Second Funeral Held for Sect Leader’s Wife Who Died in 2004

SALT LAKE CITY (AP/Staff) – A second funeral has been held for the second wife of the imprisoned leader of a polygamous sect whose members ran two communities on opposite sides of the Arizona-Utah border. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that 130 people attended the service for Barbara Jeffs held Thursday near Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. Those included many who couldn’t attend the first funeral in 2004 in Texas. Barbara Jeffs was a wife of Warren Jeffs, leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He’s serving a life sentence at the Lewis C. Powledge Unit near Palestine for sexually assaulting underage girls he considered brides. Barbara Jeffs died of cancer at age 39 and was buried at a sect-owned ranch near Eldorado, Texas, but Texas subsequently seized the property. Her body was recently exhumed and transported to Arizona, with daughter Rachel Jeffs saying family members pitched in to pay the costs.