Library books burned in polygamist community
 
Reported by: Brent Hunsaker
ABC 4 News
 
COLORADO CITY, AZ (ABC 4 News) - A book burning has once again focused outrage on the FLDS polygamist community along the Utah - Arizona border. A small building designated for a library was broken into recently and thousands of donated books were stolen. Most books were taken to other communities. A few were burned. And the FLDS controlled town marshals are doing little to find and punish those responsible.

Roman Bateman took video of the bonfire as the flames died down. It was Saturday afternoon, April 16th. The bonfire was lit that morning.

What was burning? New doors that had been taken from inside the library – what was once known as the Johnson School before Warren Jeffs ordered all FLDS children taken out of schools.

Some books were also thrown into the fire. From what he saw, Bateman says they were mostly medical textbooks and histories of some of the families of Colorado City.

Isacc Wyler, an agent for the trust that owns all the land in town, called the Colorado City town marshals to the scene as asked for a criminal investigation of the ransacking of the library. Deputy Sam Johnson said it was a "civil matter."

"If it had been a non-FLDS person who’d done something like that, they would have been cuffed and taken to the Purgatory Jail," said Wyler.

Wyler said he has no doubt who ordered what the FLDS are calling the "spring-cleaning" of the library. He said it was a Saturday work project under the direction of FLDS leaders.

As a lifelong member of the community, Wyler said he was foreman on many such projects. That is, before Warren Jeffs kicked him out.

Stefanie Colgrove, born into one of the founding families of the community, had headed up the library project.

For two years Colgrove gathered book donations and raised money to open the library. The books numbered in the thousands and included new editions from Barnes and Noble as well as beautifully bound volumes of the classics. She said the value of the books easily ran in the tens of thousands of dollars, although there were so many she had not yet catalogued them all.

Initially she feared that most of the books were burned. But now she’s learning the vast majority were spared the fire. Instead, box loads were given away by the FLDS "cleanup" crews at second-hand stores, private schools and libraries all over Washington and Iron County. They were scattered apparently to make recovery more difficult.

Surveillance video from a Deseret Industries store in Cedar City shows FLDS men unloading a trailer with pallets of boxes full of books on the same day as the book burning in Colorado City.

That video was obtained by private investigator Sam Brower who is working for The Hope Organization of St. George, a major library donor.

Before anyone with the library could act to recover the books from D.I., Deputy Johnson seized them as part of an "official police investigation." Brower also allowed ABC 4 to view another Surveillance video showing Deputy Johnson supervising as a fork lift loads pallets of boxes into a trailer similar to the one that was used to bring them to the thrift store a week earlier.

Colgrove said the Colorado City marshal’s office has so far refused to let her see and inventory the books that were recovered by Deputy Johnson. What’s more, she said the marshals would not even acknowledge to her that they are indeed conducting an investigation.

Colgrove did file a complaint with the marshals. But when she tried to follow up, she claims she was instead pressured to sign a document saying her original statement was false.

Colgrove also contacted the Mohave County, Arizona Sheriff’s Department.

Wyler believes the burning of library books was a clear message that this is what happens when you try to do something in the FLDS dominated community that FLDS leaders don’t like.
 
ABC4.com
Originally broadcast May 3, 2011
 
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