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more than anyone, they believed, should understand how God requires a husband to have numerous wives while on earth in order to ascend to higher positions in the celestial hereafter. They could hardly have made a bigger mistake, and at exactly the wrong time. Only a few weeks earlier, Warren had successfully crushed troublesome opponents to his reign with the mass expulsion of twenty-one men and taken away their homes and families. Even before the dust had settled, this new challenge of an unauthorized bride had arisen seemingly out of nowhere. The manic Jeffs concluded that Ross was part of a wider conspiracy to topple him from power, so the prophet announced that satanic influences were being spread among his people, and then excommunicated Ross.
    Ross was instructed to write out a complete list of his sins, which Jeffs would compare to a “true list” of transgressions that had been divinely revealed to him by God. It was an exam no one could pass. “My list of sins obviously did not match up with the list of sins that Uncle Warren put together,” Ross told me with a rueful grin.
    On Wednesday, January 14, FLDS stooge and UEP trustee James Zitting drove out to the Chatwin place and delivered the final verdict: Ross was out. The order was crushing. He was no longer welcome anywhere in Short Creek and must leave his home immediately. Lori was to drop him, and even a good-bye kiss might jeopardize her own salvation. She and the children were to be reassigned. There would be no divorce, no custody hearing, and no due process of law; just the absolute command by the prophet to “leave [his] family and home and repent from a distance.” He was not to write or call or try to make contact with the family in any way but was required to continue paying tithes and offerings to the church. The girl the Chatwins had been courting would soon be married off to someone else.
    James Zitting growled that he had come over just to deliver the ultimatum, not to listen to any explanations from the Chatwins. Ross replied that he fully understood.
    â€œGood,” Zitting said. “So let’s get doing it.” He left, believing his mission had been accomplished. I would later discover that Zitting had had a special reason for being forceful that day. He had recently been cautioned by the prophet to shape up. Fail in this task and he might be the next one gone.
    The word spread swiftly throughout Short Creek not only that Ross had been excommunicated, but also that he and Lori were refusing to knuckle under. Lori was a most unusual FLDS wife. Although trained from childhood to be subservient and obedient—to “keep sweet” no matter what—she had a rather independent personality. She could be outspoken and assertive and her words carried weight with her husband. “I love him, not Warren,” she told a reporter. She would stick with Ross.
    There was a small number of other so-called apostates in town who had gone or were going through the same painful process of excommunication, but who had not left the area because it was the only home they had ever known. The outside world was petrifying and foreign to them. The Chatwins would be joining this subculture of the dispossessed.
    Ross explained to me what had happened next. Poverty-stricken and incredibly naïve, he had found an envelope containing some $220 on his doorstep over the weekend. Also in the envelope was a handwritten note asking Chatwin to mail copies of an enclosed letter to FLDS members who were still faithful to the prophet. He could keep any change left over from the costs of copying, envelopes, and mailing. “I guess whoever left the note knew I needed the money,” Chatwin later told a reporter.
    So Lori and Ross had sat down and addressed envelopes to about five hundred people, and then he had mailed the letters. The text of the letter claimed that “Uncle Rulon” Jeffs, the late father of Warren, had appeared