I'm driving around Short Creek with Alyssa—who is in Boise, Idaho, where she is a college sophomore—piped in through the bluetooth-enabled speakerphone in the rental car I'd picked in Las Vegas the previous night. She is guiding me all around town, following my route, turn by turn, on Google maps. We pass the house she grew up in with her mother, three eldest brothers, and father before he was kicked out of the cult. She directs me to the houses she lived in after that: her stepdad Jim Jessop's home; then the rotten, roach-infested house she and her mother shared with nearly two dozen cousins and friends after being removed from Jim's following the Judgment. I pass the dairy, the zoo, the park, the former birthing clinic, the condemned high school built on a foundation of adobe bricks, and so on. Eventually, I pull up to the corner of Canyon Street and Jessop Avenue, where I find the baby cemetery.Read more: Women Who Escaped a Polygamist Mormon Cult Share Their Story
There are baby graves year that date back as earlier as the 1950s, potentially even earlier: many are unmarked. The last infant grave marked in this cemetery is dated 2010; Warren issued an edict from prison banning sex in 2011, so few infants have been born since then (the few babies born each year are the product of institutionalized rape by cult-appointed seed bearers). There are also graves lacking any dates whatsoever. Some read simply, "Baby Keate," or "Baby Bateman," or "Baby Cooke," with holes where numeric date tiles might otherwise be placed.
Fumarase deficiency, however sensationalized, is not the only genetic disorder found here. One man, who asks to remain nameless to protect his and his family's privacy, describes a lifetime of round-the-clock care and too-frequent hospital visits for his five sons. His eldest died six years ago at 10 years old, he says, and another died in infancy, leaving behind two remaining brothers from a set of spontaneous identical triplets. Those two—and a fifth boy—also suffer from the condition that all of this family's sons were born with: x-linked hydrocephalus. A rare neurological disorder characterized by water on the brain, muscular stiffness, adducted thumbs and aphasia, x-linked hydrocephalus is expressed only in men and carried by women. "You have to either accept" the responsibility of caring for so many children with major healthcare needs "or let it destroy you," says this man, whose wife recently suffered a stroke. The knowledge that one's children are likely to be born with conditions like this one does not prevent FLDS couples from becoming pregnant; instead, they see it as a responsibility and blessing to have many children.And then there are the more livable genetic conditions. The most common birth defects for children born of close cousins, anywhere, are: harelip, cleft palate, clubfoot, and certain forms of heart valve conditions. These conditions are disproportionately common, relative to the size of the general population, in Short Creek. According to many of the individuals interviewed for this story, these children are seen as special angels sent from God to the FLDS community. They're given the utmost attention and care because the FLDS faithful believe everything in this life is a test before entering the celestial kingdom, and caring well for all of Heavenly Father's children is part of that test.It's not really talked about; I don't think [people here] even research to see how related they are.
Dawna's younger sister has a little boy with two clubfeet. That sister, too, dealt with a lot of respiratory problems with her kids, "because of the relation," Dawna explains. "It's not really talked about; I don't think [people here] even research to see how related they are" before getting married or pregnant, she adds.This is all compounded by the split between the FLDS and an offshoot group of polygamists that moved to nearby Centennial Park following a disagreement over how the community should be governed, and by whom). The two groups split when Dawna was growing up. "They were called the Second Warders and we were called the First Warders; we weren't supposed to hang out with kids from the Centennial group because they were wicked for having left," she says. Dawna's eldest son is now dating a Centennial woman whom he recently found out is a distant cousin. "It's doesn't stop anybody," Dawna says. "There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece," she continues. "And my oldest daughter, she's 18 and she's dated a couple of my cousins, which makes them her second cousins, and we're like, Eww, that's gross."Just under eight miles southeast of Short Creek is an area called Cane Beds, Arizona. There lives Ross LeBaron Jr., a descendant of another polygamous sect (separate from the FLDS but quite similar in practice) called the Church of the Firstborn of the Fulness of Times. He shares a last name and a not-too-distant relation with the polygamous LeBaron group in Chihuahua, Mexico. LeBaron Jr. has been accused by three of his own sons, who purport to have DNA evidence obtained by saliva samples, of fathering four children with his own biological daughter. A fifth child, they say, was fathered by their eldest brother Wayne LeBaron, (who was married to Dawna Black Bistline's cousin at the time of this child's allegedly incestuous conception). These men are living freely in the Cane Beds area. Ross LeBaron Jr. recently took to the Internet to express his support for the Bundy family in Oregon, as well as for LaVoy Finicum, the lone fatality in that ordeal.There are times when it has gotten kind of gross, like when they marry an uncle to a niece.
"Have you ever heard of the term The Turkey Baster?" Dawna asks me.I tell her I'm not sure, given the context."There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble because he was having children with these young girls, so he said, 'Well, I never had sex with them—I used a turkey baster.'" Dawna says that, when people refer to what's going on over in the Cane Beds, they say it's probably another turkey baster situation. But Dawna disagrees: "I think it was actually, you know…." Sex."I didn't touch her; I just used a turkey baster," she mimics, rolling her eyes. "I'm like, Really? That's still gross." It's also still rape with a foreign object, I remind us both unnecessarily.There was a guy out here who was married to a couple of young girls, and he was going to get in trouble.
Ron Rohbock, 64, who was kicked out of the FLDS in 2002 after serving on church security for decades at Warren and Rulon Jeffs' side, has a different answer. "There were so many young children who were born with abnormalities—harelips, club feet, heart valves—that were… they were going to die within a year," says Ron. "Many of the parents did not want to have to deal with some of those children. So they would hand them over to Aunt Martha, who was the midwife," he says. Martha's husband was "Uncle" Fred Jessop, longtime Bishop to the FLDS people, who died in 2005 at 94, after being dragged from state to state by Warren Jeffs in what many ex-members believe was a transparent scheme of murder-by-stress: Dragging around a physically ailing, elderly man in need of constant medication is one way to kill a person without committing any outright murderous act, they say."They would hand them over and say, 'Would you mind please taking care of them, because we can't?' Now let me just simply state: He took care of them. Or Aunt Martha did, or somebody did. And the graveyard grew exponentially."In a portion of Warren Jeffs' Priesthood Record –– a mostly dry document that details his every move and meeting –– one entry, a written transcription of an announcement made by Warren at lunch with his late father's family, stands out as particularly creepy.There were so many young children who were born with abnormalities—harelips, club feet, heart valves—that were… they were going to die within a year.
We're sitting in Ron's large kitchen, eating a meal of homemade tomato sauce and sweet Italian sausage that his wife Geri—a retired marriage and family therapist originally from Hurleyville, NY, who he met six years ago on Zoosk!—has prepared in a slowcooker.Geri and I ask the same question at the same time: "What exactly do you mean by took care of them?""They took their lives," Ron says. "Fred was in charge of the cemeteries, the gravediggers, all of that. If you find a grave up there that's not marked, that's the way Fred wanted it."October 15, 2002: "There will be a viewing at father's house at 3p.m. for Nathanael Allred's baby. The grave side funeral services will be at the grave side in Babyland at 4p.m."