Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

[jon1856]

Compound considered home for sect’s ‘elect’

Members of polygamist group aspired to live at Yearning for Zion Ranch

ELDORADO, Texas - The secretive and insular community established near this West Texas town by a radical offshoot of the Mormon Church is considered by the sect's members to be a holy shrine populated by its most fervent adherents and is propped up financially by members of the group living in other states, according to law enforcement officials and former members.
Interviews with law enforcement authorities and former members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints depict the Yearning for Zion Ranch, which was raided last week by Texas authorities, as an outpost whose adult residents were considered the sect's elite. They were handpicked by the church's leader, Warren Jeffs, who was convicted last year in Utah of being an accomplice to rape for arranging the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her cousin.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24089507/

[jon1856]

Trouble on the West Texas prairie

Land sale for 'hunting lodge' created polygamist nightmare for town

ELDORADO, Texas - The guy didn't look much like a hunter. He was beanpole tall — scarecrowish, some might say, with a high, collegiate forehead and a reluctant handshake. Even in a pearl-snap shirt and jeans, this cowboy somehow seemed better suited for a college lecture hall than a saddle.
Still, he wanted land — lots of it — for a corporate hunting retreat. Said he might build a lodge, to entice some big-roller clients of his in Vegas. North of town, the old Isaacs ranch — rocky and dotted as it was with rusty oil rigs, cactus and gnarled mesquite trees — caught his eye. It was plenty cheap, he said, and plenty remote.
But it didn't take long for the sheriff and everyone else in Schleicher County to figure out that their new neighbor, David S. Allred, president of YFZ Land LLC had much more on his mind than the hunting of whitetail.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24216507