The teenage boys often spiral downward into drugs, alcohol and homelessness – exactly the hell that the religion predicted would befall them if they failed to subscribe to its teachings.
"I bid thee farewell," is what Ladell Pipkin, 26, said the late Prophet Rulon Jeffs told him when he was ordered to leave town a few years ago.
Located on the Arizona Strip, Colorado City is cut off from the rest of Arizona by the Grand Canyon to the south and the Colorado River to the east.
John Dougherty
The Leroy S. Johnson Meeting Hall.
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Pipkin is one of 37 children. His father was 54 when he married Pipkin's mother at age 19. She was one of five wives.
New Times found Pipkin living out of his decrepit SUV on an empty lot in north Phoenix. Covered with scabs and pulling hair from his face, he appeared strung out on crystal meth.
Pipkin could barely put together a sentence. But paperwork in his possession showed he had graduated from Colorado City High School in 1995, before being sent on his way.
Anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop assisted Pipkin, getting him enrolled at Teen Challenge, a youth treatment center. The young man disappeared January 5, after leaving a disturbing, handwritten letter on his bed.
"Please help me," the letter begins. "It's just to [sic] darn late, Ladell. You have messed up everybody's life. You are a mass murderer. You are just like a Hitler. Just what in the world were you thinking when you tried to challenge God? You have killed so darn many people."
He then expresses regret at how many chances he had to pull his life together, including a second baptism. "I should just commit suicide right on the spot. I am damned for all eternity for ever and ever."
Phoenix police found Pipkin six weeks later wandering downtown streets, disheveled and disoriented. Pennie Peterson said she picked him up from police and arranged to have him sent to St. George, Utah, to live with an uncle.
"He stunk so bad I had to put a blanket down over the seat of the car," Peterson said. "His brain was gone."
Dissenters Evicted
Julia Thomas had a beautiful herb and flower garden around her Colorado City home.
It was a home she had built with her own hands, much to the dismay of religious leaders who don't like women displaying such independence.
She loved her little spot on Earth as much as she cherished the fundamentalist Mormon creed.
"I made a covenant a long time ago that I would give my life to the gospel," Thomas said. "I'm doing it."
The 70-something Thomas has more than 70 grandchildren and great-grandchildren. During her lifetime in Colorado City, she has seen tumultuous events in her religion. But nothing like the split that occurred 20 years ago.
At that time, a battle emerged over whether a council of seven men should lead the FLDS, or whether all power should rest with one.
Thomas opted for the council of seven, but her side lost the battle when former Prophet Leroy Johnson assumed control of the FLDS in 1984.
The congregation in Colorado City has been ruled by a single man ever since. After Uncle Leroy came the Jeffses, Rulon and then Warren. Those who had opposed one-man rule soon found themselves in trouble, even if they were still faithful to the religious doctrine.
Like many FLDS faithful, Thomas had built her home on United Effort Plan property under the assumption that she could remain as long as she wished. But soon after Rulon Jeffs assumed power in 1986, the religion notified everyone living on UEP land that they were "tenants at will" and could be evicted.
Many in the community were shocked. Eventually, 21 people filed a class-action lawsuit seeking to retain title to the homes they had paid for and built on the land.
Led by a handful of activists, including Ben Bistline, the suit cost plaintiffs more than a million dollars and dragged on for more than a decade. A Utah state court judge finally ruled that the UEP could not evict plaintiffs from their homes, unless they paid fair market value for them. Once the homeowner died, the judge ruled, the land and home would revert to the UEP.
After the suit was settled, the UEP tightened language in its charter and resumed evictions against anyone who was not in "harmony" with the Prophet.
Lenore Holm quickly found herself out of favor in August 2000, when she protested the planned spiritual marriage of her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole, to a 39-year-old man as his second wife.
The UEP immediately sought to evict Holm and her children from the Colorado City home that she and her husband, Milton, were building. The 39-year-old Lenore has 14 children – nine were still in the parents' care.
Rather than turning over the property, which most people do when it is demanded by the UEP, Lenore Holm chose to fight the eviction in Mohave County Superior Court. The case is pending, and the Holms remain in the house. But Lenore's 16-year-old moved in with the man, and the couple were married soon after she turned 18.
As for the elderly Thomas, who is divorced and was not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, she wound up getting evicted from the home she had paid for and built.
"They gave me three days' notice to leave," she said.
