Convicted Polygamist Leader’s Phone Use Suspended

HOUSTON (AP) — Texas prison officials have suspended indefinitely the phone privileges of convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs while they investigate whether he violated rules with improper telephone calls on Christmas Day.

Officials believe the calls Jeffs made to two approved people on his phone list were broadcast on a speakerphone to his congregation, a violation of the prison phone rules.

“At this point, he’s unable to make phone calls pending the outcome of the investigation,” Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Jason Clark said Wednesday.

He said the inquiry would likely wrap up within the next week or so.

Jeffs, 56, is serving a life sentence plus 20 years at an East Texas prison for sexually assaulting two of his underage brides. The charges followed a raid in 2008 on a West Texas ranch that’s home to followers of his Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Each of the Christmas Day calls lasted 15 minutes, the maximum duration before calls are cut off.

People on the list have gone through a registration process and also are made aware of the rules that stipulate the calls must be to a single person, be made to a land line and not to a cell phone and can’t be to a business or to an international number.

Jeffs is being held in protective custody, meaning he’s isolated from other inmates, at the Powledge Unit prison near Palestine, about 140 miles (225 kilometers) north of Houston.

Former members of his Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints have said he likely would continue to lead the church from inside prison, and that his followers likely still revere him as a prophet despite the considerable evidence at his trial showing he sexually assaulted young girls.

Prosecutors at his August trial used DNA evidence to show Jeffs fathered a child with a 15-year-old and played an audio recording of what they said was him sexually assaulting a 12-year-old.