(April 11, 2008)--Copies of search warrants released Friday show police seized dozens of journals and other materials, some of them documenting marriage and birth records of members of a West Texas polygamist sect.
The list of documents seized also refers to a "cyanide poisoning document," but offers no other explanation.
The records document more than 80 pages of items taken from the grounds of the Yearn for Zion Ranch in Eldorado owned by the breakaway Mormon sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Among the items seized were computer equipment, family photo albums, letters, school and medical records, including some that listed the name of the 16-year-old girl whose call triggered the weeklong search.
But her name was identical to that of several other girls in the sect.
Meanwhile the mothers of 10 of the 416 children taken from the compound say authorities have not allowed them to see or talk to their children.
The three women say they were away from the ranch at the time of the raid, but returned when they heard what happened.
One 30-year-old woman says she has three children ages 7 and under.
She told Utah's Deseret Morning News that she's afraid the children may be frightened.
She called herself "a good mother" who wants to be with her children.
For four frustrating years, an informant fed a West Texas Sheriff information about the sect, but members scattered whenever Sheriff David Doran and a Texas Ranger visited the secluded property.
Doran said that left authorities without the concrete evidence they needed to open a criminal investigation
The raid was finally triggered April 3 after a family violence shelter received the hushed phone call from the terrified 16-year-old girl who said her 50-year-old husband had beaten and raped her.
Doran says it was not until after the raid began that he learned the sect was marrying off underage girls at the compound and that the group had a bed in its soaring limestone temple where the girls were required to immediately consummate their marriages.
Investigators said a number of teenage girls removed from the compound are pregnant.
Texas Ranger Captain Barry Caver said it was hard for child welfare officials to find and remove all of the children from the commune.
He said they "were shuffled around houses as we were searching."
He said that as soon as children were seen in one house, they'd be moved to other houses.
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