Killings lead to arrest of fugitive polygamist
Three Americans slain near compound in Mexican highlands
MEXICO CITY — A fugitive polygamist from Arizona has been arrested with four wives and a “concubine” on the grounds of a conservative religious community in the northern Mexican desert highlands.
More than two dozen U.S. citizens, apparently disciples of the polygamist’s “commune,” have been detained in the same hamlet in Mexico’s Chihuahua state.
And it’s all linked to the slayings of three young Americans, two of them sons of the polygamist, shot dead weeks earlier in a nearby rural enclave called “Black Ranch.”
Authorities say the polygamist is a suspect in the slayings.
Suspect wanted in Arizona
The puzzling criminal case — and its seemingly disparate elements — came to light last weekend as more than 100 Mexican law enforcement personnel descended on the polygamist’s compound, with assistance from the FBI and U.S. consular officials, state prosecutors said.
Mexican law enforcement authorities released an account of the raid that raised as many questions as it answered. The U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and the State Department in Washington declined to comment.
At the center of the case is Orson William Black, 56, a former member of a breakaway Mormon sect. Black has been wanted in Arizona for almost 15 years on five felony counts of sexual misconduct involving a pair of underage sisters.
Black was arrested during last weekend’s raids, Mexican authorities said, along with others described as four wives and one described as a concubine. A total of 26 U.S. citizens taken into custody may face deportation, Mexican prosecutors said.
Among them are two young women who have lived all their lives in Black’s commune, Cesar Peniche Espejel, Chihuahua state attorney general, told reporters this week.
In a bizarre twist, Mexican authorities say police also seized 65 preserved exotic wildlife parts and pelts, among them lion-skin and bearskin rugs, a pair of elephant feet, stuffed birds and remnants of other creatures, including zebra and buffalo heads.
Black was placed in Mexican federal custody on suspicion of “human trafficking” and “possession of wildlife species,” state prosecutors said.
According to Mexican authorities, Black is also being investigated in connection with the killings of the three Americans — a boy and two men — whose bodies were discovered Sept. 10 in Rancho El Negro, or Black Ranch, about three miles from the site of last weekend’s raids. Black has not been formally charged in the killings.
Mexican authorities identified the victims only as Michael B., 15; Robert W.B., 19; and Jesse L.B., 23.
Details about the killings are sparse, but Mexican news reports indicate that the three were gunned down execution-style at the entrance to a trailer home.
Some media accounts have suggested that the trio shared the surname Black. But their exact relation to the detained polygamist has been unclear.
Motive not ‘clarified’
On Wednesday, however, Felix Gonzalez, a spokesman for the Chihuahua prosecutor’s office, confirmed that two of the victims — Michael B. and Robert W.B. — were Black’s sons. The parentage of the third victim, Jesse L.B., had not yet been ascertained, Gonzalez said.
“The motive has not been clarified and is still being investigated,” Gonzalez said of the killings.
The victims were found on one of five area properties owned by Black, the spokesman said.
The ranch where the slain men were found, like the settlement where Black was arrested, is situated in the sprawling Chihuahua municipality of Cuauhtemoc, hub of the region’s large Mennonite population.
It was unclear why the accused pedophile chose to hide out and set up his own polygamist commune amid land settled by agrarian Mennonite communities. The two groups would appear to be unlikely neighbors. Mennonites, who began settling in Mexico in the 1920s after emigrating from Canada, practice a conservative, pacifist Christian faith that views marriage as a lifelong monogamous commitment between a man and a woman.