I went and then he walked down the aisles and he passed out corrections to leaders.

40:44

It was devastating in my mind. I remember thinking, I married you yesterday. If you just did this without recommending

40:52

I want you to do this, it would have been different. This is not right. We are taught our whole lives in our household, really stressed, emphasized on persuasion through love, which is a

41:03

Doctrine and Covenants quote. That wasn't happening.

41:09

What does passing out corrections mean? What does that entail? It's like a note that talks about you lose your family.

41:17

You're kicked out. You need to go repent depending on who you are. Those are strong ones, strong corrections.

41:24

They're master deceivers. He wanted everybody to know about it so that we wouldn't be deceived.

41:30

It was just really eye -opening to me that he would just slam things in my face like that the day after I married to him.

41:39

He was verbally passing out corrections, not notes handed to people. I think he passed out notes. I don't know for sure, but I think he did.

41:46

He walked down the aisles and he gave them something. What do people's faces do when they start reading their notes? They're sitting next to their wives.

41:52

They're like gifts to each other. Now they're just taken away. I took that gift back.

42:01

I could only see the backs of them because I was a little bit further back in the room. It was devastating to everybody.

42:12

When I was going to Texas, he told me to listen to his special training that I had to covenant that I would never tell anybody.

42:19

One of the things you talked about, the outside world and how he treated them.

42:25

We could tell lies to them all day to protect the real meaningful things.

42:30

I've just kind of reversed that. I don't tell lies, but I can say what I need to now and tell the truth to the outside world.

42:43

I've just got a question. This is your story. It's fascinating to hear.

42:49

But then there's also the broader general story that the public knows about Warren Jefferson and primarily when he became on the

42:57

FBI's top 10 most wanted list. Just looking at the timeline, it said

43:02

September 2002 is when Warren Jefferson took over roughly. Then it was roughly around 2005 is when the issues with law enforcement were really getting heavily involved.

43:17

It said in July 2004, a nephew of Warren Jefferson files a lawsuit against him accusing

43:22

Jefferson of sexually abusing him. That took place. Along this whole timeline, when eventually he came into the public eye and became a big thing.

43:31

At the very beginning of the podcast, we played him when he was having his first court appearance after being arrested. At this time, where are you right now along this general timeline?

43:42

I was married on January 9th of 2003. Okay. Wow. This was literally just months after.

43:49

Yeah. That's why I was 18 too. Probably. I think he knew for a lot longer than that, but he had to wait until he became a leader.

44:04

Right. He sits me down in this meeting and he starts talking about this story about how he was running from the law.

44:13

I remember catching that the night of our wedding. He was talking to my father and he said something about, and that's when it hit me.

44:19

He's running from the law, but I should have known that probably before that. My mother wasn't invited to the wedding.

44:26

My father was told to take me on a drive, so I wasn't even wearing my wedding dress or anything.

44:37

Go ahead. It's a spiritual wedding. Can't be legal ever because polygamy isn't legal in America.

44:48

I sit down in this training and he starts talking about when he took his children, his minors that were under eight years old, away from his house that was a target house in Hildo, Utah.

45:00

That was where he had been living before he became the leader. And in this story, he talks about how

45:07

God revealed that not one of the biological mothers actually had those kids were worthy to continue to go with their kids until maybe they qualified later.

45:21

So he talked about like he had like 30 mothers that had kids, at least 30, and all in one day, 30 mothers just lost their kids and he took them away.

45:34

To another place and they had to qualify. But mothers that didn't have kids could be put over those children.

45:43

But it didn't make any sense to me. That was a red flag to me and I kind of wanted to be the witness from the inside.

45:50

I really wanted to know more about those kids. I have a passion for children and I always have and I was really concerned.

46:01

When I heard that, I remember thinking, um, that's really weird.

46:09

You know, like foster children, foster care is set up solely to reunite parents at all costs.

46:14

And 30 mothers in one night that God gave him those children and now he's just saying they're all not worthy is too extreme.

46:22

It's just way too. And then later I experienced living in that house with all of those mothers and saw them crying and sobbing and praying and they weren't the kind of mothers that weren't trying.

46:38

What does requalification to get your children's back even entail? When God reveals that they are now taking the steps.

46:46

This is what like sickens me about this is like marriage is supposed to be like a shadow of the unity that we have with Christ, you know.

46:54

And you're taking a marriage ceremony that we have with two becoming one flesh. But now like taking that throwing it into the dirt, not even having a ceremony, but having it with all these people that literally become a means to the end for just the prophet or the person instead of actually being in a relationship, a loving, caring relationship like Jesus has with his bride, the body, the church.

47:15

To sanctify and to make conform them more to his image. Instead, it's to tear them down, put them into the dirt and just use them as a means to the end.

47:24

It's horrible. And there's no self -care taught at all. It's all he had a motto of work hard for the privilege of working harder.

47:32

Warren Jeff's motto is work hard for the privilege of working harder. And he doesn't teach any self -care.

47:38

So if you like, he teaches work, work, work, give it, give, give everything.

47:44

And then when you can't anymore, then you get punished and you start with your kids.

47:52

Let's take what means probably the most to you in your life, since we don't really even have a relationship as husband and wife, but you have this child now who's part of you literally born.

48:01

But now we're going to take that and I'm just going to take that away from you. I'm going to pull you into the dirt.

48:06

That's what it reminds you. The first thing that comes to mind is the story in Bethlehem.

48:12

It, when Jesus was born in Bethlehem and Herod had all the firstborn children killed, killed because, and there's this wailing heard throughout.

48:19

And then the same way, just losing, having a child and essentially kidnapped from you.

48:25

There is an aspect of severance that's similar and like 30 at the same time. I mean, I've been,

48:30

I've been in the emergency room seeing someone who just lost their child. Like who, and just seeing the grief right there.

48:38

I can only imagine what that would be like times 30. And also not only that there's, there's, they have distorted doctrine, their whole view of God.

48:47

Like who do they cry out to when their messenger is the prophet who just took their child?

48:53

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he tells a story in his own words. Like, I don't have the exact scripture with me because it's like elite doctrine.

49:01

Yeah. But in these compounds that he set up in Texas and, you know, only have people that he could handpick and call and bring to those places.

49:13

He, he had this doctrine about one of his wives. He told this story when she passed away of cancer.

49:21

He talks about how the day that he took the children away from the property and her children were among them and she knew she had cancer.

49:30

And she was like, so crying and everything. Cause she didn't know if she'd ever see him again.

49:36

And he just told her, if you don't accept this, you're going to turn away from the priesthood. And so she just like submitted.

49:45

And she did see him again, but she missed like months in between that she could have had if he hadn't done that to her, you know?

49:53

Wow. It's, yeah, it's, it's, and there's so many stories.

49:59

I knew another lady who tried so hard, harder than anybody

50:04

I saw in his family. She was always praying, always not socializing because that was a sin.

50:11

She was always doing all kinds of things to be more loyal and more obedient. Well, her story later was that she was commanded that if she even had a thought about her biological father who had been kicked out since, then that was a sin because he was a bad person.

50:31

And so that was ultimately what got her kicked out. How do you follow a commandment like that? Don't talk about your biological father.

50:38

What are you going to think of as soon as you say that? You're going to think about your biological father. It's like, don't think about the elephant in the room.

50:45

It's actually part of her DNA, you know, it's like, it's, it's, it's just horrible.

50:51

The things that he has done to tear away people's hope, you know, like he made the standards so impossible for the ones he didn't want.

51:00

And so during this time, you get married to Warren Jeffs, you get sent away, uh, cause you're, you unknowingly play hard to get.

51:13

And here you are. Um, and this is sort of the timeframe we had talked on the phone and you had said that you were keeping yourselves at distance and you could, you can shed light into this because you weren't worthy.

51:29

Um, or were you trying to get yourself worthy enough to be there, but that's the way you kind of kept distant at that?

51:35

When I woke up from the shock, I started to pick up clues and started to realize what he really wanted, but it wasn't for like several months that I really figured out what he was asking for, because I didn't have any training on it.

51:51

Like my, you know, it was, it's really common actually for people in that religion to, to just be over overlooked, like, because they have so many kids, they have, you know, the mothers have all these huge families and to remember when and how, you know, everything they need to tell each one sometimes just doesn't happen.

52:12

And because we can only have specific things that we can utilize, you know, like we don't have all the books, we don't have all the internet, we don't have all the

52:22

TV. So it's really easy to be like not fully educated in like marital things.

52:30

And so I had to just pick up clues. That was basically even how, when I, when

52:36

I, when Warren just sent people later after he got caught and he was furious with me cause he could never consummate our marriage, um, he sent people to her, like really torture me psychologically.

52:51

And part of that was he used cult doctors and they would drug me with prescription drugs that he commanded them to give me or they would lose their family.

53:02

And, um, part of that was I had no internet, so I couldn't look up any of the diagnosis.

53:07

This is an example of some of the extremes. I couldn't look up any of the symptoms of what

53:13

I had. All I could do is listen to the doctors and say, I don't have that. Like, what are the symptoms?

53:18

Okay. Uh, I, you know, one of the symptoms of bipolar is that if you deny that you have bipolar, that's the first symptom.

53:27

I'm like, do you have bipolar? Doctor, do you have bipolar?

53:35

It's almost like denial is an image. Someone accuses something and denial is automatically an admission of guilt. How do you get around that?

53:41

Yeah. So I had to like really like to fight for my life and fight for survival and stuff. I really had to study clues.

53:48

And, um, that was what I did. Um, when I started to listen to Warren Jeffs and hear about some of the stuff that he had going on in Texas and among the elite groups that he was collecting.

54:02

Um, he ultimately set up these houses in hiding, like I was telling you about that lady who was in a house in hiding with a caretaker.

54:08

He set those up for people that were called to be among the elite and were struggling.

54:15

So he set up this middle ground because he didn't want them to associate with people that were never called.

54:21

He didn't want the knowledge to be too broad. Wanted to keep them separated. Wanted to keep them separated.

54:26

So he set up this middle ground for the ones that were struggling. And, um, I, uh, after I got introduced to what he really like some of the stuff he was doing,

54:41

I actually asked him if I could go to a house in hiding. Like I was like, uh,

54:47

I need more time. And I had to fight for it. Like I had to play really naive and, you know, and I was kind of, but at the same time

54:54

I was like trying to figure it out because I was out of the shock now. And I was just like trying to sort through all this download of constant information.

55:04

And I was like, I just really need more time. And, and I was in the meeting when he walked in the room and he told some of the ladies, you can't have more time.

55:13

You need to go pray harder. You, you know, you know, you know what you need to do.

55:19

And, you know, he was just like telling certain ones that they couldn't have that opportunity to go to this house in hiding.

55:26

And to me, that's really devastating because they were in a compound that they, as far as I knew, was clear out in the distance, you know, and they had a gate around it with a guard tower and they were driving around every 15 minutes.

55:40

They don't have a, if he's telling them they can't leave, um, that's, you know, that's one of the steps.

55:49

So when, what I did when I, when he gave me the opportunity to leave, cause he bought into what I was saying because he didn't know me very well.

55:57

So I go to these houses in hiding and I told him as soon as I got there, I said, I'm not going to pray to ensure that I don't get called to be among the holy elite people when

56:05

I am not ready. And so I used his own doctrine against him. And that was part of it telling him, you know,

56:11

I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna pray, you know, and I don't really know how you can stop praying.

56:17

Cause your heart prays all the time. But I told him, I went around the whole house and I told him I'm not praying. If he sends me to this godly elite place when he doesn't send people who are praying every single day, there's something wrong.

56:30

And so he couldn't take me back. And I stayed there for two years and I just read and I wrote him letters and you know,

56:38

I, I just stayed there until he got caught. So during this time you already had like red flags in your head about what's going on.

56:46

So you're trying to learn as much as you can so you can be a source of information to people on the outside in the future. Like, did you think that this was kind of all coming to an end?

56:53

I, I didn't fully have it all puzzled together, but I did figure it out before the two years was over and I was determined to figure it out.

57:02

Okay. So let's do this. We've gone for a little about an hour here and we still have a lot to unravel and we're kind of getting the two different cliffhangers.

57:12

Cause on one end, in the public record, this is the point where Warren just becomes a fugitive.

57:17

And I mean, in your own world, you're using Warren Jeff's language to keep it at arm's distance because you're just trying to figure things out by yourself sometime.

57:28

But eventually these two timelines collide. Yes. And so what we'll do is we'll, we'll wrap things up here.

57:34

We're going to continue in a part two. And just so you know, just so for all of you know, you drove down today from Colorado city and you live there now, right?

57:43

Yeah. Okay. So we really appreciate you being in here in studio today and really appreciate that.

57:50

And this is, I'm just, we are flies at the wall here and it's just, it's just wow.

57:55

And it's just, this is one of those amazing, this is one of the most infamous, I would say, stories that of people that are familiar with as far as cults in the

58:03

United States in the last 100 years. And for you to kind of give this, share your story along this timeline that a lot of people are familiar with, and maybe not so many people are as familiar with, cause this is roughly about 15 or so years later.

58:18

Definitely really appreciate you coming on today. So we will wrap things up here and there will be a part two to this as we unravel more of your, of what happened.

58:27

And also a lot more about the FLDS, where things went with yourself and with Warren Jeffs and all that sort of stuff. So all that being said, we'll wrap things up here as always programs like this cannot continue without your support.

58:40

So we want to offer for you guys to be part of the cultish crew, ladies and gentlemen, cultish crew.

58:46

So you can go to the cultish show .com, go to the donate tab. You can either donate one time or monthly.

58:52

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58:58

So if you really was blessed by this program, please prayerfully consider doing that. So all that being said, we will talk to you guys next time on cultists where we enter into the kingdom of the cults.