Polygamous group has Texans wary

ELDORADO, Texas — With the legal heat rising against its leader in Arizona and Utah, a polygamous sect is hurriedly building a new community in sparsely populated West Texas. But the arrival of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — marked by a temple tower rising out of the rocky terrain and prickly pear cactus — has been about as welcome among locals as a new species of rattlesnake.

"I think there's reason to be apprehensive, but they've done nothing to warrant any kind of great fear," says Schleicher County Judge Johnny Griffin. "But it's the unknown. ... It's the secrecy that bothers most people. I just hope nothing happens."

The congregation is known as FLDS and led by reclusive prophet Warren Jeffs since his father's death in 2002.

The FLDS began migrating 77 years ago to a remote area along the Utah-Arizona state line, where its members live in almost complete seclusion in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz. Members are not allowed newspapers, radio, TV or the Internet — and are forbidden to speak with reporters.

The sect, which may have as many as 10,000 members, has a history of polygamy that's long been an open secret in Utah. In civil lawsuits filed recently by former members there, Jeffs is accused of sexual misconduct and of assigning young girls as wives to older men.

But authorities say the accusations aren't sufficient to produce criminal charges because they can't get anyone to talk about Jeffs.

"For three years now, he's been doing everything he can to keep people from cooperating with us and to take steps to avoid our efforts," according to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, who recently held a Town Hall meeting on the church with Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard.

For Larry Donaldson, who has a ranch just up the road from the FLDS site in Texas, Jeffs' move stirs memories of the fiery demise a decade ago of David Koresh and his followers at the Branch Davidian compound outside Waco.

"That's just the thing I thought of," Donaldson said from his pickup truck, a rifle resting on the seat next to him to take care of predators coveting his livestock.

The new complex just north of Eldorado, about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio, includes roughly a dozen concrete and log apartment buildings plus other structures around the fortresslike temple, about 80 feet tall, that is nearing completion.

The main entry to the property is a dirt easement blocked by a locked metal gate. A quarter-mile down the path there's a small guard shack, and someone equipped with binoculars has been spotted atop a construction tower that has a bird's-eye view of the 1,691-acre tract.