Texas authorities defend polygamist sect raid
Updated: 2008-04-11 13:47
Doran had been making occasional visits to the Eldorado compound -- he even called to tell members of Jeffs' capture in 2006 -- but he said he saw nothing to warrant a criminal investigation. Most of those milling around the compound would scatter when he and a Texas Ranger visited, he said.
"You can only press someone so far without having a criminal investigation going on," the sheriff said. "This group doesn't openly talk and they do not openly answer questions."
Doran said he had an informant who was "instrumental in teaching me the group's ways." But he declined to say whether the informant, a former sect member, was in Texas, or Utah or Arizona.
Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger who sometimes went with Doran to the compound, said a general welfare check wouldn't have produced much. "They would allow us on the property to the extent that we could talk to the main three or four people" only, Caver said.
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"You cannot go in and bust in someone's house if there's not probable cause to do so," Abbott said.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has written about polygamy, said even Jeffs' conviction was not enough to barge in on the sect in Eldorado.
"You cannot use stale evidence," Turley said. "They would need a contemporary statement or evidence at trial that an individual at the compound is practicing polygamy."
The man alleged to be the 16-year-old girl's husband, Dale Barlow, is a registered sex offender who pleaded no contest to having sex with a minor in Arizona.
"I do not know this girl that they keep asking about," he told Utah's Deseret Morning News on Wednesday. "And I have not been to Texas since I was a young man back in 1977."
Officials still have not identified the 16-year-old girl among the children and the 139 women being held at two sites in Texas.
"When you're dealing with a culture like this, they're taught from very early on that they don't answer questions to the point," Doran said. "All of that is certainly being sorted out right now."
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