Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [167]
The trooper explained that what had given the men away was their conflicting stories when separated and questioned individually. Warren told the officer they were en route to Denver, while Isaac said they were heading for Utah. The officer radioed for backup, and later the FBI. He was incredulous when Warren provided him with the fictitious name of John Findlay, then produced a receipt for a pair of contact lenses that had been purchased in Florida as proof of his identity. As other officers arrived on the scene, one of them recognized Warren. Eventually, when members of the FBI arrived, Warren realized that the jig was up and admitted who he was.
In the red Cadillac, officials confiscated twenty-seven stacks of $100 bills worth $2,500 each, totaling $54,000, fifteen cell phones, walkie-talkies, two GPS units, a police scanner, a radar detector, laptop computers, several knives, some CDs, two female wigs, one blond and one brunette, women’s dresses, sunglasses, three iPods, three watches, a stack of credit cards, seven sets of keys, a photograph of Warren and Rulon, a Bible, and a Book of Mormon. Authorities also found a duffel bag stuffed with unopened envelopes and suspected they might contain even more cash.
It turned out that the envelopes were tithing letters from the FLDS people. They had been opened just enough to extract the money inside but not enough to have read the letters. All Warren wanted was their money; he didn’t even care enough to read their letters. We’d heard about one from a five-year-old boy, telling Warren that he and his mother only had the five dollars that he’d enclosed but he prayed it would be enough to send back his father, who had apparently lost the priesthood and had had his family taken away. It broke my heart to think of Warren so callously ignoring a young child’s plea, but it didn’t surprise me.
Attempts to question Warren proved futile. FBI agents reported that he was “cordial” but “uncooperative,” insisting that he was being subjected to “religious presecution.” As I sat on the edge of the bed in our small hotel room that day, isolated from my friends and family, I thought how ironic it was that Warren had been arrested and taken into custody in Nevada, the very state in which he’d committed his first crime against me.
The thought of Warren in the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas gave me a certain amount of pleasure. For nearly four years, I’d been held prisoner in a marriage that I didn’t want to a man I didn’t love. Just as he had decided my fate, now others would decide his.
A few days later they moved him from Nevada to Utah, and he learned that I was the one bringing criminal charges against him. It was his constitutional right to know. To ensure my continued safety, the Washington County District Attorney’s Office stepped up security, installing cameras outside our place of residence and at the law offices of Roger and Greg Hoole, where I was spending a good chunk of my time. All at once, I faced the notion that the people I grew up with were going to learn to hate me. I was going against their prophet and going against my mom’s wishes.
It had been nearly eighteen months since I’d last heard from my mother, and I knew that