Polygamy roll shows 21 wives for one member
Pastor Dale Morgan
Polygamy roll shows 21 wives for one member*
* Story Highlights
* "Bishop's List" details number of sect members' wives, children
* One member's wife is 13 years older; another wife is 43 years younger
* List was discovered during April raid on sect's Texas ranch
By Susan Roesgen
(CNN) -- In the secretive, illegal world of American polygamy, life has
been good to 67-year-old Wendell Loy Nielsen of Eldorado, Texas.
Photos from a Web site launched by the sect show scenes during and after
the raid of their ranch.
By his own account, Nielsen has 21 wives -- and 36 children.
His oldest wife is 13 years older than he is, and his youngest wife is
43 years younger -- she's just 24.
His oldest child is 21 years old, and his youngest is a 6-month-old baby.
That's one of the longer, single-family genealogies uncovered in a CNN
review of the "Bishop's List" -- a series of documents listing the age,
marital status, children and address of the members of the Yearning for
Zion polygamist ranch in Eldorado, Texas.
The ranch is owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints, a Mormon offshoot that practices polygamy.
The Bishop's List was found among nearly 1,000 boxes of paperwork taken
from the ranch by investigators who are considering child-abuse charges
against some of the sect members.
Investigators don't believe there is a "bishop" on the ranch. Instead,
they believe sect members take orders from the man they call their
"prophet"-- convicted polygamist Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is in prison for
forcing a 13-year-old girl to marry her 17-year-old cousin.
Investigators say Jeffs still exerts control from prison through one of
the men on the ranch, Merle Jessop. One of Jessop's wives is a former
sect member, Carolyn Jessop, who left a polygamist compound and later
wrote a book about her experience, called "Escape." AC 360° Blog: Broken
bones, broken spirits?
Last week, attorneys for the sect argued against a court review of the
documents, claiming the documents should remain private under First
Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.
Judge Barbara Walther disagreed, saying the documents must be examined
to try to find possible medical records of the sect children.
The Bishop's List also reveals other interesting details.
Most of the documents list the members' address as "R 17" -- shorthand
for the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
But on at least one family's document -- the Jacob H. Johnson family --
the address for Jacob's 22-year-old wife and infant daughter is listed
as a "house of hiding."
Investigators have not revealed where or what kind of house that might
be. Also, some sect members have refused to tell investigators -- or
said they don't know -- how old they are.
Yet the documents in the Bishop's List seem to suggest that sect members
do know their ages, and the ages of their children. Again, in the
Johnson family record, one wife is listed as being "almost 28" while
another is listed as being "almost 22."
The ages of the wives and their children are critical to investigators,
who believe that underage girls were routinely married and forced to
have sex with older men.
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No formal criminal charges have been filed in the case. The next court
hearing regarding the state's custody of 463 sect children is set for
later this month.
The sheer number of children has created confusion between state
officials and FLDS families and their attorneys, many of whom say their
clients don't know where their children have been placed.