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Prophecy sect leader’s trial to test Texas law
By joshuah | May 17, 2008
“They didn’t get Al Capone because of all the people he murdered and
all the organized crime. They got him for tax evasion,” Deel said.
In his first sermon after leaving jail, Yisrayl (Buffalo Bill) Hawkins was folksy, paternal and apocalyptic.
Advertisement“No, we’re not getting ready to kill ourselves,” said the man who calls himself the prophet of the House of Yahweh, a barbed-wire kingdom of brimstone prophecies and abject poverty 15 miles southeast of Abilene, Texas.
“We’re getting ready to live through the greatest tribulation that ever will be.”
The troubles facing Hawkins may soon provide Texas’ first major test of strengthened anti-polygamy laws, just 150 miles from the spotlight on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Eldorado.
The 73-year-old Hawkins was arrested and indicted in February — less than two months before raids on the Eldorado compound — and charged with promoting bigamy, which was made a felony in 2005 after the unrelated FLDS group arrived from Utah.
“This will probably be the first case of its kind,” said Callahan County Attorney Shane Deel, who began investigating the House of Yahweh after taking office in 2005.
Topics: House of Yahweh, Yisrayl Hawkins, polygamous sects |