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POLYGAMY UNDER ATTACK – FROM TOM GREEN TO BRIAN DAVID MITCHELL
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Lee Ann Green
JUNE JOHNSON
Mother of Shirley and LeeAnn (LeeAnn moved out on her own after Tom was
sent to prison)
Interviewed by telephone: April 26, 2000 ©John
R. Llewellyn
June Johnson, age 50, mother of Shirley
and LeeAnn Green, was three years old when Colorado City was raided in 1953.
Very few people can remember events at the tender age three, but for June, the
trauma she experienced that day was so sever that it will be forever imprinted
on her brain.
"Just before the Arizona deputies arrived, they gathered
a bunch of us up and herded us up on a hill on the Utah side. My mother was with
me. I knew something terrible was happening and was frightened to death. We all
huddled together, looking down on the town. I remember seeing all the police
cars. The deputies crowded the townspeople together, put them in cars and hauled
them away. I knew my father was one of them.
"For years afterwards, I was scared to death of the
police. In my mind, the police broke up families and homes. One day at age ten
my friends and I saw a police car come into town. We were so frightened, we
jumped into a ditch and crawled all the way home
."The day David Leavitt interrogated me I refused to
give him any information. I told him why. Tom's kids love him. So does his
wives. I wasn't going to give him any information that would help him take Tom
away from his children. He got mad at me. His face turned red. He tried to get
me to talk off the record. He said its not going to hurt you if you talk. I told
him 'baloney, how do you think it will look to my grandchildren if I testify
against their father.' I wasn't going to help him break up a family. He offered
me immunity but I still wouldn't talk to him."
June's father is Warren Marshall Johnson, an old time
resident of Short Creek, now renamed Colorado City. It was June who gave LeeAnn
consent to marry Tom. June said, "LeeAnn was 14 years old at the time and
very determined to marry Tom. No one could discourage her. She caused all sorts
of problems before she was allowed to marry Tom."
According to June, it was Jesse Beagley, father of both
LeeAnn and Shirley, that gave Shirley, at age 15, permission to marry Tom.
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