Trust Me: The False Prophet | Crime Seen episode 196

[00:00:24] I'm Sarah Carradine, podcasting from unceded Gadigal land. I'm Mari Forth. And this is Crime Seen, the True Crime Review podcast, where we get to the heart of how true crime stories are told. We have some true crime news today. A 16-year-old, identified only as T.H., has been charged with sexually assaulting and intentionally killing his stepsister, Anna

[00:00:49] Kepner, on a family cruise while the ship was in international waters. She's 18, which is why we know her name. This happened in November 2025. Initially, he was charged as a juvenile, but last week, prosecutors indicted him as an adult. Her father, Christopher, said that the family is deeply troubled that despite the seriousness of the charges, he has not been taken into custody. So, Mari, this is the intersection of our conversations on crime on a cruise ship and charging adolescents.

[00:01:19] As adults, I mean, he wrapped her in a blanket, he pushed her under a bed, and he covered that with life vests. These are not the actions of a grown brain. Yeah, oh my god, that's so sad to hear. In more crime news, Rex Howerman, the Long Island serial killer, has accepted a plea agreement. He has pled guilty to eight sexual assaults, murders, and dismemberments. He had to stand in front of a judge and say, yes, I did all these things to these women,

[00:01:49] and he had to name them. The agreement is to serve several life sentences without the possibility of parole. Yeah, good. Last week, we watched The Truth and Tragedy of Mariah Wilson, our 200th episode with third chair, Sarah B. Bunting. Sarah, what did we watch this week? We watched. Many people watched. We had lots of people asking us to watch, and we wanted to watch.

[00:02:17] Trust me, The False Prophet, the four-part docuseries, which is number one in Netflix in both our countries today, Mari. One of the four women who directed this is Rachel Beth Anderson, who directed Great Photo, Lovely Life, which we reviewed and liked very much. And another is Rachel Dretzen, who was one of the producers on Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. Yes. Before we get to the crime, the documentary and our discussion in part, we'll talk about

[00:02:47] coercive control, sexual assault, including child sexual abuse. If that's not for you today, and who can blame you, you can hop off. We'll see you next week. Either way, we'd like to give you some resources and we'll link to these in the show notes. In Australia, you can call 1800RESPECT, that's 1800 737 732, or 1800RESPECT.org.au, and that is for sexual, domestic and family violence

[00:03:15] support. There is also the National Redress Scheme on 1800 737 377, or nationalredress.gov.au. For information support and to make an application, if you have experienced institutional child sexual abuse in Australia, you can apply until the end of June 2027.

[00:03:39] In the US, you can call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1800 656 4673, or go to RAINN.org, that's R-A-I-N-N.org, or you can find support at the 24-7 Child Help

[00:03:58] National Child Abuse Hotline by calling 1-800-4-A-CHILD, or 1-800-422-4453. You can also go to childhelp.org. Mari, one day we won't need those numbers, but that day is not today. Yeah. So it's just us today, Mari, just family, so we're going to dive straight into the crime. We have a lot to talk about.

[00:04:27] Yes, we do. Back in 2022, in our 14th episode, we covered the documentary, Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. Oh, my gosh. Mm-hmm. 14th episode? Yeah. We were so young. I know. What? That covered the crimes of leaders of the FLDS up until the 2011 sentencing of Warren Jeffs to life imprisonment plus 20 years.

[00:04:57] He is eligible for parole in 2038. So trust me, the false prophet, which we're talking about today, that shows that the coercive control, religious abuse, sexual assault, and sexual, physical, psychological, emotional, and financial abuse that seems to be inherent in the FLDS continued unchecked. Warren Jeffs continued to control the cult from prison because he wasn't having any sex.

[00:05:25] He instructed his followers not to have any sex either. But Warren, you can get sex in jail. There's plenty of sex in jail. But anyway, the FLDS was a disintegrated community with no new babies being born despite the commandment that not a year should go by without a woman giving birth. Bluch. Sorry, I didn't mean to editorialize, but bluch.

[00:05:48] So along comes Samuel Bateman, first with one, then two, then three, and then more new wives and babies, lots and lots of babies. He tells the faithful that Warren Jeffs has died in prison. The media's been lying. He's not alive. He's dead. And that Jeffs has anointed him from beyond the grave to be the prophet to take over, just as Warren had said his father Rulon Jeffs had done.

[00:06:15] Documentary filmmaker Tolga Katas and his wife Christine Marie moved to Short Creek. Christine is an ex-Mormon, also an ex-ventriloquist, ex-Miss Michigan, ex-escapologist, and now doctor of psychology. She and Tolga set out to make a documentary about the other side of the community, as they put it, the kindness, the communality, the spiritual faith, and so on.

[00:06:40] Instead, they documented Bateman's polygamous marriages to 23 wives, including nine minor girls. They were of material assistance in the charging and sentencing of Samuel Bateman to 50 years in jail, to two of his male followers being sentenced to 35 years and a life sentence, and eight of his adult wives got prison sentences. That is a drop in the ocean.

[00:07:09] This is something definitely to watch. We are going to talk about our reactions to it and various things like that. It would not be possible, even if we wanted to, to spoil everything that happens in these four episodes. So, Marie, let me first ask you for your overall thoughts, and then we'll get into the construction of the four parts and what each episode covers. Yeah. Yeah. Overall thoughts was it was very engaging, though it did not feel like four episodes.

[00:07:38] Like, it did and it didn't. I was like, yeah, they had way more than enough material to make four episodes. This didn't feel like a stretch. This didn't feel like a lag. This felt needed. It was very engrossing in a fascinating yet disgusting way. Yeah. And it's just like one of those things where you're so uncomfortable that I'm chuckling because of how uncomfortable I was.

[00:08:05] I had people texting me like, imagine being in a cult run by a leader who is not charismatic, who is doing parkour and dress slacks and a button up. What are we doing here? It was just so cartoonish in a way, the way that Samuel Bateman acted. And it really, it really didn't make me want to know timelines. Like, this is one of those documentaries that makes you want to, like, just delve deep into the FLDS and all of that.

[00:08:35] Because, like you said, we watched Keep Sweet, Pray and Obey. And that was such a, that was so interesting too. And this is beyond that. And it's like you forget that that stuff is still happening for them, you know, right now. So is Warren Jeff dead or no? No. No. Right. I was like, wait, what? And that was my thing. I'm like, why are they following him?

[00:09:04] So I do have some theories on that that I'm sure we'll talk about. But yeah, overall, I understand why it's number one. I do think it was very engaging, very engrossing. I learned a lot. It was, it was fascinating. How about you, Sarah? What was your overall thoughts? Well, no, you're not going to get any argument from me. I thought, oh, four episodes. Okay, here we go.

[00:09:31] And literally could have done six. I could have spent a lot, six hours more in the company of Christine Marie, who is an incredible one. She's so inspiring. Her radical empathy makes me ashamed of how, you know, how dismissively I deal with people in places like the FLDA

[00:09:57] or who are seeking a religious home somewhere. I, to a lesser extent, Tolga, but I could, I wanted more of Tolga. He was very, very interesting as well. So they moved to Short Creek. She says she feels called. She's an ex-Mormon, but she presumably still has a spiritual life. I mean, I'm assuming that. She doesn't say it. But she does say she was called to go there.

[00:10:23] And her, one of the things I didn't say that the documentary covers is her internal struggle with what she calls her betrayal of these women. Because they trust her because she says she loves them and she actually does love them. And she wants to help them. And she goes in initially very non-judgmentally and then finds herself in a situation where she has to treat Bateman.

[00:10:52] She cannot show him her revulsion for what he's doing. And it's about her love for the women and her desire to help them. There's not a saviour complex. This is a courageous woman and man, Tolga, going in to save these victims. They are victims. Some of them are now survivors. So we are fascinated by the FLDS, by cults, horrified and fascinated by the crimes.

[00:11:21] But what really stitches the four episodes together for me is the Christine and Tolga of it all. I completely agree. I completely agree. We've talked about, when we were talking about the TikTok killer, and we were talking about how the mother of the victim had to go along with pretending like she believed that he was trying to help her find her daughter,

[00:11:49] all the while strongly believing that he was her killer. And the fortitude that you have to be to keep that together. And Christine and Tolga having to do that for years, right? Did they end up saying just how many years? I think it's a couple of years, but I would have thought 15 minutes in Bateman's presence would be more than I could stand.

[00:12:20] And she's inspiring. I was just thinking about that, you know, as I said, radical empathy. And I thought, yeah, there she is. It really is amazing at how compartmentalized you can be. But it comes from a place of love. Like she was really trying to get to know these women. She was really trying to get these women to trust her. It wasn't an act. It wasn't a sham. She was trying to help them.

[00:12:47] Because they're trying to help Mormons, FDLS members who are being evicted because of the state, because of what's going on with Warren Jeffs. And even I'm at the beginning of that, I'm like, wait, why are you kicking them out of their houses, their homesteads? Like, I get we don't agree with, you know, how they're living and all of that and what their belief is causing to their children and stuff like that.

[00:13:15] But why are we kicking them out of their homes? And that's originally what Christine and Tolga are out there in Short Creek to do to help the greater FLDS community deal with Jeffs being in prison and how they can how they maintain life while he's there. And then it just evolves into a documentary about Samuel Bateman and then the documentary of the takedown of Samuel Bateman. So, yes.

[00:13:45] Great flow to this. Great, great flow. So, the first episode when I wrote down a summary of my notes because I had pages and pages of notes which either means a documentary is really bad or it's really good, as does taking no notes. It also means that. And even as I was writing my extended notes, I thought, well, I won't be using all of this.

[00:14:07] But I sort of wanted to mark what was happening and really think about what was happening, as I say, because of my sort of knee-jerk reaction to be dismissive of people of this is sort of extreme faith. And so, Christine really led me to open my cold, dead heart just a little bit. I was just about to say, she got through your cold, atheist heart there. That's right. She sure did.

[00:14:34] So, when I summarise the first episode, I see that it's introduction to Christine and Tolga, introduction to the FLDS, introduction to Bateman, introduction. So, it's a lot of table setting but you don't feel it. It doesn't feel stilted. It doesn't feel like they're getting ready to get ready. It feels like it starts from the first frame when we are talking to women in FLDS, a garb who we later see right at the end. They're still FLDS.

[00:15:04] So, it was never her intention to get them out of the cold. Her intention was to make them safe and loved. So, I thought that was interesting. And it ends in the cliffhanger of Bateman confessing that he had an impression. Apparently, when Heavenly Father tells you to do something, you get an impression from him. And he had an impression that he had to give his girls, they're constantly referred to as girls. Some of them are girls but some of them are women in their 20s and older.

[00:15:34] He refers to all his wives as girls. So, Heavenly Father told him to give his girls to other men and how incredibly painful that was for him to have to watch other men have sex with his girls. So, boo-hoo, Bateman. It was really, really hard for me. Was this escalation faster than you thought? Were you waiting for it? What did you know before you went in?

[00:16:00] Thank you for asking this because I was thinking this while you were talking. To be quite honest, if his face wasn't blasted at all on the Netflix thing, then that first episode did a really good job of just, like, I was like, oh, Christine is here to help. You know what I'm saying? Like, because that's what it is, right? Trust me, you know, it's her and a lot of the main picture art is her and with women in FDLS dress.

[00:16:28] So, you would think that it's, like, a woman trying to help out. But because Netflix and the trailer kind of leads you to, you know, where it's going, I wasn't shocked at the end in a sense of, like, I knew he was, I knew it was bad. I was shocked at finding out how bad it was, though.

[00:16:52] But I will say Netflix did toe the line of letting us know exactly what we needed to know about what happened without being overly salacious about this because it is minors here. So, and what I wanted to, what I put a pin in earlier was, so, we got Sam Bateman, right? Sam Bateman is, of course, the face of this. We get Moroni because Moroni's wife, Julia, is sitting here talking with us.

[00:17:20] She helps bring them down. We get footage of Moroni as well. We do not hear from the Biceline brothers, right? And by the fourth episode, we know why. And the fact that there's a lot of unspoken things for me with the Biceline brothers. We are told that they are the ones that are funding a lot of this. I must have missed it, but I didn't realize it to the end.

[00:17:49] Naomi was one of the Biceline's daughters. Essentially, they were the money behind this child sex ring. And essentially, they, you know, we know that Moroni gave his five daughters to Sam. And then the Biceline gave some of their daughters. And some of his wives. Yes, you're right. And some of his wives. Lord Jesus. And the Bicelines gave their daughters. They basically were just exchanging their daughters.

[00:18:19] And again, having sex parties, I know, with all the children in the room. And so, I say all that to say. Not to be too graphic, but not only were children being sexually assaulted. It's still a sexual assault if you have sex in front of a child, which was also happening. Yes. And some of Bateman's wives now in their early 20s had been minor when he married them. Yes.

[00:18:48] So, to hear him on this tape, which Christine does her own reenactment. It's very, it would be cute if it wasn't disgusting. They're in a car and she realizes he's about to say, so she doesn't realize what he's going to say. But she thinks he's about to say something. So, she reaches down into her bag and gets her phone and turns it on to record. And we have this, if you want to know why he said it, it's because he was poor me. It was so self-serving.

[00:19:17] Which means no sense. That heavenly father made me go through and I had to do it because he was testing me. It was very painful for me. Ugh. And Sarah, it's typical abuser behavior, right? Because he's testing them, right? He's telling them like, he's dipping his toe into telling them about the child sex abuse to see how they respond to it. Yes. You know what I'm saying? He's like, oh, poor me. We had to do this thing.

[00:19:45] And the three girls, the young girls are here in the car. What did you guys think? Were you guys scared? No, it was okay. It was fine. You know what I'm saying? Like, he was testing him. And we hear him telling them to say that it was fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. It was chilling. Yeah. It was chilling. And I thought that was, again, a great way to end the first episode.

[00:20:10] I did not, I truly did not feel like they were over sensationalizing this. I didn't feel like we have to do the comparison. It was not Jared from Subway. Oh, no. Everybody take a drink. I know. I thought about Jared from Subway. It was not gratuitous.

[00:20:31] Because there's also, you know, her going undercover and her, in Jared from Subway, her driving at two in the morning to exchange tapes out a window. I mean, she thinks she's Christine. She is not Christine's little toenail. That woman whose name escapes me and I have no desire to go and find out. Do not watch Jared from Subway. But by all means, listen to us covering it. Because you'll get a good laugh. So in the second episode, we have Christine and Tolga gaining Bateman's trust.

[00:21:00] They have to decide between themselves. And they do take themselves having discussions. He's a documentary filmmaker, so it's second nature to him to do that. And I really appreciated being led into their thought process. So they gain his trust. They gain the women's trust. They are trying to gather evidence. You can see that Christine can't push. She knows she can't push because she'll lose them. And the other side of it is trying to get law enforcement to do something.

[00:21:30] And we do meet the sergeant that she gives the tape to. He can't quite remember what it says because he only listened to it once because he didn't want to burden himself with having heard it more than once. Sir, it's your job. Oh, my God. When I tell you, I was like, oh, so y'all just sit on your asses and eat donuts. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:56] The 13 of y'all for the Colorado City Police, I believe it is. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, at the end, we, you know, at one point they said there's only eight of us. Yeah. Tolga's gone to help with the takedown. And Christine's saying, no, no, no, don't do it. And he said, there's only eight of us. Fantastic. Fantastic. Of course you don't want to burden yourself. No. Oh, we don't have any evidence. Y'all don't want to do anything. Ugh.

[00:22:25] So she continues to love on them, listen, pick up babies, kiss babies. Like it's genuine. Otherwise they never would have let her in. So it has, we know it's genuine, I think. We get the covert defection of Julia. And again, going back to the summary, I thought that's quite early in the docu-series because I would have thought it was later. But this is key. Yeah. Julia, who was married to Moroni, Moroni gave her to Bateman. She and her husband gave their children.

[00:22:55] I mean, she carries that. And she comes to Christine. Christine feels that she's almost ready to put her toe out. And so Christine tells Julia her story. And in telling Julia her story, she tells us her story. So this is halfway, halfway through the docu-series we find out about Christine's backstory. What did you think about the placement of that?

[00:23:23] In that it was the moment that she revealed it to Julia to help her defect. And that in that way we find out too. So well-placed. So well-placed. Because we do know at the beginning, she does say that she's ex-Mormon. She does flirt with a little bit like, yeah, my husband was a false prophet. I was able to get out. And then we go about our business. And then we come back here.

[00:23:50] And when she tells her story, man, I was just like, how does this keep happening? How does this keep happening in this religion? And I know that you, I know, we know your stance on religion. And yeah. And I have to try and remind myself as a form, as not a religious person, but again, as a spiritual person. That it's not, to me, it's not the religion that begets the bad people.

[00:24:20] It's that the bad people flock to the religion. Because they know. I absolutely agree with that. Yes. They know that they can get away with a lot of stuff. Because of. God told me. Heavenly Father told me to do it. Exactly. false prophet.

[00:24:43] But in the Mormon religion, we do know that men supplicate themselves to God and women have to submit themselves to their husband. And so he was like intentionally pushing her, pushing her sexually to do things until at one point he's telling her that God wants her to sleep with other men for him in front of him for money.

[00:25:10] And Christine, thankfully, was able to get out of that situation. Like we said, she found herself in being a magician and escape artist and eventually going to school and getting her doctorate in psychology. She told us about how she was in a very dark point in her life. And how she at one point believed everything like kind of like these women did too.

[00:25:40] And so hearing her story, I was like, man, this, this, it was just so touching. It was so touching. It was so well placed. It, it, it made me so sad for her. Cause again, I'm like, why, why, why does this keep happening? But it also just made her seem so resilient. And I, I think it, it was the catalyst for Julia because it's like, if she can do it, I can do it too. If she can get out, I can get out too. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:26:09] I mean, it's, it was, that marriage was a cult of two basically. So a cult doesn't have to be a huge group of people. It can be the coercive control of one, one by another. Yeah, I agree with you. I think the placement's absolutely perfect. The Julia of it all is amazing and a revelation. And the fact that she's being interviewed now still in the FLDS at Garb. I thought, yep, this is, her faith is very, very important to her.

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[00:27:33] Auf Zuzahlungen und mitbestellte Produkte. Na, schmeckt dir die Idee? Dann probier's jetzt aus in der Shop-Apotheke-App. Episode 3. Hurra! Special Agent Dawn. Oh, no. The FBI. So finally Christine has badgered and badgered the local law enforcement to bring in the FBI. They say we can't bring in the FBI because it has to be multi-state.

[00:28:01] And she says, well, it is multi-state. Here, here, here and here it's multi-state. And they go, oh, oh, okay. We'll call the FBI. Go and meet Dawn. She is an FBI agent. It's her last case, Marie. Yeah. It's her last case.

[00:28:27] And she is going to tell us with a little tear in her eye at the end after being very stoic and very factual, there will be a little tear in her eye when she says this was my last case and it's what I became an FBI agent to do. Destiny, really. So here's Dawn. So Christine and Tolga have been begging for support and getting none. Again, we have seen their confusion. We have seen we don't know what to do. Like we're undercover but who knows that we are

[00:28:55] and who knows that we're not, you know, involved and who is there to debrief us and help us, which is why undercover agents have a handler. And finally, Special Agent Dawn is there to support them, to tell them exactly what they need because they've just been recording anything at all. She is able to say these are the pieces of evidence that we need and so they can go and find the birth certificates, they can go and find the things that they didn't know were going

[00:29:25] to be useful and plan the takedown. So after Special Agent Dawn enters, things start to go pretty quickly. Now we've seen all the way through Naomi clinging on to Bateman, draping over Bateman with this face of, I mean, you can read her face like a book, but she says she loves him. Right at the end of Episode 3 we have an empty chair and I thought I know who's coming to sit in that chair and it's Naomi.

[00:29:54] So what did you think about this third episode? Suddenly things start to move, even though it's actually a longer episode. It's the longest episode of the four. But it feels like this is where things started to move and maybe it felt like that for Christine and Tolga as well. I completely agree. I thought Naomi, I'm pretty sure, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm pretty sure it was this episode where we get the first montage of her. Was it this episode or episode two? Yeah, this is the montage. Was it this one?

[00:30:22] We've seen her, but this was the Naomi montage, yes. Which was, I thought, really well done in a scary way, right? Because in this first montage, it's like, yeah, he has this wife named Naomi. She goes by gnomes and she's kind of one of the most dedicated ones to him. And we get this montage of her just at his knee all the time, hanging all over him.

[00:30:52] The, like, being the wife that is there. It's like she has to be physically clinging on to him. Like, she doesn't feel safe unless she's clinging on to him. It's her and, I believe, Moretta, who I think are the two, yeah, the two wives that, to me, really stood out in the first few episodes. They were the older of the wives.

[00:31:15] I do believe they, like, Moretta especially, who we find out is Moroni and Julia's daughter. I believe she was of age and she was the first wife that was introduced to Christine and Tolga. Naomi was third, second or third or something like that. Not the second or third wife, but the second or third that we meet, yes. Yeah, that we meet, yeah. And my understanding is they were of age-ish.

[00:31:43] Yeah, so Naomi's 23 now. So I think she was of age. I think Moretta's slightly younger, but they're both in their early 20s. Now, Mr. Bateman also has older wives or there are older women around. Maybe they are beards for him, I think, because he do like them young, like a certain other powerful man.

[00:32:07] Yeah, but I did grapple with this Naomi montage because I forget who was talking during the montage. Was it, like, her brother or somebody? Why do I feel like it was? Somebody was talking about how before she was with Sam, she was outgoing, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You know what I'm saying? I think it's her aunt because later she lives with her aunt after she gets out of jail.

[00:32:37] That's what it is. Tozzie? Tolly? Nettie? Cousin? Something? I think you're right. So we have her aunt talking about young Naomi and young gnomes and how she was before she sent off with Sam and how now she is just one of his most devout. And I was like, okay. You know, I was like, okay. So this means she's the most devout. She's here.

[00:33:05] I was like, okay, so eventually I'm hoping she'll get away, right? And then at the end of episode three, she sits down in the chair. I'm like, oh, great. We're going to hear her. Episode four, Sarah, I was like, oh. Yeah. I was like, I don't know. Me too. Me too. So episode four gives us the arrests. Christine's struggling with the betrayal of the women.

[00:33:28] We see Naomi really spearheading, keeping in touch with Sam Bateman in jail, getting Torrance, one of the other brothers, to put money for him so that he can continually have these video calls. Because if you have enough money, you can have a video call from jail. He sends them to kidnap the minor children who've been removed and placed in a group home. So they get kidnapped.

[00:33:54] They are found and then they are returned to separate homes. And after going to separate homes, one of them comes forward. This is Julia's daughter to say that man had sex with me because this is what Special Agent Dawn has been waiting for. There's plenty of evidence, but she says we need one of the minor children to say this happened to me.

[00:34:21] So interesting what happens when they get out of the influence of even each other, even the other women. Naomi and Marietta are both sent to jail for a period of time, a year, a matter of months. And they both say that's what set them free, was going to jail. And Naomi is now studying psychology. Naomi did such a good job as episode four is unfolding and they're talking about the takedown. They talk about how mad she was in the moment.

[00:34:50] Like she was, I mean, just excellent here. Such a, you could tell she's a woman who's healing. You could tell that she learned from it. I think the title of episode four was, what was it? I look at that girl in third person. In the third person, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Also, it should be noted, she said to Samuel, I am suspicious of Christine and Tolga. She did, yes.

[00:35:18] He said, how dare you? And if you say that again, it means you don't trust me and you'll be punished. It's like, well, Naomi was the smart one. Naomi knew. Yeah, exactly. And that's why we were both kind of like, uh-oh, because she was talking about how she didn't trust them. She was talking about how she slowly was starting to put it together, like there is a traitor among us. Like she was, we even had the footage of it, you know, from the takedown and stuff like that.

[00:35:46] And she's like, we had the footage of her talking about how she threw some documents out the window in a bathroom. Like she was clever. Super, really, really clever. You know? Super smart, yeah. Super smart. And again, it was a few weeks after he's arrested. The DCS, Department of Child Services, we'll get to you in a second. You sit there. But they told them. Mary's face. I sat down.

[00:36:17] They told them like immediately, they're like, hey, don't come for these children. If you're, even if you're the parent for these children, these minor children, if you come for them, you will be charged with kidnapping. They, DCS told them before they left. So with Sam still making his calls every day, still having them under this thumb, he still convinced them, the older wives, to go and kidnap those children.

[00:36:44] And especially Maretta and Naomi, they're very lucky that they only got, I think it was like 21 months and a little bit over a year, like you said. Because kidnapping, that can be a life sentence. Kidnapping can run you life. Kidnapping nine people? Is that nine lives? I mean, they don't go into it, but I would assume that mitigating circumstances would have been brought in. But Maretta's really happy that she went to jail. I mean. Both of them.

[00:37:12] Like they really, because you're able to get out of that bubble. And Maretta says like, she just got, she just got to sit there and think. And when you're actually thinking and not being bombarded with indoctrination every day, because that's what indoctrination does, it replaces your thinking. And it just makes your baseline whatever you're being indoctrinated with. When you actually sit down and think about it, why would your God okay this?

[00:37:42] All of this stuff. You can think through this stuff that doesn't make sense. And the fact that they, that, yeah, like you said, prison is what freed them, is what Maretta says. It was so powerful. Yes. And fascinating because Naomi actually takes us through the thought process. She's still FLDS. She's still Heavenly Father. She's still, you know, Samuel Bateman is a prophet and clings to him and all of that.

[00:38:09] But on a phone call with him, totally devoted, she hasn't gone to jail yet. He says something about that he's been in jail for a year. And she thinks to herself, no, you haven't. It's only been eight months. And that is the thread that pulled, like amazing, this tiny lie, this little fact. But I think her brain was, something in the back of her brain was yelling at her.

[00:38:37] And this gave her the thread. She started to pull and she thought, if he lied about that, what else has he lied about? And the whole thing came, came tumbling down. Yeah. I believe she said it was when they were, they were going to a hearing and that they had put her and Sam right next to each other. Yes, that's right. Yes. And he talked to her for four hours. Four hours. And, and, can you believe that? And, and she's just like.

[00:39:08] What? Yeah. Like, man. Like, she was probably sitting there like, I can't believe I used to listen to this for four hours. And now just listening to it for four hours and questioning it all. So, yeah, she was able to really get out of that. You know, he was, he was poor me. He was something like, I haven't been hugged in, you get hugged every day and I haven't been hugged in over a year that I've been in jail. And she was like, no. Right. Exactly. You're exactly that. Yeah.

[00:39:36] I believe you wanted to scream about DCS. Yes. Because first off the FBI is sitting here, this operation they've been working on for years. They're trying to get this raid going. DCS shows up. They're like, oh, we had no clue DCS is showing up. I guess the minor children have to go with them. That kind of sucks for us because we kind of need the minor children. We would have liked to talk to them. Yes. To talk to them first before you just stick them in a group home. Okay.

[00:40:06] Sure. Fine. But then while these girls are in a group home, they're not supposed to have a phone. They find a phone. It's a group home. So yes, of course, they're going to get a phone. They're still contacting Samuel Bateman. They're still contacting the older wives. This is why it honestly took so long for it to break apart because DCS, I truly believe it's because DCS handled it poorly by keeping them all together like that.

[00:40:32] Not only that, DCS, DCS woman had, I guess, the notes of the case and she just tears them up and throws them in the trash in front of those girls. They grab it out of the trash, put it together. And on those notes, they find out that Christine, Tolga, and Julia are the people who are responsible for the raid and what's happening to them.

[00:40:57] And it just, it just sets them again, sets them all back because Julia was making preparations to get her younger kids. She wanted, you know, them in a safe place to tell them all of that. Christine was still working with them. They find this out. Naomi starts sending text messages to Christine, calling her all sorts of names. Like the language in those texts is, is, I mean, I've used it myself, but I was, you know, aren't you a good Mormon lady? Yeah.

[00:41:26] Julia in particular wanted to tell, wanted to get her daughters home with her. She was going to tell them, but she would have told them herself in the right way at the right time. So DCS can eat a big dead dick. Honestly, DCS freaking sucks. Like, like, it's such an important job.

[00:41:49] And the fact that it doesn't get done properly in cases like this is so frustrating because, because of this, this severs those kids connections to the only responsible adults in this situation and basically sparks this kidnapping. Yes. Because they still were trusting Christine. They were still trusting Julia. So there was a thread connecting them to safety.

[00:42:17] There's a world in which DCS mucks up the case so badly that it doesn't go through and these women are never freed. So boo. Yeah, exactly. I have a question for you. Okay. Would Bateman have been charged without Christine Marie and Tolga? No, no. Because who? Colorado City Police going to do something? No. All the way to them. They don't want to be burdened, Marie.

[00:42:47] They do not want to be burdened. Exactly. It wouldn't have happened. It, it had to be the inclusion of the FBI. It had to be Christine and Tolga getting those confessions. And again, it's the reason why I'm looking at Short Creek and over there and wondering how, what other stuff is happening because the police force can't get off their butts to do anything. Terrible.

[00:43:13] Sadly, without this, without them going there to help in a different way and without Samuel Bateman being an egotistical maniac who wanted the spotlight on himself, none of this would have broke free. And those poor women and children and girls would still be there being abused to this day. Yeah. Yeah. So before we get to our ratings, let's hear from listener Lisa, who sent us her review

[00:43:43] via SpeakPipe. Hi, Mari and Sarah. It's your true crime friend, Lisa. I'm so happy you are reviewing Trust Me, The False Prophet. I came across it after reading an article in a magazine and was hooked. I was drawn in immediately by Christine Marie and how she told this story. I had watched all of the Warren Jeffs documentary and really had hope that once he was removed, the abuse would have stopped in the FLDS. But boy, was I wrong. As we soon find out, someone else just came along and continued where he left off.

[00:44:13] That said, I want to give credit to all the women who came forward and allowed their stories to be told and heard. I was even more impressed by the bravery of Julia, who had the strength to come forward and reveal the truth to save these young women. And a big shout out to the FBI agent who took these women seriously and did everything to move the investigation along. I am so glad that justice was served against these men. I also appreciated the sensitivity and manner in the way this story was told. Yes, there is a trigger warning.

[00:44:43] And just know that at times there are some very horrific details about what was done. So it might not be for everyone. But I do think it was interesting, well done, and have already told several friends to watch. I highly suggest checking it out. Thanks a lot. Bye. Yay. Lisa. Lisa's coming for the third chair spot there. Yeah. She's coming for Sarah. That was great. Watch out. Yes. That was exactly right.

[00:45:10] We're happy to receive reviews, commentary, or just say hello, messages from our listeners. We like them any old way, but SpeakPipe is our favorite. That's SpeakPipe.com slash CrimeScenePod. Thank you, Lisa. That is great. So, Mari, how many magnifying glasses would you give, trust me, the false prophet out of a possible five? I gotta give it a five. Good Lord. I know, am I passing these five out like Skittles?

[00:45:39] I, again, I don't see a fault in this documentary. I truly don't. The production is great. The storytelling is great. The subject is captivating in a, you know, in a sad way, but a triumphant way. The length, surprisingly, four episodes, great. I truly, I would literally just be taking points away just so I wouldn't have to give it a five. So, I'll give it a five, Sarah. How about you?

[00:46:08] How many magnifying glasses are you going to give, trust me? It has to be five. I was ready to, I had a half already off because it was four episodes, and then I had to sheepishly put it back on because it needed to be four episodes. You don't feel the four episodes, and it's so skillfully made. I love spending time with these, mostly the women, but Tolga as well is quite a powerful, although more behind-the-scenes presence. So, yes, five from me.

[00:46:38] Yeah. Samari, what do you have to recommend to our listeners? So, I have to recommend, I mean, I love me a good Netflix reality TV show, so The Million Dollar Secret is back. Yes, that was on my list too. They are so bad at advertising and marketing. I did not know this was coming out until it was out because everybody's- Yeah.

[00:47:04] And the only reason why it's on my timeline is because I follow people who are obsessed with reality TV like me. If I was just a regular person, I would have no idea this was out. Yeah. So good. So good. It's so good. So if you're not familiar with Million Dollar Secret, it is basically, it's essentially the traitors and the mole all wrapped into one with better mechanics to me. So like with better game mechanics to be quite honest.

[00:47:34] So basically, people are given little animal avatars. I still kind of understand why they're there, but I'm like, okay, I guess. Well, you're the bear, you're the snake, you're the fish, whatever. But basically, people go into these rooms, they pick rooms, and one person is a secret millionaire. They have a million dollars. Their goal is to keep that million dollars. Their goal is so that nobody suspects them of being the secret millionaire. However, along the way, they're giving tasks that they have to do.

[00:48:03] So one of the first tasks was, you have to say a phrase 10 times in conversation. Meanwhile, everybody who's not the millionaire is hunting them. And I guess that's kind of why it's like they get the animals. Like the other people are looking for the millionaire because they're trying to vote the millionaire out. Because when they vote the secret millionaire out, the million dollars gets redistributed. And the goal is to be the person with the million dollars at the end of the show.

[00:48:32] So it is so compelling. The people are so good. I believe it's the first four episodes have dropped and it's already a game changer. Again, I love the game mechanics of this year because people are hunting for the millionaire. The millionaire has to do these tasks. The tasks that they do can actually give people clues to who they are. And that's another thing. The non-millionaire people can win clues to the identity of the millionaire.

[00:49:01] That's what elevates it. That's what elevates it. Thank you, Sarah. That is literally what elevates it because it's clues like the secret millionaire is the firstborn. So because it's clues like that, people are, everybody is actively lying if you're the secret millionaire. Because you may not be the millionaire now, but you might be the millionaire next time. And so you don't want to give away your birth order or whatever it might be.

[00:49:33] Look, I like the activities in the traders. I like it when they go out and earn money. If they're going to get the money anyway, it sort of doesn't matter. But I like to watch them. Here, the tasks really have consequences because if you win the task, you get to go and get a clue. And if you have a clue, you can find the millionaire. You can vote the millionaire out. And then maybe the million dollars will come to you. So it has a really strong flow to it. It's also in an amazing property.

[00:50:02] Peter Serafinowicz is divine. He's the host. He's very urbane. And they dress up for dinner and they dress up for cocktails. So you've got people, you know, in their glad rags as well. It's amazing. It's such a good show. It's so underrated. And Netflix is horrendous at marketing because this should be traders. Like people are obsessed with traders and traders feels like it burst into the mainstream.

[00:50:28] Like, of course, we knew about it, but it literally bursted into the mainstream. Million Dollar Secret should be up there with traders. It truly should. Yeah. Sarah, what do you have to recommend to our listeners? Well, it's all Netflix all the time in this episode. So we have our main topics on Netflix, Million Dollar Secrets on Netflix. Wrinkles the Clown has dropped on Netflix. I have spoken about it before. It's wild. It's super creepy.

[00:50:56] It's a documentary film about a clown who Florida parents hire to scare the shit out of their misbehaving children. I would love our listeners to watch it and send us a speak pipe letting us know what they think. Dan Levy's new series, Big Mistakes, has dropped on Netflix. It is just fantastic. It's what I wanted it to be and more. And, of course, Murray, the untold series continues. The one we both watched this week was Chessmates, which I thought was excellent.

[00:51:25] I always like all of them. This has got to be if I was ranking rather than rating. This would definitely be in my top several of the untold. It's about the chess world. So I like it when untold takes me into a world that I really don't know much of. Although, for me, there was a comparison to Bridge. Some people may know as a professional card player. And I'm a state and national champion.

[00:51:52] And there's also cheating in Bridge and how it gets very, very hard to do. But it does happen. And very hard to accuse someone of cheating. You never do. And so it all has to be in whispers behind the hand. And then in order to make your accusation public, you have to have actual proof. And there was a group of people who worked for three years, a very famous case, in the Bridge world to figure out how these people were cheating. You play Bridge in pairs.

[00:52:21] But it was a similar idea. There was one expert player and one essential doofus. And it's like they should not be winning. How are they doing it? So here I was reminded of that in Chessmates. I was also wondering, is it class? Is it that the stuffy world doesn't want the young upstart, the young upstart American, to burst onto the scene? It's absolutely fascinating. Listeners may remember this as the anal beads scandal. It wasn't anal beads.

[00:52:50] I believe he was cheating because he was cheating on chess.com. So he figured out a way to cheat. But I don't think it was anal beads. What did you think about this episode of Untold? Yeah, I watched it because I remember that. I love how they explain. Like you said, they went into the world of chess. And finding out that during the pandemic, chess exploded and all this stuff. And, you know, my famous line, two Americas. Because I was like, what? People was doing chess? But I can't talk.

[00:53:19] I signed up for Duolingo to learn French. So I get it. Like we were all looking for our thing, you know? And the one thing about this was like, I remembered. I was like, oh yeah, the anal beads. Thought it was a fact. I watched it to learn. I wanted to learn how he did the anal beads. How he set it up to do it. Come to find out he never did the anal beads. I was like, man, that's kind of a letdown.

[00:53:48] But I was also kind of like, all of you people kind of suck. Like chess is kind of too elitist for me. Like I wanted to really dislike Hans because like you said, he was young, brash, American, loud, white boy that came off entitled. And then I met Magnus and I was like, oh, you're that but even more. So I was like, who am I rooting against here? There's a fantastic documentary called Magnus, which is about Magnus.

[00:54:17] It was pre-anal beads. And you have very, very mixed feelings about him because, yes, he's extremely expert at a very particular thing and he knows it. Which is okay because we say you own your shit. But yes, very interesting. Very cocky entitled, all of that. Very white, as you say. Yeah. And it's very interesting because so Hans beats him twice. He does beat him twice.

[00:54:45] We do find out that he was cheating with the electronic games. I think my biggest thing is the only gripe about it. I really enjoyed it. But my only gripe about it was even in the end, the chess.com people were like, well, we couldn't figure out that he was cheating. Like we don't, we couldn't figure out he was cheating. So we did all of this. And even though we think that there's a great possibility that he cheated, we can't prove it. We don't know how he did it. He's here talking to us.

[00:55:14] He's not going to admit it. He's still currently a grandmaster. So I was like, man, this is kind of a letdown because I want to know how you can cheat a chess. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I thought was, again, if I can refer to my bridge playing, when you are a good player, when you are a champion and you play against less experienced people, which you can do in open tournaments, they're really hard to play against because

[00:55:42] they're not experienced, they make plays that an experienced person would not make. And sometimes this crazy play is the only way to take down a hand. So you can lose to inexperienced people because of that. So I did think not, you know, overall long term, but certainly a game or two. And so I did think about that, that maybe Magnus lost because Hans was making crazy moves,

[00:56:10] unexpected moves, because the top players all play in a very measured way. And so you know that whatever they're going to do is going to be measured. So I thought that was interesting. You can listen to Rebecca Lavoie's interview with Hans on her show, You Can't Make This Up. At Crime Scene, we're eager to hear your feedback and suggestions for future episodes. You can subscribe by going to CrimeScene.com or search Crime Scene, that's S-E-E-N, wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:56:40] You can follow Crime Scene everywhere at CrimeScenePod or email us at CrimeScenePod at gmail.com. You can support us at buymeacoffee.com slash CrimeScenePod. Sing us a couple of backs or be like Jess and join our monthly membership. Welcome back, Jess. Members receive episodes early and ad-free, as well as other bonus content. Big bonus content last week.

[00:57:03] Mel Barrett and Ellen Marsh from I Think Not and Fuck Off Nick Lachey Podcast joined us to break down all things Bachelorette Season 22. We had a great live with a very engaged chat. Thank you to those who joined us there. The audio is available on demand for our members only. Rate and review Crime Scene so that others can find us. Five stars only. Five stars.

[00:57:32] Your support makes a big difference. Mari, what have you got going on and where can the people find you? The people can find me over on Blue Sky at MariTalksTooMuch. That's two like the number two. I've also recently, I just figured out how I'm streaming on Twitch again a little bit. So you can go to twitch.tv slash MariTalksTooMuch. I was trying to go, I was just trying to go live on Blue Sky and I didn't realize I also like Blue Sky doesn't have a live thing.

[00:58:02] You just got to connect your live to them. So I had to go live on Twitch to go live on Blue Sky. So I went live on Blue Sky making cups and talking to the people doing it, ask me anything. I had a lot of fun. So if you follow me over on Twitch, you'll get notified when I go live. Of course, over on Recap Kickback, me and Chappelle, we do whatever we want to over there. We just dropped our WrestleMania preview podcast last week. WrestleMania was this weekend.

[00:58:31] Me and Matt were joined on the Wrestling Kickback by my good friends Mo and OD to preview WrestleMania. WrestleMania is over now. So coming up this week, we will be doing a review of the event. So if you are subscribed to Recap Kickback, you'll get notifications for the Wrestling Kickback. Chappelle is also finishing up coverage on Abbott Elementary,

[00:58:58] finishing up his flavor of love. They just finished up I Love New York season one, I believe. So now they're moving on to charm school over there. So that should be interesting. I know you and Chappelle have finished your jury duty, a company retreat coverage. Yeah, we've finished it. Yeah, go over there and listen. So make sure you go to RecapKickback.com in order to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts,

[00:59:24] or especially to go see our beautiful faces, go to YouTube.com slash at Recap Kickback and subscribe there. Sarah, what do you got going on and where can the people find you? Well, the people can find me on Blue Sky as well. I'm at Sarah Carradine. I'm covering Traders Turkey A on Babes in the Conclave with Annabelle Fiddler. We're having fun over there. Boy, those Turkish celebrities are something else.

[00:59:51] And past and future guests Nicole Horne and I are recapping season six of Race Across the World, one of the nicest reality competition shows you can ever watch. They're British. They're very nice. That's on Silent Podcasts International. Get into it. Mari, what are we watching next week? Next time on Crime Scene, we're covering Sky King, Panic in the Sky with my dad, Tony Cox. Watch it on Hulu and send us your comments and questions.

[01:00:22] Thanks to you all for listening and for supporting our show. To Will from America for the theme music and to courageous women, especially today, Christine Marie, Julia, Dawn and Naomi. Until next time, case closed.