Law Enforcement Misled the Court to Obtain Search Warrants for the YFZ Ranch

2009-04-18 10:25:31

By Donald Richter

On April 15, 2009, attorneys representing ten FLDS men filed a motion in the 51^st District Court in Schleicher County, Texas, to suppress any and all evidence seized during the searches conducted at the YFZ Ranch during the raid last year. Relying on information obtained through interviews with law-enforcement officers and other evidence, the motion shows that there was a reckless disregard for proper investigative procedures, if not a deliberate attempt to deceive the court in obtaining the search warrants used in the raid.

The Hoax Phone Calls

The calls that triggered the raid have since been traced to Rozita Swinton, a Colorado Springs woman linked to false allegations of sexual abuse made to over ten child protection and law enforcement agencies across the country from Monroe, Washington, to Ft. Meyers, Florida, dating back to 2005. It may be claimed that Texas law enforcement was not aware at the time of the raid that the calls to the New Bridge Family Shelter were a hoax, but officers chose to ignore numerous warning signs and instead of conducting a proper investigation withheld from the court important evidence that they already had which raised serious questions about the validity of the calls.

In the first place, Ranger Long failed to notify the court in his initial affidavit that the caller never did give her telephone number or precise location and that she did not give the name of her “husband” but only approved a suggestion made by Jessica Carroll, a volunteer at the crisis center. By “Googling” the name “Barlow” and FLDS, Ms. Carroll located a news article reporting that Dale Evans Barlow had been convicted in Mohave County, Arizona, and sentenced to forty-five days jail time and three years probation. In her affidavit of April 2, 2008, she states:

I told Sarah that I knew she could get in trouble if she told me her husband’s name, so I asked her if I had a list of names, could she state yes or no? Sarah said yes. I began with a few random names and when I said the name DALE, she said yes, how did you know?

The alleged “Sarah” claimed that her husband had beaten her so severely on a previous occasion that she had to be taken to a hospital with several broken ribs. The doctor had wrapped her torso in an ace bandage and told her to “take it easy for a few days.”[1]

The name of the hospital to which she had been taken was elicited by Jessica Carroll in a manner similar to that by which she obtained the husband’s name:

I asked her what hospital she went to and she could not remember. I asked if it was in Eldorado or Sonora and she said it was really close. She told me it was called the medical center. I asked if Schleicher County Medical Center sounded close and she stated, yes, that is the place.[2]

In an interview on December 18, 2008, Ranger Brooks Long stated that he had sent Sheriff Doran’s deputy, George Arispe, to the hospital in an attempt to verify whether “Sarah” had been treated as she claimed but that Arispe had found no record of any Sarah Barlow ever having been admitted or treated. Long said that Sheriff Doran told him that the FLDS likely would not have used the girl’s real name; however, there is no evidence that Arispe inquired about any other woman from the Ranch with the type of injuries described. Also, it is likely that any doctor who had treated a patient with bruises and broken ribs would have been suspicious and reported possible abuse at the time or at least have remembered the incident if he was questioned about it later. Had a thorough investigation been made, the failure of this part of the story to withstand scrutiny would have cast serious doubt on the rest of what "Sarah" had to say.

Ranger Long also acknowledged during his interview that he could obtain a blocked phone number by asking the Ranger Captain to have the call traced but that this usually required anywhere from a week to thirty or forty days. He said that an emergency procedure could be used for life-or-death situations but that he didn’t feel that the “Sarah” calls were in that category. He admitted that at no time from March 29^th to April 9^th was there any attempt to involve the Ranger Captain and see if the calls could be traced.

On March 31, 2008, anti-FLDS activist Flora Jessop phoned private investigator Sam Brower and hooked up a three-way telephone conversation with Rozita Swinton, who again claimed to be “Sarah Barlow” and stated that she was being taken to Texas. Brower took the number of Swinton’s phone and provided it to Gary Engles, an investigator for the Mohave County District Attorney.[3] Since Brower and Engles were in regular contact with Texas authorities, it is likely that they communicated with them regarding this incident. If nothing else, such inconsistencies in the “Sarah” story should have cast serious doubt on the reliability of the caller.

Brower and Engles apparently did not call law enforcement in the area code from which the call was coming; however, during the course of the raid, Texas authorities did make such a call. A Colorado Springs officer recognized the number as that of Rozita Swinton because of his familiarity with her history of making false calls of child abuse.[4] Instead of making any earlier efforts to trace the calls, law enforcement officials amassed a small army in preparation for their invasion of the Ranch.

Another important piece of information regarding the phone calls indicates the eagerness of law enforcement to seize upon the “Sarah” story as an opportunity to make a general search of the Ranch. Jessica Carroll has indicated that she and Alisa Thomas did not write their own affidavits concerning the calls made to the crisis center but that these affidavits actually were written by Ranger Brooks Long with the omission of several material facts which tended to cast doubt on the validity of the calls.[5] If this is actually the case, Long attempted to conceal the fact by claiming that the affidavits were prepared by “somebody” else and that he merely reviewed them.[6]

The Missing Husband

In addition to their failure to adequately investigate the phone calls on which the initial search warrant was based or to inform the court of significant facts relating to their validity, law enforcement also failed to inform the court that before entering the Ranch they had no probable cause to believe that the alleged abuser was even in Texas at all.

In a March 30 call to the crisis center, “Sarah” said “that her husband had to go away for a while and she wanted to know why.”[7] The reports of the crisis center volunteers do not indicate any other calls claiming that he had returned. Yet in the affidavit used to obtain the search warrant, Ranger Long stated that he believed “based on the information provided by the caller, that DALE BARLOW is currently located at the Suspected Place and Premises.”

Ranger Long had additional reason to believe that Dale Barlow was not in Texas. Long’s affidavit states that he had obtained from the Mohave County Superior Court a copy of Dale Barlow’s judgment. He failed to inform the court, however, that he also had obtained a written copy of Dale’s probation conditions, commanding him not to leave the state without prior permission from the Arizona Probation Department. Long phoned Arizona Deputy Sheriff Allen Pashano and learned that Dale had not obtained such permission. He admitted in his interview that Pashano was cooperative but that he had not asked him to contact Dale’s probation officer or to do any investigation regarding Dale’s whereabouts or the whereabouts of any member of his family.[8]

Prior to entering the Ranch, Sheriff Doran called Dale Barlow in Arizona and learned that he had not been in Texas since a school trip in 1977. (See “YFZ Search Warrant Was Not Obtained in Good Faith”)

On April 4, the day following the raid and prior to Ranger Long’s affidavit for the second search warrant, Arizona CPS case workers Candice Babb and Vince Vincent interviewed Dale Barlow at his home in Colorado City. The same day Arizona CPS received a call that on April 3 Arizona authorities had been called by a person claiming to be a sixteen-year-old girl named Sarah Jessop, “locked in her basement” in Colorado City, being sexually abused by her father, and being forced to marry a forty-year-old man in Arizona named Wendell Nielson. This call was also traced to Rozita Swinton.[9] With the publicity that the raid was receiving at this time, it is inconceivable that Texas authorities were not apprised of this important information.

Prior Cooperation at the Ranch

The “Petition for Orders in Aid of Investigation” filed by the Department of Family and Protective Services on April 3, 2008, stated, “[a]s more particularly shown in the attached affidavit, the Department has attempted to make a thorough investigation and report, but cannot obtain admission to the home or school, or access to the children, or cooperation of the parents or others responsible for the care of the children.”[10] The affidavit referred to does not support this claim, and it is hard to imagine why the Department would make such assertions before they had even attempted an investigation at all.

Sheriff Doran stated in his interview on December 18 that he had been out to the Ranch on some twenty occasions and had always been admitted whenever there was a need. Brooks Long accompanied Doran on four of these trips. In 2005 he assisted Doran in investigating rumors of a potential mass suicide at the Ranch and found them totally unfounded. Long stated in his interview:

And that’s the first time that I physically actually went in the Ranch and kind of drove around and saw what was going on out there and, you know, we saw the chicken coup [sic], we saw the dairy, we saw where they were growing potatoes and fruit trees, where there used to be rocks and desert and uh, I was impressed…by these folks and their work ethic and what they had done out there, to a bunch of cedar and cactus…. But we didn’t see anything dooming bloom…we didn’t see any signs that there was a problem…. They were growing potatoes, they had fruit trees, very self sufficient, you know. Obviously a lot of work, a lot of sweat and uh, a lot of craftsmanship.[11]

Long stated that whenever he had visited the Ranch he always found Merril Jessop to be “a gracious host” to law enforcement.

On March 31, just three days prior to the raid, Sheriff Doran and the Schleicher County Tax Assessor were allowed on the Ranch, where they went house to house and building to building for tax appraisal purposes.[12]

Sheriff Doran was well aware that the FLDS people had always been cooperative and were not a violent people. At a briefing of the raid team on April 3, Doran advised the assembled officers that they were dealing with a “docile,” peaceful people and that he had never “had any violence out there…never seen any weapons displayed on the property.”[13]

The Real Reason for the Raid

The court was not informed at the time of obtaining the search warrant that law enforcement had made numerous trips to the Ranch, had never been denied access, and had investigated a prior allegation which had proven to be false. The court also was not informed that the real purpose for obtaining the warrant was not to locate the alleged “Sarah” and arrest her abusive husband but to conduct interviews and a general search of the Ranch in an attempt to uncover evidence of supposed child abuse.

DPS Sgt. Aaron Grigsby stated, “At approximately 2:15 pm [April 3, 2008], law enforcement agencies from the area massed for the operational briefing involving the approach of the YFZ Ranch and entry onto the facility to check for evidence of any crimes against the children present.”[14] (Emphasis supplied) When CPS and law enforcement entered the Ranch, they did not conduct a search to locate “Sarah” but requested that all girls between the ages of seven and seventeen be rounded up for interviews.

Authorities really were not interested in examining the validity of the calls to the crisis center or of verifying the location of the alleged husband. They had been waiting for years for just such an excuse as these calls provided and did not want to lose their opportunity. Shortly after the raid the New York Times reported:

The Texas lawmaker who represents Eldorado, Representative Harvey Hilderbran, a Republican, said the authorities had been looking for a tool, if not a spark, to combat the particular form of polygamy that arrived here in 2003, when the group’s members came from Utah and Arizona….

“We’ve been fighting this for awhile, trying to do something about it,” Mr. Hilderbran said. “But we needed a complaint. You can’t just say: ‘Golly, I can’t get into that ranch, I bet you lots of awful stuff is going on in there.’”

Mr. Hilderbran said that based on recent conversations with law enforcement officials, they had been poised to respond if and when a cry for help came.[15]

Is it any wonder that law enforcement did not tell the court the whole story before they obtained their search warrant?

[1] Ruby Gutierrez, “Affidavit in Support of Petition in Aid of Investigation,” 3 April 2008.

[2] Jessica Carroll, “Affidavit,” 2 April 2008.

[3] “Joint Consolidated Motion to Suppress,” 51^st District Court, Schleicher County, Texas, 15 April 2009, Cause No. 1016, p. 47.

[4] Ibid., 15.

[5] Ibid., 9, Footnote 15.

[6] Interview of Lt. Brooks Long, 18 December 2009, 34.

[7] Jessica Carroll, “Affidavit,” 3.

[8] Interview of Brooks Long, 28-32.

[9] “Joint Consolidated Motion,” 44-45.

[10] Ibid., 17.

[11] Interview of Brooks Long, 48-49.