CRANBROOK, B.C. - The prosecutor in the trial for three accused from a British Columbia polygamous community says Brandon and Gail Blackmore knew they were taking a girl to the United States for a sexual purpose.
Peter Wilson told a B.C. Supreme Court judge in Cranbrook today that records from the now-imprisoned U.S. polygamous leader Warren Jeffs show that he instructed the teenager be brought to him so he could marry her.
In his closing arguments, Wilson says border records from late February 2004 show the Blackmores and another girl crossed into Idaho, but the 13-year-old girl was “conspicuously absent.”
Wilson told the judge the girl must have crossed the border somehow, because right after the two Blackmores were given orders by Jeffs, priesthood records show the polygamous leader married the teen on March 1 that year.
James Oler faces the same charge of taking a girl into the United States for a sexual purpose, but in connection to a 15-year-old girl.
Justice Paul Pearlman ruled earlier in the trial that priesthood records dictated by Jeffs and found in a secure vault on a church ranch are trustworthy and can be used in the criminal proceedings of the three accused.
