Working on the Railroad

[TheDuke]

it was DOA

[tmac]

If anything might stand a chance of resurrecting AGF, it might be Duke's incessant goading.

[JuneBug12000]

it was DOA

I have great respect for you Duke.

I appreciate your concern about this thread, but some of the things brought to light by following the links and primary sources lead me to think there may be information I need in order to understand what is happening right now.

I want truth, and especially after the last couple of years. I need to find it, wherever it may be found.

Isn't President Nelson known for saying "Good inspiration comes from good information."

I am searching for answers through inspiration, and the information presented in this thread was helping.

[keeprunning]

Isn't his nephew harakim? There haven't been any funerals in your family I hope?

[Lineman1012]

If anything might resurrect AGF, it might be Dukes's incessant goading.

Those who fight against information coming to light - usually have something to hide or have they have something to gain from keeping the information hidden.

This motivation could be financial:
A) being paid to keep it covered up or to derail any attempt to shine the light on it
B) they make more money if things are not exposed
C) exposure would ruin their craft

The motivation could be a Pride thing:
A) They are invested emotionally in the other narrative
B) Family or friends are involved and the "family" name and exposure of the dirty little secrets are at stake
C) They always fight against exposing the truth

The Motivation could be Institutional:
A) Secret group they belong to would be exposed showing their true intentions
B) The church they go to would be exposed showing their true intentions
C) The place of business they work at gave them an assignment to derail the train.

The reason for negative response to more information is always the same - Money or Pride or Power

[TheDuke]

my only point was AGF has never provided any facts, just rumblings with promises to follow. I've made those comments many times. I was hoping for something useful but each request was returned with telling me to find another thread and veiled attacks about questioning him. It became apparent long ago, that he didn't really have anything but inunendos and thoughts without any backing. Hence my opinion it was empty from the start.

[tmac]

As always, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

[Cruiserdude]

As always, everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Yep....except for AGF. He's not allowed to share his opinion or story...

[BeNotDeceived]

I am starting this thread and will update it shortly as I get time thank you

Hey AGF, where ya been?

There's an awesome video about railways on the Isle of Wight.

Wight, but not Isle. GBNG

[JuneBug12000]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/train-thieve ... os-angeles

Trains in downtown Los Angeles ransacked by thieves: 'Amazon packages, UPS boxes, unused Covid tests'
Union Pacific, a railroad company, has primary jurisdiction over crimes committed on the tracks

Interesting that it is Union Pacific, and not local police authority, that have jurisdiction. How can a company have jurisdiction, like a government entity? Even BYU Police had limited roles (like parking tickets) but "real crimes" are for local police, right? Or am I wrong?

[HVDC]

https://www.foxnews.com/us/train-thieve ... os-angeles

Trains in downtown Los Angeles ransacked by thieves: 'Amazon packages, UPS boxes, unused Covid tests'
Union Pacific, a railroad company, has primary jurisdiction over crimes committed on the tracks

Interesting that it is Union Pacific, and not local police authority, that have jurisdiction. How can a company have jurisdiction, like a government entity? Even BYU Police had limited roles (like parking tickets) but "real crimes" are for local police, right? Or am I wrong?

Railroad Police are essentially a private police force.

They have nation wide police powers.

Most people have never heard of them.

And that's the way they like it.

I knew one of them.

That's how I know.

The Federal, not really, Reserve has their own private police force as well.

Sir H

[Mangus MacLeod]

It's been a while, and I certainly wish Brother Faith would return and finish what he started, but in his absence, I am going to share one last story, in three installments, but not necessarily in chronological sequence.

Unlike my previous stories, which were mostly just warm-up band material, trying to fill-in time and space for the main attraction (and I have plenty of those kinds of stories), I only have a small handful of main-attraction-caliber stories, and this is one of them. Unlike other stories, however, this one may not be that amusing or entertaining. But I can virtually guarantee that it will be genuinely unique, and possibly a little intriguing. And it does have a unique connection to another thread that seems to have some recent popularity on the forum, which is the primary reason I am sharing it now.

Without further ado, I’m actually going to start out towards the end of the story, in the Fall of 2017. In November of that year the Mexican federal government abruptly expelled an American Ex-patriot and his entire household, which included multiple “wives,” children, and a substantial posterity, who had been in Mexico for approximately 15 years, and had acquired substantial holdings there. This man, who had been “wanted” by the law in the United States for so-called sex-related changes, had disappeared into Mexico approximately 15 years earlier as a so-called un-convicted felony fugitive. But after the Mexican authorities ultimately “dumped” him back across the border in El Paso, for extensive interrogation by American authorities at every level and multiple branches, including everything from Homeland Security to the State Department, he was ultimately released as a free man, with no charges pending, to figure out what to do next.

According to most news accounts about all this, in the months leading up to this development, there had been a huge escalation in drug violence in the small rural communities of the Sierra Madre Mountains, along the border between the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. At that time I had some personal knowledge of this general escalation of violence based on my connections and recent travels in that area. According to most corresponding media accounts about what had happened to this man and his family, the previous August, 2017, three male members of his household had been killed—allegedly caught in the cross-fire between two rival drug cartels.

I followed this story closely, because for approximately 10 years (primarily in the 1990s), prior to his disappearance into Mexico, I did more legal work, of all kinds, for this man than for any other client I had in that period of time. And, my cousin, who I’ll refer to as Rick, who is also an attorney, likewise did a lot of legal work for him, and sometimes we worked together.

For anyone who has followed this thread, and consequently knows anything about my background and connections, etc., it should probably not come as any big surprise that I have represented plural marriage practitioners. This particular man was an FLDS dissident and had been expelled from the FLDS Church long before many of its subsequent dust-ups, and was completely unaffiliated and operating on his own at that point. And I’m going to just put it out there right upfront---contrary to conventional wisdom and popular stereotypes---several of the women and children in his household were very mature widows and divorcees, etc., who he had taken in as a practical matter of Christian service, just to help take care of them, and knowing what I do about the whole situation, I seriously doubt he ever had any kind of intimate physical relations with them.

But once he disappeared into Mexico neither Rick nor I had any further contact with him.

Shortly after he disappeared, however, Rick did handle a very stressful situation when this man’s “first wife” called him in the middle of the night (approximately 1 a.m.), and said that a SWAT team was at their place with bright lights and a loudspeaker in search of her husband, threatening to kick their door down if they didn’t open up. Rick immediately called the Washington County, Utah Sheriff’s dispatch, and asked them to get a message to the chief deputy county attorney, with whom he had a good working relationship at the time. When his middle-of-the-night call was returned, Rick explained—and essentially swore on a stack of Bibles—that this man was gone, was no longer in the country, and if the SWAT team insisted on kicking down the door, all they would do is scare and potentially harm a whole houseful of women and children. Based on this exchange, the SWAT team backed-off, set-up a perimeter to make sure that no one left the property, and waited until morning.

Because this man was now gone, and because he had had legal custody of the minor children from one of his other wives, from whom he was then divorced, the next morning Rick had the unsavory task of going there---because they all trusted him---and taking those children and surrendering them into law enforcement custody, based on an emergency court order requiring their surrender in their father’s absence.

Rick said it was one of the hardest things he ever had to do---trusted like he was---to have to turn those kids over to the cops. Because Rick was then in the process of moving away from that area (I had already relocated), he did accompany the man’s first wife to meet with another attorney, to whom he was referring her to handle the custody case. And that was the last he heard of any of it—until he surreptitiously happened upon a surprising news article about that particular custody case, explaining that in an extremely rare (as in completely unprecedented) move, the judge had awarded legal custody of the minor children to the man’s first wife rather than their own mother, because the judge found that it would be in the children’s best interests under the circumstances. Rick said he could hardly believe it, and was vastly relieved about the ultimate outcome, and amazed to have even been able to find out about it the way he did, which seemed to be some kind of message.

Now, fast-forwarding almost 15 years to November 2017, when we were completely surprised to hear about this man’s expulsion from Mexico, we closely followed the story, from every media source we could find. In light of everything, I was genuinely curious not only about what had really happened, but also about the welfare of this man's large family (many of whom I knew very well), having been ripped away from their home and life and property in Mexico, unceremoniously expelled, and dumped back into the United States. There were many, many times over the previous 15 years when this man and his family and situation had been on my mind. And just the previous Spring of 2017, for completely other reasons (including dental work south of the border) Rick and I had spent some time kicking around in the Sonoran/ Chihuahuan Outback, always with our eyes and ears open for any sign of this clan. .

Anyway, after the dust had long since settled on this story from the Fall of 2017, although Rick and I talked about it and compared notes from time to time, neither of us heard anything further about any of it for almost a year. Then one day, completely out of the blue, Rick was surprised to received a very strange phone call, that ultimately turned out to be this man, calling to thank him for some things he had done, and inviting both of us to come visit him at his new home, which turned out to be not all that far from where Rick was then living. Of course we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see him and his family and catch up on everything that had happened in the intervening 15 years.

I’m not going to make any attempt to share much of all that here, except for the following: He told us that his sons had not been killed by drug cartels---that they had been killed by Mexican federal police, and the federal government took their bodies. Under such circumstances, normally someone would eventually claim and bury the bodies, but neither he nor his family had ever “claimed” these bodies, so they remained in the highly-secure Mexican federal police morgue from August until November, when they inexplicably “disappeared.” He explained that what happened in that disappearance freaked-out the Mexican government so bad that after 15 years, they immediately gathered up the whole clan and suddenly expelled them from the country, without any further discussion, and a big mystery about what actually happened with the bodies.

As our friend and former client was sharing all of this with us, at one point, feeling somewhat incredulous, I attempted to ask a clarifying question just to help try to better wrap my head around what he had just said, to which he abruptly responded and cut me off, by shooting back: “you heard what I said. . . .”

In the next installments I’ll go back and talk about some of what led up to all this.

[Mangus MacLeod]

In true Brother Faith fashion, I’m going to start off by saying, “So anyways” . . . moving on with this story, it probably gets tiresome having me continually refer to the subject of this story as “this man,” so from here on out I’ll refer to him as Bill. Instead of picking up where I left off, I’m going to go back to the beginning.

I don’t know who did legal work for Bill first, me or my cousin Rick, but it wasn’t long before he had quite a bit of work for both of us. He had a lot going on.

At first it was pretty normal business and real estate type stuff. Since Rick and I were both licensed in Utah and Arizona, we both did plenty of work along both sides of the Utah/Arizona border. As things progressed, Bill’s legal needs evolved.

It should be noted that Bill had a pretty normal start in the FLDS Church, with a pretty standard FLDS upbringing. Apparently he didn’t seem to have many questions or problems early on, and was fairly young when he was assigned his first wife, and then assigned another wife just a few years later. It wasn’t until he was into his 30s and already had a decent-sized family before he really started having many questions about the whole equation, including the gospel, his relationship with God, or anything else, including where plural marriage actually fits into the whole scheme of things. But what could he have done about some of that at that stage of the game? As long as LeRoy Johnson was the FLDS prophet, there were no problems. But once “Uncle LeRoy” passed, and first Rulon Jeffs, and then his son Warren, took over, Bill’s questions ended up putting him on a collision course with the FLDS Church. When Rulon Jeffs demanded that Bill deed some unrelated family property over to the Church, his reluctance got him booted out of the church. From that point on, because he refused to leave his own property and kowtow to Jeffs, he seemed to be in a continual power struggle with them. First Jeffs took away his second wife as punishment/retaliation, and then tried to take his first -- but she refused, and stood by Bill.

What Jeffs and his cohorts did not count on is that Bill would ask his attorneys to go to the mat to fight for custody of his children that they had tried to take away. And what they had counted on even less was that, under the circumstances, including the second wife’s issues, the court would award Bill, as the father, legal custody of their children, with only supervised visitation to the wife. All of this, along with a whole bunch of other stuff, created plenty of legal work.

At a certain point, though, both Rick and I observed that there was something going on that we simply couldn’t quite account for. There was something more to the whole equation. Bill always seemed to be a step ahead of us and everything else. At a certain point in time, it became fairly clear that he often knew what was going to happen before it happened. After I got to know him better, he started opening up to me about all this. Eventually, he told me that when he was in his early 30s, he had a transformative personal experience with God, and that ever since then life wasn’t all just based on warm and fuzzies – God had started communicating very clearly with him. Although there were many, many examples of how this came into play in our relationship and our legal work, I will share just one.

When Bill was still in his teens, before getting married, he went to St. George looking for a job. Because he always loved cars (and usually had a nice one or two around), he got a job detailing cars for a small used car lot, where he developed a good relationship with the owner. At some point, the aging owner started recognizing some special gifts and talents in Bill. Among other things, he noticed that Bill had a gift with financial management, and seemed to have a Midas Touch, so he started giving Bill more and more responsibility. At a certain point, when the owner was ultimately diagnosed with terminal cancer he asked Bill if he would be willing to serve as trustee of a spendthrift trust for his widowed wife when he passed. Bill said he would, and ultimately took over management of the business, and the wife’s financial affairs, under the trust. It was just one of many things Bill had going, and by then he was in his mid-30s.

I will refer to the spend-thrift wife as Jewel, and some point, Jewel noticed the personal car Bill was driving, and asked him if she could have it to drive. Not thinking much of it, he handed her the keys and let her have use of the car for the next five years. When Jewel said she was ready for a new car, and told Bill what she wanted – for her upcoming birthday -- he went to a new car dealership and made arrangements to trade the old car in on a new one in the model that she wanted. Again, he thought little of it, and made the deal. Because the trade-in car was titled in his own name, the dealership likewise prepared the paperwork and temporary paper tag for the new car the same way -- in his name as well. Right at that moment, he didn’t think much of this. After delivering the new car with the temporary tag to Jewel, however, he immediately returned to the dealership in a panic, asking them to unwind the paperwork, and title the new car in the name of the trust, instead of his name, which they did. But the paper tag on the car was still in his name. Although he received a new paper tag, he couldn’t catch-up with Jewel before she headed to Las Vegas to celebrate her birthday. This was before the age of cell phones, and before he was able to track her down, the next thing he knew, while driving intoxicated, Jewel had driven the new car up onto a sidewalk along the Las Vegas Strip and killed one young man and turned another one into a quadriplegic.

Based on the temporary tag on the car, in Bill’s name, people started coming after him with both barrel’s blazing. Although it took years of intense litigation for us to prove that the paper trail showed that the car was actually titled in the name of the trust, it took a lot of legal work to get to that point. During that time, of all the depositions that were taken, I still remember that Jewel’s was taken at the Nevada State Penitentiary where she spent a few years. During that whole experience Bill told me that the only reason he had gone back and changed the title paperwork at the dealership is because God had reached out to him, and clearly revealed to him that is what needed to be done immediately. He never did say if he knew exactly what was ultimately going to happen, but there was no question that he needed to change the title paperwork without delay – and that ended up being the only thing that prevented him from being completely wiped out financially, with personal liability for the multi-million dollar personal injury claims that vastly exceeded the standard insurance policy limits.

During that time, with pending personal injury cases, custody battles, and even ridiculous criminal charges leveled by the Jeffs-controlled Colorado City police department, there was plenty of associated legal work, and it is also fair to say that there was plenty of reason for Bill to be stressed-out, but he rarely acted stressed – even when he had to spend 10 days in the Mohave County jail in Kingman for contempt of court – which was largely my fault. I asked Bill about also this. He said, “The Lord has shown me that if we’re going to keep this whole thing afloat, I have no choice but to just keep swimming. If I quit swimming, the whole thing sinks and falls apart, so even if it is really the Lord that’s keeping everything afloat, I have still got to just keep swimming. . . . I have faith and trust in the Lord.”

Among other things, Bill was also an alchemist. I didn’t even know what alchemy was prior to that, but among other things, he told us that God had revealed to him ancient secrets for how to make gold – and he was doing it. So, despite all the challenges, money never seemed to be much of an issue. He had an obvious Midas Touch, and always seemed to have sufficient financial resources for their needs – which included all the normal demands of a very large household.

On that front, in addition to his own children from his initial two wives, along the way, he had taken in the widow of one of his friends who had been killed in a car accident, and all her children. He also took in a divorcee who was a close childhood friend of his first wife, and all of her children. One day I was sitting with him in his driveway in what was known in that neck of the woods as “The Second Ward” (everything South of Arizona Highway 389), when the school bus stopped to drop-off that household’s children for lunch. In that area, rather than a large school lunch room, the children all just went home for lunch, even if that required an extra bus ride. As we sat there watching I didn’t think kids (of all ages, from kindergartners all the way to the top), would ever stop getting off the bus. It seemed that there must have 30+ children that got off there, and completely emptied the bus. They were all very well behaved. And about 30 minutes later they came trailing back out again to catch the bus back to school. Once the children were gone, Bill invited me to come in the house. The women served us a nice lunch and sat down and ate with us. They all seemed very comfortable and congenial, and nothing seemed amiss. Afterwards he might have just been showing off, but we finished our conversation while doing dishes for that whole crowd.


That’s probably enough for this installment.

[Cruiserdude]

It's been a while, and I certainly wish Brother Faith would return and finish what he started, but in his absence, I am going to share one last story, in three installments, but not necessarily in chronological sequence.

Unlike my previous stories, which were mostly just warm-up band material, trying to fill-in time and space for the main attraction (and I have plenty of those kinds of stories), I only have a small handful of main-attraction-caliber stories, and this is one of them. Unlike other stories, however, this one may not be that amusing or entertaining. But I can virtually guarantee that it will be genuinely unique, and possibly a little intriguing. And it does have a unique connection to another thread that seems to have some recent popularity on the forum, which is the primary reason I am sharing it now.

Without further ado, I’m actually going to start out towards the end of the story, in the Fall of 2017. In November of that year the Mexican federal government abruptly expelled an American Ex-patriot and his entire household, which included multiple “wives,” children, and a substantial posterity, who had been in Mexico for approximately 15 years, and had acquired substantial holdings there. This man, who had been “wanted” by the law in the United States for so-called sex-related changes, had disappeared into Mexico approximately 15 years earlier as a so-called un-convicted felony fugitive. But after the Mexican authorities ultimately “dumped” him back across the border in El Paso, for extensive interrogation by American authorities at every level and multiple branches, including everything from Homeland Security to the State Department, he was ultimately released as a free man, with no charges pending, to figure out what to do next.

According to most news accounts about all this, in the months leading up to this development, there had been a huge escalation in drug violence in the small rural communities of the Sierra Madre Mountains, along the border between the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. At that time I had some personal knowledge of this general escalation of violence based on my connections and recent travels in that area. According to most corresponding media accounts about what had happened to this man and his family, the previous August, 2017, three male members of his household had been killed—allegedly caught in the cross-fire between two rival drug cartels.

I followed this story closely, because for approximately 10 years (primarily in the 1990s), prior to his disappearance into Mexico, I did more legal work, of all kinds, for this man than for any other client I had in that period of time. And, my cousin, who I’ll refer to as Rick, who is also an attorney, likewise did a lot of legal work for him, and sometimes we worked together.

For anyone who has followed this thread, and consequently knows anything about my background and connections, etc., it should probably not come as any big surprise that I have represented plural marriage practitioners. This particular man was an FLDS dissident and had been expelled from the FLDS Church long before many of its subsequent dust-ups, and was completely unaffiliated and operating on his own at that point. And I’m going to just put it out there right upfront---contrary to conventional wisdom and popular stereotypes---several of the women and children in his household were very mature widows and divorcees, etc., who he had taken in as a practical matter of Christian service, just to help take care of them, and knowing what I do about the whole situation, I seriously doubt he ever had any kind of intimate physical relations with them.

But once he disappeared into Mexico neither Rick nor I had any further contact with him.

Shortly after he disappeared, however, Rick did handle a very stressful situation when this man’s “first wife” called him in the middle of the night (approximately 1 a.m.), and said that a SWAT team was at their place with bright lights and a loudspeaker in search of her husband, threatening to kick their door down if they didn’t open up. Rick immediately called the Washington County, Utah Sheriff’s dispatch, and asked them to get a message to the chief deputy county attorney, with whom he had a good working relationship at the time. When his middle-of-the-night call was returned, Rick explained—and essentially swore on a stack of Bibles—that this man was gone, was no longer in the country, and if the SWAT team insisted on kicking down the door, all they would do is scare and potentially harm a whole houseful of women and children. Based on this exchange, the SWAT team backed-off, set-up a perimeter to make sure that no one left the property, and waited until morning.

Because this man was now gone, and because he had had legal custody of the minor children from one of his other wives, from whom he was then divorced, the next morning Rick had the unsavory task of going there---because they all trusted him---and taking those children and surrendering them into law enforcement custody, based on an emergency court order requiring their surrender in their father’s absence.

Rick said it was one of the hardest things he ever had to do---trusted like he was---to have to turn those kids over to the cops. Because Rick was then in the process of moving away from that area (I had already relocated), he did accompany the man’s first wife to meet with another attorney, to whom he was referring her to handle the custody case. And that was the last he heard of any of it—until he surreptitiously happened upon a surprising news article about that particular custody case, explaining that in an extremely rare (as in completely unprecedented) move, the judge had awarded legal custody of the minor children to the man’s first wife rather than their own mother, because the judge found that it would be in the children’s best interests under the circumstances. Rick said he could hardly believe it, and was vastly relieved about the ultimate outcome, and amazed to have even been able to find out about it the way he did, which seemed to be some kind of message.

Now, fast-forwarding almost 15 years to November 2017, when we were completely surprised to hear about this man’s expulsion from Mexico, we closely followed the story, from every media source we could find. In light of everything, I was genuinely curious not only about what had really happened, but also about the welfare of this man's large family (many of whom I knew very well), having been ripped away from their home and life and property in Mexico, unceremoniously expelled, and dumped back into the United States. There were many, many times over the previous 15 years when this man and his family and situation had been on my mind. And just the previous Spring of 2017, for completely other reasons (including dental work south of the border) Rick and I had spent some time kicking around in the Sonoran/ Chihuahuan Outback, always with our eyes and ears open for any sign of this clan. .

Anyway, after the dust had long since settled on this story from the Fall of 2017, although Rick and I talked about it and compared notes from time to time, neither of us heard anything further about any of it for almost a year. Then one day, completely out of the blue, Rick was surprised to received a very strange phone call, that ultimately turned out to be this man, calling to thank him for some things he had done, and inviting both of us to come visit him at his new home, which turned out to be not all that far from where Rick was then living. Of course we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see him and his family and catch up on everything that had happened in the intervening 15 years.

I’m not going to make any attempt to share much of all that here, except for the following: He told us that his sons had not been killed by drug cartels---that they had been killed by Mexican federal police, and the federal government took their bodies. Under such circumstances, normally someone would eventually claim and bury the bodies, but neither he nor his family had ever “claimed” these bodies, so they remained in the highly-secure Mexican federal police morgue from August until November, when they inexplicably “disappeared.” He explained that what happened in that disappearance freaked-out the Mexican government so bad that after 15 years, they immediately gathered up the whole clan and suddenly expelled them from the country, without any further discussion, and a big mystery about what actually happened with the bodies.

As our friend and former client was sharing all of this with us, at one point, feeling somewhat incredulous, I attempted to ask a clarifying question just to help try to better wrap my head around what he had just said, to which he abruptly responded and cut me off, by shooting back: “you heard what I said. . . .”

In the next installments I’ll go back and talk about some of what led up to all this.

Mangus, this is excellent! As much as I despise what the corruption of our courts has done to our law, I do thoroughly enjoy a good law story/novel whether fiction or non.... (ie: John Grisham, etc) and I can tell this story is gonna be a great one

[Motherlode]

Mangus, I came on the forum just to read the next installment of your fascinating story! Having lived in southern Utah for several years in the past, I relate to the setting and people of the story. My husband and I hired a number of different tradesmen from the FLDS community over the years. As a midwife's assistant, I remember attending a birth for a family living in the Second Ward in about 2004. Looking forward to hearing more of your story!

[Mangus MacLeod]

First of all, thanks for the kind words. In response to Cruiserdude’s comment, and hanging question as to whether this story is fact or fiction, let me be very clear: It is not fiction. Although I have fictionalized the names, etc., the substance of the story is completely true. My guess is that I have left plenty of breadcrumbs that if someone who knew what they were doing really wanted to they could connect virtually all the dots.


Otherwise, it’s hard to know best where to go next with this story. Perhaps the place to start is with the fact that one of the women Bill had taken in had a whole passel of younger siblings, including some teenage full and half-sisters. It was fairly well known in that area at that time that the aging father of that particular very large family had become quite neglectful of his large family – especially the daughters -- and was then spending more time in Las Vegas than anywhere else.

Some of these teenage daughters started noticing how good things were for their older sister and her children with Bill, versus how bad things were for them in their own family. One of them, who I will refer to as Belle, could legitimately be described as mature for her age, and a little bit “forward.” Belle’s own mother at died when she was fairly young, so she had largely been forced to fend for herself to a large degree in a large family. Given everything about her individual background and stage in life, at one point Belle approached Bill and asked him if he would consider also taking her on as a spiritual wife. And once he did, several of her sisters then had the same question, which ultimately resulted in them all becoming part of his already large household.

This started to create a huge dilemma for Bill, primarily because these girls were still minors, and times had changed, in a variety of ways. Although this would have made little difference less than 20 years earlier when young wives had first been assigned to Bill, by the time he took in these younger gals, “The Law” was breathing down the necks of a number of those who had taken younger wives, and the State of Arizona was really starting to crack down. At that point Arizona was keeping an eagle eye on all birth certificates issued (whether from a hospital or mid-wife delivery), and they would compare the birthdate of the child with the birthdate of the mother, and compare all of that with the surname of both the child and the father listed, and take action accordingly. And many people know what happened in Texas -- which is why Warren Jeffs and a number of his closest male associates are in prison.

The difference between Bill and seemingly everyone else, though, was that based on his communications with the Lord, he could clearly see what was coming, and as he sought to navigate the plural marriage minefield, he said the Lord very clearly showed him what he should do.

This all became front and center for me and my cousin Rick when Bill told us that all the women in his household had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix, obviously seeking to pursue and indictment against him. Obviously, Bill was concerned about this for a number of reasons, including the fact that one of the gals was due for a new delivery on that very date. This was back when Janet Napalitano was governor and Terry Goddard was the Arizona AG. So Bill asked me to get on the phone with Goddard and offer to have all these women first appear to be interviewed in St. George before being forced to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix. Goddard went for it.

On the day in question, when we met in St. George, there must have been at least 10 attorneys from the AZ AG’s office swarming, along with about that many "investigators" and paralegals. It was a definite cluster. Their idea was to divide and conquer by-splitting up all the women, and interrogating each one of them individually. Rick said, “that’s not how this is going to happen. They are going to stay together as a group. You can interrogate them individually if you want, but either Mangus or I are going to be in every “interview.”

Those interrogations were one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed in my life. Each of those women, including the teenage girls, acted with poise and confidence, and testified about their sincerely held beliefs regarding their divine roles as mothers. The first of that younger group, Belle, explained that her own mother had died fairly young of cervical cancer, and because she knew that cervical cancer can be hereditary, she felt like there might be a biological clock ticking on her own motherhood, and she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to start having children, so she herself had started putting pressure on Bill to do something about it.

Belle explained that Bill had eventually given her a Christian medical encyclopedia with a page marked. On that page were illustrations and a description of a simple, at-home artificial insemination procedure, involving a medium-sized syringe, to be performed by the woman herself. Bill told her, “if you want to start having children now, this is how it’s going to happen.” And she testified that after keeping careful track of her monthly cycle, that is what happened. Each and every one of those gals likewise stated their unequivocal beliefs about their primary divine role and purpose in life, and each of them said they had learned about the applicable procedure the same way, and ultimately became mothers using that procedure.

After hearing what the younger gals had to say, Goddard and his posse didn’t even want to bother interrogating most of the other, more mature, fully adult women. But that didn’t stop him from pressing charges against Bill, alleging multiple counts of statutory rape, and felony sexual abuse of minors, insisting that no red-blooded man, if given that opportunity, would turn-down the opportunity to conceive a child the old-fashioned way.

Although Bill was seriously disappointed, as we all were, as per usual, he was once again a step ahead. In my last conversation with Bill, he said the Lord had shown him what he needed to do. He didn’t elaborate, but said that he would be doing it. He said that he regretted that I had previously moved, and that Rick was in the process of moving, and that we wouldn’t be around, quite as close at hand, to help deal with the aftermath of what was coming. I apologized and wished him God’s speed.

By the time Bill was abruptly dumped back into the United States 15 years later, all the charges had been dropped and dismissed based on lack of any credible evidence. Although Bill and his family were on my mind many times over the course of those 15 years, I didn’t have a chance to see or talk to him again until we had the conversation about what had happened in Mexico, when he put me in my place by saying “you heard what I said.”


Although I have never before shared this entire story, there have been times, over the years, when I have attempted to talk to people (other than Rick), about Bill, how he had an uncanny, unaccounted for ability to know what was coming, as well as his approach to navigating the plural marriage, minor motherhood issue. Although I have often had plenty of questions myself, any time I ever said anything to almost anyone in Church-type circles, often in the context of discussing so-called “spiritual” things, about what Bill had described to me in terms of his relationship with God, and the kinds of things that had been revealed to him, the almost universal response has always been: “That just can’t be. It’s got to be Satan. God would never communicate with a Plig like that, and He would never tell anyone to do that.” But, as my cousin Rick likes to say, the proof is in the pudding – because, while a number of men are rotting in prison based on very similar circumstances, there Bill is, with a large posterity, and having seemingly fully navigated the plural marriage legal minefield – as well as a broad assortment of other minefields he has been confronted with, with the Lord’s help, completely intact, including the reasons why, after almost 15 years, he and his entire household were abruptly kicked out of Mexico. From all appearances, it looks like Rick is right -- the proof is in the pudding

I’ll leave it to you to try to connect the dots, according to your own understanding, enlightenment, and the dictates of your own conscience. But again, I do want to be clear, this is a true story.

[HVDC]

Thank you for sharing that story.

I believe it.

I have had similar experiences with direct communication.

When I listened, my enemies were confounded.

When I didn't, they got over me.

Maybe I need to go back to my interest in alchemy.

Sir H

[Dusty Wanderer]

First of all, thanks for the kind words. In response to Cruiserdude’s comment, and hanging question as to whether this story is fact or fiction, let me be very clear: It is not fiction. Although I have fictionalized the names, etc., the substance of the story is completely true. My guess is that I have left plenty of breadcrumbs that if someone who knew what they were doing really wanted to they could connect virtually all the dots.


Otherwise, it’s hard to know best where to go next with this story. Perhaps the place to start is with the fact that one of the women Bill had taken in had a whole passel of younger siblings, including some teenage full and half-sisters. It was fairly well known in that area at that time that the aging father of that particular very large family had become quite neglectful of his large family – especially the daughters -- and was then spending more time in Las Vegas than anywhere else.

Some of these teenage daughters started noticing how good things were for their older sister and her children with Bill, versus how bad things were for them in their own family. One of them, who I will refer to as Belle, could legitimately be described as mature for her age, and a little bit “forward.” Belle’s own mother at died when she was fairly young, so she had largely been forced to fend for herself to a large degree in a large family. Given everything about her individual background and stage in life, at one point Belle approached Bill and asked him if he would consider also taking her on as a spiritual wife. And once he did, several of her sisters then had the same question, which ultimately resulted in them all becoming part of his already large household.

This started to create a huge dilemma for Bill, primarily because these girls were still minors, and times had changed, in a variety of ways. Although this would have made little difference less than 20 years earlier when young wives had first been assigned to Bill, by the time he took in these younger gals, “The Law” was breathing down the necks of a number of those who had taken younger wives, and the State of Arizona was really starting to crack down. At that point Arizona was keeping an eagle eye on all birth certificates issued (whether from a hospital or mid-wife delivery), and they would compare the birthdate of the child with the birthdate of the mother, and compare all of that with the surname of both the child and the father listed, and take action accordingly. And many people know what happened in Texas -- which is why Warren Jeffs and a number of his closest male associates are in prison.

The difference between Bill and seemingly everyone else, though, was that based on his communications with the Lord, he could clearly see what was coming, and as he sought to navigate the plural marriage minefield, he said the Lord very clearly showed him what he should do.

This all became front and center for me and my cousin Rick when Bill told us that all the women in his household had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix, obviously seeking to pursue and indictment against him. Obviously, Bill was concerned about this for a number of reasons, including the fact that one of the gals was due for a new delivery on that very date. This was back when Janet Napalitano was governor and Terry Goddard was the Arizona AG. So Bill asked me to get on the phone with Goddard and offer to have all these women first appear to be interviewed in St. George before being forced to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix. Goddard went for it.

On the day in question, when we met in St. George, there must have been at least 10 attorneys from the AZ AG’s office swarming, along with about that many "investigators" and paralegals. It was a definite cluster. Their idea was to divide and conquer by-splitting up all the women, and interrogating each one of them individually. Rick said, “that’s not how this is going to happen. They are going to stay together as a group. You can interrogate them individually if you want, but either Mangus or I are going to be in every “interview.”

Those interrogations were one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed in my life. Each of those women, including the teenage girls, acted with poise and confidence, and testified about their sincerely held beliefs regarding their divine roles as mothers. The first of that younger group, Belle, explained that her own mother had died fairly young of cervical cancer, and because she knew that cervical cancer can be hereditary, she felt like there might be a biological clock ticking on her own motherhood, and she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to start having children, so she herself had started putting pressure on Bill to do something about it.

Belle explained that Bill had eventually given her a Christian medical encyclopedia with a page marked. On that page were illustrations and a description of a simple, at-home artificial insemination procedure, involving a medium-sized syringe, to be performed by the woman herself. Bill told her, “if you want to start having children now, this is how it’s going to happen.” And she testified that after keeping careful track of her monthly cycle, that is what happened. Each and every one of those gals likewise stated their unequivocal beliefs about their primary divine role and purpose in life, and each of them said they had learned about the applicable procedure the same way, and ultimately became mothers using that procedure.

After hearing what the younger gals had to say, Goddard and his posse didn’t even want to bother interrogating most of the other, more mature, fully adult women. But that didn’t stop him from pressing charges against Bill, alleging multiple counts of statutory rape, and felony sexual abuse of minors, insisting that no red-blooded man, if given that opportunity, would turn-down the opportunity to conceive a child the old-fashioned way.

Although Bill was seriously disappointed, as we all were, as per usual, he was once again a step ahead. In my last conversation with Bill, he said the Lord had shown him what he needed to do. He didn’t elaborate, but said that he would be doing it. He said that he regretted that I had previously moved, and that Rick was in the process of moving, and that we wouldn’t be around, quite as close at hand, to help deal with the aftermath of what was coming. I apologized and wished him God’s speed.

By the time Bill was abruptly dumped back into the United States 15 years later, all the charges had been dropped and dismissed based on lack of any credible evidence. Although Bill and his family were on my mind many times over the course of those 15 years, I didn’t have a chance to see or talk to him again until we had the conversation about what had happened in Mexico, when he put me in my place by saying “you heard what I said.”


Although I have never before shared this entire story, there have been times, over the years, when I have attempted to talk to people (other than Rick), about Bill, how he had an uncanny, unaccounted for ability to know what was coming, as well as his approach to navigating the plural marriage, minor motherhood issue. Although I have often had plenty of questions myself, any time I ever said anything to almost anyone in Church-type circles, often in the context of discussing so-called “spiritual” things, about what Bill had described to me in terms of his relationship with God, and the kinds of things that had been revealed to him, the almost universal response has always been: “That just can’t be. It’s got to be Satan. God would never communicate with a Plig like that, and He would never tell anyone to do that.” But, as my cousin Rick likes to say, the proof is in the pudding – because, while a number of men are rotting in prison based on very similar circumstances, there Bill is, with a large posterity, and having seemingly fully navigated the plural marriage legal minefield – as well as a broad assortment of other minefields he has been confronted with, with the Lord’s help, completely intact, including the reasons why, after almost 15 years, he and his entire household were abruptly kicked out of Mexico. From all appearances, it looks like Rick is right -- the proof is in the pudding

I’ll leave it to you to try to connect the dots, according to your own understanding, enlightenment, and the dictates of your own conscience. But again, I do want to be clear, this is a true story.

Thanks Bro. MacLeod. I have really appreciated your posts and hope the train continues down the track. Looking forward to another story.

[Cruiserdude]

First of all, thanks for the kind words. In response to Cruiserdude’s comment, and hanging question as to whether this story is fact or fiction, let me be very clear: It is not fiction. Although I have fictionalized the names, etc., the substance of the story is completely true. My guess is that I have left plenty of breadcrumbs that if someone who knew what they were doing really wanted to they could connect virtually all the dots.


Otherwise, it’s hard to know best where to go next with this story. Perhaps the place to start is with the fact that one of the women Bill had taken in had a whole passel of younger siblings, including some teenage full and half-sisters. It was fairly well known in that area at that time that the aging father of that particular very large family had become quite neglectful of his large family – especially the daughters -- and was then spending more time in Las Vegas than anywhere else.

Some of these teenage daughters started noticing how good things were for their older sister and her children with Bill, versus how bad things were for them in their own family. One of them, who I will refer to as Belle, could legitimately be described as mature for her age, and a little bit “forward.” Belle’s own mother at died when she was fairly young, so she had largely been forced to fend for herself to a large degree in a large family. Given everything about her individual background and stage in life, at one point Belle approached Bill and asked him if he would consider also taking her on as a spiritual wife. And once he did, several of her sisters then had the same question, which ultimately resulted in them all becoming part of his already large household.

This started to create a huge dilemma for Bill, primarily because these girls were still minors, and times had changed, in a variety of ways. Although this would have made little difference less than 20 years earlier when young wives had first been assigned to Bill, by the time he took in these younger gals, “The Law” was breathing down the necks of a number of those who had taken younger wives, and the State of Arizona was really starting to crack down. At that point Arizona was keeping an eagle eye on all birth certificates issued (whether from a hospital or mid-wife delivery), and they would compare the birthdate of the child with the birthdate of the mother, and compare all of that with the surname of both the child and the father listed, and take action accordingly. And many people know what happened in Texas -- which is why Warren Jeffs and a number of his closest male associates are in prison.

The difference between Bill and seemingly everyone else, though, was that based on his communications with the Lord, he could clearly see what was coming, and as he sought to navigate the plural marriage minefield, he said the Lord very clearly showed him what he should do.

This all became front and center for me and my cousin Rick when Bill told us that all the women in his household had been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix, obviously seeking to pursue and indictment against him. Obviously, Bill was concerned about this for a number of reasons, including the fact that one of the gals was due for a new delivery on that very date. This was back when Janet Napalitano was governor and Terry Goddard was the Arizona AG. So Bill asked me to get on the phone with Goddard and offer to have all these women first appear to be interviewed in St. George before being forced to testify before a grand jury in Phoenix. Goddard went for it.

On the day in question, when we met in St. George, there must have been at least 10 attorneys from the AZ AG’s office swarming, along with about that many "investigators" and paralegals. It was a definite cluster. Their idea was to divide and conquer by-splitting up all the women, and interrogating each one of them individually. Rick said, “that’s not how this is going to happen. They are going to stay together as a group. You can interrogate them individually if you want, but either Mangus or I are going to be in every “interview.”

Those interrogations were one of the most amazing things I had ever witnessed in my life. Each of those women, including the teenage girls, acted with poise and confidence, and testified about their sincerely held beliefs regarding their divine roles as mothers. The first of that younger group, Belle, explained that her own mother had died fairly young of cervical cancer, and because she knew that cervical cancer can be hereditary, she felt like there might be a biological clock ticking on her own motherhood, and she hadn’t wanted to wait any longer to start having children, so she herself had started putting pressure on Bill to do something about it.

Belle explained that Bill had eventually given her a Christian medical encyclopedia with a page marked. On that page were illustrations and a description of a simple, at-home artificial insemination procedure, involving a medium-sized syringe, to be performed by the woman herself. Bill told her, “if you want to start having children now, this is how it’s going to happen.” And she testified that after keeping careful track of her monthly cycle, that is what happened. Each and every one of those gals likewise stated their unequivocal beliefs about their primary divine role and purpose in life, and each of them said they had learned about the applicable procedure the same way, and ultimately became mothers using that procedure.

After hearing what the younger gals had to say, Goddard and his posse didn’t even want to bother interrogating most of the other, more mature, fully adult women. But that didn’t stop him from pressing charges against Bill, alleging multiple counts of statutory rape, and felony sexual abuse of minors, insisting that no red-blooded man, if given that opportunity, would turn-down the opportunity to conceive a child the old-fashioned way.

Although Bill was seriously disappointed, as we all were, as per usual, he was once again a step ahead. In my last conversation with Bill, he said the Lord had shown him what he needed to do. He didn’t elaborate, but said that he would be doing it. He said that he regretted that I had previously moved, and that Rick was in the process of moving, and that we wouldn’t be around, quite as close at hand, to help deal with the aftermath of what was coming. I apologized and wished him God’s speed.

By the time Bill was abruptly dumped back into the United States 15 years later, all the charges had been dropped and dismissed based on lack of any credible evidence. Although Bill and his family were on my mind many times over the course of those 15 years, I didn’t have a chance to see or talk to him again until we had the conversation about what had happened in Mexico, when he put me in my place by saying “you heard what I said.”


Although I have never before shared this entire story, there have been times, over the years, when I have attempted to talk to people (other than Rick), about Bill, how he had an uncanny, unaccounted for ability to know what was coming, as well as his approach to navigating the plural marriage, minor motherhood issue. Although I have often had plenty of questions myself, any time I ever said anything to almost anyone in Church-type circles, often in the context of discussing so-called “spiritual” things, about what Bill had described to me in terms of his relationship with God, and the kinds of things that had been revealed to him, the almost universal response has always been: “That just can’t be. It’s got to be Satan. God would never communicate with a Plig like that, and He would never tell anyone to do that.” But, as my cousin Rick likes to say, the proof is in the pudding – because, while a number of men are rotting in prison based on very similar circumstances, there Bill is, with a large posterity, and having seemingly fully navigated the plural marriage legal minefield – as well as a broad assortment of other minefields he has been confronted with, with the Lord’s help, completely intact, including the reasons why, after almost 15 years, he and his entire household were abruptly kicked out of Mexico. From all appearances, it looks like Rick is right -- the proof is in the pudding

I’ll leave it to you to try to connect the dots, according to your own understanding, enlightenment, and the dictates of your own conscience. But again, I do want to be clear, this is a true story.

What an incredible life Bill has lived. I love that you are able to tell us about it.

[OPMissionary]

So did AGF take the vaccine? Very sudden ghosting.

[JuneBug12000]

So did AGF take the vaccine? Very sudden ghosting.

I thought his nephew was on here, but I can't remember his name to ask.

[tmac]

I may have more news about all that in a few days. But no promises.

[JuneBug12000]

I may have more news about all that in a few days. But no promises.

I'd love more of the story. Maybe he would let you post it?

[tmac]

Without going into any detail about the extensive lengths I have gone to reach- out to AGF and his nephew, I am now returning to report.

Before doing that, though, I'm sure some people may question my own motives, and very reasonably ask why I would bother going to such lengths.

I know there has been a lot of disagreement here as to the possible significance of anything AGF had to say. But there was enough mystery with the whole thing that I wanted to solve some of that mystery at least for myself, and satisfy at least some of my personal curiosity, if nothing else, just as to background, motives, current status, and personal well-being, etc.

At this point, I am prepared to report the following:

AGF is real, and situated about as he always described -- an elderly widowed brother in the Gospel, recovering from knee surgery, surrounded by well-meaning, but hovering BYU PhD-type daughters who became increasingly apprehensive about their father's involvement on LDSFF, especially based on how agitated it was making him, and the fact that his general health took a significant turn for the worse last fall. So, they basically took AGF's keys away, and also shut down his nephew as the LDSFF facilitator.

And AGF's likewise well-meaning nephew ended being on-board with that because, despite his previous experiences with LDSFF, he ended up being very disappointed with the whole experience, and felt like he had gotten AGF in over his head in a surprisingly hostile environment.

They both realize that there have been a handful of supportive folks who really do seem to care, and are interested in hearing the rest of the story, but those people have been drowned-out by the loudness of the malicious naysayers, to the point that they both concluded that in an overall cost/benefit analysis, the price that AGF was being forced to pay vastly exceeded any possible benefit he was getting out of any of it -- which was basically only to try to get some unique, one-of-a-kind type stuff (personal knowledge stuff) off his chest.

At the end of the day AGF does feel like he is in possession of important information, based primarily on personal knowledge. One of his primary motives was to make a credible "anonymous" semi-public and semi-permanent record of this information, that he will otherwise probably just end up taking to his grave.

But I don't think we will ever see or hear from AGF again here on LDSFF.

I realize that this may come as a real disappointment to some. I'm sorry, but it is what it is. That is my report.

Having said that, because I twisted my cousin, MM's, arm to make part of the multi-tasking trek with me, and because he's a better storyteller than I am, I'm going to try to twist his arm to throw everyone a bone, and share one last completely unrelated story from our trip.

[Cruiserdude]

Without going into any detail about the extensive lengths I have gone to reach- out to AGF and his nephew, I am now returning to report.

Before doing that, though, I'm sure some people may question my own motives, and very reasonably ask why I would bother going to such lengths.

I know there has been a lot of disagreement here as to the possible significance of anything AGF had to say. But there was enough mystery with the whole thing that I wanted to solve some of that mystery at least for myself, and satisfy at least some of my personal curiosity, if nothing else, just as to background, motives, current status, and personal well-being, etc.

At this point, I am prepared to report the following:

AGF is real, and situated about as he always described -- an elderly widowed brother in the Gospel, recovering from knee surgery, surrounded by well-meaning, but hovering BYU PhD-type daughters who became increasingly apprehensive about their father's involvement on LDSFF, especially based on how agitated it was making him, and the fact that his general health took a significant turn for the worse last fall. So, they basically took AGF's keys away, and also shut down his nephew as the LDSFF facilitator.

And AGF's likewise well-meaning nephew ended being on-board with that because, despite his previous experiences with LDSFF, he ended up being very disappointed with the whole experience, and felt like he had gotten AGF in over his head in a surprisingly hostile environment.

They both realize that there have been a handful of supportive folks who really do seem to care, and are interested in hearing the rest of the story, but those people have been drowned-out by the loudness of the malicious naysayers, to the point that they both concluded that in an overall cost/benefit analysis, the price that AGF was being forced to pay vastly exceeded any possible benefit he was getting out of any of it -- which was basically only to try to get some unique, one-of-a-kind type stuff (personal knowledge stuff) off his chest.

At the end of the day AGF does feel like he is in possession of important information, based primarily on personal knowledge. One of his primary motives was to make a credible "anonymous" semi-public and semi-permanent record of this information, that he will otherwise probably just end up taking to his grave.

But I don't think we will ever see or hear from AGF again here on LDSFF.

I realize that this may come as a real disappointment to some. I'm sorry, but it is what it is. That I see my report.

Having said that, because I twisted my cousin, MM's, arm to make part of the multi-tasking trek with me, and because he's a better storyteller than I am, I'm going to try to twist his arm to throw everyone a bone, and share one last completely unrelated story from our trip.

You and MM are cousins?! I should've known.... I could tell I was gonna like that guy from his first post