![]() Her parents eventually gave in after she turned 20. ask the prophet to choose a spouse for her) after she graduated high school. Alicia RohbockĮlsewhere in the Netflix doc, Rohbock remembered constantly going to her father asking to turn herself in (i.e. Following the elder Jeffs’ death, Warren married all but two of his father’s reported 20 wives, including Colleen, per The Sun. One of Warren’s wives, Briell Decker, told The Sun in 2019 that she was 13 when her 18-year-old sister, Colleen, was forced to wed Rulon, who was in his 80s at the time. In addition to appearing in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, she also wrote the 2013 memoir, The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice. “I was scared, I was terrified of marrying this man, and yet I could not say no because it would bring a tremendous amount of shame on my family,” she explained during a 2013 CNN interview with Piers Morgan, adding that she “felt extremely violated.” After Rulon’s death, Warren - whom she testified against at trial - allegedly threatened to marry her off to another church member in “less than a week.” So, with the help of her brother, she escaped the compound and began a new life. One of the most vocal of Rulon’s former wives, Rebecca Wall Musser was 19 when she was forced to marry a then-85-year-old Rulon. “I first will ask a question: Do we really believe in Uncle Rulon?” Naomi said in the clip taken shortly after Rulon’s death, adding, “’Cause if we do, we believe that Warren Jeffs is the Prophet of God, and I need him to guide me.” Rebecca Wall Musser The Netflix doc also includes an audio clip from Naomi, who’s identified as the “16th widow” of Rulon Jeffs. “She really pushed her sons to be close to our dad, to make them the next leaders of the church after my dad,” Wallace said. In Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, Wallace refers to brother Warren’s mother, Marilyn, aka “Mother Marilyn.” According to Wallace, Marilyn believed that Warren was “very special” because previous prophets told her as much after he survived being born about eight weeks premature. She reportedly moved to California with their two small children, and after a judge granted their divorce in 1941, the LDS Church excommunicated Rulon. ![]() After Rulon’s father convinced him to embrace polygamy and he decided to marry a second wife in 1940, Zola became “so worried and upset that she cried almost day and night, that her milk dried up so she was no longer able to nurse her baby,” according to their divorce papers. (In 2011, Warren was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years for sexually assaulting two minors he claimed were his “spiritual wives.”) As such, many of the women are shrouded in mystery, but here is what we do know about Rulon’s wives.Īccording to ABC News, Rulon’s first wife was Zola Brown, the daughter of one of the Mormon Church’s highest-ranking leaders, known as an apostle. “And I’m telling you, these lines were so bloody long,” she said.įollowing Rulon’s death, his son Warren Jeffs essentially inherited the president and prophet role of FLDS - along with his wives, many of them teenagers, who were often raped and subjected to other forms of sexual harassment. She also recalled a nightly routine of all the women lining up outside his door to take turns saying goodnight to him. ![]() In Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey, one of Rulon’s wives, Alicia Rohbock, described the dining room of Rulon’s house displaying a picture of each woman in the order he married her. (One of those children, Wallace Jeffs, claimed he has 62 siblings in the four-part Netflix docuseries.)īecause polygamy is illegal in the United States, these were primarily “spiritual” marriages. The New York Times estimated the count to be 19 or 20 wives and “about 60” children. At the time of the president of The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ (FLDS) death, an attorney for the organization declined to disclose the spiritual leader’s actual number of wives or children. Though the total number reported has ranged between 19 and 75 women, Rebecca Wall claimed in Netflix’s Keep Sweet: Pray and Obeythat she was one of Rulon Jeffs’ 65 wives when the 92-year-old died in September 2002.
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