Trouble in the Hills

But in court filings seeking to stop the raid, FLDS members said that allowing outsiders to enter their sacred temple would be absolute desecration, that it was akin to rummaging through the Vatican and that once the damage was done it would be irreversible—the bell could not be unrung. A SWAT team entered the temple anyway.

Carolyn Jessop, author of the book "Escape," fled the sect and her polygamous union with Merril Jessop in 2003. Merril is now thought to be leading the Eldorado group in Jeffs's absence, she said. Carolyn rushed to Eldorado in the wake of the raid hoping to meet with her stepdaughters, with whom she hadn't been able to speak with since she fled to Salt Lake City. "I knew these girls would be just terrified," she said. "They are being exposed for the first time to mainstream society."

Jessop doesn't think authorities overreacted in preparing for the worst when they called in an armored personnel carrier, K9 dog units and ambulances during tense negotiations to enter the temple. "This group absolutely could turn violent," she said, adding that Warren Jeffs had reintroduced the use of guns into the community, which had for a time limited hunting to the use of bow and arrows.

Sheriff Doran, who worked in the field until 2 a.m. some nights assisting with the compound search, has declined to comment in light of a judge's gag order. He is credited with derailing what some feared could have become a violent standoff of Waco-like proportions.

Carolyn Jessop and others who fled the group said it had become increasingly isolated and bizarre under Jeffs, who had already taken control by the time his father died in 2002. The new leader banned the color red and made members execute all their dogs, for instance. He started reassigning wives and children to men in better standing, sometimes casting the husbands out with no more explanation than "repent from afar."

Law-enforcement officials are not saying yet what they found at the compound, but Mange said Monday afternoon that Texas troopers had encountered no violence. She declined to say whether weapons had been found. Now a federal search warrant has been issued, the church's lawyers said in court Wednesday, and FBI agents have been seen entering the compound.