This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Jerold Williams, age 5, had been missing for more than a day and a half.
His father, Colorado City, Ariz., Mayor Joseph Steed Allred, was speaking with a sheriff's detective, though Allred was reluctant to let deputies into his home.
Meanwhile, almost 900 volunteers from Colorado City and neighboring Hildale, Utah, were pouring onto the Kaibab National Forest to look for Jerold. There were so many that it exhausted the search-and-rescue professionals who had to log them in and organize them.
But no one was able to save Jerold. He was found dead four days after his disappearance. He likely died the first night.
"The remote location, difficult terrain, inclement weather, limited resources and privacy concerns from the family and community continued to be significant hurdles during the entire search," a U.S. Forest Service officer wrote in a report.
Colorado City and Hildale, collectively known as Short Creek, are home to the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Reports and interviews describe how the FLDS provided both help and hindrance to the search for Jerold after he disappeared Aug. 6.
The reports also give a glimpse into Allred, 43, who has become an important figure in a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit alleging the municipal governments in Short Creek discriminate against people who do not follow imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.
The Kaibab National Forest begins in northwestern Arizona, just south of the Utah line. Allred and his family were camping about 75 miles southeast of Colorado City in what appears to have been a pullout spot along a Forest Service road. The adults later would tell deputies they were camping and picking raspberries. One deputy counted Allred, seven women and 27 children at the camp. Jerold would have been No. 28.
About 2:30 p.m. on Aug. 6, Jerold's mother, Julia Williams, took her son and three other children to a small pond about 100 to 200 yards away from camp.
The last person to see Jerold was apparently a 9-year-old girl, though the reports don't make her story clear. The reports say Williams was walking with the other two children when the 9-year-old came running up saying Jerold was lost.
In a recent interview, Coconino County sheriff's Sgt. Aaron Dick said he was told Jerold chased a grasshopper.
The mother told Allred their son was missing and the group began searching. After three to four hours, according to the sheriff's reports, the mother and father drove until they could make a phone call to the sheriff's office asking for help.
The temperature that night dropped into the 50s "with a steady cold rain coming down all night," a deputy noted. "A thunderstorm cell was overhead generating wind gusts up to 23 mph, and sporadic lightning and sleet."
About 1 a.m., two Air Force helicopters arrived from Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base to assist in the search. By that time, the search force already consisted of personnel from Coconino County, Fredonia town marshals, Arizona Game and Fish Department, the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
Also that morning, a sheriff's deputy tried to interview the 26-year-old Williams. The deputy's report notes Allred was reluctant to let her speak, but ultimately agreed.
Allred has long been protective of Williams. According to court documents filed in federal courts in Arizona, Allred married her in 2004 or 2005, when Williams was 15. In an October 2005 letter Williams sent to Jeffs that was intercepted by law enforcement, Allred included a photograph of his family, but said he was destroying the digital copies because Williams, then age 16, was in the photo. Federal documents say Williams was 17 when she gave birth.
Allred has never been charged with any crime related to bigamy or underage marriage. He did not respond to an interview request from The Tribune.
While detectives were speaking with the parents, volunteers from Hildale and Colorado City — including residents and the towns' search-and-rescue team — began streaming in.
"We didn't request them. They simply showed up," said Ken Phillips, who is in charge of searches for the National Park Service and had driven from his base in Flagstaff to help.
Phillips was in the planning center and tried to organize volunteers when they arrived. Phillips and the other people doing the planning didn't want people hiking terrain that had already been searched and didn't want anyone else getting lost. Authorities also wrote down everyone's name.
"It was a very, very exhausting operation," Phillips said, "because of" everyone who arrived.
The second day of the search came and went without finding Jerold. On Aug. 8, Detective Troy Short of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office interviewed Allred again. It is standard procedure in missing-child cases, even when the youngster is suspected to have gone missing in the forest, to consider whether he or she could have been abducted.
Short asked if investigators could search Allred's home for Jerold.
"[Allred] explained he was reluctant to do that because of internal church and community problems that were going on with Colorado City," Short wrote. "He was fearful the sheriff's department would identify his address and that it could later be used against him and his family."
In letters intercepted by law enforcement in their pursuit of Jeffs, Allred pledges to serve Jeffs through positions in local government. Allred also asked Jeffs what he wanted done with money from a water utility and whether Allred should keep spending the money on his own family.
At a civil trial last year in which a Colorado City couple won a discrimination verdict, Allred answered no questions on the witness stand, citing his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination even for questions about what positions he has held in town government or whether he knew who else worked there.
Short said he would not put Allred's address in his report. That is an unusual offer from law enforcement, which typically uses addresses as reference points for recording events.
Allred agreed to let Short — and only Short — search the home. Allred said he would call ahead so someone could let the detective into the home and the police force in Colorado City could escort him.
A marshal from the Colorado City police force met Short and took him to a home. One woman escorted Short inside for what turned out to be a fruitless search.
"It took a little while to work on gaining their trust," Dick said of law enforcement's interactions with Allred and his family. "We weren't there to judge their lifestyle or their activities. We were there to find a child."
Aug. 8 and 9 passed without finding Jerold.
About 4 p.m. on Aug. 10, a search group riding in the back of a pickup truck spotted Jerold's body about 8 1/2 miles from the campsite. It was along a Forest Service road behind a small dirt rise. Other searchers had probably passed it, but it was out of sight to anyone who wasn't elevated.
An autopsy confirmed Jerold died from exposure. The sheriff's office believes Jerold simply went the wrong direction when he tried to go back to camp.
Five weeks after Jerold was found, a flash flood in Hildale killed three women and 10 children. (The same storm system produced floods that killed seven people in Zion National Park and one man near Hurricane.)
At a memorial for the flood victims Sept. 26, Allred took the podium to address the hundreds of mourners and also spoke of Jerold.
"These experiences are what the Lord gives us and we're grateful," Allred said. "We have the bright hope of meeting [Jerold] again and enjoying his loving embrace."
Twitter: @natecarlisle —
Ruling in lawsuit
Phoenix • A judge presiding over a civil rights lawsuit against Hildale and Colorado City has ruled federal authorities can offer evidence at trial about polygamy, underage marriage and the teachings of the dominant religious sect in both communities.
U.S. District Judge Russel Holland ruled the topics can be raised as long as they have a connection to the U.S. Justice Department's allegation that the town governments served as an arm of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
The rulings issued last week marked a setback for both communities, which argued it would be irrelevant or prejudicial to let the Justice Department bring up those subjects.
The trial is set to begin in Phoenix on Jan. 19 and will be decided by jurors from northern Arizona.
— Associated Press