Samuel Bateman became a new polygamous prophet after FLDS leader Warren Jeffs was sent to prison. He rose to power quickly — until federal agents raided Bateman’s home for evidence of underage marriages. 1/4
Bateman grew up in Short Creek in the 1980s in a Colorado City home in the center of town, close to the Utah-Arizona state line.
Bateman’s father left the FLDS Church in 1996 and stopped practicing polygamy, asking his “junior wife” to leave, he laterDeLoy Bateman had grown frustrated as he saw teenage girls leave school to be married, usually to much older men, and especially after Warren Jeffs moved into a leadership role, he said in the 2001 interview. “When Warren hit, we hardly had any high school girls left.”
The two young sisters said they were being sent to Winston Blackmore, a polygamous leader in British Columbia. It wasn’t unusual for rebellious kids in Short Creek to stay there, the sisters recalled in a recent interview, with the idea that Blackmore would set them straight. The Cooke sisters had been caught sneaking out to hang out with boys, they said, and were rebellious by FLDS standards.
“A lot of it centered around how he had been rebellious, but he’d been forgiven,” Jami Cooke remembered. “Once that happened, he had devoted himself to doing what’s right and devoted himself to the Prophet and the Lord.”As it turned dark, the girls fell asleep draped over one another as they rode through Montana. The next thing Victoria Cooke remembers is waking up to the Suburban rolling.
But Jeffs soon drew the attention of the FBI, making the agency’s top 10 Most Wanted list after he was charged with having sexual contact with girls he had taken as polygamous wives. He was arrested in 2006. But since his arrest in 2006, there had been no new marriages in the community because Jeffs was the only one who could officiate weddings. In late 2010, he told his followers, including married couples, to practice abstinence as part of a cleansing of his church.
Those who spoke to The Tribune asked not to be identified because of sensitivity surrounding speaking publicly about their religious beliefs.In a recording of a phone call uploaded to YouTube, a man can be heard saying that the Lord spoke to him and told him to “surrender” his wives and children to Bateman. Saying each of his wives by name, the man declared it so.Vision boards, Bentleys and a white leather jacketBateman and his followers returned to Short Creek in 2021.
He mentioned in a YouTube video that he had a dream about this new home — a 40-bedroom multimillion dollar marble mansion with an indoor swimming pool where he could bring the queen of England for a visit. He also dreamed of this visit, he said on the video, and had been working to manifest that meeting.
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