An Arizona attorney plans to seek a court order to require anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop to answer questions after she refused to cooperate Monday unless a television crew was allowed to tape the meeting.
He wants to ask Jessop about phone conversations she had with a person whose call, later considered a hoax, triggered the April 2008 raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Texas.
In papers filed last week in a Kingman, Ariz., court, Jeffs’ attorneys said they have scheduled a Nov. 24 interview with Flora Jessop in Phoenix. Jeffs’ criminal defense team has asked her to bring copies of “any recordings of any phone calls between yourself and Rozita Swinton,” the woman suspected of making the hoax call that launched the raid.
The woman suspected of making the hoax phone call that sparked the raid on the Fundamentalist LDS Church’s sprawling Texas ranch may soon be undergoing mental health treatment.
Rozita Swinton has not been charged in connection with the April 3 raid on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints ranch near El Dorado, in which she allegedly pretended to be a pregnant 16-year-old girl.
Rozita Swinton became well-known over investigators’ suspicions that she pretended to be an underage bride and called a crisis hot line in Texas.
Investigators say such calls triggered an April 3 raid on the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints’ Yearning for Zion Ranch compound near Eldorado, Texas.
The April raid on the polygamous FLDS sect was in response to a phone call that may have been a hoax.
Growing evidence indicates Swinton repeatedly made calls to authorities in multiple jurisdictions, setting off large emergency responses that sometimes involved dozens of police officers.
A court document says a phone number used to report alleged abuse at a polygamist retreat in West Texas had been used previously by a 33-year-old Colorado woman.