Former FLDS members team up with biker group to search for missing children
4 moms searching for 8 kids fear Warren Jeffs' prophecies may mean mass suicide.
On a cold morning in April, a group of bikers, clad in leather, gathered at dawn in Brigham City, Utah, in an empty parking lot next to a park. The men and women of Road Warriors for the Missing weren’t getting ready for a joyride. Instead, they were preparing to chase down a lead. Their goal: looking for a child who has been missing since January 2023.
Elintra Fischer, a 17-year-old girl born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the polygamist breakaway offshoot of Mormonism, ran away from her mother’s home on New Year's Day in 2023. Her mother and local law enforcement have been looking for her ever since.
"The network we're up against is, is big. It's expansive," Jason Clark, the founder of Road Warriors, said about the FLDS. "They've got a lot of, a lot of places to go. They've got a lot of places where they can put these kids that are making [them] difficult to find."
Four mothers – Lorraine Jessop, Mirinda Johnson, Elizabeth Roundy, and Sarah Johnson – all ex-members of the FLDS, are looking for their missing children. Their kids, labeled as ‘runaways’ by law enforcement, have disappeared from remote towns dotting the Rocky Mountains.
The Road Warriors’ efforts include trying to find all the missing children; eight in total, one as young as 13.
In addition to Elintra, Salome Jessop, Denver Barlow, Manden Barlow, Truson Barlow, Nathan Barlow, Summer Barlow and Benjamin Barlow are also missing.
“I need to believe you are watching and waiting for me,” Sarah Johnson, the mother of Salome, who has been missing for four years, said at a press conference. “I love you, son. It's never too late to call me. I'll always be here.”
The last time Sarah saw her son was August 2020.
The FLDS was founded more than 130 years ago after polygamy was outlawed in the Mormon Church. The church is best known for its prophet – Warren Jeffs – who was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting girls as young as 12. But he remains the church's prophet from behind bars, according to experts and former members interviewed by ABC News.
In 2022, Jeffs released prophecies from prison, calling for the FLDS members to come back into the fold and die to be resurrected to heaven. The mothers think they are working against time to find their children and save them.
“The recent revelations from Warren Jeffs are very scary,” Elizabeth Roundy, Elintra’s mother, told ABC News.
Tonia Tewell, who runs the nonprofit Holding Out Help, which helps women who escape the FLDS, says that the main concern of the recent revelations is a mass suicide within the FLDS community.
“They have a chance of salvation at the end of the day,” Tewell said. “Their alternative is hell. What would you pick?”
“What people need to understand is that they firmly believe that the revelations coming out from their church are coming directly from God,” Tewell continued. “And when you're born and bred into a system and taught that from birth, it could happen to any one of us. That is brainwashing.”
While law enforcement officers have been actively looking for each of the children, they do not have any new leads.
The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the local police department in Idaho in charge of Elintra’s case, told ABC News that “we are still actively working Elintra’s case; unfortunately, we have not had any new leads.”
“It's been a very frustrating situation to me with law enforcement,” Roundy told ABC News.
The mothers, desperate to find their children before the clock runs out, turned to the Road Warriors, a nonprofit filled with biker volunteers who take on the cases of missing kids.
“They keep to themselves and are very private,” Allen Robbins, a private investigator who volunteers with the Road Warriors, said of the FLDS. “And so, in trying to locate a specific individual, it's challenging because they don't want to provide information unless they have to.”
The Road Warriors have traveled great distances looking for these missing children. They say they’ve knocked on doors in Arizona, Utah, North Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho looking for the FLDS runaways.
ABC News has been reporting on these missing kids for a year and a half, producing an “Impact x Nightline” episode now streaming on Hulu.
After all this time, these mothers still haven’t lost hope. During a press conference in April outside of Salt Lake City, the moms looked straight into the cameras set up for the event, hoping to speak directly to their missing children.
“Love cannot be defined by church walls, locked doors or drapery, by mountain ranges, skies, or even the endless sea,” Lorraine Jessop, one of the moms, who has three children missing, said at the press conference. “A continuous flood of love pours from a mother's heart, and no amount of fear can pull that love apart.”
ABC News' Karin Weinberg, Juju Chang, and Kaitlyn Morris contributed to this report.
Popular Reads
ABC News Live