Former FLDS member wants money found with Jeffs

Salt Lake Tribune/October 5, 2006
By Brooke Adams

The list of people laying claim to items found with polygamous sect leader Warren S. Jeffs continues to grow.

Shem Fischer, a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, filed a motion Tuesday in U.S. District Court for Nevada objecting to Jeffs' efforts to get back documents and other items taken when he was arrested Aug. 28.

In May, Fischer won a $338,411 judgment against Jeffs and the FLDS church in a religious discrimination suit. Fischer alleged that in 2004 he lost his job at Forestwood Co., a wood products shop in Hildale, after he abandoned his faith and protested the firing of another man for a similar reason.

Fischer wants to intervene in the Nevada case in order to lay claim to approximately $67,500 found with Jeffs during his arrest. Fischer has filed a similar claim in Denver federal court to claim $142,000 found with Seth Jeffs, the polygamist leader's younger brother, last October.

Seth Jeffs was arrested during a traffic stop outside Pueblo, Colo., and later pleaded guilty to harboring a fugitive.

In his Nevada filing, Fischer says documents found with Jeffs may contain information helpful to settling his monetary judgement. He also states that his claim competes with a separate claim filed by Bruce R. Wisan.

Wisan, a court-appointed fiduciary overseeing the FLDS church's communal property trust, also has asked to intervene in the case in order to review documents found with Jeffs.

Jeffs, who is incarcerated in the Purgatory Correctional Facility in Hurricane, is scheduled to appear in court on Nov. 21 for a preliminary hearing in his case. He is charged with two felony counts of being an accomplice to rape for his alleged role conducting an arranged marriage that resulted in the alleged assault of a young girl.