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

by Musser, Rebecca

  Finally Warren changed the edict: we were to fast every other week. Still, our long periods of fasting and isolation had taken a toll on everyone’s health. Instead of getting better, we were becoming sicker, and so was Rulon. Mary stayed by his side night and day, resting only for a few hours when necessary. It wasn’t helping. Not a single one of us wanted to admit it, but we were losing our husband, our Prophet.

  On September 8, 2002, Rulon Timpson Jeffs passed away. He had prophesied that he would never die, and we had believed him. We all relied on the Prophet for our eternal salvation. And Rulon had promised he would be renewed! Even as we prepared for our Prophet’s funeral services and the people mourned, we kept expecting Rulon to bang on the lid of the coffin and demand to be let out! But there was no sound.

  More than five thousand FLDS members attended the funeral services for the Prophet. Afterward, Warren asked the people to allow immediate family to view the interment, promising that they could come and pay their respects when it was over. More than sixty of Rulon’s wives, his children, and a few close great-grandchildren gathered to see Rulon’s ornate wooden casket lowered into the ground. My sister-wives and I sang “A Choir of Angels,” one of Rulon’s favorite songs, a cappella. It wasn’t until dirt was shoveled onto the enclosure that we looked at one another with wide eyes and the frightening realization that our husband and our Prophet was truly gone.

  On the way home in the van, as we were coming up the hill between the cemetery and the Jeffs property, a deep and tangible fear grew within me. Most of us had remained in a state of devastation for several days and were terrified by the thought of living without Rulon. Not that living with him had been that grand, but the unknown felt much worse. For me, personally, Rulon had provided a powerful layer of protection between myself and Warren. I knew that now I would have to pay the price.

  Warren’s usurping of power over the last four years meant that the transition to full power was fairly seamless. The day after Rulon’s funeral, he continued “speaking for Father” and then stunned the entire congregation who had gathered for instruction, song, and prayer when he curtly announced, “Hands off the Prophet’s wives!” I was shocked and still numb, but so grateful. I had been old enough to remember the power plays involving Uncle Roy’s wives after his death. Everyone had wanted one of the Prophet’s little darlings, and within just a few weeks the women were placed with new men and families, hardly given a moment to grieve. I was relieved that Warren was granting us time and safety.

  That night in family class Warren spoke for hours on how we should go on with our lives as if Father was still there, that it was what he would have wanted for us. He even said if we were faithful enough, we would see Rulon walking among us. I felt that same tremendous sense of relief. Like a nun married to Christ, I could simply be married to Rulon for the rest of my days. It might have been an odd thought for a twenty-six-year-old woman, but the idea of being bedded by any other man terrified me. Warren’s proclamation settled my nerves.

  Because of this, I was not prepared for what was about to happen.

  The week after Rulon’s passing, my sister Brittany called me from Bountiful, her voice full of concern as she told me that Winston proclaimed that with Rulon dead, Warren would have “free rein” over his father’s wives!

  At Brittany’s words, my blood ran cold. When Rulon passed, I had been secretly relieved that I would no longer have to be violated at the hand of God. To have to face that violation again with someone else was beyond what I could handle.

  “There are many of us praying that Heavenly Father will have mercy for your fate in the desert,” Brittany said, but there was little comfort in her voice. “Becky, my husband has so many wives, he doesn’t even bother to spend the night with just one of us!” Her voice broke. “He simply hops from bed to bed, treating us like whores—without even the dignity of holding us in his arms for even one night after relations.”

  With a start, I realized what it had taken from Brittany all these years not to crumble under the strain. Jason Blackmore should be taken out back and beaten with a hairbrush! I recalled how at the beginning of their marriage, he had forced her to submit before she was ready, and now she was expected to keep sweet and be grateful for any morsel of affection as he jumped from wife to wife in the night.

  As I placed the phone back on the receiver, a great anxiety swelled up within in me. Christine had come into my room as I had been on the phone with Brittany, and she was half reclining on my bed.

  “You don’t think we’ll be forced to remarry, do you?” I asked, confiding my worst fear to her. “Do you really think we’ll have to be placed with another man?”

  I looked into her beautiful, dark eyes, hoping for some verification that this was all nonsense and foolishness. Instead, I was shocked to see a wistful smile upon her face.

  “I’ve actually dreamed that I would marry…” Nodding matter-of-factly, she added, “I dreamed that I would marry Warren.”

  “What?” I cried shrilly, unable to hide my disgust and disbelief. “Warren?” Christine was much too young and too beautiful to be a widow forever, and though I couldn’t blame her for desiring a younger husband and children of her own, I was sickened by her response.

  “Yes,” she said, languidly. “I think it’s what Father would want us to do. Don’t you?” She stared at me pointedly, and I could feel my temperature rising. I had visions of Warren jumping from bed to bed like Jason. The heat moved from my head into my belly, and like a volcano, indignation burst from deep within me.

  “If you think I will be part of a herd of cows where a wild bull runs rampant among us, openly mounting one cow, then moving on to another, and another, and another… well, you’re wrong. I will have some dignity… and jump the fence!”

  There was only one context in which I would have preferred to be treated like an animal. Why couldn’t I be “put out to pasture” like the older wives after our husband’s death? Those past childbearing years didn’t have to face this gut-wrenching dilemma. I could easily live with Mother Marilyn, Mother Ruth, and Mother LaRue, and the other older wives. I honestly believed in my life and my religion, and I would have been content to spend the rest of my days cooking, cleaning, and serving others as long as I didn’t have to go near a bedroom with a man in it.

  “Why the hell would you base a decision like that off a stupid dream?” I threw my notebook on the bed, highly disturbed at all Christine was suggesting. I began having a very ominous feeling building in the pit of my stomach.

  That Sunday, I was called once again into Warren’s office. He got right to the point.

  “Mother Christine came and talked to me.”

  I froze, then tried to act casual.

  “Oh yeah…? What did she say?”

  Warren gave me a rather sanctimonious look. “She told me everything.”

  My heart sank. And I was furious with Christine.

  “No offense, Uncle Warren,” I said. “I could not marry you, or any man.” I waited for him to explode, but instead he grabbed a nearby garbage can and began clipping his fingernails over it. Aside from the clip, clip, clip, there was total silence.

  “I know I could have been more obedient when Father was alive—” I finally began, but Warren stopped me.

  “Mother Becky, I want to put your concerns to rest. No one is going to be forced into anything. This household will carry on as if Father were alive.” My heart jumped in relief. He went on. “I am going to ask if you have a problem with me, you go directly to me. Don’t go to Christine, or anyone else. Just come directly to me.”

  It took me several moments to respond. If I didn’t have to run away from violation, I would no longer look for reasons to be gone. I would seriously commit myself to doing just what he asked of me.

  “Well, okay then, Uncle Warren,” I said. He looked up at me, surprised. “I will ask you for the same consideration. Stop fishing. Stop going to others for reports. Come straight to me, and I will tell you
the truth of what is in my mind and my heart.” Hopefully, he would be able to understand that 99 percent of my rebellion had been about being with Rulon in the bedroom, and that if I no longer had to worry about being raped and violated, I would be obedient to him.

  I stood up to excuse myself.

  “Mother Becky,” Warren prompted, “what would you do, if Father’s wish was now for you ladies to be remarried?”

  I looked at him fiercely. “I will tell you one thing. I will not say yes to something that I don’t agree with or feel I can succeed at.”

  In my mind, marriage meant sexual submission. I never wanted to be with another man, not ever.

  Warren nodded. “I just wondered,” he said. “Remember, no one is going to be forced to do anything.”

  For the next several nights, however, I couldn’t eat or sleep. Warren began intimating that he had changed his tune. His words were in direct opposition to what he had told the people, and then what he had told me, but in a devious way.

  “Ladies, consider in your heart that you might be called to do something that will not feel right to you,” he said one evening in class. “Consider it prayerfully. The minute you revolt from anything that comes from God, you will be under the power of Satan and not be able to resist. One night, Father is going to have you do some things that you may first reject. I’m telling you, be silent and pray for a testimony that you will not reject and that your heart will be open. If you are pure in heart, you will know that this is a truth. This is the next step.”

  I sat there, unable to believe how this man was so adept at twisting words and using our beliefs against us for his own purposes! When we obeyed him to the letter, he called us “Father’s Heavenly angels.” If we voiced a single fear, however, he would say that Satan was finding a place in our hearts. Of course, we wanted to be angels and keep sweet!

  My head and heart hurt, my bones were aching, and I had the most awful stomach pains. I had developed ulcers like many of my sister-wives. Several sleepless nights later, I went to the kitchen to find something to alleviate the pain. My sister-wife Amanda was in there, too, having the same problem. The rest of the house was silent.

  I hugged her, noticing the circles under her eyes mirrored mine.

  “Amanda, you don’t think we are going to be required to remarry, do you?”

  She started to cry. “Becky, the last time I helped Father was in the last two weeks of his life. Father was laying down, and Mary and I were rubbing his legs to help with the pain. Suddenly Rulon pulled himself up with great strength and grabbed Mary by the shoulders. ‘Mary, promise me, you will save yourself for me!’ ‘What are you talking about?’ she cried, and he said, ‘Promise me that if something happens to me, you will totally save yourself for me.’ ‘Nothing will happen to you, Father!’ she cried. ‘You are going to live for one hundred and fifty more years! You’ve said so.’ Then Father shook her shoulders, hard! ‘Promise me, no other man will have you!’ ‘Okay, I promise!’ she said.”

  Amanda looked at me with the same desperation I was feeling. “Becky, I cling to that… I cling to that.”

  I clung to that as well.

  In the meantime, many people, especially in Canada, began to murmur that Warren was not the rightful leader of the Church. Warren addressed these rumblings at the annual breakfast my sister-wives and I had at Maxwell Park in honor of my and Rulon’s anniversary. We would have been married seven years. These breakfasts were always a special occasion, though we had them often, as we had sixty-five of Rulon’s unions to celebrate. Naomi took notes as Warren spoke.

  “Before Father passed on, he set in order this situation,” Warren began, referring to Canada. “The opposition is going to say that it was not Father that made the corrections on Winston—that he was not able to make the decisions—that it was Warren who did it.”

  I looked around at my sister-wives. They knew as well as I did that Rulon had deferred everything to Warren.

  “Thus it all comes down to whether they have a testimony of the Prophet and that he does right. I say to us, make sure your testimony burns bright. The other night I talked to you, about how Priesthood succession takes place, how the previous Prophet has already, by revelation, appointed the next Prophet. Even since Father’s passing, think on the testimonies you have heard and how you felt—and why Father is doing this among you—so that his family will stand firm and not be divided. This is why you must stay close to home where the Priesthood can guide you and that you won’t go off and join in all the fearful and doubting conversations among this people.”

  Not only were we not to question; he asked us to become “sweeter and even sweeter.” I kept concentrating on the people and my desire to hold them together. But my body language could not lie. And my brain could not compute the way Warren was twisting his words to sound like the new truth.

  Unbeknownst to me, on Friday, October 4, 2002, Warren wrote in his Priesthood Record:

  I talked to LeRoy Jeffs today. I told him to seek a testimony of what I was to tell him, of the Lord and Father, that some of Father’s ladies would be sealed, many to myself, and I told him one to him, as far as I know now; that he needed a testimony of his own of the authority to perform that work and that it is Father’s will. He immediately expressed that he believed and would support the directive, knowing that Father would tell me what to do. I said this to him as we walked along outside at the school.

  I just yearn none of Father’s ladies will fail this test that is coming on them. But I feel like when a sealing takes place, most would come, yearning to do Father’s will. All but one seems to be converted, and that is Mother Becky.

  One month to the day after Rulon died, my entire belief system was shattered. At six a.m., Warren’s voice sounded over the speaker.

  “Good morning, ladies! This morning’s Good Words will not be over the intercom, it will be in the living room. All of you come up!”

  Hmmmmm, I thought. I threw on one of my long dresses and socks, not really bothering with my hair. When I arrived in the living room, several ladies were already seated, and I chose a seat on a recliner.

  Warren walked into Good Words Class, bouncing on his heels and grinning from ear to ear as if he had won the Nevada state lottery. Most of the ladies in the room looked at him as mystified as I was.

  “Seven of you ladies married me last night. Would you seven please stand up?” Immediately, seven of my sister-wives rose to their feet, while the rest of us looked on in shock and disbelief. They stood there, giggling like young schoolgirls.

  I couldn’t stop tears from racing down my cheeks and onto my dress. Mother Paula, Mother Ora, Mother Naomi, Mother Melinda, Mother Tammy, Mother Kate, and even Mother Kathy were standing. Once I thought about it, I was not surprised to find Naomi in that first batch of Warren’s wives, but I found it significant that mothers Paula and Ora were first—the ones who served as examples to the rest of us. And his marriage to Mother Kathy, known previously in the community as an avid follower of Winston, was a clever, strategic move on Warren’s part. Jubilantly, Warren described how each of these women had come to him in private, feeling like they were supposed to be married to him. They continued giggling as he spoke, while the rest of us sat there bewildered.

  “We are all going to go on a honeymoon trip, to play baseball at the park. This is the next step for you ladies. This is what Father wants you to do. These seven women came to me!” Then he told us to pray, and Father would tell us who it was we were to marry.

  “These women are so pure they received Father’s revelation first. This is Father’s will, and I’m just his little boy. I’m just his little boy!” He threw his hands up and shrugged his shoulders.

  I glanced over at Christine. She had told both me and Warren about her dream of marrying him. Her face betrayed her sadness that she was not among the first seven of his wives. There would be more, though—I would bet my life on it. My stomach turned violently. Not only did our scripture forbid men from ever m
arrying their mothers; something about the whole thing just felt sick. I told everyone I didn’t feel good and begged out of going to the honeymoon celebration at the park.

  Up until that point, I wholeheartedly believed in my religion. I did not like Warren and I didn’t agree with his maneuverings, but I believed I was in the truest church the world had ever known. Had we been told that the next step was to drink purple punch filled with cyanide, I would have done so without question.

  Now I was questioning everything.

  Even though I’d heard from Warren, “No one is going to be forced,” there was a horrible gnawing at the pit of my stomach. Over the next several days, I hesitated to go to Good Words Class. Each day, Warren would show up with more of my sister-wives on his coattails! I couldn’t help but be repulsed.

  My sister-wives were disappearing, and not just from our household to Warren’s. In the last week we had woken up to find Emma gone, and no one knew where she was until she showed up later with Warren’s brother LeRoy. They were both thrilled, and my heart delighted that she had found a kind man, though it was sobering for the rest of us to lose her.

  At church, Warren carefully used testimonies of the Prophet’s last days to substantiate his power from the pulpit. He had Isaac testify how Rulon had pointed at Warren and told Isaac, “You follow that man. You follow that man.” Then for the very first time, Warren had Naomi stand up to give her testimony. I could count on one hand the times that a woman had spoken in church—and I wouldn’t use all the fingers. Naomi testified that Rulon had said, “If anything ever happens to me, you follow that man.”

  The destructions of 2000 and 2002 had never happened, but now I felt the ground tremble violently under my feet. At least with Rulon, we had generally known what to expect. Warren was a loaded gun.