The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

by Musser, Rebecca

  Joshua and Jordan were beautiful baby boys, and I felt such sweet tenderness anytime I looked at them. When one of them cried, a fiercely protective, mothering instinct overcame me. Their lives deserved to be absolutely perfect, and we were all a little distraught at leaving the security of Hildale for our Salt Lake home.

  “Mom,” Christine said, courageously raising the question that was on all of our minds. “How are we going to protect the babies?”

  My mother threw up her hands in frustration. “I never had to face anything like this when I was growing up!” she said. “There was always peace in our home.” Christine and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. This was the first time we’d ever heard Mom speak openly about our situation.

  I thought about my grandmothers. Eliza and Vilate had already passed, but I dearly loved Mama Olive, Mama Kloe, Mama Alice, Mama Cynthia, and Mama Ida, all of whom were here to support their daughter. Mom’s siblings were her dearest friends, especially her sister Martha Steed Allred, who lived in Salt Lake. Aunt Martha and her sister-wife treated each other kindly, and their relationship showed me a genuine closeness and respect that was missing within my father’s family. Uncle Jim Allred was a patient man with a great sense of humor. Through them I glimpsed that plurality might be not only endured but even enjoyed.

  Our last night at Grandfather’s, I went to bed exhausted from playing. Dad had come to take us all home. I usually slept soundly, but that night I tossed and turned. When I heard quiet voices in the kitchen, I snuck upstairs to cajole a snack from an indulgent grandmother. Suddenly I stopped still, recognizing Grandfather Steed’s voice. I loved him, but he was no-nonsense. He would send me straight back to bed. I had almost turned to go back downstairs when I heard my mother’s trembling voice. Curiosity piqued, I snuck around the other way to the kitchen and slipped silently under the table.

  “Daddy, you don’t understand how hard it is!” my mother cried. “If I leave the house for any reason, to go to work or go out with my husband, I have no idea if my children will even be alive when I get home. How can I take these two new precious souls back to that?”

  “She’s telling the truth!” I wanted to shout. A wellspring of hope rose inside of me. Grandfather Steed could surely help us! He was powerful in the family and in our community—as revered as any FLDS leader besides the Prophet. He could do anything, couldn’t he?

  When Grandfather’s voice thundered, I almost jumped and hit my head in fright.

  “You stop that crying right now, Sharon!” he bellowed. “Go home, and obey your husband!”

  After we arrived back in Salt Lake with two little ones in tow, our chore list grew ever longer. My favorite tasks involved anything having to do with the twins, though I wasn’t yet allowed to pick them up or carry them. How I longed to be as big as Christine and Savannah!

  That fall I received the most glorious news. My beloved Mrs. Garrett, my kindergarten teacher at Eastwood Elementary, would be teaching my first-grade class! She didn’t mind my incessant questions or voracious appetite for knowledge. She put my bubbly energy to good use by letting me explore, experiment, and read. Her gentle nurturing made facing the bullies who pulled my braids and made fun of our long clothing bearable.

  That year our class studied dinosaurs and the ecosystems of early earth life. I was fascinated, but that wonder was about to be superseded by a visit from an astronaut, now a Utah politician, who told us about his flight into space. He showed us his space suit and let us taste the dehydrated ice cream the astronauts ate.

  Mrs. Garrett took advantage of our enthusiasm over our guest to teach us the solar system. Each day I would soak in as much as my six-year-old brain could handle, then run home as fast as I could. Completing my chores and homework in record time, I’d anxiously await the arrival of my father. He had to divide his time among a lot of children, but given his background in the space industry, I loved being able to discuss what I was learning with him.

  When the school year ended, I said good-bye to Mrs. Garrett. The promise of summer thrilled me, though no one in our family sat idle—especially the girls. At nearly twelve, Christine was in charge of all eight of us younger siblings, and there was never-ending laundry, cleaning, and enormous meals to prepare.

  That summer began a series of extraordinary events that would forever alter our lives. Mom stayed home full-time and even became pregnant again after the twins turned one. The promise of another baby meant a longer refuge from Irene. It was glorious to feel Mom’s warmth, cheerfully singing as she went about her duties.

  Music had always been a part of the Steed legacy. Grandfather’s family was still often requested to provide musical entertainment in the community on every possible occasion. The early Mormons had been great purveyors, contributors, and patrons of the arts. Among our own people, we had carried on that tradition with operettas, plays, parades, and musicals. With Mom at home full-time, music made a grand entrance into our lives. There I discovered a place of exquisite peace and rest; it awakened my creativity and was a safe haven from a harsh world.

  Christine began playing the viola and later switched to the violin. When I heard the stringed music, I was in Heaven! I hung on every note and hovered around her as she played. I could tell when she was on note or not—something had awakened within me, probably due to my mother’s sweet singing voice. I had a natural ear for pitch, tone, and tempo. When Christine practiced, I played on wooden spoons beside her.

  The next summer, I turned eight and was presented with a miniature violin for my birthday. It was the loveliest thing I had ever seen, and I cradled it, watched over it, and protected it like my baby brothers. It was unusual for one among my siblings to receive such an expensive possession, especially with Mom no longer working. The birth of baby Zach marked my mom’s tenth child and my father’s nineteenth. I did not take it for granted.

  The day of my birthday celebration, which I shared with my brother Trevor, we were each presented with a beautiful homemade cake of our own. I was wearing a pretty, hand-me-down, gunnysack-style dress, and when Trevor and I posed for our picture, my sleeve caught fire on the birthday candles. Someone snuffed it out quickly, but the plastic from the material melted into my skin. I showed up to my first violin lesson dressed in bandages with huge, painful blisters down my arm, but I didn’t care. No one could pry the violin away from me, and I played it night and day, even sneaking it into the bed I shared with Brittany—until she put a stop to it.

  I became proficient quickly, with the help of Mrs. Guertler, a Mormon woman who taught violin to students of different backgrounds. Even though she didn’t practice plurality, Dad allowed us to go to her lessons. He began to call me a virtuoso and loved to show me off whenever a guest from the FLDS came over.

  “Play something, Sis!” he would say, grinning broadly. I would pick a hard piece I had practiced well, and it usually stunned the listener to hear intricate music from such a tiny person. I loved to shine for Dad, and I drank in the praise he gave me. Sometimes my siblings called me a show-off.

  Months later Mom got a sleek new Yamaha piano, and she would occasionally sneak a few precious moments to play with me. My love affair expanded to the piano, and I practiced that for hours, too. Irene would inevitably scream down the stairs, “Can you make Becky stop?” I’m sure my siblings felt the same way. But the magic of the music seemed to fill my life with light. It also opened unexpected doors.

  Anxiously awaiting my turn at Mrs. Guertler’s rock house on Millcreek Way, I consumed her Reader’s Digest and other magazines. Reading Guideposts (a Christian publication) and the Ensign (published by the LDS church) shocked me. Each issue showcased at least one story where a life was spared and hope provided. How could God’s hand extend to Gentile Christians who knew not the truth, and apostate Mormons who had turned away from it?

  I pondered these questions and many others, though I learned very early never to ask them aloud. My parents had made a momentous decision as to our FLDS education, one
whose ramifications would affect our entire household. The previous fall, my siblings and I had been “blessed” with the opportunity to attend Alta Academy, an elite educational facility for children of families who strictly observed all of the principles of the FLDS. Housed inside Uncle Rulon Jeffs’s enormous white mansion within his large estate at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, it was considered the “Yale” of the FLDS, even though it originally went only to eighth grade, later expanding to the twelfth grade. I was eager to enroll, as Uncle Rulon’s estate was a place where we didn’t have to worry about what the outside world thought. As part of the throngs of children in prairie dresses and long sleeves playing in the courtyard, we could be ourselves without ridicule. And for the first time, all of Dad’s children could be the “Walls,” instead of some of us having to carry the seemingly shameful name of “Wilson.”

  We had attended church on the property for our entire lives, as it was the only FLDS building in Salt Lake that could hold our large congregation for Sunday services. My father had designed the home and said it was the largest single-family dwelling in the state of Utah when it was built. Before now, I had been familiar only with the vast meeting hall areas and a couple of nearby bathrooms on the first floor. As a student, I got to explore the rest of the building, including the third floor, which housed the principal’s office and eventually the home economics rooms and tool shops. The house also had forty-four bedrooms, twenty baths, two full kitchens, two half kitchens, and two laundry rooms. Upstairs, the Jeffses did their best to maintain a household and raise their families, despite the hundreds of children below. There was also an area reserved for birthing rooms. Women from the Jeffs families, especially second and third wives and so on, were often instructed to deliver their babies here, so as not to arouse the suspicions of outsiders. It was not uncommon to be headed to class and hear the eerie reverberations of a mother in labor, or the cry of a newborn.

  As good Priesthood children, we had to make a lot of changes in order to live up to the standards being set at Alta Academy for the rest of our community. We also now had to wear long underwear, once reserved for adults, which I helped Mom and my aunts to sew. It was vital that we follow each and every rule to the letter.

  These standards were strictly enforced by our principal, Warren Jeffs, known to us as “Mr. Jeffs.” The son of Rulon Jeffs, who was in the First Presidency with our Prophet, Uncle Roy, Warren had become Alta’s principal within a few years of graduating from Jordan High in 1973, despite having no college education. Mr. Jeffs was strange, but his position demanded respect. He had a gangly, lean frame and wore glasses that made his dark brown eyes look beady. Around his father he was obliging, seeming to hang on his every word. In the halls of Alta Academy, however, he was in charge. While he often had a goofy smile plastered to his face, everyone knew when he was serious. His expression would grow somber while his soft, almost hypnotic voice would get a sudden, deadly edge.

  Every morning in the great meeting hall, an expansive area with a low, flat ceiling, we had devotionals or Morning Class. There we gathered together as a student body to hear Mr. Jeffs, joined on rare occasions by another FLDS leader or the Prophet, to speak on church doctrine. Then we would go to our classes for age-appropriate Priesthood subjects. Finally upon our return home, we had large amounts of homework on the same—usually accompanied by sets of tapes of Mr. Jeffs speaking on each subject. We were quizzed each day on that content, and we had to get the answers right or listen to the tape again until we did. A low-grade test score meant you had a low-grade testimony of God.

  I was at the school for only two days when I first heard Mr. Jeffs soberly address appropriate behavior between boys and girls. He seemed obsessed with ensuring we were keeping ourselves pure.

  “To warn you,” he said, “your boy-girl relationships here, young people, are being closely watched, as you are quite aware. As our Prophet, President Leroy Johnson, has taught the young people, the boys particularly, ‘Treat the girls in your acquaintance as though they were snakes. Hands off!’ And the girls should treat the boys the same way until they are placed by the Prophet.” I was determined to be a good Priesthood girl and please Uncle Roy, my Prophet, as were my sisters and friends, so we started treating males as if they were, indeed, foreign, scaly, and reptilian in nature. We avoided even our brothers and cousins. We ran from them, refused to sit by them, and were careful not to converse with them, especially near our principal.

  Mr. Jeffs paid strict attention to the styles of women and girls. I was learning to sew, which was hard work! I carefully considered acceptable styles, looking for attractive fashions that were still considered “pure.” One friend’s mother made her a princess dress, an elegant style with a modest bodice designed to make the waistline look slim. My friend was delighted until Mr. Jeffs sent her home in tears, after raving that the V-waistline pointed down “there—that place of a girl’s body where the mind should not go” and was therefore a wicked, evil design. Her own mother, in her innocence, could not explain to her daughter why Mr. Jeffs considered it evil. Still, she was never allowed to wear it again.

  Every child at Alta tried to stay on his or her best behavior. With nearly everyone related, any misstep was bound to get back to our families and cause them considerable shame. My siblings and I avoided being called into Mr. Jeffs’s office as if our lives depended on it. We dreaded hearing any of our own called in over the PA system that was present in every one of the seventy rooms on the property. We also quickly learned to keep our mouths shut in the classroom, as Mr. Jeffs seemed to enjoy making an example of a student in front of his or her own classmates.

  Unfortunately, the Walls, especially my mother’s children, seemed to be a little more curious and stubborn. I focused on my studies and my homework and did my best to keep out of trouble. But once in a while, my Wall traits emerged, especially when I knew I was right about something.

  I crossed swords with Mr. Jeffs several times during my first two years at Alta. On the first occasion, even though I had seen dinosaur bones and been able to touch and study them, Mr. Jeffs forced me to say that dinosaurs did not exist, had never existed, and were a lie made up by my worldly teacher! Deep down, I knew Mrs. Garrett would not have taught me anything that was a lie. But, greatly humiliated, I mumbled the words and sat down, with a red face and hot tears of defiance leaking from the corners of my eyes.

  The second time, Mr. Jeffs was called to our classroom by my teacher to reiterate that astronauts had never landed on the moon.

  “But, Mr. Jeffs,” I exclaimed, “I met an astronaut in real life! I touched his space suit! He even signed his autograph!” I went on, ignoring his contorted expression. “He flew in space, and he told us about it! He told us all about Russian astronauts going up into space first, but U.S. astronauts raced ahead to be the first ones to land on the moon!”

  “The government is crafty, Miss Wall,” he snarled, and I jumped, recognizing that edge in his voice. Mr. Jeffs cocked his head condescendingly, as if I had been totally led astray. “They have made films and erected lies to make the public think they have landed on the moon.”

  “But—”

  “Your teacher was a Gentile.” He spat the word as if it was poison. “Never speak of these things again!” He stared hard at me, and I returned his gaze for a moment before putting my head down on my desk in defeat. Mrs. Garrett was not evil. My dad was selling stuff to Morton Thiokol for their solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle! There was such a thing as men landing on the moon! But I was too smart to say another word. A boy I knew had been forced to drop his trousers to his knees and was whipped by Mr. Jeffs with a yardstick in front of the entire class until it broke. It had been horrifying to all of us to hear the boy’s cries of pain echoing down the hallway. I didn’t want to be the next example.

  When I finally dared to lift my head, Mr. Jeffs was gone. I was sad now for my cousins and friends who would never know about dinosaurs or men on the moon. I felt a bu
rning defiance, but just like at home, my survival meant knowing when to keep my mouth shut.

  At Alta, we studied Priesthood History, Priesthood Math, and Priesthood English and Science—just enough for the girls to read recipes and work safely in kitchens, factories, or businesses run by Priesthood men, and the boys to become excellent carpenters and builders. In Home Economics, Mr. Jeffs seemed particularly obsessed with imparting certain principles to us young ladies. It seemed very important to him that our age group of girls have “proper teachings”—more than boys and adults combined. He would often bring up subjects that made me feel uncomfortable, with daily reminders of morality and purity. Each time he said the word “body,” I felt sick to my stomach.

  Alta Academy did have some benefits, like the small library in the basement. Books were a sweeter treat for me than candy. Between chores and homework, I had little time to read but was allowed Encyclopedia Brown. In the series, author Donald J. Sobol presented the most incredible thing: choice! I could choose where the story would take me, and I could choose the ending. Since my choices in everyday life were strictly limited, I relished being able to select a variety of outcomes. The best part? No matter what I chose, it wasn’t wrong.

  One day I walked into the musty library planning to exchange my stack. I politely greeted Mrs. Dutson, the librarian, as I set my stack down and walked over to select some more volumes. Mrs. Dutson glared at me.

  “Don’t you even think of checking out those books!” Tears stung my eyes, and I hung my head and walked away.