Fundamentalist Mormon prophet Warren Jeffs came close to getting arrested over the last year because the Utah Attorney General’s Office believed he wanted disobedient teenager Vanessa Rohbock sacrificed to the Lord in a religious ritual called Blood Atonement. Based upon the teachings of Mormon Church patriarch Brigham Young, Jeffs professed…

U.S. 101 just north of downtown Los Angeles clears finally. But the respite from 70 minutes of grinding traffic from Los Angeles International Airport to North Hollywood on an early Saturday evening doesn’t last long. Another jam appears just off the freeway along Buddy Holly Drive as hundreds of cars…

Above the bold, silver letters of “Office of the Mayor” hangs a sign that inadvertently reveals how the nation’s fifth-largest city operates. “Diamondbacks Way” declares the blue-and-white strip inside Phoenix Mayor Skip Rimsza’s 12th-floor suite. Doing things the Diamondbacks Way means this: Do what Arizona Diamondbacks general partner Jerry Colangelo…

Congressman Rick Renzi is sponsoring a provision in a defense-spending bill that could provide hundreds of millions of dollars to his father’s business while delivering what environmentalists say is a death blow to the San Pedro River, the state’s last free-flowing desert stream and one of the most important environmental…

Arizona and Utah authorities plan to join together for the first time in an effort aimed at curbing the widespread sexual abuse of minors within a Mormon polygamist enclave that straddles the border between the two states. Law enforcement officials have agreed to open a sheriff’s office substation close to…

“We are under attack,” declared fundamentalist Mormon Prophet Warren Jeffs from his pulpit in Colorado City during an August 10 sermon. “We need the Lord’s protection,” he warned members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS). Utah authorities are investigating Jeffs for allegedly having sex with…

“This is laughable,” scoffs Cindi Nannetti, Maricopa County’s sex-crimes bureau chief, as she finishes reading a three-page report prepared by the Colorado City Police Department — an agency controlled by fundamentalist Mormon polygamists along the Arizona-Utah border. The report briefly summarizes more than a decade of sex crimes by Dan…

An Arizona Department of Public Safety investigation has linked a call to former independent gubernatorial candidate Dick Mahoney’s cell phone to forged state Attorney General’s office documents circulated to the press last September. The The fake documents appeared to be internal AG memoranda strongly suggesting that then-Attorney General Janet Napolitano…

The state Auditor General’s Office has begun a preliminary investigation into the finances of a polygamist-controlled school district in northern Arizona in the wake of New Times’ reports of extravagant and improper spending by the tiny, one-school Colorado City Unified School District. The auditor general’s “special review” could lead to…

In a blow to the powerful fundamentalist Mormon church that controls most of the land in Colorado City, a Mohave County judge has ruled that religious dissidents Milton and Lenore Holm cannot be forced from their home without just compensation. “I feel like Colorado City really is part of America,”…

Arizona State University president Michael Crow rolls across the conference room floor in a chair, grabs a potted plant and begins a lecture on his vision for ASU to become the world’s leader in biodesign. “This plant is biodesign,” he says. “Nature, evolution, designed this plant. This plant can convert…

KINGMAN — A simple eviction trial in Mohave County has evolved into a battle over the scope of power a religious group can exert to control its members including their behavior, their relationships and even where they live. The leaders of a fundamentalist Mormon polygamous sect could have kicked Milton…

The spiritual leader of a fundamentalist Mormon sect along the Arizona-Utah border apparently fathered a child with a second underage girl he considers one of his many wives, according to Utah birth records obtained by New Times. A Utah birth certificate shows that 47-year-old Warren Jeffs is the father of…

Deloy Bateman begins each school day long before dawn. He rousts five of his teenage children from bed at 2 a.m. An hour later, the clan arrives at the Colorado City public school. Soon, a few other kids join the group in Bateman’s well-stocked science laboratory. After two hours of…

The leader of a renegade branch of the Mormon Church, now 47, had sexual relations with an underage girl who bore him a daughter in July 2000, records obtained by New Times indicate. Warren Jeffs, Prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints (FLDS), apparently lives…

Joseph Smith, a 24-year-old New York farmer, founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830. Relying heavily on Old Testament teachings, Smith introduced polygamy to fellow “Saints” in 1843 in Nauvoo, Illinois. A year later, Smith was assassinated in Carthage, Illinois. Polygamy became a fundamental…

Sixteen-year-old Ruth Stubbs wanted to marry the boy down the street. So she revealed her desire to a religious leader, a man held in the highest esteem in her rural, isolated community straddling the Arizona-Utah border. On a December morning four years ago, Ruth sought the advice of the Prophet…

Environmental activists say two Valley billboard companies rejected their advertisement because it is critical of Salt River Project’s plans to build a massive coal mine that threatens to destroy the Zuni Salt Lake in western New Mexico. SRP does extensive business with Clear Channel Outdoor and Viacom. Both billboard companies…

A lawyer for a man accused of plotting to kill Sheriff Joe Arpaio will use the entrapment defense to challenge what was one of the top county lawman’s grandest public busts. Defense attorney Ulises A. Ferragut Jr. will employ the defense next month in the long-awaited trial of James Brian…

Phoenix City Councilman Michael Johnson’s raucous nightclub on South Seventh Avenue quietly won an unusual reprieve last month from the state liquor board. An administrative law judge’s recommended one-year suspension of the club’s liquor license was overturned by a vote of the full board. A first-term councilman and retired Phoenix…

The author of a purported Attorney General’s Office memo describing widespread criminal activity in the polygamous community of Colorado City remains unknown more than two weeks after it surfaced. The state Department of Public Safety has begun an investigation requested by Attorney General Janet Napolitano to determine who prepared the…

FLAGSTAFF — A decade-long, high-stakes financial and environmental struggle that stretches from a 1,000-year-old Hopi village to Southern California electric users is rapidly coming to a head. At stake are hundreds of high-paying jobs on the Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations in northeastern Arizona; they could be lost if the…