"I bid thee farewell," is what Ladell Pipkin, 26, said the late Prophet Rulon Jeffs told him when he was ordered to leave town a few years ago.

Pipkin is one of 37 children. His father was 54 when he married Pipkin's mother at age 19. She was one of five wives.

New Times found Pipkin living out of his decrepit SUV on an empty lot in north Phoenix. Covered with scabs and pulling hair from his face, he appeared strung out on crystal meth.

Pipkin could barely put together a sentence. But paperwork in his possession showed he had graduated from Colorado City High School in 1995, before being sent on his way.

Anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop assisted Pipkin, getting him enrolled at Teen Challenge, a youth treatment center. The young man disappeared January 5, after leaving a disturbing, handwritten letter on his bed.

"Please help me," the letter begins. "It's just to [sic] darn late, Ladell. You have messed up everybody's life. You are a mass murderer. You are just like a Hitler. Just what in the world were you thinking when you tried to challenge God? You have killed so darn many people."

He then expresses regret at how many chances he had to pull his life together, including a second baptism. "I should just commit suicide right on the spot. I am damned for all eternity for ever and ever."

Phoenix police found Pipkin six weeks later wandering downtown streets, disheveled and disoriented. Pennie Peterson said she picked him up from police and arranged to have him sent to St. George, Utah, to live with an uncle.

"He stunk so bad I had to put a blanket down over the seat of the car," Peterson said. "His brain was gone."