Black Hills religious cult gearing for end days

Update, 1227 MDT: Seth Tupper is doing a series on the polygamist doomsday sect building in the Black Hills.

For several minutes I had been gawking and Sean had been shooting photos. Then our eyes were drawn to the most imposing thing on the site, the guard tower. It’s much like the guard towers at prisons — three stories high, with windows at the top providing a 360-degree view of the grounds. [Tupper, Miles from nowhere: A trip to a compound that keeps secrets]

As South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley looks away as a favor to political allies, Charlie Najacht of the Custer County Chronicle has amassed an archive mountain and is on full tilt about the growth of the compound housing members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints near Pringle.

Even Custer County Sheriff Rick Wheeler seems on edge about having a polygamist group known for human trafficking digging in his jurisdiction.

In South Dakota, they worry those expelled would head north, bringing the same problems to their state. “There's been building going on all through the summer and all of a sudden it stops and there's nothing and the projects were never really completed either,” Wheeler says. The construction has caused enough concern neighbors in the area have started to pack up and move out. "They're digging a huge foundation for something, now. There's speculation that it could be a temple, who knows?” Najacht says. [KUTV]

Seth Tupper has published a pair of reports on the Waco-like compound applying to tap massive volumes of Black Hills water that would support what could become the biggest town in Custer County.

“If Custer County P and Z is going to put its head in the sand,” said one of the letters, referring to the county’s planning and zoning office, “I guess it will take Pierre to do something before this turns into Waco, Texas.” Waco was the site of a 1993 federal siege at a Branch Davidian compound that ended in the fiery deaths of 76 members of the religious sect. Craig Bobzien, supervisor of the Black Hills National Forest, wrote that the proposed well, in combination with other existing and future uses of the aquifer, could harm a “rare warm water spring ecosystem” in the area. [Tupper, Compound's neighbors fears Waco-like scenario]

And:

The man who submitted the application for the compound is Seth Jeffs, brother of Warren Jeffs, the former head of the FLDS. Warren Jeffs, who married multiple underage brides as young as 12, is serving a life sentence for sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children. Seth Jeffs was convicted in 2006 of helping to hide Warren Jeffs from authorities. [Tupper, Religious compound's water could serve thousands, Park Service says]

Lifted from Wikipedia:

Church leaders have encouraged their flock to take advantage of government assistance in the form of welfare and the WIC (woman-infant-child) programs.[citation needed] Since the government recognizes only one woman as the legal wife of a man, the rest of his wives are considered single mothers and are eligible to receive government assistance. The more wives and children one has, the more welfare checks and food stamps one can receive. By 2003, for example, more than $6 million in public funds were being channeled into the community of Colorado City, AZ. In his book Under the Banner of Heaven (p. 15), Jon Krakauer writes that, "Fundamentalists call defrauding the government 'bleeding the beast' and regard it as a virtuous act." Carolyn Campbell ("Inside Polygamy in the '90s,", 102) adds, "The attitude of some polygamists is 'the government is untrustworthy and corrupt, and I'm above it, but give me those food stamps and free medical care.'"[83]

Also from the Rapid City Journal:

A secretive religious group linked to national cases of polygamy and the marriage of underage girls may be expanding to the Edgemont area, and there may be little Fall River County officials can do. The property in question was part of the estate of Buddy Heck and was left to Doris Seabeck and to Carolyn Fines. Seabeck is Heck’s sister and is the personal representative of his estate. Seabeck signed the purchase agreement, which is being contested by Fines in the courts. The commissioners said that as Carolyn Fines is state’s attorney Lance Russell’s mother, there may be some conflict of interest on the county’s part.

Lance Russell is now an earth hater SD legislator who was censured by the state's judiciary for leaking grand jury testimony.

Host families are being sought for teen refugees:

“They are much more successful if they stay with a family,” said Jean Goode, Safety Net’s clinical Case Manager, said of the ex-FLDS teens. “They have very little information about the outside world. They were taught to be afraid of people who were not like them.”

Oh well, in fundamentalist red state South Dakota all women are just breedstock anyway.

A foreign company wants to mine uranium in the vicinity tapping even more water.

South Dakota's newly elected junior senator wants to end protections for the state's water supplies.

Park Service, 8 Others Oppose FLDS Compound's #Water Request: http://t.co/2TGwC6v3Ca
— interested party (@larry_kurtz) January 26, 2015