Is the end of days looming for fundamentalist sect in Utah?

The Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints believe an apocalyptic
miracle will free their imprisoned leader this week but the
group’s own future is in doubt

Joanna Walters in Salt Lake City, Utah
Sunday 3 April 2016 19.24 BST

The new federal courthouse in downtown Salt Lake City is a massive, futuristic cube of metal and glass that looks imposing, austere and, above all, impregnable. Armed guards patrol the exterior 24 hours a day.

But if a certain group of polygamous religious extremists in a lonely corner of southern Utah are to be believed, this Wednesday the walls will split open and fall when one of their leaders, Lyle Jeffs, appears before the judge in a major fraud case, according to former followers of his sect.

Simultaneously, an earthquake will apparently cause the walls of a prison in Texas to crumble and Lyle’s brother, Warren Jeffs, the group’s “prophet” and supreme leader, will also walk free – despite the fact he has been serving a sentence of life plus 20 years in that state since 2011, convicted of having sex with underage girls as young as 12 that he took as polygamous wives.

By divine coincidence, perhaps, Wednesday is 6 April, the date most Mormons – and the outlawed, rejected offshoot sect of that religion known as the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints (FLDS) – proclaim is the actual birthday of Jesus Christ.

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