Trent Nelson and Jessica Schreifels
Salt Lake Tribune
December 6, 2024
Samuel Bateman faces decades in prison after admitting that he took 10 girls as his “wives,” and sexually abused nearly all of them.
Colorado City, Arizona • Squeezed into the back seat of a Bentley, Christine Marie was sitting with three young wives of self-proclaimed prophet Samuel Bateman.
She couldn’t believe what he was revealing.
Bateman was describing how he “gave away” the three “wives” sitting next to her — two adults, the other a 12-year-old girl — to three male followers and ordered them to have sex with the wives while he watched. He called it “The Atonement,” explaining it as a religious ceremony.
Marie recognized the actions that Bateman described as something else: A man raping a child.
And the reaction of the two women made her wonder whether they had felt coerced.
“Sam kept revealing more and more and more and the young ladies were clearly in distress as he was talking about it,” Marie recalled. “I was in absolute shock. I was mortified. And to think that he thought this was somehow from God was just mind-blowing.”
For months, Marie and others had been trying to alert local police to their fears about Bateman, the leader of a small offshoot of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The sect’s traditional home is in the state border towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona, a historically tight-knit region known as Short Creek. People there had told police they suspected Bateman was having sexual contact with girls he referred to as his “wives,” the youngest of whom was 9 years old when they “wed.”
But police told her they needed evidence, Marie recounted, and calling someone his wife doesn’t prove that he had committed any crime.
Sitting in that back seat, Marie grew angry as Bateman kept talking. She wanted “to assault him,” she recalled, and to pull the girls out of the car with her.
Instead, Marie calmly listened as she quietly pulled her phone out of her purse.
Then she hit record.
“All I could think was I have to save this girl next me, who was a child,” Marie said. “... I was absolutely obsessed with doing whatever I needed to do to get the evidence needed to get this man behind bars.”
That recording from inside Bateman’s Bentley was the first piece of evidence Marie sent to local police, and later the FBI — but it wasn’t the last. Marie and her husband, a professional filmmaker, had already been documenting Bateman and his followers. They had filmed him at barbecues and picnics. They were rolling when Bateman’s followers bore lengthy testimonies about him.
And after that pivotal day in the Bentley, they kept recording as Bateman again described ordering his followers to have sexual contact with his young wives. The leader expressed in that second recording that it was a “great personal sacrifice” for him to watch, according to court testimony. But he said it needed to be done to appease God.
The evidence helped prosecutors bring criminal charges against and convict Bateman, 48, who now faces decades in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to two felonies. Federal prosecutors charged him and 11 of his followers, accusing them of a “years-long conspiracy to travel across state lines in order to amass ‘wives’ for Bateman, including minor girls.”
Bateman is expected to be sentenced on Monday, after a federal judge hears testimony about whether he is competent. Bateman’s attorney raised questions about his mental state because an expert hired by the defense found Bateman is “mentally ill” and “delusional,” and would benefit from a sentence served at a treatment facility rather than a traditional prison.
This conclusion of Bateman’s criminal case comes three tense years after the November morning in 2021 when he asked Marie and her husband, Tolga Katas, to sit inside his car as he detailed the “Atonement.”
Thinking back to that day in the Bentley, Marie remembered panicking, praying her phone was capturing what Bateman was saying.
Once she and Katas were alone back inside their home, she called the local police.
“I got the bombshell you’ve been waiting for,” she told a sergeant.
Marie first visited Short Creek in 2015 to help after a flash flood swept through the towns and killed 13 women and children. A year later, she and her husband moved from Las Vegas to Hildale, renting a small, tan stucco house in the tiny Utah town.
The couple aren’t polygamous or FLDS members, but Marie was drawn to keep helping the community and started a nonprofit charity called Voices For Dignity.
There were other organizations offering help, she said, but some focused on assisting people only once they left polygamy. Her Voices for Dignity took a harm-reduction approach, accepting that people needed support as they stayed or while they were deciding whether to leave, and served anyone who knocked on the front door.
She focused on handing out food and school supplies. The FLDS have been cloistered, so she would look up housing information online for those who felt uneasy going on the internet. Marie gained the trust of many FLDS members — in one later court hearing, she estimated she’s helped about 2,000 people in Short Creek. Only a few dozen of them, she said, left polygamy.
Her organization helped Bateman in 2019 while he struggled through a divorce from his first wife, Marie recalled. Esther Bistline, an FLDS member on the board of Marie’s nonprofit, remembered Bateman talking “about the fact that he had no money.”
In a 2019 text message to Marie, which she shared with The Tribune, Bateman worried about going on a photography day trip with her and her husband to a Utah ghost town if he would have to pay for anything.
“Hello dearest Christine,” the text reads. “If where we are going tomorrow requires pecuniary additions I am apologetic in saying that I am in the middle of some dire straits in my financial world. If we are not in need of helping in this manner in this picture[-]taking jaunt with you and Tolga it would be a marvelous privilege to participate. You and Tolga are greatly appreciated and loved!”
“He was broke,” recalled Katas. “He called Christine and wanted to borrow like $20. He was homeless, broke, everything.”
Bateman began spending more time in early 2019 with Moroni Johnson, another FLDS member who grew up in Short Creek, according to court testimony from Julia Johnson, Moroni’s wife. The Colorado City couple, both faithful FLDS, had married in 1995 and took Julia’s sister on as a second wife in 2001; Julia and Moroni had eight children.
Some FLDS families had grown frustrated about the lack of guidance from Warren Jeffs, the longtime FLDS leader who was in prison after being convicted of sexually abusing his child brides at a Texas enclave.
In their faith, marriages were arranged by the FLDS prophet. But marriages stopped being performed in 2006 when Jeffs was arrested and later sent to prison. Word came down from church leaders in 2012 that FLDS couples were to stop acting as husband and wives — that meant no sex and no children.
“We wanted children and sex,” Julia testified at a trial for two of Bateman’s followers. “I wanted a baby. It was a common sentiment [among the FLDS].”
Soon, Bateman and Moroni began teaching that women could now pray and receive revelation about marriage for themselves, without the prophet’s guiding hand. “This was not well received by the FLDS,” Julia testified.
Moroni began marrying more women that year, Julia said, but she wasn’t comfortable with these unions that weren’t approved by Jeffs. “It was a devastation,” she testified. “We were leaving the church and not being obedient.”
The Johnsons moved from Short Creek to Nebraska for work later in 2019 and Bateman later joined them. As a group of other FLDS families moved there, too, Bateman began marrying women and girls — a total of 13 by the end of 2020, she testified.
Seizing leadership of the small group, Bateman was taking advantage of Jeffs’ absence, several of Bateman’s followers later told The Tribune. Bateman told them the reason they hadn’t heard from Jeffs was because he was dead or translated — a teaching of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that refers to God changing a person from mortal to immortal.
Bateman claimed to be the new prophet, they said, and told the families that Jeffs would now only speak through him. He started to pressure them to give him money, to bear testimony of him, and for him to be given new wives, those who spoke to The Tribune also said. They called themselves “Samuelites.”
“There were so many things about it that just didn’t line up with our [FLDS] beliefs,” said Bistline, with Voices for Dignity. She remembered how the families who followed Bateman would text or visit people in Short Creek and “look at us like we’re weird” when the FLDS members talked about writing letters to Jeffs.
“Why would you do that?” she recalled the Samuelites saying. “He’s not even there.”
FLDS leadership rebuked Bateman in 2020, issuing a revelation confirming that Jeffs was still alive in prison and was the sole prophet — calling Bateman and his followers “gross and wicked men.”
“Father yet lives,” the revelation read, referencing Jeffs, “and is the mortal Keyholder Prophet on this world.”
Bateman and some of his followers moved back to Short Creek in 2021. He was now driving a Mercedes, Katas recalled, and could fill two SUVS with his more than a dozen wives — a far cry from two years earlier, when he was alone and asking for money.
Marie remembered how Bateman would drive an SUV around Short Creek’s dusty red roads, pulling a flatbed trailer where he had his wives sit in two neat rows, “singing to show off, like they were [his] prize horses.”
It was no secret in Short Creek that Bateman was claiming that he had married young girls, and several residents reported him to law enforcement, police officials have confirmed.
“Reports were coming from a lot of different directions,” testified Sgt. David Wilkinson, from the small Hildale and Colorado City Police Department. He said Marie talked to him about Bateman “at least six times” before the FBI eventually became involved.
But Wilkinson felt there was “not enough specific detail to begin to take action,” he testified. “There were allegations,” he added, “but we did not have any witnesses coming forward and giving details of specific crimes that were occurring.”
Documenting Bateman
But Katas had started recording hundreds of hours of Bateman and his followers, footage that he would later give to law enforcement. The filmmaker had been working on a documentary about the FLDS community for a few years — and he recalled that when Bateman learned of the project in 2021, he seemed desperate to be included.
Bateman wanted them to film him and post YouTube videos, but neither Katas nor Marie wanted to give him a platform, they said. But Marie thought that it would be worth filming him anyway, she recalled, thinking, “they’ll get used to it and we’ll catch them with some evidence.”
In February 2021, Marie and Katas were invited over for the first time to what was known in the group as the Blue House — a large Colorado City home where Bateman had taken over the top floor, where only he and his wives were allowed. The couple went over for dinner and to watch what was essentially a family talent show, they recalled in interviews.
Katas was filming. The video he made — which was later played in a federal courtroom at a trial for two of Bateman’s followers — shows Bateman surrounded by 13 women and girls, as well as a few men who are seated at the edges of the room.
“These wonderful ladies are going to sing a song for us,” Katas narrates as his camera focuses on two small girls holding guitars. “How old are you guys?” he asks.
“We’re both ten,” one of them says.
The girls then sing a song about how much they love “Father,” a term of endearment that the Samuelites have used when referring to Bateman.
Marie and Katas continued visiting Bateman and his growing number of wives, and said they began to see a pattern when they visited his second home, a cramped and crowded house the group called the Green House.
In this second home, “there are 24 ladies and him sitting there, and every day there would be two girls in the back crying.” Katas said. “... And the next day it’s another two girls.”
“Christine told me, ‘You keep Sam busy, I’m going to go back there and try to get more information,’” he recalled. “So in the videos, there’s a lot of me asking really stupid questions like, ‘Hey, let’s go see the Bentley. Wow, that’s amazing!’”
The hardest thing, he said, “was being at the house, trying to be funny.”
Becoming an informant
The couple kept filming through 2021. That November, Marie recorded Bateman detailing sexual abuse in his description of the “Atonement” ceremony and immediately gave the evidence to the Hildale and Colorado City Police Department.
Because the small office lacked the resources he felt they needed, Wilkinson testified, it asked the FBI to take over the case in the summer of 2022. His testimony came during the trial for two of Bateman’s followers, and prosecutors did not ask him during questioning to detail what happened in the meantime.
By that summer, Marie said, she heard Bateman belittling Moroni in a way that made her fear for his safety. “Things got real scary,” she said, and she hoped that becoming an FBI informant would make her feel protected. “I kept saying, I want to be official.”
Marie became an official FBI informant, and the FBI encouraged Katas to share any video he thought would be useful to investigators.”That’s what I did,” Katas said. “Every day there was so much evidence that was [being turned in]. It was terabytes of stuff.”
The couple doubled the time they were spending with the group, from 20 hours a week to being nearly a full-time job. Katas passed up film gigs and lost income.
The stresses of the time commitment, the fear of being found out, and the weight of feeling that girls were continuing to be sexually assaulted were taking a toll.
“Every day it was like, I’m done with this,” said Katas. “I’m done. I’m leaving. You know, even divorce at some times. We would fight. And then she would just say, ‘Fine, fine, but then I’m going [to Bateman’s house].’ And I’m like, ‘You can’t go because you’re going to get caught. Don’t take your phone, take another phone, he’s going to want to see your phone.’”
Those close to Marie were also growing concerned. “I was worried that they were going to find out that she was working with law enforcement and shut it down or try to hurt her and Tolga,” said Bistline, the Voices for Dignity board member.
Katas continued to struggle. “I would cry every day. Do I say, f— this, I’m not doing it? Do I let another girl get raped? Why is it on me?”
He vented his frustrations to the FBI. “I kept telling the FBI I don’t know if I can do this,” Katas said. “I said I want to kill him. They said, ‘Don’t do that.’”
Convincing Julia: Julia Johnson was also struggling.
Julia’s oldest adult daughter was one of the women Bateman had married in 2019 in Nebraska — with no ceremony, or the ability for the young woman to consent before witnesses. Julia felt this was wrong, she later testified, but other followers shunned and excluded her.
Then, Bateman and her oldest daughter started pressuring another adult daughter to also marry the leader. That daughter, Julia testified, “didn’t want to go. [She] told me, ‘I don’t want to do this. I want to wait.’”
When Bateman married her anyway, “I could see it was becoming forced,” Julia testified.
Bateman then married a 9-year-old girl, Julia recalled from the witness stand, followed by taking Julia’s teenage daughter as a wife. “I was becoming numb,” she said.
When Julia’s teenage daughter became pregnant, Bateman cut off contact between the woman and her daughters. Julia still lived in the Blue House with other followers, she testified, and was told to stay away from the other home, where her daughters were staying.
Her daughters sent her messages, she recalled, calling her a b—-. Doing laundry, she noticed that Bateman’s wives’ long religious underwear had been replaced with lingerie.
Arizona child welfare officials attempted to visit the Samuelites several times, asking questions about the girls and their relationship to Bateman — including in May 2021, when the parents of two of the girls refused to speak to child welfare workers but denied that there was anything inappropriate happening between Bateman and their young daughters. Child welfare officials also tried to speak to some of the girls, according to court records, but their mothers would not allow them to speak to the government workers alone.
After that, Bateman became more “paranoid,” Julia recalled on the witness stand. He installed security cameras, and questioned her about whether she was speaking to the police. His wives were given code names, according to court testimony. And the group established hideouts in the neighboring desert, Marie recalled.
Bateman had also pressured Julia to marry him, she recalled, and although she refused, she still followed him. On the witness stand, she admitted she was present in moments when Bateman had sexual contact with other Samuelites, including his underage “wives.”
Julia began spending time in Marie’s yard, letting her young son play with the chickens, a donkey, a horse and other animals that Marie kept to calm herself and others. As the two spent more time together, Marie realized that Julia could be the inside witness law enforcement needed.
“I spent hours with her, hours and hours and hours,” Marie said. “If I wasn’t over there [at Bateman’s homes] I was secretly talking to her or meeting her. We were very much walking on eggshells.”
Julia opened up to Marie one Friday in July 2022, and expressed fear that Bateman’s behavior could escalate to violence. “Following Samuel to hell is not doing right,” Marie remembers telling her.
“It isn’t,” she said Julia replied. “And Uncle Warren says a woman does not have to follow a man to hell.”
Seizing the moment, Marie shared her own past with someone whom she described as “a con man prophet predator.”
“You’re going to save your children,” Marie said, trying to boost Julia’s courage. “All of this is to save your children.”
It was the tipping point, Julia later told The Tribune outside court, that convinced her to talk to the FBI and tell them everything.
An unexpected arrest
Bateman’s first arrest was unexpected. In August 2022, local Arizona police pulled Bateman over after several drivers called law enforcement to report that they saw small fingers holding the door of a trailer shut as Bateman drove the GMC Denali pulling it down the freeway near Flagstaff, Ariz.
Bateman was arrested and charged with child abuse. As soon as Julia found out about the arrest from local police, she called her FBI contact. The FBI agents tracking Bateman were not expecting this complication, she recalled on the witness stand.
For Bateman’s followers, this arrest was a sign that he was a prophet, since it happened 16 years to the day on the same day as the Aug. 28, 2006 arrest of Warren Jeffs. For the FBI, it was a possible derailment of their investigation.
After Bateman’s arrest, his followers began destroying potential evidence.
“I could see in Signal, a group chat was no longer there,” Marie testified. “I saw things happening at the Green House where they were throwing away and ripping journals.”
One of Bateman’s followers quickly bailed him out of jail. Marie was sitting in the back seat of the car that picked him up from jail, her phone in hand. As he got in the car and sat down next to two of his wives in the middle seat, he immediately started asking about erasing data from his phone and deleting messages, though he said there was “really nothing to hide.”
“What I was wondering,” Bateman asks in the video, which was shown in federal court. “Is there a way to factory reset a phone?”
“And I’m filming the whole time,” Marie recounted. “I sent it to the FBI before we even got out of the car.”
The raid
Within weeks, the FBI had a warrant to arrest Bateman again and search for evidence of child sex crimes at three properties: The Green and Blue houses and a small warehouse where he spent time in Colorado City.
FBI agents asked Katas to help them diagram the Green House and its multiple entrances a little more than a week before the raid, Katas said.
“I said, ‘Sam, you know since the Flagstaff incident, I think people are watching you. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna come to your house and drone to see if it’s your neighbor.’” Katas recalled. “He goes, ‘That is so smart. This is why God sent you to me, you’re so smart.’”
Using his phone to control the drone’s flight over the property, Katas recorded the gates and entryways with Bateman looking on. As both men stared at the phone, a text from the FBI popped up on the screen.
“It’s showing up and he’s looking over my shoulders,” Katas said. He quickly moved the text notification off his screen, feeling lucky that he had used a fake name for his FBI contact.
On Sept. 13, 2022 — the day the FBI had planned to execute their search warrant and arrest Bateman — it was drizzly and overcast. Colorado City was quiet. The plan was for Katas to meet Bateman at a warehouse, under the guise that the filmmaker wanted to record an interview with the leader for his documentary.
When Katas knew where Bateman was, he planned to text 1, 2, or 3 to tell the FBI the location, followed by the number of wives Bateman had with him. That morning, Katas dropped Marie off at the Green House and texted, “I’m at 2 and I dropped her off.”
“Copy,” came the response from the FBI. Katas arrived at the warehouse. “I’m at 3,” he texted. “Copy.”
If a swarm of agents ready to pounce was anywhere around, Katas said, he saw no sign of them.
Bateman soon arrived at the warehouse with three wives. Katas started to set up his camera for a purported interview with Bateman. He texted the FBI, “3-3.”
“Copy.”
Before he started recording the waiting Bateman, Katas unlocked the front and back doors and walked back to his camera. Within moments, the doors were flung open and agents rushed in. “There were like 25 people who were in there in a second,” Katas recalled.
“They just lifted him up,” Katas added. “They got everybody really so fast …. I knew it was coming, it still got me. That’s how good they were.”
Katas was moved to a wall and held by agents, just as Bateman was, in an effort to not disclose to the leader that he had been working with the FBI.
The wives who were there were crying, Katas recalled, while Bateman said little before he was taken away in handcuffs.
The large FBI team next surrounded the Green House, several toting assault rifles outside, their cars parked on the road flashing red and blue lights.
Marie was inside with Bateman’s other wives and some small children. Mattresses were strewn on the floor, further crowding the small home. As agents called for the women to come outside with their hands raised, Marie began recording a video. It shows the women running around the small home, confused.
Marie walked each person out to police through a front foyer of the home, a prayer room which had been adorned in expensive marble and gold accents. She recalled: “I felt as if I was walking them to freedom.”
The FBI team last went to the Blue House, where it told several more female followers to leave and spent the rest of the day searching.
Groups of Bateman’s wives, crying and in shock, made their way to Marie’s home. Displaced and with few other options, it was a place they felt safe.
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