Free Prophet's Prey by Sam Brower Page B

Reynolds case set the stage for the Mormon Church to discontinue the practice of polygamy and for Utah to become a state. Wilford Woodruff, the fourth LDS prophet, issued what became known as the 1890 Manifesto, which made monogamy official church doctrine.
    Special provisions were eventually made into law allowing those who were already in plural marriages at the time to continue them without disruption, but no new plural marriages could be performed. That was the situation under which my pioneer great-grandfather lived, although he was occasionally hassled by the authorities for “cohabitation,” or living with a woman to whom he was not legally married. He paid $150 on one cohabitation charge and noted that it was “a lot of money.”
    Eventually, polygamy faded from the mainstream church as most Mormons busily assimilated into the growing United States. However, the deep divide had been created with the Manifesto. A handful of die-hard polygamists refused to go along with the new direction, arguing that the church had abandoned “God’s will” and that a man must possess numerous wives. The dissidents were excommunicated and driven into secrecy.
    By splitting away, the fundamentalists found themselves shorn of the right to set foot in any LDS temple—and temples are extremely important to Mormons, who use them as places for special worship such as formal marriages, in which everlasting vows are taken. The rebels could reasonably substitute meetings in private homes for their normal church services, but they had nothing that resembled a temple, and this created a big hole to fill in their new brand of religion. They came up with the novel excuse that since they were the true Mormons, they were of a higher order than everyone else, and therefore did not need a temple at all. Over time, that rationalization would become a point of stubborn pride with them.
    Rulon Jeffs rapidly became a big frog in the very small fundamentalist pond and rose steadily in power. He was soon an apostle, then a patriarch, and then he held one of the seven positions on the Priesthood Council (or the “Council of Friends”), who shared power and control over their loosely formed organization and everyone in it. They controlled everything. Rulon also was the protégé of President John Y. Barlow.
    A demonstration of the status he was acquiring came in 1942, when the fundamentalists created a rather dreamy socialist scheme called the United Effort Plan Trust (UEP), in which they pooled their resources with the notion that everyone would share the wealth equally. While that practice had been a part of early Mormon life as the religion struggled to survive during their long westward migration, it was eventually abandoned in favor of tithes given to the church and a storehouse from which supplies could be given to the needy. The fundamentalist version would turn that original good deed on its head.
    Not just tithes, but all real estate holdings and other assets would be pumped into their UEP, and its trustees would decide how to dole out the assets, as well as doling out entitlements from their own version of a “bishop’s storehouse.” Rulon, the financially shrewd tax accountant, was appointed a trustee of the UEP. The United Effort Plan Trust became the financial arm of the church, and grew to be worth millions of dollars. Since the United Effort Plan had no bank account—having an account might have opened the records to legal scrutiny—that fund was controlled primarily through the private Rulon T. Jeffs Trust, for which he had sole authority. The storehouse for the needy instead became plunder for the loyalists.
    As Rulon prospered in Salt Lake City, a colony of polygamists under the guidance of the Priesthood Council settled in an isolated little town called Short Creek, at the far southeastern end of Utah, along the Arizona Strip. It had been mostly rough cattle ranching country up