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	DPS Serves Arrest Warrants at Jeffs' West Texas Compound By Michelle Roberts The Dallas Morning News April 4, 2008 http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8VR6TQO1.html Authorities served search and arrest warrants Friday at a secretive West Texas religious retreat built by polygamist leader Warren Jeffs following a complaint to state child welfare investigators. Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Tom Vinger confirmed the warrants but declined to provide details. They were served a day after state troopers sealed off the polygamists' ranch near Eldorado on Thursday night so investigators could interview children to see if they're safe. Child Protective Services spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner said the DPS and other law enforcement helped investigators gain access. She said CPS is "investigating whether any children are in danger" but said no decisions had been made on whether to remove any children. Vinger said CPS was responding to a complaint but could not say whether the complaint was made from within or outside the ranch. He wouldn't say how many people were being interviewed or how many officers were involved. "At this point the people at the FLDS ranch are being cooperative," he said early Friday. "They're providing us with the people we need to talk to. ... This is an ongoing situation." Vinger wouldn't say whether there was resistance to authorities entering the ranch, but did say that officers "eventually ... gained access to the compound." It was unclear how many people live in the ranch's numerous buildings, Vinger said. Local authorities in 2006 put the figure at about 150. The retreat was built by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. The congregation, known as FLDS and led by the reclusive Jeffs since his father's death in 2002, is one of several groups that split from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints based in Salt Lake City decades after it renounced polygamy in 1890. In November, Jeffs was sentenced to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison in Utah for being an accomplice to the rape of a 14-year-old girl who wed her cousin in an arranged marriage in 2001. In Arizona, Jeffs is charged as an accomplice with four counts each of incest and sexual conduct with a minor stemming from two arranged marriages between teenage girls and their older male relatives. He is jailed in Kingman, Ariz., awaiting trial. The group's retreat, about 160 miles northwest of San Antonio, is located on the fortress-like YFZ Ranch, a former exotic game ranch. The letters stand for Yearning For Zion, and the group is known for its secrecy around the town. The group bought the property in 2004 for $700,000 and began an ambitious construction program anchored by an 80-foot-tall, gleaming white temple. The remote area is not far from Eldorado, a livestock and mohair center and Schleicher County seat and population center. It is home to about 1,800 of the 2,800 residents of the Edwards Plateau county.
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