Multistate Ground Search Called Off for Idaho Teens Feared Abducted by the FLDS Church — Due to New Information in the Case

A multistate search for two missing Idaho teens, feared to have been kidnapped by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), has been called off.

The Uvalde Foundation for Kids — which has been actively involved in the search for Allen Larand Fischer, 13, and Rachelle Leray Fischer, 15 — announced they had ended their volunteer-run search in a press release issued on July 3. 

The organization said that new information had been received in the case, and they now believe the teens are being actively hidden by members of the FLDS church. They further stated that their team of 48 volunteers logged more than 120 hours of search time, following leads “throughout Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Arizona.”

Jefferson County police received a report of two teens missing from their home in Monteview, Idaho, on June 22, according to a June 23 press release from the Jefferson County Idaho Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff’s office believed the teens may have returned to the FLDS community in Trenton, Utah, where they previously lived.

“Their mother was previously an FLDS member,” Jennifer Fullmer, a public information officer with the sheriff’s office, told PEOPLE at the time. “She was exiled and had to leave the children there. And then when she finally got custody of them, she brought them back to her hometown of Monteview.”

“We believe that [her children] wanted to go back to the FLDS lifestyle,” she added.

Authorities do not believe that the children simply walked off on their own, and instead suspect they were aided by members of their former church.

“There’s no buses,” Fullmer told PEOPLE. “There’s no trains. It’s out in the middle of the desert. Mom’s belief is that somebody from the FLDS picked up the children.”

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The FLDS church is a polygamist sect run by Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed prophet and convicted pedophile. In 2011, Jeffs was convicted on two counts of child sexual abuse and sentenced to life in prison.

Fullmer stated that authorities issued an Amber Alert on June 23 after learning of a 2022 revelation by Jeffs.

“What the information we got was about this revelation that the children are supposed to gather to assist in the building of Zion so that they can die and become pure and translated beings,” she said. “We don’t have any concept of when [or] how quickly children should be gathered and brought back to the church so that they can die and become pure beings.”

PEOPLE reached out to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, as well as the Uvalde Foundation for Kids, for comment on Saturday, July 5, but did not receive an immediate response.