12/20/24

Former SD FLDS compound owner sued after fencing public land in CO

At the courthouse in a South Dakota county named for a war criminal Patrick Pipkin and members of a religious splinter group bought a 140 acre compound for a fraction of its value in 2021 that was built in 2005 by now-jailed polygamist Warren Jeffs. 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 Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints or FLDS and the towns of Hildale, Utah and Arizona City, Colorado. In 2023 the parcel sold for $5,237,475 to SDR Training Center, a nonprofit church registered in South Dakota. 

Pipkin has admitted to being manager of Blue Mountain Ranch of Colorado—a summer camp for at risk adolescents but he and his co-owners transferred title to it to a Nevada trust in 2023 and he recently stated he still lives there. In October a group led by Pipkin called the Free Land Holders claimed and fenced some 1460 acres of public land in the San Juan National Forest near Mancos, Colorado so the feds sued in November in part citing watershed protection.
The Free Land Holders argued their ownership with local enforcement, saying they do not respect the jurisdiction of the U.S. Forest Service. Their argument was based on esoteric interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, the Louisiana Purchase Treater [sic], and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Free Land Holders' methods align with the Sovereign Citizens movement, an extremist anti-government sentiment that believes the government is illegitimate. However, the Free Land Holders have claimed they are not part of the sovereign citizens movement or FLDS. [Community hosts celebration of public lands near Mancos in response to land grab attempt]
Learn more at the Colorado Sun. Image: KUSA teevee.
Earlier this month an FLDS member in Arizona was sentenced to fifty years in prison after being convicted of trafficking girls as young as 12 for sex slaves. 

According to a comment at a Faceberg page the real owner of the compound near Pringle and mostly surrounded by the Black Hills National Forest is Paul Elden Kingston, a polygamist believed to have some 40 wives, over 300 kids and preaches "bleeding the beast." Kingston is an accountant and attorney who has served as the Trustee-in-Trust of the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS), a Mormon fundamentalist denomination and part of the Latter Day Church of Christ with assets in the $150 million range.

No comments: