He escaped just two weeks later and has been in the wind since.
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The next day the Federal Bureau of Investigation issued a warrant for his arrest.
Controversy is not new to Jeffs’ church.
Now, federal investigators say they believe Jeffs escaped the FBI’s monitoring by pouring olive oil or a similar substance onto his ankle to allow him to remove a bracelet that was tracking his whereabouts.
Others aren’t that surprised that Jeffs escaped.
Authorities believe Jeffs fled from this house in northwest Salt Lake City nearly a month ago.
“The damage to the bracelet was not such to trigger the full array of alarms that law enforcement or the US Marshals Service would have responded to”.
Authorities checked Jeffs’ ankle bracelet earlier on June 18 and found the tracker was still intact, Barnhart added. The FBI is asking for information about Jeffs or the vehicle. The agency issued a warrant for his arrest the next day.
Federal Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Sandra Yi Barker said Tuesday that Jeffs may have been driven away in a dark, late-model Ford Mustang that neighbors saw at his house June 18. Neighbors also said the garage door closed, and sometime later the Mustang left the residence, she said. Investigators couldn’t get the license plate number. Witnesses saw the vehicle leave the residence later that night, though they “could not identify who was in the auto”, she said. Someone waved back, he said, as if to say: ‘See you tomorrow’. Reporters at the network saw girls in prairie dresses and boys in long-sleeved shirts, the church’s traditional attire, when they visited the property.
The FLDS church, which splintered off more than 70 years ago from the mainstream the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is known widely for its polygamy and came under national scrutiny when the church’s self-described “prophet” Warren Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison in 2011 for raping a child. Jeffs is one of 11 people who have been charged in the case.
Jeffs had been serving time in the Iron County Jail since his arrest in February, but since his trial was delayed, US District Judge Ted Stewart chose to release Jeffs early on the conditions that he wear a Global Positioning System tracking bracelet and live in Salt Lake City.
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Jeffs was prohibited from talking with witnesses, co-defendants and his brother, imprisoned sect leader Warren Jeffs.
