Polygamist leader held for sex charges in Texas - Reuters

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO, Texas | Wed Dec 1, 2010 4:15pm EST

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (Reuters) - Polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, whose rape conviction in Utah was overturned on appeal in July, has been extradited to Texas, where he was ordered held without bond on Wednesday on sexual assault and bigamy charges.

Jeffs, 54, whose word was considered God's will by thousands of followers, is the self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway Mormon sect known to practice illegal plural marriages.

Jeffs was indicted by a Texas grand jury in July 2008 following a raid on an FLDS ranch near the tiny west Texas town of Eldorado. He is charged with bigamy and with sexual assault involving two girls, aged 12 and 13, whom he allegedly took as wives.

All three counts are felonies that carry penalties ranging from five to 99 years in prison if convicted.

State authorities removed more than 400 children from the FLDS compound at the time of the raid, sparking a child custody battle that gripped the nation with lurid allegations of adolescent brides and teenage pregnancies. But the children were all later returned to relatives.

The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the official name of the Mormon faith, renounced polygamy more than a century ago as Utah was seeking statehood and tries to distance itself from splinter groups that still espouse it.

FLDS men typically marry one legal wife while taking others as their "spiritual wives" -- a practice that attempts to skirt the law and entitles the women and their children to various welfare benefits.

Female members of the sect wear long, pioneer-style dresses, keep their hair in long-braided plaits and are raised to be submissive to their husbands. Church members are generally suspicious of outsiders.

Revered as infallible by some and reviled as power-crazed by others, Jeffs has been characterized by his lawyers as an "unpopular religious figure" unfairly singled out for prosecution on the basis of unorthodox beliefs and teachings.

He spent 15 months on the run and made the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list of fugitives before his August 2006 arrest near Las Vegas.

Jeffs was convicted in Utah in September 2007 on two counts of first-degree felony rape as an accomplice, stemming from a 2001 marriage between a 14-year-old girl and her 19-year-old cousin performed by Jeffs over the girl's objections.

At the time of the April 2008 raid on the sect's ranch in Texas, he was serving a prison sentence of 10 years to life in the Utah case and awaiting trial on a similar charge in Arizona, which was later dropped.

The Utah Supreme Court threw out his conviction in July of this year and ordered a new trial, ruling the presiding judge had given faulty instructions.

Last week, Utah's high court ruled Jeffs could be extradited to Texas, a move defense lawyers said would effectively end the case against him in Utah by denying his rights to a speedy retrial.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said Jeffs was picked up in Utah by Texas Rangers on Tuesday night and "escorted into the state," where he was booked into the county jail in San Angelo, about 200 miles northwest of San Antonio.

Twelve other FLDS men from the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado were indicted on charges ranging from setting up sham marriages to bigamy and child sexual assault. Seven of those have either pleaded guilty or been convicted and have been sentenced to prison.

(Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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Texas A&M gunman alert during Bushes' visit called misunderstanding - msnbc.com

COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Texas A&M University locked down its main campus Thursday after a report that a suspected gunman had been spotted while the Bush family was on campus.

The incident appeared to be a misunderstanding, NBC News reported.

A member of the Texas A&M Corps of Cadets was walking down the street with his rifle about 2 miles from where the Bush family was, NBC said.

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The university's notification system, called "Code Maroon," sent a message at 5:35 p.m.: “All Clear. Person with replica weapon identified. No danger. Resume normal activity.”

Earlier, a campus bus driver was on his route around 4 p.m. when he reported seeing an individual carrying a weapon, possibly a rifle, near a building next to the student union, according to A&M spokesman Lane Stephenson.

The situation at first raised fears of what happened last month when a student opened fire on the University of Texas campus in Austin before he eventually turned the gun on himself in the library.

A&M's emergency notification system sent texts and e-mails telling students, faculty and staff to remain indoors while police looked for the suspected gunman. Students reported seeing police, including SWAT team members, searched all over campus.

About two hours later, students, faculty and staff were notified that there was no danger and they could resume normal activities.

"University officials believe the basis for the report was an individual who had in his possession a 'dummy' rifle — a replica," according to the A&M statement.

The person with the replica rifle had apparently walked through Rudder Tower on his way to the western part of campus, where he got into his car and drove home, A&M officials said.

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The university said no actual weapon had been found.

About two miles away from where the suspected gunman was spotted, the university was to hold an event where former President George H.W. Bush and his wife Barbara were hosting former first lady Laura Bush at the George Bush Presidential Library Center. Stephenson said the Bush event was still planned as scheduled.

The A&M campus, which ranks as the nation's sixth-largest university in enrollment with more than 49,000 students, is 95 miles northwest of Houston.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Texas sheriff on Jet Skier: 'All we want ... is a body' - Houston Chronicle

At a news conference on Thursday, Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez discusses the disappearance of David Hartley from a lake that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border.

ZAPATA — A Texas border sheriff on Thursday said he was calling directly on Zeta operatives to simply produce the body of a missing U.S. citizen believed shot and killed last week by drug gangs on Falcon Lake reservoir.

“All we want on this side is a body,” Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez said at a news conference here attended by three congressmen and a host of other U.S. officials.

Gonzalez said he had made his entreaty privately through channels he could not disclose, but that now he was making his request public so the Zetas — an assassination hit squad now turned full-fledged cartel — would know he had no jurisdiction to go after them.

Mexican authorities resumed their search Thursday morning for the body of David Michael Hartley. This morning’s ongoing efforts, being conducted by at least 40 troops, comes one week after Hartley’s wife made a frantic 911 call reporting his slaying during a sightseeing trip.

There were conflicting media reports early Thursday suggesting that Mexican officials had stopped their search because of threats from drug cartels, prompting criticism from Gov. Rick Perry, who on Wednesday called on Mexican President Felipe Calderón to do a thorough search for the body.

Speaking in Houston, Perry, who's running for re-election, said he had not heard from Calderón. He was harshly critical of the Mexicans’ efforts to find the body.

“No, I’m not satisfied, I don’t think we’re doing enough. When you call off a search the way they did this morning, and give as the reason that the drug cartels are in control of that part of the state, something’s not right,” said Perry, after receiving the endorsement of the Houston Police Officer’s Union at their headquarters. “If they need some assistance, the United States needs to be visiting them about how we can give the assistance to take back control of that part of the state. "

“But we do not need to let our border continue deteriorate from the standpoint of having drug cartels telling us whether or not we can go in and bring back the body of an American that’s been killed, that is irresponsible,” Perry added.

Meanwhile, three members of the South Texas congressional delegation said they had called for more federal Homeland Security resources, not only along the border, but directly on Falcon Lake and Amistad reservoirs.

The congressmen said they wanted to emphasize that the incident did happen on Mexican waters and that people were safe to visit the U.S. side of the lake.

The ambush by three boatloads, as the couple was on Jet Skis viewing Mexican ruins, was the fifth reported confrontation with “pirates” on the border lake since the spring. It was the first involving a shooting death, followed by a gun chase extending to the U.S. side.

Tiffany Hartley and her family met Wednesday night with two Mexican state police commanders at an international crossing linking Roma, Texas, with the Mexican city of Miguel Aleman.

“I took them to the Roma ..... port of entry and brought them face to face with the two people that were in charge of the search,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said. “One of the things I wanted to do was make sure the family met up with the people in charge of the search and let them know that the Mexican government is indeed searching.”

Cuellar said officials on Wednesday searched a tributary where the reported incident had occurred, and planned Thursday morning to widen the search into the lake.

Family members said they were encouraged by the meeting.

“They were extending the courtesy to come out and to try to put us at ease,” said Paul Hartley, David Hartley’s uncle who traveled from Tucson, Ariz.

The Mexicans are frank about their fears searching an area under known control of traffickers protecting prime real estate for contraband. On either side of the 60-mile-long lake are long stretches of privately owned scrub land, with the U.S. side patrolled primarily by a handful of game wardens.

Eleven mayors have been killed, and police on all levels are under pressure to moonlight for the cartels. Kidnappings are rampant, as are threats to harm officials and their families.

“We don’t want that on our conscience,” Paul Hartley said.

Tiffany Hartley said it was difficult returning to the lake to observe the Texas efforts in the search Wednesday, as it brought back memories of how last week’s sunny day on the lake ended in horror.

Laying a wreath in the water from Tuesday night’s well-attended memorial service gave her some peace, she said, but closure won’t come until her husband’s body is found.

She said she’s hoping that by speaking publicly, the Obama administration will ramp up border security more than has already been done. She’s also dealing with a nation that largely doesn’t want to believe her, with some television personalities insinuating she killed her husband.

“How on earth could I want to live this life without him?” she said. “I can’t even imagine why people would think that I would do this to him. But there’s people who don’t know us.”

Houston Chronicle staff writer James Pinkerton contributed to this report.

lbrezosky@express-news.net

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