Well, not so much actually....
I had an interesting exchange today with someone who wanted to know where to find "the laptop article" on Warren. I had to saddly inform them that there was no article. No one ever picked the story up. Then, they went on to encourage me to send it to a particular reporter, so I checked my records, and he already had it.
I said, "I sure do appreciate it, but he got the same copy I'm including below, almost a year ago now. Everyone got it. Nobody would touch it. I was warned repeatedly to leave it alone or I was going to get hit hard by the jerks. They were right, and I don't care. Let them try coming down here to Texas to mess with me. Make my day."
And the other person told me perhaps that I should push again, now. I dunno, I figure if people want to know the truth from the media, it's their responsibility to demand it. In other words, if it bothers you that your right to know might have been infringed, maybe you should call your local media and ask them why they didn't think you had the right to know any of this information?
Swear me in, I'll sing like a bird, so will the eye witness. But don't blame me if the media doesn't think you have the right to know the truth.
****************************************************
August 2008:
This story is happening right now
I have eye witness accounts from two prisoners, who were in the Mojave County Jail in Kingman, Arizona and saw Warren Jeffs allowed having possession of a phone and laptop computer inside his cell. This was barely two months after the Mohave County Sheriff was quoted in the Fort Worth Star Telegram saying that Warren Jeffs was not allowed any electronic devices in his cell.
When I asked a Mohave County Supervisor, Buster Johnson-District 3, to ask the sheriff’s department, he was told by Mohave County Under Sheriff, Jim McCabe, in no uncertain terms-that was not the case and all Jeffs had access to- were “two books and one legal document at a time.” That is what they relayed to Supervisor Johnson when he questioned them, knowing that information was for the public, since he was elected to represent it.
I asked a local journalist if he would ask Mohave County Sheriff, Tom Sheahan if it were true. His response was strictly off the record, that indeed “that had been the case but now the situation has been remedied.”
I have requested the Mohave County Jail logs for that time period and expect to have a lot more eye witnesses to Jeffs’ access to a laptop computer, soon.
I have also requested all written documentation of items allowed to Warren Jeffs for the same time period by staff at the Mohave County Jail, be they written, electronic or telephonic.
Additionally I have requested Jeffs’ visitor logs, wanting to see if visitations happened to have decreased while he was in possession of the laptop in his cell. Does he still have a phone?
Was this special privilege, which has now been removed, documented or not? Who has it now? What was on it? Did Jeffs have internet access and if so was he using the county’s wireless or a phone line to access it on a daily basis? If he had internet access was he communicating with his daughter, Theresa Jeffs, or others who were being called by a grand jury in Texas to testify during that same time period? Was he influencing witness testimony, right from inside the Mohave County jail? Who signed off on the laptop? Whose password was used? Was he able to email? Was anyone disciplined for this error in judgment? On and on…
Sheriff Sheahan is running for his third or fourth term right now, unopposed by either party.
My public records requests are already there, in the Mohave County Manager’s office and they all know, without doubt, that I have caught them in a public lie. When I called the county manager’s office on Monday to ask about the status of my public records request they called back and left me a voice mail explaining that the records I had requested were not in the county manager’s office, so they have now sent my public records request straight over to the sheriff’s department. And another week has gone by, they’ve “gotten me fired” and I still haven’t heard anything on the progress of my public records requests, which are now at the sheriff’s department.
Last Wednesday I was the guest speaker for a local Chamber of Commerce luncheon. My topic was the FLDS in Mohave County. There I presented documentation of the Colorado City cemetery, which is comprised of 50% children’s bodies. I also spoke extensively about the women and children I have met for the past three years who have either left, been thrown out or escaped the FLDS. I also provided documentation on the cemetery and on the death rates for Colorado City, though the press who were present seemed highly disinterested in looking at it. Present for the luncheon was Chuck Rathburn, who is the owner of two local newspapers, along with a photographer and a reporter.
The next day my face was on the front page of the paper with an AP story on the FLDS. The only thing it mentioned about me were how I originally became interested in the story, that I was alleging that Mohave County was not doing enough to stop the abuses within the FLDS and my name and position with my current company.
“Ignatin, media manager at the Avi Resort & Casino, told of how she originally became interested as a radio news reporter in what she described as the plight of the women and children of the FLDS.
Ignatin alleges that Mohave County officials have not been adequately aggressive in pursuing FLDS members.”
I did not introduce myself as representing my company at that luncheon. I am the media manager and publicist for a large resort and casino. I am under no contract and have never been disciplined for my personal interest in, or pursuit of this case.
I was suspended on Friday and will probably be fired on Wednesday. On Sunday morning friends woke me up banging on my door at 7:30 a.m. They couldn’t reach me and were worried sick. The first they had heard of anything was a dinner they had attended the night before. They heard the “news of my firing” at the dinner from the county under sheriff, Jim McCabe and Chuck Rathburn, owner of the local paper. The two of them were laughing and talking about how easy it was to get me fired. My friends said it was literally vicious.
This is the very same county under sheriff who told Mohave County Supervisor, Buster Johnson that Warren Jeffs only had two books and one legal document at a time allowed to him in his cell.
Fortunately I live on the Nevada side of the river. If I lived in Mohave County, right across the river, I probably would have high-tailed it back to Texas by now.
Not one major media outlet has ever thoroughly investigated the rate of child deaths up in Colorado City, Arizona in Mohave County. The county attorney, the county special investigator, the county sheriff and the county supervisors, with the exception of Buster Johnson from District 3, have never done anything but say that they have checked it out and “everything is normal up there.”
When I confronted one county supervisor, Pete Byers in whose district Colorado City resides, with the astonishing number of accidental child deaths there, he told me that they accidentally run over more of their children up there “because they have more children.”
The FLDS is estimated to have pockets 400 million dollars deep. They have been in Mohave County, Arizona for a hundred years now. They have many friends out here.
I have spoken to women who have fled the FLDS in the past and made reports of abuse, which the county sheriff’s department claims to have no record of. I have women who have tried to flee and were caught who were then sent to a state mental hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. Their discharge papers from a state funded facility say that they were discharged only on condition that “they must see the Prophet.”
The local Mohave County Health Department stopped returning my calls three years ago when I was first investigating the child deaths in Colorado City. They told me it was too statistically small a sample to get a true death rate for the community. They also mentioned how hard they have worked to get to know the community up there so they would immunize their children and that they didn’t want to do anything to risk alienating them.
I imagine having it publicly revealed that there are hundreds of dead children buried in one very small town might indeed alienate the adults there from any authorities. But all of the authorities here, so far, are completely aware of the phenomenon, yet are unwilling to investigate their deaths. They would be unable to continue this close relationship they have built with the FLDS if the truth were known. They might even have to enforce some laws.
Please find attached the following items, none of which are originals or need to be returned: Copies of my three public records request to the Mohave County Manager’s Office. Four Photos of the “Baby Land Cemetery”, located in front of the town junk yard in Colorado City, Arizona, where only the infants are buried.
If we have further contact I will be glad to provide you with a copy of a list of every body buried in the Colorado City Cemetery as of 2005, with only the children’s bodies highlighted. I am including that list in the hard copy of this story proposal being sent to the address above.
Senator Harry Reid is right. There are more laws being broken out here than you can shake a stick at. And local law enforcement is not going to investigate or pursue the FLDS beyond a shallow show of “See? We are doing something.” It needs to be a federal investigation because the corruption now runs so deep.
Why on earth would a convicted child sex offender, who was once on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, need a laptop and a phone in his cell?
k.Dee Ignatin
3800 Desert Marina Drive #162
Laughlin, NV 89029
928.897.9335
Albert Hawkins. In January 2003, Gov. Rick Perry appointed Albert Hawkins to serve as the state’s health and human services executive commissioner. In this position, Hawkins heads the Health and Human Services Commission, which provides leadership and strategic direction to the health and human services system in Texas. The executive commissioner oversees the operations of the five health and human services agencies, comprised of about 45,000 employees working with a total annual budget of $25 billion
