FLDS not sole focus of probes

Fugitive polygamist leader Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist LDS Church are not the sole focus of Utah's criminal investigations into polygamy.

In an interview with the Deseret Morning News, Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff put other polygamous sects in the state on notice that they remain under a cloud of suspicion of abuse, fraud, child-bride marriages and other crimes.

"In case anybody wondered," he said, "we're clearly following up on investigations and leads of every other group that we've had allegations of (perpetuating) these crimes that we're focusing on."

Shurtleff declined to say whom he is investigating or if charges are pending. Sources tell the Deseret Morning News that a number of current and ex-members of different polygamous groups in Utah have been meeting with investigators and providing them with information.

The lawyer for polygamist John Daniel Kingston said he is aware of a criminal investigation into his client and other members of the Kingston group.

"There is an open investigation by the attorney general's office," Daniel Irvin told the Deseret Morning News. "We don't know what it's for."

Irvin said the Utah Attorney General's Office has been investigating matters that go beyond a custody case involving one of Kingston's purported wives, Heidi Mattingly. Discovery requests in the court case have been about more than allegations of abuse and neglect, he said.

"What they're doing, I can't talk about," said Rowenna Erickson, an ex-member of the Kingston polygamous group and a founder of Tapestry Against Polygamy. In an interview Friday with the Deseret Morning News, Erickson acknowledged she has been speaking to investigators and providing them with information being used in criminal investigations.

"I'm pleased at what is being attempted," she said of the cases the investigators for the Utah Attorney General's Office are building.

Tapestry Against Polygamy has been critical of Shurtleff, saying he has not been aggressive enough in prosecuting polygamists.

"We want them to give us some time frame so that we know it's really going to happen," said Tapestry Against Polygamy director Vicky Prunty. She was in Denver Friday, speaking to a conference on cults.