AUSTIN, Texas -- In 2004, when private investigator Sam Brower began looking into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints on behalf of a client, he didn't know much about the religion.
He had been raised Mormon in California, but Brower hadn't had any contact with the religion in more than 20 years. Some years earlier, he and his wife decided to move from Southern California to Cedar City, Utah, to raise their kids in a quieter environment.
It was there that Brower started to look into the practices of the FLDS organization and, more specifically, the actions of their charismatic and abusive leader, Warren Jeffs.
Seven long, frustrating and sometimes victorious years later, a period chronicled in Brower's book "Prophet's Prey: My Seven-Year Investigation into Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints" (Bloomsbury, 352 pages, $26), Jeffs sits in a Texas prison, convicted in August of sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault of children in connection with the 2008 raid on the FLDS compound near Eldorado called the Yearning for Zion Ranch.
It's a conviction that would not have been possible without Brower's work. But he does not sound as happy about it as you might think. In fact, his tone is that of the prosecutor who has put away a key member of the mob, knowing full well the organized crime syndicate that put that guy in power in the first place still exists.
''Remember, we had already been through a court case here in Utah," Brower said from his home in Cedar City. On the phone, he is extremely polite and soft-spoken, giving no indication that he is more than 6 feet tall and built like a linebacker. "Jeffs received essentially a life sentence in 2007," he says.
In the Utah trial, Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice and given a sentence of 10 years to life, a conviction reversed in 2010 by the Utah Supreme Court because of incorrect jury instructions. Jeffs was then remanded to Texas.
''The fact that Warren was convicted in Texas a second time was a little bit vindicating," Brower says. "The part that's frustrating is that he has established little Warren clones all over the country that still run the show."
Brower says he struggled with even mentioning his Mormon background in the book.
''If you are a Mormon investigating the FLDS, you get it from both sides," he says. "The FLDS attorneys think because I'm Mormon that I must hate the FLDS, period. By the same token, some people think that all Mormons are secretly trying to help this organization."
In "Prophet's Prey," Brower makes the case that Jeffs' leadership was a combination of pedophilia and religious terrorism.
''It really is very similar to something like the Taliban. There is a tribal element. But it is also a very well-organized, very well-funded crime syndicate that specializes in child abuse. And people that try to leave have their families literally taken away from them. They are left with zero hope."
Nor does Brower have much time for media portrayals of polygamy such as the reality TV show "Sister Wives" and its patriarch, Kody Brown. (Brower wrote an article with the somewhat shrill title "Is 'Sister Wives' Hiding the Disturbing Truth About Polygamy?" for The Huffington Post.)
''I really don't know what kind of guy Kody Brown is, but I believe the organization is inherently abusive because the act of polygamy teaches children not obeying the law is OK, that we're gonna obey God's laws and do what God tells us." Brower sees this as the definition of a slippery slope.
But now the book is out, and Brower sees this as the beginning of a new chapter in what may have become his life's work. "I hope the book will generate some kind of public awareness, especially with state and federal agencies," Brower says. "There is still a lot of work to do."