A Warren Jeffs Wife Flees Sect With Police Help

Police yesterday helped one of Warren Jeffs' numerous wives flee the polygamous community on the Utah-Arizona border that he still leads from behind bars. The woman, 25, "asked for assistance in leaving the community, and a deputy responded and facilitated that request," said a spokesman for Utah's Washington County police. She was taken to a woman's shelter following a tense standoff between members of Jeffs' Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and a community member whose house the young woman had fled to, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Jeffs, 55, has at least 78 "wives," according to court documents. He was sentenced to life in prison in Texas for sexually assaulting two of them when they were 12 and 15. (More Warren Jeffs stories.)