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The 2008 YFZ Raid -- Part 1 -- Arrival of the Forces

2009-04-08 00:23:39

By Donald Richter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
This is the first in a series of articles giving a history of the raid on the YFZ Ranch. Much of the material has been obtained from the diaries and journals of the FLDS men, women, and children who were directly involved in the events narrated, and I am deeply grateful to these dear friends for sharing their experiences. Wherever possible, I have also used information gleaned from news articles, court transcripts, letters, and other documents.
 
Part 1—Arrival of the Forces
 
Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on April 3, 2008, the lookout on the north watch tower at the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado, Texas, noticed a grayish-white pickup drive across the field on the north side of the ranch close to the gate that gave access to a gas-line right-of-way. Assuming that a neighbor was inspecting his property, he gave the incident little thought until an hour later when he observed an APC (armored personnel carrier), two police cars, a cargo-carrier van, and a black Ford Expedition following the same route the pickup had taken. He quickly alerted others on the ranch of the approaching forces. By the time a second man arrived near the fence line to examine the situation, a SWAT team already was hunkered down behind the APC in full gear, including body armor, helmets, face masks, machine guns, and other weapons. Texas authorities were moving into position for the largest government action against the followers of Joseph Smith since Arizona’s raid on Short Creek in 1953.
 
The FLDS people had only been in Texas slightly over four years. In November of 2003, the FLDS purchased a 1,691-acre ranch near Eldorado, Texas. Laboring around the clock, FLDS workmen had transformed the old ranch—dotted with rusty oil rigs, cactus, and gnarled mesquite trees—into a thriving community of massive log homes, a Bishop’s storehouse, a cement plant, gardens, orchards, a modern dairy, cheese factory, medical clinic, grain silo, sewage treatment plant, furniture factory, and cabinet shop. The most impressive structure was a beautiful four-story temple faced in native white limestone quarried on the ranch.
 
In 2005, just over a year after the FLDS began settling in Texas, State Representative Harvey Hilderbran (R-Kerrville) introduced HB 3006, specifically targeting the FLDS people. “I wanted to make it unappealing to them,” Hilderbran told the Deseret News. “I hoped they wouldn’t stay.”[1] Political jealousies also were apparent in the intended legislation. The House Research Organization bill analysis reported that supporters of the bill had stated that “a group of Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints is building a compound south of San Angelo….Local residents…are concerned that members of the group will run for public office and will have moved a large enough group of voters into the area to take over local governance.” The analysis also stated that “[T]his bill would pick up elements of similar laws in Utah and Arizona, states that have faced similar concerns about the same group.”[2] Although the bill itself stalled in committee because of opposition to provisions affecting home-school curriculums and voting rights of minorities, Hilderbran was able to attach the marriage amendments to a Child Protective Services bill containing less controversial family law matters.[3] The result was that Texas raised the minimum age for marriage without a court order from fourteen to sixteen and changed the law on bigamy so that instead of a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000 it became a second-degree felony punishable by a prison term of from two to twenty years and a fine of up to $10,000. If one partner was age sixteen or younger, the prison term could be from five to ninety-nine years. The law also required spouses to testify in cases involving bigamy and provided that persons performing a marriage prohibited by law would be subject to a prison term of from two to ten years and a fine of up to $10,000.[4]
 
According to Schleicher County Attorney Raymond Loomis, Jr., the report which triggered the April 3 raid was the first accusation of criminal activity on the ranch since the FLDS members bought the land. “They’ve been real quiet,” he said. “They keep to themselves, and we don’t hear or see much of them at all. There really hasn’t been any problem with them.”[5]
 
       
At about the same time the military force was observed moving into position on the north of the YFZ Ranch, one of the FLDS men driving to Eldorado, met three Schleicher County officers, fifteen troopers, and about ten unidentified cars approaching the ranch from the south and notified Bishop Merril Jessop. Pulled over for speeding by state trooper Daniel Nunez, who drove the last car in the convoy, the man flatly denied that he had been speeding, saying that he had just passed about thirty cops. After checking to see that no one else was in the vehicle, Officer Nunez let him off with a warning, and the man phoned the lookout at the front gate and asked him to count the vehicles as they came by. Another seven vehicles were discovered at the south gas-line gate close to the same time the officers began arriving at the front gate.
 
 
Merril Jessop, who was in San Antonio at the time, phoned Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran to find out what was going on and then sent two of his sons to the gate to discuss the situation. Sheriff Doran introduced Captain Barry Caver of the Rangers. He said that a sixteen-year-old girl by the name of Sarah Jessop Barlow had called a hot line alleging that she was pregnant with her second child, was being physically and sexually abused by her husband Dale Evans Barlow, and was being held as a prisoner on the YFZ Ranch. The men replied that there was no Sarah Jessop Barlow in the community and asked whether the call had been traced to be sure that it was coming from the ranch. When the sheriff replied that the number was blocked so that the call couldn’t be traced, the men said they understood there was technology available to get past a blocked number and that the whole thing sounded like a prank call, probably a Flora Mae Jessop deal. Doran dodged the issue and claimed that he had seen the locations described in the calls and that the caller would have to be inside the ranch to have included so many details. 
 
There is ample evidence, however, that the Texas authorities knew, or should have known, that the calls on which their search warrant was based were bogus. Between March 29 and April 5, sixteen calls were placed to the Newbridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, from the alleged “Sarah.” Such calls were still going on while the raid was in progress. The same phone was used to call a battered women’s shelter in Washington State numerous times between March 22 and April 8. The caller gave a similar story, identifying herself as Sarah Barlow, but, in this case, claiming that she had a “reassigned husband” named Uncle Merril. The calls have since been linked to a 33-year-old Black woman in Colorado Springs named Rozita Swinton, who has a history of making false reports of sexual abuse.[6] 
 
 
The brother of Dale Evans Barlow, alleged husband of “Sarah,” arrived at the gate of the ranch about 7:15 p.m. and told the officers no one in his brother’s family was named Sarah Jessop Barlow. He said that Dale did not live on the ranch and had never been there. By this time the officers had obtained Dale’s cell-phone number, and Sheriff Doran and Captain Caver went to the sheriff’s vehicle and talked to Dale, who lived in Colorado City, Arizona, and had not even been in Texas since a school trip in 1977. Dale Barlow’s April telephone record shows two calls from the same number in Texas at 6:20:42 p.m. and 6:24:59 p.m. MST on April 3. There are no other calls on the record from or to Texas. After the conversation the officers remarked as they returned to the gate, “Well, that takes care of half the problem. Now we need to find this Sarah Jessop Barlow.”
 
The FLDS men at the gate insisted that there was no such person on the ranch and asked the officers, “How do you prove nobody?” The officers wanted to talk to girls sixteen to eighteen years old to verify whether or not “Sarah” existed and said that they would bring in Child Protective Services (CPS) workers to question them if they could have a few private rooms made available for this purpose. Merril Jessop directed a man to prepare the necessary rooms in the schoolhouse but requested that a search warrant be presented before any officials entered the ranch. The men at the gate had asked several times to see a search warrant, and although one of the officers would go back each time, supposedly to obtain it, no warrant was actually presented until 9:00 p.m. The warrant contained the signature of Judge Barbara Walther of the 51st District Court and was dated April 3, 2008, at 5:50 p.m.[7] Since it requires almost an hour to travel from San Angelo to the Ranch, it is obvious that the officers at the main gate had no warrant in their possession at the time of their arrival. (See “YFZ Search Warrant Was Not Obtained in Good Faith”)
 
 
The warrant was based on an affidavit signed by Ranger Brooks Long, stating that he had interviewed two employees of the Newbridge Family Shelter and reviewed their affidavits concerning the calls made to the “Crisis Hotline” by the alleged “Sarah.” Long’s affidavit also included the statement that he had confirmed through Sheriff Doran that Dale Barlow had been arrested in 2005 on the charge of Conspiracy to Commit Sexual Conduct with a Minor. Long obtained a copy of the judgment made by the Mohave County Superior Court and found that Dale Barlow was serving a three-year probated sentence in Arizona.[8] It does not appear that Ranger Long or any other Texas law-enforcement official had attempted by the time of the raid to contact the Mohave County probation office to verify the actual whereabouts of Mr. Barlow or to determine whether he could have been living in Texas as the “Sarah” calls indicated.
 
The warrant itself treated the entire YFZ Ranch as a single household and authorized a search of “all buildings, medical facilities, structures, places and vehicles on said premises… which are found to be under the control of the Suspected Party named below” and the seizure of all records pertaining to Sarah Jessop and Dale Barlow. The officer executing the warrant was also ordered to arrest Dale Barlow and to identify and photograph Sarah Jessop.[9]
 
In response to a petition from the Department of Family and Protective Services, Judge Barbara Walther also signed an Order for Investigation of Child Abuse. This petition has not yet been released. However, on March 5, 2009, Judge Walther signed an order unsealing an affidavit by CPS investigator Ruby Gutierrez in support of the petition. It is significant to note that Ms. Gutierrez’ affidavit was not signed until April 5, even though Judge Walther’s Order for Investigation of Child Abuse was signed on April 3. The affidavit, therefore, was an attempt on the part of CPS to justify what they had already done.
 
Ms. Gutierrez’ affidavit in the main repeated at length the story of the “Sarah” calls but also included information obtained during the interviews and investigations already conducted: “The department, during its investigation of the allegations made by Sarah Jessop, obtained access to the YFZ Ranch. While at the ranch, the Department observed a number of young teenaged girls who appeared to be pregnant…”[10]
 
During the 14-day Hearing, on April 17, attorney Kirk Hawkins during his cross examination of CPS investigative supervisor Angie Voss, effectively disposed of the myth of investigators’ having seen numerous pregnant teenagers:
 
       Q. Now you talked about—I think the affidavit also mentioned seeing other young ladies that appeared to be minors who were pregnant; is that correct?
 
A. Yes, sir.
 
Q. And I believe according to the charts you found one that was under seventeen—I mean that was under eighteen that was pregnant, is that correct, one sixteen year old? On the first page.
 
A. One minor that is pregnant and four minors that already have children, yes.
 
Q. Already have children, but the affidavits talk about several of them that appear to be too young?
 
A. Yes, sir.
 
Q. And were pregnant?
 
A. Yes, sir.
 
Q. As a general rule, don’t these—don’t these people as a whole look younger than what they may really be?
 
A. I couldn’t speak to that.
 
Q. Is it true that some have had identification that indicated that they were adults, but that the Department has unilaterally just ignored or counted as a forgery or not accurate?
 
A. I wouldn’t say that the Department ignored their identification. I certainly took the information off of it. But when you have a person that appears to be in her teens and is reporting that she’s in her late twenties with an identification that gives her a date of birth it makes her in her late twenties, yes, we did make the decision to treat her as a juvenile.[11] 
 
 
It is a well-known fact by this time that every one of the twenty-six women on the CPS list of disputed minors has since been acknowledged by the court to be an adult; some of the ladies actually were in their mid to late thirties. CPS has a very poor track record for determining ages by visual observation.
 
In common with the search warrant, the Order for Investigation of Child Abuse treated the entire ranch as a single home and recognized an immediate need for the Department to have investigatory access to the “home” and to the following children: “Sarah Jessop” and “Baby Girl Jessop.”   The “parent or person responsible for the children’s care” was ordered to “allow an authorized representative of the Department… to enter the home… [and] to interview and examine the children...”[12] 
 
Angie Voss, a supervisor of investigations with CPS, asked to have five CPS investigators come in and do the questioning. A Ranger remarked that they also needed to bring in a few officers for protection. After the men at the gate agreed to this, a line of cars started driving in with up to thirty vehicles backed up at the gate. When an FLDS man at the gate objected that he had been told only “a few,” an officer came to the gate and said, “Well, there are a couple more.” The FLDS man insisted they call a halt, and the gate was shut after the CPS investigators and about ten Texas Rangers had entered.
 
            (To be continued…)
 

[1] Andrew Kirk, “Texans Had Been ‘Reining in” the FLDS via State Laws,” Deseret News, 2 June 2008.
[2] Texas House of Representatives, House Research Organization, “Analysis of HB 3006,” 12 May 2006.
[3] Kirk, “Texans Had Been ‘Reining in.’”
[4] Texas House of Representatives, Bill Analysis.
[5] Nate Carlisle and Brooke Adams, “Child Welfare Officials Have 18 Children in Custody from Texas FLDS Ranch; 52 Girls Removed,” Salt Lake Tribune, 4 April 2008.
[6] “Hearing Postponed for Woman Named in FLDS Raid,” cbs11tv.com, 6 June 2008.
[7] Judge Barbara Walther, “Search and Arrest Warrant,” Schleicher County, Texas, 3 April 2008, No. M-08-001S.
[8] Leslie Brooks Long, “Affidavit for Search and Arrest Warrant,” Schleicher County, Texas, 3 April 2008, No. M-08-001S.
[9] Judge Barbara Walther, “Search and Arrest Warrant,” 3 April 2008.
[10] Ruby Gutierrez, “Affidavit in Support of Petition in and of Investigation,” District Court of Schleicher County, Texas, 51st Judicial District, 5 April 2008.
[11] Transcript of “14-Day Adversary Hearing,” District Court of Schleicher County, 51st Judicial District, 17 April 2008, 231.
[12] Judge Barbara Walther, In Re: S.J. and Baby Girl J., “Order for Investigation of Child Abuse,” Schleicher County, Texas, 3 April 2008, Cause No. 2778.
 
 


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