UTAH
Salt Lake Tribune
November 11, 2017
By Nate Carlisle
Child bride-related charges dropped against polygamist; details of Mexico ranch killings emerge
Pennie Petersen says Orson William Black will be free within days unless sex-abuse charges are reinstated.
In this photo provided with a redaction by the law enforcement in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, Orson William Black, 56, stands while being detained Nov. 5, 2017. Black is a former member of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who has been on the run from child sex abuse charges in Arizona since 2003. Courtesy Photo.
Arizona prosecutors eight months ago dropped charges against a polygamist who had allegedly married underage girls on the Utah line, said a woman who has been working for 14 years to bring the polygamist back from Mexico.
Following the slaying of three of his family members in Mexico, Orson William Black, 56, finally returned to the United States on Thursday and is being held at a detention center in El Paso, Texas. But the woman who has been pursuing him, Pennie Petersen, on Saturday said he’ll be free this time next week if the Arizona attorney general doesn’t reinstate the child sex-abuse charges.
“When he gets out of that jail cell in El Paso, if he thinks the heat is on him, he’s gone,” Petersen said in a phone interview.
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