FBI: Polygamous leader had 20 wives, many of them minors
FLAGSTAFF, Arizona (AP) — The leader of a small polygamous group near the Arizona-Utah border had taken at least 20 wives, most of them minors, and punished followers who did not treat him as a prophet, newly filed federal court documents allege.
Samuel Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left to start his own small offshoot group. He was supported financially by male followers who also gave up their own wives and children to be Bateman’s wives, according to an FBI affidavit.
The document filed Friday provides new insight into what investigators have found in a case that first became public in August, when authorities said they pulled over Bateman on a highway and discovered he was driving three young girls in an enclosed trailer.
The latest filing accompanied charges of kidnapping and impeding a foreseeable prosecution against three of Bateman’s wives — Naomi Bistline, Donnae Barlow and Moretta Rose Johnson. Bateman is already facing state and federal charges of child abuse and tampering with evidence. He pleaded not guilty in September.
Bistline and Barlow are scheduled to appear in federal magistrate court in
Flagstaff on Wednesday. Johnson is awaiting extradition from Washington state.
The women are accused of seizing eight girls who Bateman considered his wives from Arizona state custody and fleeing with them. The children were found last week hundreds of miles away in Spokane, Washington.
Bateman once tried to take his only daughter as a wife, according to court filings, but she told her mother about her father’s plan and the mother and daughter moved out and got a restraining order against Bateman. The mother was Bateman’s only wife in 2019, before Bateman started taking more wives.
Bateman was arrested in August when someone spotted small fingers in the gap of a trailer he was hauling through Flagstaff. He posted bond but was arrested again and charged with obstructing justice in a federal investigation into whether children were being transported across state lines for sexual activity.
Court records allege that Bateman, 46, engaged in child sex trafficking and polygamy, but none of his current charges relate to those allegations.
Polygamy is illegal in Arizona but was decriminalized in Utah in 2020.
Arizona Department of Child Services spokesperson Darren DaRonco and FBI spokesperson Kevin Smith declined to comment on the case Tuesday.
Bistline’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment, and Barlow’s attorney declined to comment. Johnson didn’t have a publicly listed attorney.
The FBI affidavit filed in the women’s case largely centers on Bateman, who proclaimed himself a prophet in 2019. Bateman says he was told by former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs to invoke the “Spirit of God on these people.” The affidavit details explicit sexual acts that Bateman and his followers engaged in to fulfill “Godly duties.”
Jeffs is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for child sex abuse related to underage marriages.
Criminal defense attorney Michael Piccarreta, who represented Jeffs on Arizona charges that were dismissed, said the state has a history of trying to take a stand against polygamy by charging relatively minor offenses to build bigger cases.
“Whether this is the same tactic that has been used in the past or whether there’s more to the story, only time will tell,” he said.