Cult known for child rape lists property again in South Dakota county named for a war criminal

Sharia Law? Nah. Sons of Perdition. 

Recall the mother of former legislator, now Republican Fall River County State's Attorney Lance Russell sold property to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) where minor girls have been trafficked and raped. 

In South Dakota where corruption drives the Republican Party the FLDS uses Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) dollars to bleed the beast. It's a community where counterfeit plural marriages of children to old white men are not only accepted they're encouraged. 

But in 2021 at the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal members of the splinter group bought the 140 acre compound for $750,000 despite its $9 million valuation. The cult was not delinquent on property taxes but the acreage was sold at a sheriff's auction to settle a $2.1 million judgment against the FLDS, the towns of Hildale, Utah and Arizona City, Colorado. Buyer, Patrick Pipkin is manager of Blue Mountain Ranch of Colorado — a summer camp for at risk adolescents, no less.

Now, Pipkin, Andrew Chatwin and Claude Seth Cooke are cashing out and listing the stigmatized property in occupied South Dakota for $6.9 million.

The property has nine parcels and 140 total acres. There were $106,726.10 in property taxes paid on the property last year. Parcels of the property include: 

• Ten acres of baseland and an orchard 

• Five acres with three tanks 

• Five acres with a fourplex and a 9,855 square-foot log apartment building with 12 baths and 14 bedrooms

• Fourty [sic] acres with a 6,362 square-foot building with 14 bedrooms and 14 bathrooms, and another smaller log home with four bedrooms and five bathrooms 

• Twenty acres with a duplex that has 14 bedrooms and eight bathrooms 

• Twenty acres with a 13,860 square-foot lodge that has 26 bedrooms, 26 bathrooms, as well as a meeting house with 15 conference rooms and 10 bathrooms 

• Ten acres with a shed, roof cover and milk barn 

• Ten acres, guard tower, cat walk, greenhouse, well houses, shop and lots of tanks 

• Twenty acres with a house, 6,660 square-feet building with seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, a two-car garage, warehouse/equipment building/storehouse and a poultry house.

Many readers remember that in 2011 Russell was censured by the state's judiciary for leaking grand jury testimony.