Moment police find missing girls in Doomsday cult compound hidden in barrels
Chilling footage shows the moment two missing girls embroiled in a Utah Doomsday cult were found in the compound after being kidnapped by their father.
A newly-released horrifying video shows police finding the girls in the polygamist compound in a December 2017 evening after a very public search. Dinah Coltharp, 8 and Hattie Coltharp, 4, had been snatched by their father John and given to his friend Samuel Shaffer - who hid them on the compound and allegedly married them.
The girls were found in Lund, south of Salt Lake City, where Shaffer’s two young daughters, Lily, 7 and Samantha, 5 were also found - although they had not been reported missing. Samantha and Hattie were being kept in large blue water barrels to keep them hidden from the authorities. They had reportedly been there for over 24 hours in sub-zero temperatures.
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Coltharp was sentenced to 25 years in prison in August 2018 (Sanpete county sheriff)Dinah and Lily, the older girls, were found in an abandoned compound, with all four children found to be dehydrated. Police believe the men planned for Coltharp’s daughters to be married to Shaffer - described as the ‘prophet’ of the cult. When the girls were found, Shaffer admitted they were being hidden from the police.
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The cult’s makeshift compound was situated in shipping containers in the Utah desert. Earlier in the day before the girls were found, Coltharp’s sons, William, 7 and Seth, 6 had been found after also being kidnapped by their father.
Micha Coltharp, the children’s mother, had reported her four children missing and issued an effort to gain custody of the four children, after it emerged the children were with her husband in the cult. Shaffer and Coltharp allegedly took the children in an attempt to prepare for an impending apocalypse and in the hope of gaining new followers, MailOnline reported.
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Coltharp’s sister, Cindi Ray, described her brother as a “doomsday prepper”, adding that she feared he was grooming Dinah and Hattie for child marriage. Coltharp and Shaffer’s religious obsession had reportedly been a noted concern to investigators, friends and family, after the girls were reported missing.
Shaffer was the 'prophet' of the small, racist and abusive cult (Iron County Sheriffs office)
Children were found hidden in blue water barrels and in an abandoned compound (KUTV2)Shaffer described on the cult’s website his “revelations” about marriage, including that multiple men should be able to have sex with one woman if it is permitted by her husband. “A man to whom a woman is sealed need merely place his wife's hand in the hand of another and she shall be submissive to him to whom she has been given,” the sick website reads. “Whether it is to be temporary permission or eternal union according to the order, she may have intercourse with him and he with she.”
Police believe Coltharp was being groomed by Shaffer to take over as ‘prophet’ of the cult. Claiming that God spoke through him, Coltharp said all the governments of the world would be overthrown and there would be an impending Muslim invasion of the United States. The pair formed an islamophobic cult called the Knights of the Crystal Blade.
But it all unravelled after the children were found, and in May 2018 Shaffer was jailed for a minimum of 26 years after being accused of secretly marrying young girls, and child rape and abuse charges. He was 34 at the time. Coltharp, then 35, was sentenced to prison for at least 25 years in August 2018, pleading guilty to sodomy and child bigamy charges.
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