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Gary Engles Creates a False Report: The Corruption of Arizona Law Enforcement

2010-07-14 10:43:46

By Donald Richter

 

In May of 2006, Arizona authorities convinced the FBI to place Warren Jeffs on its Ten Most Wanted list, along with mobsters, drug-cartel leaders, serial murderers, and terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. In this way it was insinuated that the FLDS Prophet was a dangerous felon. On June 9, 2010, acting on a motion from Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith, Arizona judge Steven Conn dismissed with prejudice all Arizona charges against Warren Jeffs. According to the official version of these events, the state dropped its case because the “victims” requested it, Mr. Jeffs had already served more time in Arizona than he would receive if convicted, and he is facing more serious charges in Texas, which the “victims” were anxious to see pursued. 
 
All of this is nothing but desperate media spin intended to obscure the fact that Arizona is in serious damage-control mode. Not only did state authorities realize that their case against Warren Jeffs had crumbled, but they also wanted to avoid at all costs a public disclosure of the fabrication of evidence, the perjury of key prosecution witnesses, and the shameless cover-up of such actions by government officials.
 
Sincerely believing, as the title of our site fearlessly proclaims, that “Truth Will Prevail,” we intend over the next several weeks to publish a series of articles exposing the web of corruption, conspiracy, and hypocrisy which, from the beginning, have surrounded the persecution of an innocent man and his followers in Utah, Arizona, and Texas.
 
We begin with the fabricated report of Mohave County special investigator Gary Engles, used to circumvent the fact that the statute of limitations in Utah had already run out in April of 2005, a year before charges against Warren Jeffs were even filed.
 
In a report dated January 10, 2005, but not submitted to authorities until after Warren Jeffs’ arrest, Engles gives an account of a purported meeting at JB’s Restaurant in Hurricane, Utah, of himself, Richard Holm, and Lamont Barlow, wherein Lamont advised him that Elissa Wall had been married by Warren Jeffs at age fourteen to Allen Steed.[1] The complete report reads as follows:
 
1/10/05 @ approx 1140 hours
Met with Richard Holm and Lamont Barlow
 
Lamont advised his new wife, Elise Wall Barlow, had been married when she was 14 years old
Lamont stated Elise was married by Warren to an individual by the name of Allen Steed
He also stated Allen Steed was Elise’s first cousin
Allen was very abusive to her, and beat and raped her
He stated Elise had gotten away from Allen some time ago and he married Elise
Elise is now 18 and expecting their first baby
Elise’s father’s name is Loyd [sic] Wall and mother is Sharon Steed
Allen’s father’s name is Lawrence Steed, possibly the principal of a public school
I asked Lamont if Elise would talk with me and Lamont said he would rather wait until after Elise has the baby
I advised I would honor that request and not push the issue until after she has the baby
 
End of report 
 
Engles’ account of this informal meeting was used as evidence that Allen’s alleged actions were reported before the statute of limitations ran out. The report, however, is a complete fabrication. 
 
On page 345 of her book Stolen Innocence, Elissa Wall refers to a meeting where “an investigator from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office” unexpectedly joined Lamont and a friend for breakfast. However, she places the date of this meeting after the Utah statute of limitations had run out in April of 2005 and indicates that Lamont told her after the meeting that her sister and her brother “had been misinformed when they were told that the statute of limitations would run out for [her]… that past April” and that there was still plenty of time for them to file charges.
 
Engles’ report itself contains internal evidence that it was fabricated a considerable time after the event it supposedly recounts. The first line of the report reads, “Lamont advised his new wife, Elise Wall Barlow, had been married when she was 14 years old.” In January of 2005, Elissa was not Lamont’s “new wife.” They were not married until the fall of 2006, when Elissa, according to her own account, was “very pregnant” with her second child by Lamont. Engles’ report also includes the statement that Lamont had said that “Elise had gotten away from Allen some time ago and he married Elise.” Elissa’s marriage to Allen Steed had been annulled less than two months before the purported meeting at JB’s following the discovery of her adulterous affair with Lamont.   
 
Engles also includes the statement that “Elise is now 18 and expecting their first baby,” which glosses over the fact that, according to her own admission on page 307 of Stolen Innocence, she was only seventeen when she and Lamont first became intimate and was still only seventeen when the child was conceived. Under Arizona law Lamont would be guilty of statutory rape, but, of course, Utah and Arizona authorities have never had any intention of prosecuting him for this crime. After all, he was no longer a member of the FLDS Church. Instead, as reported on pages 358 and 359 of Elissa’s book, members of Utah law enforcement worked with the Hoole attorney firm to help arrange the marriage of Elissa and Lamont in September of 2006:
 
That week, I was preparing for my wedding to Lamont. A bishop from the mainstream Mormon Church had agreed to marry us, and while it sounds bizarre, the only people who could attend the ceremony were members of law enforcement and lawyers.
 
I was very pregnant at the time and did my best to look the part of a blushing bride in a white blouse and skirt that Greg’s wife helped me put together. Brock and his associate Jerry Jaeger from the Washington County District Attorney’s Office drove up for the ceremony. I later learned that Brock and Jerry had spent the morning driving to jewelry stores with Lamont and Roger to find me a wedding ring. In the end the three lawyers helped Lamont pick out a ring that I absolutely loved. 
 
No one knew better than Brock Belnap and Jerry Jaeger that over a year and a half earlier Elissa was not Lamont’s “new wife.” 
 
Additional evidence that Engles’ report was a total fabrication is the statement of Richard Holm made during a deposition by Michael Piccarreta on August 19, 2008:
 
Q. And do you remember anything of substance being discussed at that meeting?
A. Well, substance is—no.
Q. I mean, substance is something about what happened to Ms. Wall in her relationship with Allen Steed. You know, something—
A. There wasn’t anything. It wasn’t even a topic that was discussed.
Q. Okay. And you were present for the entirety of the meeting with you and—
A. It wasn’t a meeting. It was like we’d just chance getting together at breakfast, an introduction.
 
Richard Holmes’ statement is consistent with the fact that, knowing he could be facing charges of statutory rape, Lamont would hardly call attention to himself by telling a representative of law enforcement that another man had also raped the same young lady.
 
On May 27, 2010, after accounts surfaced regarding the fabrication of medical records and the perjury of key prosecution witnesses in Warren Jeffs’ Utah trial, Engles provided a supplement to his report, giving the following account of its time of composition:
 
Based on some of the proceedings going on in the State of Utah, I have been asked by multiple people, including Brock Belnap, for specifics as to when I met with Lamont Barlow initially and when I did my report. According to my report which has previously been disclosed, I met with Lamont Barlow on January 10, 2005, at JB’s Restaurant in Hurricane, Utah. Although my report is dated January 10, 2005, that was the date that I met with Lamont Barlow, I dictated my report one week later, on either January 17 or January 18, 2005. I then turned over my report to Mohave County Attorney Secretary, Sarah Krumwiede, and asked her if she could type up the report that I had dictated. According to the Mohave County Attorney’s Office computer, Sarah Krumwiede actually typed the report on May 12, 2005, at 2:42 p.m. 
 
Although my report was dictated in the middle of January, since I spend a lot of my time up in Colorado City, even weeks at a time, I would often wait until I had tapes filled on both sides before I would give a Secretary a dictation to type up. Due to the fact that these Legal Secretaries also work for attorneys, it would not be unusual for me to wait multiple months before I would get my reports typed.
 
In the unlikely event that Engles’ account was written, as he claims, near the time of the purported meeting, it never was a formal notification to law enforcement of the commission of a crime. No investigation was made and no charges were filed at that time in either Utah or Arizona. In fact, a delay of four months in the typing of the report would suggest either that it was not considered of urgent importance or that the Mohave County Attorney’s office was grossly inefficient.  
 
The inconsistencies in Engles’ report as well as the statement of Richard Holm suggest that in all probability no such matters as are contained in the report were ever discussed and that the account itself was not composed in January of 2005 at all but rather at some time following the arrest of Warren Jeffs in August of 2006, when Utah and Arizona had recruited Elissa Wall as a witness against Mr. Jeffs and were scrambling to find a way around the fact that the statute of limitations in Utah already had run out.


 

                [1] Most accounts of Elissa Wall’s marriage to Allen Steed fail to mention that in Arizona and in Nevada, where the ceremony is alleged to have taken place, a girl of fourteen can legally be married with parental consent and a court order. The absence of such a court order hardly justifies a charge against the person performing the marriage ceremony of “rape as an accomplice.”


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