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Colorado sheriff confirmed Monday that an investigation into the Marshallwildfire will include the Twelve Tribes community. - Twelve Tribes is a fundamentalist Christian sect with a community in Boulder, where neighbors say the blaze began.
Local and federal investigators are examining property owned by a fundamentalist Christian sect in Boulder, Colorado, to help determine what caused a massive wildfire that destroyed nearly 1,000 homes and forced 35,000 people to evacuate.
Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle confirmed in a press conference Monday that a property owned by the Twelve Tribes sect is "widely known and understood" to be part of the investigation. He added that the property's surrounding area was also being investigated.
"We haven't eliminated or honed in on any one specific thing," Pelle said. "We're going to get the right people with the right expertise, the snow's going to melt, we're going to be able to see better, things are going to happen."
Twelve Tribes is a religious sect of roughly 2,000 to 3,000 members who live in communes across the United States and around the world, and describes themselves as an "emerging spiritual nation." The sect is known for operating restaurants, cafés, and farms, and has drawn scrutiny over its treatment of children, and its views on Jews, Black people, and women.
In 2018, New York State investigators announced they'd found multiple violations of child labor laws at a Twelve Tribes farm in Cambridge. Inside Edition used a hidden camera in 2018 to film children as young as 9 years old working in the farm's factory, packaging cosmetics.
A number of former Twelve Tribes members have also described child abuse allegations to various media outlets. Two former members told Inside Edition that "beatings are a way of life every single day," and that adults would beat children with bamboo rods "until your arm is literally tired."
Another former member told The Daily Beast in 2017 that he was hit 30 to 40 times a day as a child.
"They used to teach that anyone in the group could spank any children, so some random, creepy motherfucker could grab you and beat your ass," the member said.
Representatives for Twelve Tribes did not respond to Insider's request for comment. But the sect's website, which was viewed by Insider before apparently being taken down, described the group's teachings and practices, and denied child labor or abuse allegations.
The website said Twelve Tribes teaches parents to "promptly spank" disobedient children using a "small reed-like rod, which only inflicts pain and not damage." Twelve Tribes describes the practice as "discipline" and not abusive. The website also says children are included in work activities, such as caring for farm animals and carpentry.
Twelve Tribes was founded in the 1970s in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a couple who opened a café named The Yellow Deli in the hopes that it would become "a place where people from all walks of life could come and touch a living demonstration of God's love," according to the café's website. There are now Twelve Tribes-affiliated Yellow Deli cafés across the US, and in Japan, Australia, and Canada.
Neighbors say the blaze started on the Twelve Tribes compound
Boulder residents who live near the Twelve Tribes compound have told local media that they witnessed the early stages of the fire igniting the houses and land on the compound. A widely viewed video of a barn in flames also fueled online speculation about the origin of the fire.
Mike Zoltowski, who lived next door to the compound, told The Denver Post he saw the blaze begin on the morning of December 30, and saw three Twelve Tribes members huddling together against the wind. Zoltowski said that when he spoke to the men, they told him, "One of our dwellings caught on fire."
"I don't want to speculate, it's still under investigation, but there is no possible way the fire started from any other place," Zoltowski told the newspaper.
Another neighbor, Anne Michaels, told The New York Times she drove past the property, saw smoke, and called 911.
The Twelve Tribes commune in Boulder has drawn scrutiny in the past. A 2019 article by the University of Colorado Boulder's student newspaper, the CU Independent, said reporters visited the compound and heard the sound of children apparently being struck, and later found wooden rods.
Pelle, the Boulder County sheriff, told reporters on Monday that authorities initially believed the devastating Marshall wildfire had been caused by downed power lines. But when fire investigators arrived at the scene, they determined that the downed lines they found were telecommunications lines that would likely be incapable of sparking the blaze.
Pelle said officials from the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Colorado State Forest Service were all involved in the investigation. He warned not to expect answers quickly, and declined to reveal details about authorities' investigation, saying only that investigators had interviewed "dozens" of people so far.
"It's an open investigation; we're going to do it right. It's going to take some time," Pelle said. "You're going to lose your patience because it's going to take awhile… because the stakes are huge."