Rangers talk with polygamist ranch suspect

by Amy Judd | April 12, 2008 at 07:36 pm

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Today rangers had a meeting with, but did not arrest, Dale Evans Barlow, the man accused by a teenage girl of physically and sexually abusing her at the Texas polygamist compound.

Arizona probation officials said the meeting with Dale Evans Barlow, 50, happened just across the Arizona state line in St. George, Utah.

"The Texas Rangers met with him. He was allowed to go, and no arrest was made," said Friend Walker, director of the Mojave County, Arizona, probation office.

Barlow's attorney, Bruce Griffen, said the meeting was voluntary.

He said he and Barlow are working to gather evidence that his client could not have been in Texas when the crimes are said to have happened.

"We shook hands; we left," Griffen said outside Barlow's home in Arizona.

"They're doing their thing; we're doing our thing. We may meet again. But at this point, Dale is not being arrested, and we are working cooperatively with them, and we made very clear to them that they have made a mistake."

Authorities in Eldorado, Texas, raided the YFZ (Yearning For Zion) Ranch on April 3 after a 16-year-old girl there told a family violence shelter that she had been beaten, choked and forced to have sex with an adult man with whom she had an 8-month-old child after their "spiritual marriage."