Groomed by Their God: Inside the FLDS and the Machinery of Cult Recruitment

**Trigger Warnings: CSA/exploitation, religious trauma, infant deaths**

Presenter:

Mike King is an internationally recognized criminal investigator, and author with more than 40 years of experience in law enforcement, intelligence, and public safety technology. He began his career as a street cop in Ogden, Utah, eventually rising to Chief of Staff at the Utah Attorney General’s Office. Trained by the FBI in profiling, Mike served as co-chair of the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) and created UTAP, the Utah Criminal Tracking and Analysis Project. He is a founding board member of the Cold Case Foundation and has consulted on hundreds of complex homicides, missing persons, and cult cases worldwide.

He is the author of several acclaimed titles, including the just released Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing. Other works include: Deceived, She Knew No Fear, Predators, Analyzing Criminal Behavior, and Who Killed King Tut?. Mike holds a master’s degree in criminal justice and has taught profiling and victimology at universities. He was a visiting scholar at Boston College and a contributor at the Harvard Medical School Program in Psychiatry and the Law.

A respected voice in cult behavior, coercive control, and religious criminality, Mike continues to influence public safety through education, media, and global consulting. He can be reached through his website at ProfilingEVIL.com.

One thing I can promise you: Mike King is one of the best public speakers about crime, cults, and religion. He’s skilled at using his voice, gestures, looking at the audience, and having visual aids. He makes serious discussions about tragedies into a way that people can digest the shocking subject matter through being lively on stage and occasionally providing comic relief. Before he took the CrimeCon stage in Denver, he casually entered the room while people were just beginning to find seats and he shook hands, spending time to exchange a little conversation. The previous time I saw him, he educated the crowd on the Zion Society cult. This year, he tackled the massive history of the FLDS which mostly recently was under the control of child rapist, master manipulator, polygamist, Warren Jeffs.

It’s far too much to detail the history of the Mormons and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as Mike King did. What you need to know is that at one time polygamy was allowed, then illegal by the government and outlawed by the church, then branches off of the original church. Those sects wanted to continue polygamy and moved to a new area of Utah away from the original location. This move made under Leroy Johnson was essentially a church-state. The police department, government, and utilities were run by the FLDS. The added “F” to “LDS” is for fundamentalist.

This new church-state had even more extreme beliefs including murdering anyone who the leaders singled out. They would rather kill than offend their god. This continued into the 1980s when Rulon Jeffs became the leader and started new (convenient to him) prophecies. He eliminated the original council of seven leaders and declared himself the one true prophet of god. After his death, his son Warren (not the oldest son) claims he got the vision to take over where his father left off. We are still hearing about the damage caused by Warren Jeffs today despite his sentence of prison for life.

Mike King said that Warren Jeffs and his second-in-command, Willie Jessop, have continued to run what is left of his cult. It still exists. Not everyone came to the reality that they were duped into a life run by abusers.

From King’s investigations, he heard rumors that he sought to prove or disprove once and for all. These included secret caves, a mysterious baby cemetery, and the existence of “the god squad” which acted like the private security and protection (Secret Service, if you will) of the prophets. To King’s credit, it took 35 years and required help, but he proved all that and more about the heinous guts of the FLDS cult. A woman still in the delusion of Jeffs as a prophet, gave King the key to solving the myth of the secret caves. She gave him the coordinates which undoubtedly required a lot of courage for her to do. In order to make progress on this investigation, King was sworn in as a Marshal which gave him the jurisdiction to multiple areas.

King went to the location and digitally mapped the caves. They were first gone through by active law enforcement on the case. The caves had been filled with bunk beds, supplies, vaults, and weapons. Lots of weapons. The dirt tunnels looked like something made by drug cartels. The metal vaults inside the carved out corridors housed explosives and guns.

While in prison, Jeffs “confessed” that his vision of being the true prophet wasn’t real and that his BFF, Willie Jessop, is really the leader. How convenient. Yet, Jeffs is in there and talking about the blood atonement his followers should make. That involves believers convincing any of their children who escaped to come back to the fold, tithe their money (of course), and dedicate themselves to him.

The next myth was also proven. King found the location of 250 infant burial plots which barely had any identification. There were no birth or death records for these children and no one knows why. No one would talk about how these babies died. King has been instrumental in cataloging all these children. He and his wife Bonnie also use some of the money they raise to replace the inadequate grave markers with more substantial headstones.

At this point, after decades, King takes any information he gets on the FLDS and its abuses to a trusted police chief.

The proceeds from King’s book, Deceived, went towards the creation of Utah’s Children’s Justice Center for people who were raised in and escaped cults. The first people to walk through the door were survivors of the Zion Society.

Next up for Mike King is his new podcast, Cult Files: Garden of Evil.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.