One Bowling Ball of a Man-Part One

In this episode, One Bowling Ball of a Man, we dive into the first two episodes of Trust Me: A False Prophet and unpack the unsettling story at the center of it all. 

Join us as we react to the shocking details introduced in episodes one and two. This is just the beginning, and already, there’s a lot to unravel.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hello everybody, I'm Casey Forbes. And I'm Sarah Cuvion. And welcome to Let the Good Crimes Roll. The case that we're doing today, I found out about it because I stayed with Amber Friday night and she was like, girl, you gotta watch this episode. It is so good. It's four parts. So today we're only covering two parts because there's a lot to unpack. But this is the case of the FLDS women. The source is Trust Me, the False Prophet. Today we're gonna use episode one, and that's how we met Sam Bateman and episode two, The Prophet, the Queen in a Camera. And if you want to watch this, you can watch it on Netflix.

SPEAKER_05 0:52

Predators don't come in dressed with their horns and their cape. They come in dressed in their suit and tie.

SPEAKER_06 0:59

Are you a prophet?

SPEAKER_00 1:01

I would be a liar if I said I wasn't. In the aftermath of Warren Jeff's incarceration, the FLDS has really been praying and fragmented. Sam Bateman saw himself being an air apparent to Warren Jeffs.

SPEAKER_05 1:18

We're following our fault. And he's leading us right to hell.

SPEAKER_06 1:27

When we moved to this town, we thought, well, maybe we could do a documentary of these FLDS people because they're so stigmatized, and that's where we met Sam. Seeing Sam with all these females is concerning. But there were rumors that he was married to the children. So we got an idea. If they let us film, spent more time with them, and developed a relationship with them, maybe we would see what was really going on.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Not very often you have somebody wanting to be recorded all of the time, especially talking about some of the heinous crimes that he was committing.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

The richest man or that's gonna be screwed.

SPEAKER_05 2:11

We weren't living very far from the police station. But will they hear one woman's cry? I have to turn this up.

SPEAKER_06 2:22

I asked him if we get caught, what are they gonna do to us?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

We were concerned about the threats that Sam would make.

SPEAKER_05 2:30

If Sam found out where I was going, he will take my children and he will flee.

SPEAKER_06 2:37

I was so trusted. I wanted to help them before they found out I was a ball. I want your hand on your head! I remember.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Okay, I know I've watched documentaries about this stuff before, but I don't think I've seen this particular one.

SPEAKER_02 3:07

Well, I'm gonna dive into it and I'll explain a little bit of background of FLDS and how you know what it is. So Christine Marie was a woman of many talents. She was a beauty queen pageant winner, an escape artist, a ventriloquist who had a show called The Gingerbread House. But what she was most proud of was being called a survivor. Okay. And I say that in seriousness.

SPEAKER_03 3:31

I love how they slipped in there an escape artist. An escape artist. Like a magician escape artist. Like a like a talent section of the beauty pageant stuff. I'm sure. It just showed a straight jacket and implied that she could escape a straight jacket.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

She's like a modern-day Houdini. Okay. Gotcha. Go girl. There was a time in her life when, as a single mom of four, she met a man. The man belonged to the fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or FLDS, a community that is an extreme offshoot of the Mormon religion or LDS. He began having her do just these small tests, prove that she's able to sacrifice for the religion and all this stuff. And those tests consisted of her like selling some of her favorite things, items from her house.

SPEAKER_03 4:18

He made her sell these things?

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Yes. It gets worse. Trinkets or just think of something in your house that you love. He would make her sell it to show she had the capability to sacrifice. Oh, it gets much, much worse. The tests evolved, and eventually she was told to abandon her four children, and she needed to allow herself to be debased by men, but she had to provide her now husband, who was demanding this of her, photographs to show that these acts were being done. When you say debased, is that what you said? Yeah. I'm trying to keep it as PG13 as possible, but it may not be.

SPEAKER_03 4:54

You mean like what do you mean sexually? Her husband is requiring this of her.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Well, he's saying that God is telling her she needs to do this. Okay. So he has a fetish. Because he wants proof.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

He wants proof because he's not there, but he wants proof. She held on to these pictures. She would get these men to take these erotic pictures, but she held on to them as proof that this actually happened. They show some of the pictures on the documentary, but it's PG 13. Things are like blocked out, but it's still horrible. She became a shell of herself and understandably. She recognized that both what she was doing and what was being done to her and asked of her was wrong. She finally was like, I cannot do this anymore. In the FLDS religion, it is believed that there are prophets, and the only way to heaven is by complete submission to this prophet. So if a prophet asks you to do something, you don't question it, you just do it, especially if you're a woman. She began researching cults, and she went so far that she ended up getting a doctorate in cult psychology from a university.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

I did not know that that was like a degree. I had no idea. It's so prevalent that you need a degree to study it. Apparently, that is crazy.

SPEAKER_02 6:05

I'm assuming it's psychology, but it's like her doctorate. Probably went to a certain place with psychology. She found herself again, and she also found love with a music video producer named Tolga, who married and settled down in Las Vegas. So she came across the story of Warren Jeffries. He was the FLDS cult leader who was prosecuted.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

Was it Jeffries or Jeffers?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Jeffers or I think Jeffries? I don't know. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that guy.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:34

The bad one. Yeah. Warren led an FODS community in Short Creek on the Utah-Arizona border as the prophet until an investigation revealed he'd been engaging in inappropriate sexual relationships with underaged girls. He was convicted and sentenced to a life sentence plus 20 years and kept in a prison in Texas. And there's a whole other documentary about him because he escaped for a long time. He was like one of the FBI's most wanted for a long time before he was caught. While physically removed from the compound, Warren still held power from the prison. They actually believed he was a martyr because he's being imprisoned for his religious beliefs. But he went so far as to tell his community that no one else could get married. And for those who were married, they could not be intimate with one another and they could not have children because the prophet is locked away and he can't have that. So if he can't have that, they can't have that. They obliged, but it wasn't great for the community. I mean, women quit having babies, population within the community began to diminish. And not to mention, like, you're married, like you want to have matrimonial relations with your spouse. So it's really hard because you're being told, like, what? Like how would he know? But they were so devout in their religion that they were like, Well, you know, he is a prophet, so he would know. By 2015, Warren, who was becoming more and more mentally unstable, had stopped communicating and the community started to crumble from within. Members began getting evicted from their homes. And it was around this time that Christine and Tolga moved there. He produces music videos, but he makes the videos. Like he he's a filmmaker. She felt compelled to go there to help these people, but she wanted to do it from the point of view of being like documentarians. So in 2016, Tolga and she moved to Colorado City, Arizona. They described this as the Mecca of the Mormon community, like out here in this Utah, Arizona area. They set up a farm and they began integrating as outsiders into the community. Many women from the community worked at local shops and they were very leery of the outsiders. Tolga had a slight Turkish accent because he was from Turkey and he had long hair and he kept it up in a ponytail. He just looked like this hippie. Christine had this long platinum blonde hair. She wore these thick black glasses and she wore like vintage clothing. But one of the women said, We think she's darling. They loved her clothes because their clothes were just terrible. Yeah. As we all know. So Tolga and Christine explained that they were documentarians and wanted to film the other side of the FLDS. Members of the community agreed, including a man named Samuel Bateman, who was also being evicted from his home. So let's talk about Sam. Okay. He was fugly, okay? Samuel Bateman didn't have status within the community, meaning he wasn't a good provider. And the one wife he was able to convince to marry him divorced him. Ooh. In FLD. I was gonna say, I didn't think that was a thing. You talk about hitting rock bottom. He had to have been pretty bad. She's like, I will take my chances in hell before I'm gonna be married to you. Okay. He was frumpy, he was not charismatic, and no one paid him any attention. Wait, so was he just ugly and awful, or was he like ugly and awful? He didn't make money, like he really wasn't a good guy. No, he was a mooch, he didn't work, like he just was within the community, they thought this of him. Like it was this isn't just me watching this documentary and going, what a freaking Gomer. Like, I almost it's like his Sam. I'm thinking like Sam was Gamge, the hobbit. I'm like, that is that's a put down on hobbits. Like, I'm not even gonna do that to him. He was more like a what's the other one? It's an orc. He was an orc. I know you don't watch the line. An orc is an evil elf, and they're really ugly. And they they don't have good vocabulary. Gotcha. That was this guy. Christine and Tolga were kind of helping all these people that were getting evicted sort things out. They helped him, and then he kind of went away for a while, and not like went away, but like he they did he just wasn't on their radar because there were so many people they were helping. But when he came back, he came back married to a woman. And the entire congregation, the community, like just was side-eyeing him because they're like, We're not supposed to do that. But he didn't stop there. He went away again and he married her sister. Now, this man is in his like mid to late 40s. These girls are like 23 and 21. Yeah, really young, really inexperienced in life. Many in the community did not approve based on the last message from their prophet Warren, but they hadn't heard from him in years. Because remember, Warren got cut off. He continued to marry women and he came out with like a bold statement. He said, Warren is dead. The mainstream media is not reporting it. I know this because Warren has told me from beyond the grave. It was a tactic used by Warren himself when Warren's own father died. When Warren's dad died, he said, Oh, dad's talking to me from beyond the grave. And he said, I am now the prophet, give me your daughters. Yeah, okay. That was the whole thing. Many from the community shunned Stam, but there were some who followed him. So not only was he getting these wives, he was they were having babies, which was refreshing because they hadn't had babies in so long. Like the community was like, Wow, we didn't realize how much we missed having children or yeah. There were three men who were named to be like part of his community because he was starting his own community, and those men were a guy named Torrance, a guy named Liddell, and a guy named Right. I have it spelled Moroni, but they were like, What were they saying? Morona or something, it was something weird. I'm sure it's the name of the Bible. Y'all, I'm a Christian, but I don't remember seeing a Moroni in there. Maybe it was. I'm sorry. I'm not that I'm not Derek knows he was raised in a very Christian home. It didn't hurt that these three men had very lucrative businesses. Okay, they were very, very, very successful. So a lot of people, including Christine, because Christine, who has a lot of knowledge about the LDS community, because she was in it for a while, and even members in the community just were like, What in the hell do y'all see in this guy? Like he's a weasel. Yeah. Like, why are y'all following him? Do y'all just believe that he's like can speak to ghosts and the government is hiding the fact he's like, Oh, that's just a mannequin in there. They're like, when you see him on the news, that's not really him. Like, are y'all buying this? And they're people that were. So Sam didn't wait to begin to start making his demands. These demands included the men's salaries, their wives, and their daughters. And these three men got moved into a basement in one of the homes that they paid to build, giving up their wives, their children, and their status, basically.

SPEAKER_03 13:09

This is where that cult psychology degree would come in handy because I am lord at how you get somebody to do this.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

We were too, because he this man is not charismatic at all. Some of the daughters were, or a lot of the daughters were underage. Yeah, these were children. Sam's ego just continued to grow, and he asked Tolga and Christine to make him and his community the star of their documentary they were making because he decided to name his little community the Samuelites. And I told Derek, I'm like, Can you imagine the Derek Lites? That's intricate type of beard, doesn't it? The Samuelites. The Samuelites. So he invited them over for dinner, Christine and Tolga, and they were shocked to see that this bowling ball of a man was living in this now large house with multiple women and children just trotting around town in Bentleys and Range Rovers. I'm sorry, this bowling ball of a man. That's what he looks like. Just a bowling ball who should be punched. Yeah. What was most concerning though was that some of these wives were clearly underage. Yeah. Clearly. They were children. Yeah. So they left and they were very unnerved. And they immediately reported it to local police who should be on high alert after the warning debacle. Correct? Yeah. But the police said calling a minor your wife isn't a crime. They needed more evidence. So the couple decided to go undercover. They're like, okay, we're gonna just go totally in on this documentary idea, and maybe they'll get comfortable and let us in. So the Samuelites consisted of 50 members, which included babies. Tolga f this was so funny. Tolga, God bless him, would follow Sam around and he would like watch Samuel do the dumbest shit and go, Wow, you are so talented. Like they went on a hike in the mountains, and he literally jumped from one rock to another. He walked up a hiking trail. And Tolga had made it up like in three times faster than this other man. Fast enough that he got there could film him coming. And he goes, Wow, you were so strong. How can you do that?

SPEAKER_03 15:16

So he's like trying to get on the good side.

SPEAKER_02 15:20

Tolga was even like he it was horrible. I had to go watch him ride dirt bikes. And it was like watching a bear on a bike. It was just so bad. He was making fun of how bad he jumped because this he would go and do these jumps, but he like didn't even get off the ground because he was so fat. Okay. And I'm fat, so I can call them fat. Okay. He'd be he'd be like, go on a you know, you see these like dirt bike riders, like just off the thing. His like didn't even catch air. And he'd get off, he'd wave his hands up in the air, and we're like bad when you can't overcome physics.

unknown 15:50

It's bad.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Yeah. Toga was like, it was just a nightmare. And he would call. Sam would call and be like, I'm going to do something. Come film me. And Tog's like, Okay, this is a nightmare. Just remember why did I marry this woman who dragged me down here? But it came to like a really serious point when Tolga and Christine rush over to film because Sam wanted to tell them about this impression he received from God. An impression is a direct message from God. And so he takes three girls, one of which is 13, Christine and Tolga, and puts them in his Bentley and they go for a ride. Well, he asked Tolga not to film because obviously what he's about to tell them is illegal. But Christine's like, I'm just gonna hit record on my phone. You already signed an agreement, so we're gonna film. Oh girl, she took out her phone, she snuck it out of her pocket and just hit record. And what he confessed to just blew their mind. He said, now if you have children in the room, I'm going to take it R rated, okay? He confessed that God instructed him that to atone for the sins of evil men, he would have to watch the three women in the back, one of which was a 13-year-old girl, have sex with the three grown ass men who were his other leaders. So he was to watch this going on. And these girls are in the back seat, and you can't see them in the documentary, but you can hear them. And the girls, especially like the 13-year-old, you can tell which one's the 13-year-old because she has a really 13-year-old voice. She was like, I didn't understand what was going on. I was really scared. I didn't want to, but I did it for because I want to go to heaven, completely brainwashed. But then he interrupts them and he starts telling them what to say. He's like, No, you need to make sure you say that you don't feel guilt, that you don't feel dirty, like just telling them how to feel and think. And it was so bad that Christine was like, I have to get the F out of this car. I cannot take this anymore. So she's like, Y'all, I'm gonna head home now. Y'all have a pleasant evening. I'll just walk the 12 miles or whatever. I don't know where they were, but she got out the car and left. And Tolga stayed so that he could try and get some more information. But she had the confession on her phone. You know, Sam continues to say that he had to live with the pain of watching another man have sex with his wives. And it's like, are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? You were cute. It was oh, it's gonna get worse. Oh sorry, y'all, it's gonna get worse. Just hang in there, hang tight for the rud. But like I said, the girls confirmed the story. And when they leave, Tolga and Christine immediately turn the recording over to the local police who do nothing.

SPEAKER_03 18:24

I was gonna say, is it inadmissible because they didn't have like his consent?

SPEAKER_02 18:27

No, they're still not. He can just go back and say it didn't happen. Oh, even though, even though in the recording he admitted to it and the three girls all confirmed it. There's nothing they cannot open up an investigation because of that. The police officer who agreed to be interviewed in the documentary said he only had the heart to listen to the recording one time. Yet still, there was nothing, there was not enough evidence to open a case.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

There's not enough evidence to even open a case.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

No, and you know what was really sick was Sam married some of the mothers of these girls so that when DCFS would come out to interview, it looked like they were his stepchildren. It's like, well, their moms are married to their moms, their moms are right here. When actuality he was married to the daughters. That's awful. Yeah. And like, shame on the moms for standing by and being like, but they're all just so brainwashed. They think that this is okay. So Christine's mental health really starts to deteriorate. She has grown children at this point. Her daughter Lola is so concerned, but she, you know, tells the documentary, My mom's not gonna stop until she frees these girls. So instead of giving up, Christine dug in deeper. She convinced Sam to begin sending the girls to her house for interviews, and she took that as an opportunity to drop hints about spotting bad people or false prophets because she really wanted to implement this false prophet's idea. Yeah. Because that's what the members who chose not to join this community. They all were like, he's a false prophet, and we don't understand why they're following him. Yeah. Slowly, Christine noticed the facade in the girls' body language begin to slip. And one of the girls admitted she lost her virginity to him when she was 15. She didn't even understand what the birds and the bees were. So he had explained to her before he took her virginity. And there was another girl, her name was Naomi. They called her Gnomes. She, for months and months and months, said she did not want to go with Sam. Sam wanted to, she was very pretty. Sam wanted to marry her. And for she was very young. I don't know if she was underage, but she was about 18. I mean, she was right there. She didn't want to go. And she was pressured by her family and by him. And after months and months and months, she went. And as soon as she got there, the brainwashing started. And she became very brainwashed. Christine was connected with a 19-year-old son of Moroni, Morona, whatever his name is, and he was against Sam Bateman. He watched as many of his sisters aged 20-ish to nine all be married off to Samuel without the ability to stop it. He spoke out against him, and his dad pretty much cut him off. This son explained that around eight months before he began, Moroni began following Sam, he'd begun to think for himself. And so he started having sex with his wives and they got pregnant and had children. And the community, community ultimately shunned him because he went against the prophet. And instead of him making up some obscene lie about, well, Warren's dead and I'm his mouthpiece, Moroni felt guilty and thought like he had squandered his way to get into heaven for both himself and his children. And then so when Sam came about and said, I am the mouthpiece for Warren, he says to continue the good work, but to atone for what you've done. Give me all of your entire salary, give me your wives and give me your daughters. And he did. Was it Moroni that had, I don't think it was Moroni. One of them had a really lucrative, they were all lucrative people. They all were all in business, but one of them had a really lucrative green energy business that made a lot of Ton of money. So much money that Sam was able to build multiple huge houses. We're gonna go into that in the next episode we talk about about who lived where and why. As Sam's power grew, so did his belief that he could do whatever he wanted. He planned to build one massive mansion for his entire community. And he actually began a YouTube channel regurgitating self-help gurus. And he didn't regurgitate it well. Okay. There is nothing charming about you. You're just gross. Like, can you please wipe the sweat from your brow before you start? You don't have to do this in the middle of the damn desert. You know what I mean? You can go in an air-conditioned room where your face isn't clearly like all red and sweaty. That's disgusting. Yeah. So despite her, this was funny. Despite her disgust, Christine became an Academy Award-winning actress. She was so grossed out by this man, but she had to continue to pretend like she supported what he was doing. While she was doing that, these women were becoming more and more like loose-lips around her. Yeah. They all started saying that their religion does not believe in underage marriage. That's not a thing. If the Lord tells a prophet he has to take a 10-year-old as his wife, that is perfectly fine. And more and more women were basically confessing that they lost their virginity to him underage. Tolga got really upset because he would film and you would see it because they showed all this. There would be girls in the corner crying. You could tell there was so much unhappiness there. It was terrible. Christine continued to go to local police who continued to not take her seriously. And finally, she demanded for the case to be given to the FBI. But the police said it has to cross state borders for the FBI to get involved. And she says, Oh, well, I got that. Because the majority of these victims were trafficked in from across state lines. They came from Colorado and from Nebraska and from Utah. It was just a random day, and Christine's phone rang. And when she answered, she was stunned to hear the words, Hi Christine. My name is FBI agent Dawn Martin, and I'd like to talk. And she said Finally. Yeah. She's like, Well, thank God. So eight months after Christine made the initial report, she walked into a building and presented everything she had to the FBI agent Dawn, including that Sam had 23 wives. Twenty-three? Nine of which were underage.

SPEAKER_04 24:27

Oh, that's gross.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Yes. Dawn was disturbed, and not just by the overwhelming evidence, but by how long it took local police to contact the FBI in the first place. Yeah. She's like, why was I not contacted eight months ago? The FBI would take on the case, but they said it would really help us out if you can find someone on the inside who would testify to what was going on. And Christine had someone in mind, a woman named Julia. She was actually one of the earlier wives of Moroni, and she had several daughters that was married off to Sam. It wasn't common for any of the wives to come to Christine's house alone, but Julia always did. She would come up with reasons to walk over with her, she had a toddler little boy. One day she was like raking up leaves in Christine's yard, like as an excuse to go over there by herself. And Christine said, Okay, I have to figure out how to get this woman to talk to me because that's my end. Christine felt like Julia had something to say. So she decided to tell her her own story, or where she was led by a false prophet and had to escape. And so it was then that Julia decided that she wanted to talk to. And that's where we're gonna end it today. Oh, okay. It's gonna get so intense. There's a lot that happens in the next two episodes. I've already watched them. Yeah. But this documentary is so good. Like it gives me chills how good it was.

SPEAKER_03 25:48

It's such a sad subject matter that it is. It is. It is.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

With all these poor underage girls, like yeah, because one of the things that Julia, and I don't want to spoil anything, but one of the things Julia talks about is women in this community are told not to think for themselves. Yeah. You are to blindly follow the prophet, not ask any questions, not have any critical thinking skills, don't question authority unless it's the police. It's a disservice to our girls.

SPEAKER_03 26:15

I mean, it's really this this kind of community is really just about the subjugation of women.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

It is really it's terrible, it's terrible and it's sad, but it does have a happy ending.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

So we'll get there. We have that to look forward to.

SPEAKER_02 26:29

Yes, and we have a lot of like just crazy drama to unravel. So tune in next week, and we will give you the conclusion to the story. And if you want to watch it, like I said, it is on Netflix. So Netflix, got it. It's so good. Okay, yeah. All right. Well, thank y'all for listening this week, and we will see y'all next time. Bye, guys.