Authorities have yet to locate five indicted FLDS sect men

Authorities have yet to locate five indicted men

Texas authorities said Friday five members of a polygamous sect indicted by a Schleicher County grand jury still have not been located.

The jury issued six indictments Tuesday after a daylong session in Eldorado. One was for Warren S. Jeffs, the leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who is currently jailed in Arizona.

The identities of the other five men will not be released until they are arrested.
[…]

Willie Jessop, a spokesman for the sect, said that the men will turn themselves in if the state provides names of those indicted.

“In Arizona and any other case, the people turn themselves in,” said Jessop, referring to prosecutions of eight men charged with sexual conduct with minors. “They never missed a date or anything.”

The exception was Jeffs, who was a fugitive when he was arrested in August 2006.

Indicted sect members can hide with ease

Texas authorities will have their work cut out for them as they try to track members of a wealthy polygamist sect who are well-equipped to hide within a national network of safe houses, one expert said.
[…]

“It’s so hard. It’s not like a regular bank robber takes off in a 1986 Toyota Camry and you can go check with his wife or girlfriend,” said Sam Brower, a Utah private investigator, who has spent the past five years working for attorneys suing the church and assisting law enforcement.
[…]

Brower points to Jeffs’ own run from justice. In 2005, Jeffs was placed on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. Efforts to find him failed for a year until an obscured temporary license plate on a newly purchased Cadillac Escalade caught the eye of a Nevada highway patrolman.