Warren Steed Jeffs (born December 3, 1955) is an American cult leader who is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault following two convictions in 2011.

[9] In 2006, Jeffs was placed on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List for his flight from the charges that he had arranged illegal child marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls in Utah.

[10] In September 2007, Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice,[11] for which he was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years to life in Utah State Prison.

In 1976, the year he turned 21, Warren Jeffs became principal of Alta Academy, an FLDS private school at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon.

The Revelator was the head of the organization of all adult male church members who were deemed worthy to hold the priesthood, a tradition carried on in the Latter Day Saint movement.

[22][23][24] Following Rulon's death, Jeffs told the high-ranking FLDS officials, "I won't say much, but I will say this – hands off my father's wives."

Jeffs, like his predecessors, continued the standard FLDS and Mormon fundamentalist tenet that faithful men must follow what is known as the doctrine of plural marriage in order to attain exaltation in the afterlife.

[28] Before his 2006 arrest, Jeffs had last been seen on January 1, 2005, near Eldorado, Texas, at the dedication ceremony of the foundation of a large FLDS temple on the YFZ Ranch.

Residents, however, told authorities that there was in fact no such girl, and the calls were ultimately traced to 33-year-old Rozita Swinton, totally unconnected to the FLDS Church, and known for repeated instances of filing false reports.

[29] The women and children who were suspected of being minors were returned after Texas courts established that the state had not presented sufficient evidence of abuse to have removed them.

In July 2005, the Arizona Attorney General's office distributed wanted posters offering $10,000 for information leading to Jeffs's arrest and conviction.

During a routine traffic stop in Pueblo County, Colorado, police found nearly $142,000 in cash, $7,000 worth of prepaid debit cards and personal records.

[46] On April 5, 2006, Utah issued an arrest warrant for Jeffs on felony charges of accomplice rape of a teenage girl between 14 and 18 years old.

[50] On August 28, 2006, around 9 p.m. PDT, Jeffs was pulled over on Interstate 15 in Clark County, Nevada, by highway trooper Eddie Dutchover because the temporary license plates on his red 2007 Cadillac Escalade were not visible.

Jeffs possessed four computers, sixteen cell phones, disguises (including three wigs and twelve pairs of sunglasses), and more than $55,000 in cash.

[51][52][53] In a Nevada court hearing on August 31, Jeffs waived any challenge to extradition and agreed to be returned to Utah[54] to face two first-degree felony charges of accomplice rape.

He was held in the Washington County jail, pending an April 23, 2007 trial on two counts of rape, as an accomplice for his role in arranging the marriage between Elissa Wall and her first cousin.

[58] On July 27, 2010, the Utah Supreme Court, citing deficient jury instructions, reversed Jeffs's convictions and ordered a new trial.

The court found that the trial judge should have told the jury that Jeffs could not be convicted unless it could be proved that he intended for Elissa's husband to engage in nonconsensual sex with her.

Smith said that the Arizona victims no longer wanted to testify and that Jeffs had spent almost two years in jail awaiting trial, more than he would have received had he been convicted.

[69] In 2012, while incarcerated at the Powledge Unit, Jeffs released a book titled Jesus Christ Message to All Nations compiling various revelations that he stated he had received.

[73] The United Effort Plan (UEP) trust that formerly belonged to the FLDS was taken over by Utah in 2005 and controlled by the court for over a decade, before a judge handed it over to a community board mostly composed of former sect members.

Jeffs allegedly suffered a mental breakdown in the summer of 2019, leaving him unfit to give a deposition in the sex abuse case against him.

[74][75] Jeffs has also condemned interracial marriage and described Black people as being used by the devil for evil, as detailed in 2005 by the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report.