Warren Jeffs gets another letter in jail
 
By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
 
The man in charge of the Fundamentalist LDS Church's financial arm is asking jailed polygamist leader Warren Jeffs for help.

Bruce Wisan, the court-appointed special fiduciary of the United Effort Plan Trust, sent another letter to Jeffs at the Purgatory Jail in Hurricane. He sent a copy of it to the Deseret Morning News on Monday. In the one page letter, he asks for Jeffs to use his influence as the FLDS Church's leader to get his followers to pay their property taxes.

"I know that if you asked the FLDS people to properly and expeditiously pay their property taxes to their respective counties, it would happen," Wisan wrote. "It appears to me that the FLDS people listen to your instructions in all things."

Wisan fought with FLDS faithful for months to get them to pay their property taxes in the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Ariz. After going house-to-house, knocking on every door and taping up tax notices, the property taxes were paid.

With taxes coming due for another year, Wisan threatened to pass the extra costs of posting the tax notices on to those who refuse to pay.

"If I am again forced to have each and every home in the community posted with a notice to pay property taxes or face eviction, I intend to pass the cost of such process on to those that occupy each property," Wisan wrote. "A separate collection assessment will be added to each property tax calculation."

In 2005, a judge in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court took control of the UEP Trust amid allegations that Jeffs and other top FLDS leaders were fleecing the $110 million trust. The UEP Trust controls homes, businesses and land in the FLDS enclaves.

Last week, Judge Denise Lindberg signed an order reforming the trust, paving the way for private property ownership and doing away with the "united order" concept the UEP was founded upon.

Jeffs, 50, remains in the Purgatory Jail on charges of rape as an accomplice, a first-degree felony. He is accused of forcing a teenage girl into a child-bride marriage with an older man. Jeffs is scheduled to appear in court on those charges on Nov. 21 for a preliminary hearing.

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
 
deseretnews.com
Originally published Monday, October 30, 2006
 
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