In 2000, Warren Jeffs told FLDS faithful to remove their children from public schools in Hildale and Colorado City. Two-thirds of the students disappeared overnight from the Colorado City Unified School District. At Phelps Elementary School in Hildale, enrollment got so low that the Washington County School District was forced to close it.

"President Jeffs wanted people to educate their children, and he encouraged us to pull together," then-Hildale Mayor Dan Barlow told the Deseret Morning News in 2002. He would later be kicked out of the church by Warren Jeffs.

On September 8, 2002, Rulon Jeffs passed away at the age of 92. He left behind somewhere between 19-to-75 wives and dozens of children. More than 5,000 people turned out to Hildale's mammoth Leroy S. Johnson Meeting Hall to mourn the passing of the man who encouraged his followers to "keep sweet forever."

"My constant message to my family is to keep sweet, and we have a heaven on earth. I suggest that for you, brethren," Rulon Jeffs said in a March 2002 sermon reprinted on his funeral program. "My family is united as one, and they all love me, and I love all of them, and I am constantly telling them 'Keep sweet no matter what.'"

At the funeral, Warren Jeffs spoke for his father. He dedicated his father's grave. He then took over his father's work as president and prophet of the FLDS Church.

Warren Jeffs' rise to power was meteoric, ex-FLDS members say. On his way up to the hierarchy of the church, he stepped on the backs of a number of high-ranking FLDS leaders to be No. 1.

One of them is Winston Blackmore.

The former number three man in the FLDS Church, Blackmore was known as the "Bishop of Bountiful." Blackmore ran the FLDS enclave in British Columbia and when he was ousted by Jeffs, half of the followers there remained loyal to him.

"It has now been three years since we were handled by Warren Jeffs," Blackmore wrote on his website. He blasted Jeffs for destroying families, the doctrine of the once-proud FLDS Church and blowing money on keeping himself on the run.

"The FLDS leadership are on the run and in hiding," Blackmore wrote. "Truly the once proud twin cities of the saints will be known as one of the waste places of Zion."

Sources tell the Deseret Morning News that Blackmore has been cooperating with authorities in the manhunt for Warren Jeffs, as well as the current property tax fight over UEP land. A judge in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court has said she will sign off on a plan to reform the trust.

'The Storm Clouds'