Prosecutor helps family of defendant move closer to prison

PROVO, Utah -- The prosecutor behind Tom Green's bigamy convictions is helping Green's wives and children move from their complex of mobile homes in Utah's west desert to an apartment closer to the prison where he is serving time.

The wives are loathe to accept the offer of help from Juab County Attorney David Leavitt, but they have no choice, said John R. Bucher, Green's attorney.

"They had to accept it," Bucher said. "The living conditions, without someone to help them, are difficult."

The wives have a hard time with home repairs and car maintenance without their husband, Bucher said.

Leavitt is trying to raise money from state and federal programs and private donations for the wives and children to move to Springville, which will make it easier for them to visit Green in prison.

"I've always seen Green's wives and their children as victims, victims of people who sold them into polygamy," Leavitt said. "They may not see themselves as victims, but I have always seen them as people who are victims."

Leavitt tried the case in which Green, who has five wives and 31 children, was convicted last year of four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal nonsupport. The nonsupport charge alleged he failed to pay the state $54,000 in child support after his wives sought public assistance. Green was sentenced to a term of one to five years in the Utah State Prison.

On June 24, Green was convicted of child rape for marrying and conceiving a child with Linda Kunz in Mexico in 1986, when she was 13 and he was 37. She is now the mother of seven of his children. He is scheduled to be sentenced in that case Aug. 16.

Kunz Green plans to sue Leavitt for declaring her a victim against her will.

Polygamy, advocated by the Mormon church early in its history, is an open secret in Utah and elsewhere in the West, where an estimated 30,000 people practice plural marriage.

But Green practically dared prosecutors to go after him by appearing on TV talk shows, saying his lifestyle was a constitutional right.