Two key investigators in the raid of the polygamist compound near Eldorado talked for the first time today. They offered up key details, but other questions still remain.

For starters, Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran said he has an informant on the inside. Although the Sheriff wouldn’t specify if that person lives on the YFZ ranch, he did say they’d been in contact for four years — that’s about the time when FLDS members moved into the neighborhood.

Sheriff Doran says the informant was crucial in providing him with details on the cultural aspects of how FLDS operates. Doran says the raid wouldn’t have been possible without that person’s information but he wouldn’t elaborate further.

Captain Barry Caver, a Texas Ranger, talked about the raid itself. As this story was unfolding over the weekend, we were all asking ourselves how was it that each day, more and more children kept coming out of the compound? Were they being hidden? Caver explained today that the members of the church played something of a shell game, shifting children from building to building as troopers searched each one.

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The Texas Dept of Family and Protective Services now says all the children from the polygamist compound have been moved to two locations in San Angelo, Texas. There are 419 in all. What happens next? I think that’s what TX DFPS is trying to figure out now. They’ve never had a case of this size.

If all of those children do stay in state custody, how do you place them? Even before this happened, Texas didn’t have nearly enough foster families. And how do you place a child who may have children of her own? And what about the adult mothers who left the compound with their children? A court hearing for the children will be held next week.

We’re also beginning to learn details about the initial complaint that led officials to the compound and what social workers and law enforcement found once they arrived. A 6-page affidavit was released yesterday during a Texas DFPS press conference. Here are a few excerpts – to read the whole affidavit, click here.

From page 3:

The teenaged mother stated that she began to be abused shortly after she started living at the YFZ Ranch. She advised that the adult male would “beat and hurt” her whenever he got angry. According to the caller, this would include the man hitting her in the chest and choking her and that while such abuse was occuring one of the other women in the home would hold her infant child. She reported that the last time he beat her was on Easter Sunday 2008. The report also indicated that, on a previous occasion, the man had beaten her so severely that it resulted in her having several broken ribs, for which she was taken to the hospital. She reported that the doctor wrapped her torso in an ace bandage and told her to “take it easy for a few days”. She also indicated that the man would hurt her, explaining that he would force himself on her sexually. She also indicated that she is several weeks pregnant.

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We had a moment of levity while covering the polygamist raid.

done

All the media is camped out in a parking lot across from Ft. Concho where the children from the compound are staying. To get a sense of the layout, there’s the parking lot, train tracks, and an area where reporters were doing live shots. The photographers asked around and had been assured there wasn’t a train coming though for days.

There were at least a dozen sets of cables across the tracks. Murphy’s law being what it is, after a few hours of live shots, what do we hear? Sure enough, a train was coming. Photographers everywhere scrambled out onto the tracks to pull the cable out of the path of the train. Our photographer caught the tail end of it on tape.

Note to bosses: Our expensive cables were never in danger since we were across the street doing a live shot using wireless gear.

Barack Obama made an unprecedented 45 minute speech last night (to me it seemed like a convention nomination acceptance speech) repeating his platform and promises for big change. A filled beyond capacity crowd in Houston applauding and hanging on every word while Hillary Clinton spoke to supporters in Ohio with much less airtime.

Upcoming races in Ohio and Texas are critical for Hillary whether or not she can turn the all-important superdelegates her way (they make up 20% of the democratic delegate count). While Obama is ahead in delegates neither candidate is guaranteed the 2025 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

So what do you think Senator Clinton should do:

a) hang in there and keep campaigning because it ain’t over till it’s over

b) bow out and get back to being a senator

c) work out a deal for the #2 spot and join forces with Obama

Feel free to suggest something else…..

I just got off the phone with a family member of the two teenage girls who were murdered New Years night in Texas. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, the story she told me made me even more sick to my stomach.As you know from my last blog, we are following the story of Sara and Amina Said very closely.

Their father, Yased Abdel Said remains at large tonight, and there has still been no sign of him since his teenage girls were found shot to death in the backseat of his taxi cab outside of the Dallas area. The family member told me that Sara had been shot 6 times in the back, and Amina had been shot 2 times in the chest. The one who was able to call 9-1-1, told police that her father had just shot them both. By the time police found them, they were dead. The family member also told me about what relatives know about the last 24 hours of their life, which is a chilling story.

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