Ex-Polygamist Wives Relieved at Jeffs' Capture
 
By Julie Rose
KCPW News - Public Radio - Salt Lake City, Utah
 
(KCPW News) As word spreads that fugitive polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs is now in federal custody, former polygamist wives are relieved. Vicky Prunty of Tapestry Against Polygamy feared capturing Jeffs would end in violence. Instead Nevada police caught the polygamist at a routine traffic stop yesterday. Prunty says the ripple in the fundamentalist mormon community will be significant:

"I think this is a really wonderful wakeup call for them," says Prunty. "God wasn't there to intervene. His bodyguards weren't there to intervene. And this will send a message that man is not above the law and (Jeffs') followers are going to have to start thinking on their own."

Jeffs has been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List for more than a year on suspicion of committing sexual conduct with a minor and arranging plural marriages of older men with underage girls. Prunty, a former member of an independent polygamous community in Southern Utah, has not personally met Jeffs, but says many women have come to her organization from FLDS communities on the Utah/Arizona border.

"At first when we heard their stories it was almost hard to believe how evil and sinister things could be going on right in from of us and yet nobody knows the deep dark secrets behind this man and his group," says Prunty.

The Associated Press reports one of Jeffs' wives and his brother were in the car police pulled over late Monday night on I-15, just north of Las Vegas.
 
KCPW.org
Originally broadcast August 29, 2006
 
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