Las Vegas: After more than a year on the run and three months on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Most Wanted List, the charismatic leader of a polygamous sect was captured during a routine traffic stop and now faces charges that he arranged marriages between underage girls and older men.
Fifty-year-old Warren Steed Jeffs was arrested without incident just outside Las Vegas late Monday, the FBI said Tuesday.
No weapons were found, but the 2007 red Cadillac Escalade he was riding in was filled with items including three wigs, 15 cell phones, $ 54,000 in cash and $ 10,000 in gift cards, authorities said.
Jeffs leads the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a group that broke away from the Mormon church a century ago.
He is said to have at least 40 wives and nearly 60 children.
Church dissidents say that underage marriages, some involving girls as young as 13, escalated into the hundreds under his leadership, and that he broke apart families by casting out married men and reassigning their women and children to others.
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said that Jeffs' arrest marks "the beginning of the end of the tyrannical rule of a small group of people over the practically 10,000 followers of the FLDS sect."
He predicted it would lead more people to come forward with allegations of sexual abuse.
Most of the church's members live in Hildale, Utah and adjoining Colorado City, Arizona, but authorities have said they believe Jeffs had "safe houses" in four other states including Nevada and Canada.
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