LAS VEGAS -- The leader of a polyga...

LAS VEGAS -- The leader of a polygamous Mormon splinter cluster was captured three months after being impose on the FBI's Most Wanted List and faces charges he arranged marriages between underage girls and older men

Warren Ste Jeff 50 was arrested just outside Las Vegas Monday after more than a year upon the run, the FBI said. The 2007 r Cadillac Escalade he was riding in contained more than $50000 in cash, confined apartment phones, laptop computers and wigs, authorities said.

Jeff has l the Fundamentalist ecclesiastical authority of Jesus Christ of Latter- day Saints since 2002 and is said to have at least 40 wives and nearly 60 children. ecclesiastical authority dissidents say that underage marriages -- a involving girls as young as 13 -- escalated into the centurys under his leadership.

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said that Jeffs' arrest marks "the beginning of the close of . . . the tyrannical empire of a small group of folks over the practically 10,000 followers of the FLD sect"

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

Provided at ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved