COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—A woman considered a person of interest in phone calls that may have triggered the raid on a Texas polygamist compound pleaded not guilty Wednesday in an unrelated Colorado case. Rozita Swinton faces one misdemeanor charge of false reporting in Colorado Springs, but authorities have not released details of the specific charge.
Texas authorities have said a cell phone number linked to her was “possibly related to the reporting party” for the Yearning for Zion Ranch raid, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed in the Colorado Springs case. Authorities took hundreds of children away from their parents following the raid.
Swinton’s trial on the false reporting charge is scheduled for Oct. 20. El Paso County district attorney spokeswoman Lin Billings said Swinton was free on $10,000 bail.
However, the 33-year-old could be jailed for up to 12 months for violating the terms of her probation in another case of false reporting she pleaded guilty to in June 2007. As part of her probation, she was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation and take any medicine prescribed to her, and stay out of trouble. That case stemmed from an arrest in Castle Rock in 2005 after she contacted an adoption center and authorities, claiming to be a 16-year-old named Jessica who was suicidal after giving birth.
She is due in court on that case Monday.
Messages left for her attorney, David Foley, were not immediately returned.
Swinton is suspected in a string of false reports in Colorado Springs between October and April, Billings said. One of those cases involves a police investigation of 911 calls purportedly made by a 4-year-old girl claiming to be locked in a basement after getting in trouble, according the affidavit. The cell phone used to make those calls had been used by Swinton to make false reports, police said.
According to the affidavit, it was also used to make at least one phone call to the Newbridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, not far from the retreat owned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ, a renegade Mormon sect.
Another telephone number used to make calls to the shelter was registered to a 31-year-old man with the last name of Swinton who lived in the same apartment complex as Rozita Swinton, according to the affidavit. That number was used to call the shelter at least 16 times in the days before and after the April 3 raid.
Lisa Block, a spokeswoman with the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Wednesday they’re awaiting lab results on items seized during a search in mid-April of Swinton’s apartment to determine whether any charges will be filed in Texas.
Texas authorities have not said whether Swinton made those calls and Block declined to say whether they’ve determined any relationship between Swinton and the owner of the telephone.
The affidavit documents how in days before the raid, a girl identifying herself as 16-year-old Sarah Barlow used that phone to call the shelter to say she had an 8-month-old daughter, was pregnant, and at 14 was forced to become a third wife to a man three times her age. She also said she had recently moved to the compound and had been reassigned a new husband named “Uncle Merrill.” Authorities believed that was a reference to Frederick Merrill Jessop, the person in charge of the ranch.
Authorities raided the ranch, removed more than 450 children from the compound, then desperately tried to rescue the 16-year-old girl, who said she feared beatings and having her child taken away for the “trouble she caused,” according to the affidavit.
One Schleicher County deputy tried to get Sarah Barlow’s location but the girl hung up each time he asked her to describe her location. Once the deputy offered to go to whatever shelter she was at while wearing a shirt of any color she chose so she could tap him and escape.
Ten days after the raid, however, authorities contacted Colorado Springs police about the two telephone numbers related to the “reporting party.” Swinton was arrested April 16.
Authorities have not located the 16-year-old girl and are investigating the calls as a hoax. An arrest warrant issued for Dale E. Barlow, of Colorado City, Ariz., who the caller identified as her husband, has been dropped. Texas authorities declined to elaborate.
Block said she did not have a timetable for when the forensic analysis would be completed. Authorities have not released details of what was seized.
