Polygamous Sect Leader Lyle Jeffs Arrested After Year On The Run
June 15 2017, Published 5:45 p.m. ET
Polygamous sect leader Lyle Jeffs was arrested by the FBI in South Dakota Wednesday night, nearly a year after he slipped off his ankle monitor and went on a 1,200 mile run from the police.
Authorities had been looking for the 57-year-old since last June, when he fled home confinement while awaiting trial on food stamp fraud charges.
As RadarOnline.com reported, Jeffs was among the 11 sect members charged in the $12 million fraud scheme.
As readers know, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was also convicted of two counts of child sexual assault for the abuse he inflicted upon his child wives.
The polygamist Mormon Church forbade its men from fathering children, instead allegedly forcing them to watch as their wives were raped by worthy bloodline “seed bearers” – a procedure the church established as a “ritualistic procreation.”
Jeffs’ legal wife divorced him in 2015 after opening up about the sect’s inhumane ways.
“It is the husband’s responsibility to hold the hands of their wives while the seed bearer ‘spreads his seed,'” she told ABC on 20/20. “In layman terms, the husband is required to sit in the room while the chosen seed bearer, or a couple of them, rape his wife or wives,” she wrote.
Jeffs however, still has eight “spiritual wives,” as the sect believes polygamy brings men exaltation in heaven.
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As RadarOnline.com reported, Jeffs went on the run less than two weeks after a U.S. District Judge released him from jail on supervised home release.
The FBI issued a warrant for his arrest shortly after he disappeared and issued a $50,000 reward and “wanted” poster.
His brother, Warren, 60, was displayed on a similar poster and captured almost a decade earlier. Once the sect’s highest leader, he is currently serving a life sentence in Texas for raping girls he considered to be his brides.
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