Polygamists’ Leader Is Arrested for Sexual Misconduct

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LAS VEGAS — The leader of a polygamist breakaway Mormon sect who was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List has been arrested and faces sexual misconduct charges for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men, authorities said yesterday.

Warren Steed Jeffs, 50, was taken into custody after he and two other people were pulled over late Monday by a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper on Interstate 15 just north of Las Vegas, an FBI spokesman, David Staretz, said.

The leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was wanted in Utah and Arizona on suspicion of sexual misconduct for allegedly arranging marriages between underage girls and older men.

He assumed leadership of the sect in 2002 after the death of his 98-year-old father, Rulon Jeffs, who had 65 children by several women. Mr. Jeffs took nearly all his father’s widows as his own wives. He is said to have at least 40 wives and nearly 60 children.


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