The spotlight on Owen Allred followed renewed attention to the topic of polygamy, kick-started in the spring of 1998 when several former polygamist women formed "Tapestry of Polygamy." They revealed details of systemic abuses in all of the state's largest polygamous communities, including Allred's AUB.

A flurry of polygamy-related news dotted newspaper front pages during that time.

First, responding to questions from reporters at a monthly televised news conference, former Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt acknowledged plural marriages in his family tree and the tradition of polygamy in Utah.

"For the most part, they are very hard-working, good people," Leavitt said. He also reaffirmed polygamists' rights to religious freedoms.

Later that summer, Owen Allred called a press conference to denounce abuses within polygamous cultures and distinguish his group from others.

The then-84-year-old leader wrote letters to newspapers and members of the Utah Legislature, lauding efforts to raise the minimum marriage age from 14 to 16 and reasserting the group's adherence to all laws.

"For 50 years now . . . the rule among our people has definitely been that girls should not even start courting until they are at least 17 years of age," Allred wrote in a letter to the Deseret News.

"Our policy is to allow our young girls and young men to seek the mates of their own choice, but to do it with wisdom and wait until they are old enough to know what they really want in life," he wrote.

"Of course this will not stop girls younger than 16 who want to get pregnant in order to get state support."

At the time of the fracas, Mike King was an investigator for the Attorney General's Office. King spent more than 10 years studying the state's polygamous communities and worked closely with Owen Allred in what turned out to be a landmark meeting between state investigators and the polygamous compound.

"We did make some pretty good progress," King said Tuesday.

In the fall of 1998, Allred lived up to his promise to allow state officials access to his followers and approved a visit from 10 criminal and domestic abuse experts from the Utah Attorney General's Office. The team spent three hours on a Sunday on the Bluffdale property owned by the Apostolic United Brethren.

More than 900 followers, dressed in their Sunday best, attended a "special meeting" called by Allred, who did not reveal who would be visiting the church.

"He invited them out to make sure they knew we have nothing to hide," Carl Allred said Tuesday.