Polygamist sect kept money flowing into Texas compound
 
By John MacCormack
San Antonio Express-News
 
ELDORADO — After more than a century as Schleicher County's only settlement, tiny, unpretentious Eldorado four years ago suddenly found itself with an improbable new neighbor rising swiftly from empty brush a few miles from town.

In four years, members of a secretive, hard-working polygamist sect have built a whole town on a 1,700-acre ranch, erecting more than 30 large buildings, including a soaring white temple that dwarfs any house of worship within hundreds of miles.

The market value of their Yearning for Zion Ranch and its improvements already exceeds $21 million, with the approximately 80,000-square-foot temple alone valued at $8.7 million, according to the county tax appraiser. One of the county's biggest taxpayers, the sect paid its $424,000 bill last year on time.

And there is little mystery about the source of all the money and manpower it took to build the ranch, according to dissident members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints who still live at the sect's historic home on the Utah-Arizona border.

Before he was arrested in August 2006, Warren Jeffs, the sect's self-pronounced prophet, aggressively dunned the faithful at its base in Arizona, known as Short Creek, for donations of both cash and labor to build its so-called New Zion in Texas, the first sect settlement to have a temple.

"The money came from Warren's milkers. It's like he's got electric milkers on a bunch of dairy cows. He's got all these people and he's milking them for all they're worth," said Richard Holm, 55, a Utah businessman who left the sect years ago — but not before contributing more than $5 million in cash and property.

"The Texas compound is supposedly for some of the elite that were culled out of the common folks and riffraff who were left here to work and send money to the elite over there," Holm said.

Jeffs since has been convicted in Utah of being an accomplice in the rape of a 14-year-old girl. He is now in Arizona, awaiting charges of sexual conduct with a minor, incest and conspiracy but is still believed to be in charge of sect affairs.

"I know exactly where that money came from. It came from the blood and sweat of the people here, and having families do without," said Marvin Wyler, 63, a polygamist who broke with Jeffs several years ago but still lives in Short Creek.

"A while back, even two or three years ago, they were asking $500 to $1,000 a month from each family. And they had scores of men go down there and do the building. They worked for nothing," said Wyler, who has 34 children by three wives, and more than 100 grandchildren.

According to Ben Bistline, a former sect member who wrote a lengthy history of the polygamists, Jeffs raised additional millions by selling properties owned by the church's community trust called the "United Effort Plan" and by persuading successful sect businessmen to kick in large sums.

"We're talking about tens of millions. And you've got to remember the Texas compound isn't the only one he has. There's one in South Dakota, a small one in Colorado and others in Canada," Bistline said.

Male sect members are sought by contractors in the construction and home building trades around the region, he said.

"They are very skilled, hard workers. You can hire them and get away with underpaying them, or in the case of young people, paying them nothing, and giving all the money to Warren," he said.

Another source of church funds was profitable businesses that employed sect members, Bistline said.

"There are people in the organization who are very skilled at producing money. There was one business, Western Precision, that did things for the military. That was bringing in millions," he said.

"That's where the money came for Texas. They're not making any out there."

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that John Nielsen — a former employee of Western Precision, now called NewEra Manufacturing — claimed as part of a civil lawsuit that sect members were made to work for little or no wages and that up to $100,000 in monthly profits were donated to Jeffs or the church.

The company obtained government contracts worth more than $1.2 million in recent years, mostly for aircraft parts for the Defense Department, the newspaper reported.

Roger Hoole, a Salt Lake City lawyer who has sued the sect and Jeffs several times on behalf of various ex-members, said his investigators tried to track what Jeffs and the FLDS church owned.

"Significant assets were sold by the FLDS church just prior to the land in Texas being purchased, including a property in Utah called the Steed Ranch, which sold for a little over $8 million," Hoole said.

"That money didn't stay in Short Creek. It's probably a very safe assumption that it went to Texas," he said.

With ample money and a ready pool of skilled labor, the Yearning for Zion Ranch was built with a speed and efficiency that amazed the handful of locals who regularly flew over it.

Pilot J.D. Doyle, 48, recalls watching 21,000-square-foot residences take shape below his eyes in a matter of weeks, followed by the 120-foot-tall temple. Since then, dozens of other large buildings have materialized and an orderly settlement has taken shape.

"As far as work ethic, diligence and pure engineering skill, you just can't beat these people, even if they do have a dark side," he said.

"They built a whole town out there in four years. It's laid out better than Eldorado, and the buildings are better. Eldorado is hodgepodge. This place was built with a plan," Doyle said.

But the view from the air doesn't really do justice to the sect's building achievement. When a group of reporters last week was allowed inside the compound for the first time, some were awestruck.

"I don't think anyone in this town had any idea of how big those buildings were," said Randy Mankin, editor of the local Eldorado Success.

"It was just massive, with the temple looming over everything. You're looking up all the time, like being in New York City."

jmaccormack@express-news.net
 
mysanantonio.com
Originally published April 20, 2008
 
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