The man locked his eyes straight ahead and kept eating a fast-food salad as he answered all of Dutchover's questions but one: Who was he?
It didn't matter.
By then, a suspicious Dutchover had heard discrepancies in the accounts given by driver Isaac Jeffs and his passenger - fugitive prophet Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
As he spoke with Warren Jeffs, Dutchover could see the carotid artery in his neck pulsating, signaling his nervousness. "I even said to him, 'Is everything OK? You're making me nervous,' '' Dutchover said.
Jeffs said, "Yes," but still didn't make eye contact, the trooper said.
Dutchover had stopped the vehicle on the northbound lanes of Interstate 15 just outside of Las Vegas shortly after 9 p.m. because it lacked plates and had a partially obscured temporary Colorado registration.
His suspicion grew when Isaac Jeffs handed him a Utah driver license and a vehicle registration in another name, which Dutchover did not disclose during a Tuesday evening news conference.
Dutchover said Warren
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She sat silently and did not react as events unfolded.
Dutchover's attempt to check records on Isaac Jeffs was stymied because dispatch computers were down. Isaac Jeffs had just consented to a search of the Escalade when two other troopers, Rosell Owens and Shawn Martin, arrived.
Dutchover and Owens began the search and noticed envelopes addressed to "President Warren Jeffs."
A month earlier, Owens and Martin had done a traffic stop on associates of the fugitive prophet, and Owens recognized the name.
Meanwhile, Martin was asking Isaac Jeffs the name of his passenger, and he answered, "John Findley."
Owens asked Warren Jeffs once more for identification, but he kept silent. "We all looked at each other and said, 'We think this might be him, Warren Jeffs,' '' he said.
Martin pulled out an FBI business card he had been given after the earlier traffic stop. The special agent showed up, Dutchover said, introduced himself to Jeffs and asked him to state his name.
"He said, 'Warren Steed Jeffs,' and he kind of sighed, like it was over, it was finally over. We were just looking at each other, we were in shock," Dutchover said. "It was a happy moment to know that we'd captured one of the 10 most wanted criminals in the country."
Jeffs had said the trio was making a one-day stop in Las Vegas, yet the vehicle was crammed with suitcases and pillows.
Also found inside the luxury SUV: $67,500 in $100 bills; at least 14 cell phones; a radar detector; two Global Positioning System units; laptop computers; half a dozen pairs of sunglasses and three wigs - one blond, one black and one brunette.
Jeffs was cooperative as he was taken into custody, Dutchover said. "It's just been really humbling," he said. "I was just an officer out there looking beyond the traffic stop, doing my job, what the public expects me to do."



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