Warren Jeffs history & background
 
ABC 4 News
 
BORN: December 3, 1955 in San Francisco, California. Took over as "prophet" in 2002.

WIVES: Believed to have over 80 wives. The one he was captured with, Naomi, was born in 1974.

NUMBER IN FLDS CHURCH: Current membership is estimated to be 6,000 to 10,000. Also estimated (by the FBI) that there are about 1,200 men who hold the priesthood.

RULON T. JEFFS: had "married" 22 women and had more than 60 children, though Jon Krakauer's book, "Under The Banner Of Heaven" attributed 75 wives to him. Due to the secrecy of the FLDS church, exact numbers are unknown.

The FLDS Church practices what it terms "The Law Of Placing," in which all marriages are decided and assigned only by the prophet, Warren Jeffs. He places wives or removes them from men according to what he alone deems is their worthiness.

In taking wives from a man considered unworthy, all Jeffs has to do is issue a simple statement removing the priesthood from the man: " (name) does not hold the priesthood. Therefore, he cannot exalt his ladies and if his ladies choose to stay with him, they will go down with the wicked." Since obedience to the prophet Jeffs is the first order of salvation, these women will not stay with the man, and usually she and her sister wives and their children will quickly be given to another man deemed more worthy.

MEANWHILE: Mojave County Attorney Matt Smith was not in Salt Lake City for the press conference Tuesday because he is at the opening day of trial for Randy Barlow, the second man accused of a relationship with an underage girl in the FLDS case.
 
ABC4.com
Originally published August 29, 2006
 
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