Former FLDS official details Warren Jeffs' escapes from the law

• Willie Jessop, former FLDS security chief, testified in U.S. District Court against the church
• The church is the target of a federal civil-rights lawsuit alleging constitutional violations
• Jessop testified about illegal activities undertaken by FLDS before he broke away from the church

A former security chief for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints took the witness stand in U.S. District Court in Phoenix Tuesday to describe how he helped Warren Jeffs, the Mormon sect's leader, evade state and federal law enforcement, including a dramatic escape by ATV and motorcycle.

But the security chief testified that after being confronted with irrefutable evidence that the so-called "prophet" was having sex with a 12-year-old bride, he turned against Jeffs — and suffered the consequences: His business was ransacked, his home and security threatened.

The trial is in its second week. The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against the "Twin Cities" of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah, which straddle the states' mutual border. The cities have a merged police department and public utilities. The Justice Department alleges that the FLDS controls the city, violating the U.S. Constitution's Establishment Clause, which essentially requires the separation of church and state.

Furthermore, the government alleges that the church uses the town marshals to enforce church mandates and discriminate against non-FLDS residents. It alleges as well that the utilities deny or delay water hookups to non-members. Those issues are constitutional violations of due process and equal protection under the law, according to the lawsuit.

The government also claims the cities violate the federal Civil Rights and Fair Housing acts.

So far, the attorneys representing the two cities are countering accusations and testimony by saying that the accused, who are police and town officials, no longer work for the cities and that the problems took place under the reign of Jeffs, who has been in custody since 2006. Jeffs was convicted of child sexual assault in Texas in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison.

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Defense attorneys claim the U.S. government is mostly rehashing the crimes of Jeffs and his henchmen, essentially charging the cities with the sins of their fathers.

The details that emerged in trial are at once intriguing and bizarre. There are a handful of family names that keep recurring — Jeffs and Barlow and Rounder and Jessop and Allred — and some players use more than one.

A Texas prison official testified Monday that Jeffs received 1,000 to 2,000 letters a day when he first arrived at prison. That correspondence has now dwindled to as many as 300 a day, and Jeffs picks and chooses which he accepts.

Justice Department attorneys read snippets in which town officials pledged oaths to Jeffs and asked for guidance as to whom the Lord wanted them to hire for town positions.

And some of Jeffs' visitors would wear wristwatches that could record conversations, two witnesses claimed.

Justice Department attorneys and defense attorneys also played tape recordings of prison visits to Jeffs by one of his many brothers. Jeffs, who according to one witness has supposedly deteriorated mentally in prison, can be heard speaking in a halting, high-pitched, otherworldly voice, spouting prophet-like gibberish in biblical-sounding King James English.

But on Tuesday, Willie Jessop, the former security chief, took the stand and painted a frightening picture of life inside and outside the FLDS.

Jessop, a towering, well-spoken man, told how one of Jeffs' wives would decode messages that Jeffs sent from prison. Jessop described how he took sniper training and made contingencies for when outside law enforcement would come to the cities looking for Jeffs, who was a fugitive from the law.

Jessop and his FLDS security staff, who were intertwined with the Twin Cities marshals, would board planes and use credit cards to leave a decoy trail for law enforcement who might think they were going to meet with the fugitive Jeffs. Jeffs would then jet from where he was.

The community meeting house was tricked out, Jessop said, with garage doors with ATVs for fast escapes. Others were stationed in trailers with drop doors around the community. They could deploy several at once "to give law enforcement a multiple choice as to who was on each quad," Jessop said. They had aircraft at the ready at the Colorado City airport.

Once, Jessop said, law enforcement came to the meeting-house doors while Jeffs was attending a meeting. "Perimeter security" alerted Jessop, who jumped onstage to get Jeffs while other security "slow-walked" the officers into the building and congregants created other delays.

Jessop sent a rider out on one quad for misdirection. Then he and Jeffs jumped on two more and drove down into the "crick" near the meeting house, at first headed for the airport, until they figured there would be no escape there. Instead they detoured to a trailer planted nearby in the community. Inside were two motorcycles, cash, prepaid credit cards, wigs, business cards and other things. They jumped on the bikes and fled.

Both sides claim religious discrimination in FLDS trial

But in 2008, nearly two years after Jeffs was arrested, officials raided an FLDS compound in Texas and took away hundreds of women and children. Jessop traveled to Texas to serve as a spokesman for the church, he claimed. The defense challenged the assertion.

In 2010, Texas officials confronted Jessop with nude photos and an audio recording of Jeffs having sex with a 12-year-old bride. Jessop said he was taken aback. He had thought a 2007 videotaped Jeffs confession had been rigged, he said. But then he decided to interview the alleged victims, who confirmed the assaults.

While Jessop was on the stand Tuesday, a DOJ attorney asked him what he did then.

"I threw up," he said.

Jessop said he started speaking out against Jeffs to fellow FLDS members, including Jeffs' brothers.

"That's what stirred the fires between me and the Jeffs brothers," Jessop said, "and it's been raging ever since."

In 2011, Jessop testified, FLDS security broke into his excavating business, took his phones and records and ripped the hard drives out of his computers. Town marshals circled around the block as he watched.

A Justice Department attorney asked why he didn't do anything.

"They'd have killed me," Jessop said. "They'd have killed me on the spot."

Church leaders then tried to cut a deal with him to return his property in exchange for cooperation. He refused.

When a DOJ attorney asked why Tuesday, Jessop nearly shouted, "The sum-bitches were raping little girls."

"We were creating the perfect storm for Mr. Jeffs to commit the act," he told the jury.

Civil-rights trial against polygamous sect begins in Phoenix

Jessop said he left the church but remained in the Colorado City–Hildale area.

In February 2013, he said he was awakened after midnight by a phone call. A former employee, who worked for the church, called to say that church security was kicking in the door of his business and he was barricaded in a bathroom there.

Jessop said he grabbed his gun and jumped in his pickup and drove through a snowstorm to the business. He called the ex-employee, who then opened a window and started handing him some of the equipment that had been stolen from Jessop two years earlier. They loaded it in Jessop's truck, and then rushed off to the house of the ex-employee's sister, where other people were trying to break in. They were chased there by the security men breaking into the business.

Town marshals arrived quickly. Jessop said he called the police chief, who told him he could do nothing because it was a church decision. Jessop locked himself in his truck and called the Mohave County Sheriff's Office.

When sheriff's deputies arrived, there was a standoff between the marshals and the deputies, and the marshals backed down. Then Jessop said he filled three vehicles with the records and equipment that had been stolen from him and had been stored in the house. Among the objects the deputies found were keys to locks, including closets in Jessop's own house.

Jessop stowed the records behind a locked gate at his house across the state line in Utah. He called the Washington County Sheriff's Office, he said, and before they arrived, someone had already come over the walls outside his house and stolen the vehicles containing the records.

The trial continues Wednesday.