Amber Alert issued for missing Idaho teenagers feared to be with religious group in Utah

By Rebekah Riess and Taylor Romine, CNN

(CNN) — Idaho State Police have issued an Amber Alert for two missing teenagers believed to be headed to a Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints group in Utah from eastern Idaho.

Siblings Allen Larand Fischer, 13, and Rachelle Leray Fischer, 15, were reported missing from Monteview, Idaho, on Sunday and “may be with adult siblings,” the state police said.

“It is believed that the children willingly left to return to Trenton, Utah due to religious beliefs,” the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on social media, adding the teens previously lived in Trenton.

The teens’ mother, Elizabeth Roundy, is a former FLDS member who has sole court-ordered custody of Allen and Rachelle, she told CNN.

The FLDS is a religious sect that broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church, over the practice of polygamy. Members have limited contact with the outside world.

Critics and former members of the FLDS say underage females are often forced into marriages with older men.

After being sent away from the FLDS several years ago, Roundy said she returned to get her children, who had been left in the church with other people because she was encouraged to leave them with the group. She told CNN she had difficulties getting her children because she was labeled an apostate – someone who has given up their religious faith. In doing so, the FLDS church told its members to no longer speak with her and keep her kids away from her, she said.

Roundy said it was “devastating” to discover her children gone Sunday. “A terrible, terrible feeling,” she said.

She said she told law enforcement she believes her children were taken or influenced to leave in response to alarming statements made by imprisoned FLDS leader Warren Jeffs.

Holding Out HELP, a Utah-based non-profit that specializes in helping those leaving polygamous cultures, says the mother believes the children may be in “grave danger” because of “recent revelations” from Jeffs.

“When we were given the information about Warren Jeffs’ revelation, we felt like that was enough to show a danger to the children,” Jennifer Fullmer, public information officer for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, told CNN, explaining the need for an Amber Alert.

Jeffs is serving a life sentence, plus 20 years, after he was convicted in 2011 of the aggravated sexual assaults of a 12-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl who Jeffs claimed were his “spiritual wives.”

Jeffs’ “revelation,” authored in August of 2022, “directs faithful followers to consecrate and return their children to the church by any means necessary and prepare them for the end of times,” according to a release from Holding Out HELP. “The children are supposed to gather to assist in the building of Zion so they can die and become ‘pure’ and ‘translated beings,’” the release said.

Fullmer noted the children had wanted to go back to the FLDS in the past.

“These children truly believe they will lose their salvation, so they want to go back,” Tonia Tewell, the founder and executive director of Holding Out HELP who has been working with the family for several years, told CNN.

Roundy told CNN if she could talk to her children, she would “tell them I love them very much and my heart is broken.”

“I would tell them to please don’t hesitate to call me or the police or somebody that can help them if they are not in a good situation,” she said.

Since the Amber Alert was issued Monday, detectives have narrowed down the time frame that the children went missing to Sunday between the hours of 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. local time.

“At this time, we are unsure if they have left the immediate area or are still close by,” the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

The sibling’s now 18-year-old sister, Elintra Dee Fischer, was also reported missing in January 2023 and has not been located, the sheriff’s office noted.

Allen was last seen wearing a blue shirt and blue jeans, while Rachelle was last seen wearing a green dress, according to state police. Law enforcement agencies are asking anyone who may have seen the missing siblings to contact the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

As of Friday, the FBI’s Salt Lake City field office is working jointly with the sheriff’s office on the investigation, according to FBI public affairs specialist Sandra Yi Barker.

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CNN’s Kelly McCleary contributed to this report.