Warren Jeffs: The Godfather
The western United States is home to a man thousands of his followers call simply "the prophet." Some say his teachings are directly linked to those alleged abuses in Texas.
"Some even believe him to be God on Earth," explains Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
Not that you'd guess that by looking at him - 52-year-old Warren Jeffs comes across as rather ordinary. But as leader of the radical FLDS, he is anything but. His critics believe he has transformed the church from a quirky religion to something much more sinister today.
"There's a certain brand of FLDS under Warren Jeffs that is also, I believe, similar to an organized crime group," says Shurtleff, who says he sees parallels to the mob in the FLDS' organization, finances and lack of respect for the law.
The best example of that, Shurtleff says, is the practice of underage marriage. "I've gone on record as calling them the American Taliban, in the way they treat women," Shurtleff tells correspondent Susan Spencer.
Utah Private investigator Sam Brower has been keeping an eye on the FLDS for years, first helping members who'd left the group, and later working with law enforcement.
"He controlled every detail of a person's life. Where they work, who they're gonna marry, where they're gonna live, almost down to when they're gonna have sex and why," says Brower, who has a pretty low opinion of Jeffs.
Some of the 10,000 or so FLDS members who follow Jeffs' lead are scattered around the U.S. and Canada, but most live in two small towns on the Utah-Arizona border: Hilldale and Colorado City.The YFZ Ranch
Wherever they are, members accept on total faith whatever the prophet tells them. "He came in one day and decided that dogs were evil," Shurtleff explains. "And every single dog in town was eliminated."
"They've been totally brainwashed and brought into this culture that's taught them they're gonna go to hell if they deviate from it," Brower says.
Before Warren Jeffs, his father Rulon was the group's prophet. When he died six years ago at age 92, Warren, who by then was helping run things anyway, formally took power and became the new prophet. He sealed the deal by marrying many of his father's wives.
"Warren has somewhere between 50 and 80 wives," Brower tells Spencer.
Jeffs has resisted all attempts to stop underage marriages. And 48 Hours has obtained a copy of a birth certificate which may help explain why: it names Jeffs the father of the baby; the mother was underage when she got pregnant.
Brower says young girls are routinely married to older men. "I know that the FLDS wanna make this about religion. They wanna make it about polygamy. But that's not it. It's about child abuse. It's on a scale that's never been seen before in this country," he charges.
One unassuming young woman, Elissa Wall, turned out to be Warren Jeffs' worst nightmare and the main reason he's in jail. In 2001, Jeffs abruptly ordered Elissa to marry her 19-year-old first cousin.
Not only did she intensely dislike the cousin, she was only 14 years old. "He didn't treat me nicely. I didn't want to be married at all," she says. "I ended up talking to Warren and his father and pleading with them."
Her tearful pleas were ignored and Jeffs pronounced them man and wife. She says she that while she tried to look happy in photos, she was repulsed by her new husband, and, at only 14, totally unprepared for what came next.
"I didn't have any idea where babies came from. I had no idea what had to happen physically to have a child," Wall says.
After three miserable years, Wall fled both her marriage and the FLDS, and in 2005 told her story to authorities. That led to a warrant for Jeffs' arrest.
But by then, he had disappeared. "The FBI did the extraordinary step of putting him on the 10 Most Wanted list," Shurtleff says.
Jeffs was captured a few months later during a routine traffic stop near Las Vegas. In the car were disguises, cell phones, computers, envelopes stuffed with member's contributions, and $50,000 in cash.
Last year Jeffs, considered God on Earth by his followers, was put on trial in Utah, facing two charges of rape as an accomplice.
"Trial was tough, it really was, the hardest thing was I felt like I was baring my soul," Wall tells 48 Hours.
Her face hidden from cameras, Wall testified about the first night she says she was raped by the man Jeffs forced her to marry. "He said it is time for you to be a wife and do your duty. I said please don't do this, and he just ignored me. He didn't say anything and he just laid me on to the bed," Wall testified in court.
"And no matter what you said, no matter how many times you told him no, if he wanted to have sex with you, he would?" Spencer asks.
"Yes, by force or not by force," Wall says.
She says that aspect never changed.
Jeffs was convicted and is currently serving 10 years to life, but he still has influence in the FLDS' huge financial empire, estimated to be worth $100 million or more.
Not that individual members see much of that: "They were commanded to basically go to work every day, work hard, and give me your money," Brower says.
Since polygamous marriages aren't legal, technically all the wives are simply single mothers, fully eligible for government programs.
Attorney General Shurtleff says they "game the system in that way."
48 Hours found that in the two small border towns, Hilldale and Colorado City, where most of the 6,000 residents are polygamists, the food stamp bill will run to $2.5 million this year alone. "The rest of the society shouldn't be paying for their lifestyle choices," Shurtleff argues.
More of the secrets of that lifestyle may soon come to light when Jeffs goes on trial, this time in Arizona, on new charges: sexual conduct with a minor.
And Elissa Wall may once again testify against her former prophet.
"I think she needs to be very careful," Brower says. "Ten thousand people hate her because of what she's done to the prophet."
Asked if she's concerned about this, Wall tells Spencer, "You know, I am."
But she's thrown herself into the public eye by writing a book about her ordeal.
As for Jeffs, he's not taken well to prison, has at times been on suicide watch, and, in an astonishing moment, was caught on jail surveillance tape last year admitting to his brother that he is not the prophet of his church and that in fact he is a bad man.
"I'm not the prophet…I never was the prophet," he told his brother. "I have been a liar and the truth is not in me."
His attorneys dismissed the tape, saying Jeffs was just depressed.
But Utah's attorney general hopes his unquestioning followers were listening very carefully. "I think that was the one truthful moment in that man's life. He realized that he hurt a lot of people."