The Rise and Ruin of the FLDS Church
About this episode
This episode explores the rise and fall of the FLDS Church and its leader Warren Jeffs, detailing the impact of his actions on followers and the legal battles that ensued.
He was the mouthpiece of God to ten thousand followers. To the FBI, he was a face on the Ten Most Wanted list. And to a Nevada state trooper working a dark stretch of Interstate Fifteen, he was just a nervous man in a red Escalade with a bad paper tag and a pulse he couldn't hide. This week I'm taking you inside the rise and ruin of the FLDS church, from its roots in the polygamy crisis of the eighteen hundreds to the isolated fortress town of Short Creek, where one man came to control every marriage, every home, and every family on both sides of a state line. I'll walk you through the botched 1953 raid that bought the church fifty years of immunity, the doctrine of one-man rule that loaded the gun, and the accountant's son who picked it up. Warren Jeffs banned laughter, expelled hundreds of teenage boys into the desert, married girls as young as twelve, and recorded all of it, because a man who believes his every act is scripture archives his crimes as revelation. Then a fourteen-year-old bride named Elissa Wall grew up, walked into a courtroom, and started tearing the whole empire down. But this story doesn't end with a life sentence in 2011. Warren Jeffs is still issuing…
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