Back in 1950, J Edgar Hoover began the FBI’s legendary practice of issuing a “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list. Posters of dangerous criminals such as serial murderers, rapists and drug warlords were distributed to post offices, and television shows such as America’s Most Wanted shot to the top of the ratings. Americans loved playing detective, but only 150 of the most wanted have ever been arrested as a result of assistance from the public. By far the biggest name on the current list is Osama Bin Laden, who has a $25m ransom on his head and (the FBI helpfully tells us) “should be considered armed and dangerous”.
What, then, was 50-year-old Warren Steed Jeffs doing on the list two years ago? Like Bin Laden, he was also considered “armed and dangerous” and, we were told, “may travel with a number of loyal and armed bodyguards”. Such dramatic warnings were worthy of Hoover himself, but in the event, the former private schoolteacher and accountant was led away with the minimum of fuss in 2006 after cops stopped his Cadillac Escalade on Interstate 15, north of Las Vegas, because its number plates were not visible. They found they had landed a supposedly very big fish indeed.
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