
The 72-year-old presiding elder of a breakaway Mormon sect and two other church members turned themselves into authorities Monday to face felony charges relating to the underage marriage of girls to older men.
Frederick “Merril” Jessop, a leader of the
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, faces one count of conducting an unlawful marriage ceremony involving a minor, a felony.
One of Merril Jessop’s wives,
Carolyn, fled the FLDS community on the Arizona-Utah line with her children in 2003 and wrote a best-selling book, “
Escape.”