Sam Brower - Prophets Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints

Warren Jeffs with his twelve-year-old bride Merrianne Jessop, daughter of the bishop of the Yearning for Zion Ranch, Merril Jessop. Merril gave at least nineteen of his daughters and granddaughters in marriage to FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs.

Merrianne Jessop on her wedding day, just over a month before her new husband, Warren Jeffs, was captured.

A recently married and newly pregnant Veda Keate, the thirteen-year-old daughter of convicted child molester Allen Keate. Shortly after Allen gave Veda in marriage to Warren, he took an underage bride of his own. He is serving thirty-three years in Huntsville State Prison in Texas.

Ora Bonnie Steed posing with underage sister wife Veda Keate. Warren wrote that both conceived their babies during the same "heavenly session" with him. Veda also appeared in a photo in a National Geographiccover story on the FLDS, along with her daughter Serena. The caption in the magazine identified them only as two of the children taken in the raid on the YFZ Ranch.

Fourteen-year-old Loretta Jane Barlow and Warren Jeffs. Loretta is one of Bishop Merril Jessops granddaughters, and the daughter of Rulon Barlow, who was excommunicated for asking Warren Jeffs to hand him some nails while working on the temple.

Fifty of Warren Jeffss eighty-plus wives, including underage brides Merrianne Jessop, Veda Keate, Brenda Fischer, and Loretta Barlow, posing beneath a photo of their husband and prophet at the YFZ Ranch compound in Eldorado, Texas.

Forensic technicians examining the temple bed on the YFZ compound. Jeffs consummated many of his marriages to underage brides in bizarre group sex rituals on this specially made bed.

Temple at the YFZ Ranch. Also depicted are the temple annex and a couple of the typical H-homes common in FLDS compounds. (Photo by Kathy and Randy Mankin.)

El Cap section of the Vermillion Cliffs, as seen from Maxwell Park, Short Creek, Utah. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

The real Short Creek, where chickens peck on dirt roads roamed by large plyg-rigs and most people live in squalor. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

Ross and Lori Chatwin with three of their children at a family reunion in Cottonwood Park, Hildale, Utah. (By permission of Ross Chatwin.)

Giant cottonwoods in Cottonwood Park, Hildale, Utah. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

Like father, like son. Warren Jeffs and his father, Rulon T. Jeffs, enjoy a double wedding. Warren would later take his widowed stepmother (sitting on his fathers lap) as his own bride.

After the death of Parley Harker, Warren Jeffs (left) usurped the position of first counselor to his father, the prophet Rulon T. Jeffs (center). Second Counselor Fred Jessop (right).

Author Sam Brower (left) with Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran, attempting to serve a subpoena on Warren Jeffs at the front gate of the YFZ Ranch. Bishop of the YFZ Ranch, Merril Jessop (right), is stonewalling, insisting that Warren Jeffs had not been seen in months. (Photo by Randy Mankin.)

Candi Shapley (second from left), leaving the Mohave County Courthouse after refusing to testify against Randy Barlow. Candi had previously testified under oath at a grand jury proceeding that Barlow had raped her repeatedly. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

Front entrance to the Hildale medical clinic and bishops residence where Sam Brower had just served papers for Will (Timpson) Jessop. (Left to right) Deputy Town Marshall Sam Johnson (picking up papers and attempting to return them to Brower), Hildale deputy marshall Helaman Barlow, Washington County deputy Matt Fischer, and author Sam Brower.

Press conference at the home of Winston Blackmore in Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada. Winston Blackmore (center) and his wives (left to right) Leah, Ruth, Edith, Marsha, and Zelpha. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

A guard tower that overlooks the FLDS "place of refuge," code-named R-23, near the town of Pringle, South Dakota. (Photo by Cookie Hickstein.)

Town cemetery, Colorado City, Arizona. Note the mounds of red earth stacked on the graves, an FLDS tradition dating back to the original settlers in the early twentieth century. (Photo by Sam Brower.)

Warren Jeffs renounces his position of prophet in open court: Im not the prophet

Warren Steed Jeffss booking photo at Mohave County Jail, Kingman, Arizona, February 2008.