Cops link Springs woman to distress calls in Colorado, Texas

A phone number linked to a Colorado Springs woman was used to make calls to a Texas crisis hot line in the days leading up to a raid on a polygamist compound in Texas, records show.

According to newly released court documents, Texas Rangers tracked the number to Rozita E. Swinton last week before traveling to Colorado Springs to interview her as part of their investigation into the April 4 raid at the Yearning for Zion ranch near Eldorado, Texas.

More than 400 children were removed from the ranch and placed in state custody after someone claiming to be an underage bride from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints made a series of frantic phone calls to a crisis hot line in Texas.

Swinton, 33, has been named a "person of interest" in the Texas Rangers' probe into the calls, but she has not been charged in the case.

Texas Rangers were present for Swinton's April 16 arrest in Colorado Springs on suspicion of making false distress calls unrelated to the Texas case. She is charged with false reporting to authorities, a misdemeanor. Swinton is due in court May 1 in Colorado Springs.

Attempts to reach Swinton at her Colorado Springs apartment have been unsuccessful, and a phone message for her attorney, David Foley, was not returned.

The arrest warrant - filed last week by Colorado Springs police and made public Wednesday - details a web of phone calls in which Swinton allegedly posed as a teenage girl in trouble, keeping police officers, crisis counselors and other aid workers tied up for hours. Most calls were placed with disposable phones, making it difficult to track the caller.

The Springs case

Among police allegations in the court documents:

- In late October, Swinton posed as a 13-year-old girl named Dana in several phone calls to a counselor from TESSA, a Colorado Springs organization that helps victims of rape and domestic abuse.

Dana said she had been abused for several years by a youth pastor from New Life Church in Colorado Springs.

The counselor spoke to Dana for as long as 15 hours over the course of two days and said she "sounded like a young, hysterical crying female."

Swinton told a confidant that Rozita and Dana are "in the same body, but just different personalities." She said the Dana personality "is there to protect Rozita from being hurt."

- In September 2006, someone identifying herself as April called a Rampart High School guidance counselor claiming she was being abused by her father and uncle. The caller claimed she was pregnant and seeking an abortion.

- In late February, Swinton repeatedly phoned police in Pueblo and Longmont claiming to be a 15-year-old girl named Ericka Muñoz. The caller said she had recently given birth to a child fathered by her uncle.

She claimed she wanted to leave the infant at a fire station under Colorado's safe harbor law, but she did not keep several meetings they scheduled to pick up the child.

- On Feb. 26, Swinton phoned 911 in Colorado Springs claiming to be Jennifer, a small girl who had been locked in her basement by her parents. The call set off an extensive search on Steadman Drive and Candon Drive after police used GPS to find the approximate location of the phone.

The Texas case

According to the Springs arrest affidavit, Texas Rangers determined the same phone that police in Colorado Springs linked to the Feb. 26 call had also been used to make false distress calls to the New-Bridge Family Shelter in San Angelo, Texas, on March 29 and March 30.

In those calls, authorities allege, Swinton claimed to be a teenage girl named Sarah Barlow - the third wife of a 49-year-old man at the polygamist ranch. Similar claims were made in phone calls to the Snohomish County Shelter for Battered Women in Washington.

On April 10, the caller told one crisis worker she was worried about being punished for the "trouble she caused" at the ranch and blamed a call-taker at the NewBridge shelter for alerting authorities and causing the raid, records show.

The caller often ended the phone calls abruptly, saying her "sister wives" were coming or that she had to "pray on" whether to give law enforcement officers her location. She claimed the telephone she used belonged to a cousin from Colorado, according to court documents.