FLDS subpoenas filed
 Arizona asks Utah authorities to help serve papers to businesses
 
By Ben Winslow
Deseret Morning News
 
Grand jury subpoenas are being served upon businesses connected to the Fundamentalist LDS Church and an embattled school district in the polygamous border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

The existence of an Arizona grand jury investigation was revealed Tuesday when the Arizona Attorney General's Office filed papers in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court, asking Utah authorities for help to serve the subpoenas.

The subject of the subpoenas is Jeffrey P. Jessop, the former financial director of the Colorado City Unified School District. The court papers demand any financial documents, invoices, tax forms, contracts or correspondence involving Jessop between 2000 and 2005.

"It's nothing I can comment on," said Andrea Esquer, spokeswoman for Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. "Anything that deals with the state grand jury in Arizona is confidential."

FLDS-linked companies Valley Transportation, Valley Truss, Steeds Inc., and the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints are being served with the subpoenas. The Jody Wilkinson Acura car dealership is also being served, but employees there said they had no idea why.

"I'm not sure I know who Jeffrey Jessop is. That I can recall, I don't think I've met him," said Rod Parker, a former lawyer for the FLDS Church who was to be served one of the subpoenas. Reached in New York City where he was visiting on business on Tuesday night, Parker said he did not know what the grand jury was investigating.

The Salt Lake District Attorney's Office has agreed to serve the subpoenas for the Arizona Attorney General. However, it may be difficult — if not impossible.

Steeds Inc., a contracting business, went bankrupt in 2002. Its address in Midvale does not exist.

Valley Truss and Valley Transportation both have addresses at a government building that houses the Utah Department of Commerce's Division of Corporations.

Former FLDS Church member Richard Holm owned Valley Truss and Valley Transportation about a decade ago. He told the Deseret Morning News that Jeffrey Jessop would work as an independent contractor, handling vehicle licensing for his company's trucks.

"He's my cousin," Holm said Tuesday. "I know he did licensing for a whole bunch of people in the community. When you needed help that way he was the one that most everybody called on and you'd pay a certain fee."

Recently, Jessop was the financial director of the Colorado City Unified School District until he resigned under pressure in 2005. It came after the state of Arizona took over, after teachers went months without pay and allegations of financial mismanagement surfaced. Police raided district offices, seizing computers, records and files.

Peter Davis, the accountant appointed by the Arizona Board of Education to take control of the district, did not know of the subpoenas until informed Tuesday by the Deseret Morning News.

"I didn't know about the grand jury," he said, adding that his office has been conducting its own investigation into the finances of the school district. "We are continuing to look at where the money went."

In 2000, FLDS Church leader Warren Jeffs — who is now a fugitive facing criminal charges in Utah and Arizona — ordered members to remove their children from the public schools. Nearly two-thirds of the district's students left.

All of those subpoenaed were asked to appear before the grand jury in the Maricopa County Superior Court in Phoenix on May 24.

E-mail: bwinslow@desnews.com
 
deseretnews.com
Originally published Wednesday, April 26, 2006
 
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