Residents and leaders in the border towns of Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah, say they've moved on from polygamy and figures like Sam Bateman.
, a 46-year-old who residents say controls his own small sect of polygamous followers and was caught last month driving through Flagstaff with young girls kept in a trailer.
Bateman and his family lived inside two houses, and fewer than 50 people appear to have been living with him or could be counted as “followers” of his, according to neighbors and other residents. Unlike with Jeffs, residents were actively watching Bateman and alerting law enforcement to his activities, hoping he would get caught, said Donia Jessop, a former FLDS member who is now the mayor of Hildale.
While Jeffs once controlled all of the property of FLDS members, most of that land is now privately owned, Jessop said, an important distinction that means residents are now free to make their own decisions, unlike when church leaders controlled almost all of the property in the two towns. The state of Utah took control of the United Effort Plan trust and started working to privatize its holdings, becoming landlord to many residents and eventually transferring much of it to residents and selling parts to outside buyers. At the time, there were more than 700 residences and several commercial and agricultural properties held in the trust. In all, it was estimated to be worth more than $100 million.
The FLDS managed to mostly hold onto control in Colorado City until this year, but the longtime mayor Joseph Allred resigned earlier this year and former or non-FLDS residents won a majority of the seats on the council. Hildale High School, which opened in 2016, hosted its first football game last month, drawing a large hometown crowd of spectators who said just a few years earlier they would have never imagined such a thing taking place.
William"Willie" Jessop, who was once Jeffs’s bodyguard but is now a prominent member of a contingent of former FLDS members working to modernize Short Creek, bought the car in which Jeffs was arrested in order to put it on display at the America's Most Wanted Suites and Bed & Breakfast, located on the walled compound where Jeffs once lived.
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