Sam Bateman, Mike Watkiss & The Queen of England

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — On a cloudy day in late December of 2021, an unusual scene played out in a Phoenix park.

More than two dozen women and girls—some holding babies, all adorned in fundamentalist attire—gathered around a picnic table to sing religious hymns.

Their audience: me.

The performance was orchestrated by a man named Samuel Bateman – a man unknown to me prior to the meeting in the park. During the previous week, however, Bateman had repeatedly called me insisting that we meet—face-to-face. Bateman claimed that he was a new prophet of the FLDS faith. He boasted of owning two Bentleys and two Range Rovers.

“I don’t know,” he told me. “I just had a good feeling: find Mike Watkiss and tell him hi.”

He also told me that he had been “instructed by God to meet Mike Watkiss and The Queen of England.”

As it turns out, the Queen passed away a few months later without ever granting an audience to Bateman. But when I reluctantly agreed to meet with Bateman at a very public Phoenix park, he showed up with an entourage of women and girls—referring to them as “his ladies.”

The bizarre interaction was brief. After two songs, Sam headed back to Colorado City with “his ladies” — and I left with a gut-churning feeling that I had just been to a crime scene.

Having covered polygamous communities and their prophets for decades, the red flags were obvious. I immediately notified local and federal law enforcement about my encounter with Sam Bateman. And I then sat back and waited. It was just a matter of time.

Fast forward eight months. It was August of 2022 when Samuel Bateman suddenly found himself at the center of a very real crime scene when he was pulled over in Flagstaff towing a cargo trailer behind a truck. In the truck were two young women and two young girls.

Then the shocking discovery: three more underage girls locked inside the cluttered, unsafe and unsanitary trailer—each of them wearing a wedding ring.

“I would have liked law enforcement to get involved sooner,” said Valley resident Faith Bistline. “Sam Bateman has utterly shattered my family into a million pieces...that’s how I picture it.”

READ PARTS 1 & 2: She escaped the FLDS and helped uncover their crimes; now she hopes the system will serve justice

Two of Faith’s brothers, two of her sisters, two of her nieces and even her mother have all been followers of Samuel Bateman.

“I think that human traffickers are using religion to do human trafficking, and I think this is an example of that,” Faith said. “I knew this was coming. I know the way these cults go—this is the end result.

Because of the girls discovered in the trailer, Sam Bateman was busted on child endangerment charges. While in the Coconino County jail, prosecutors say Bateman used a recorded phone line to instruct his followers to delete and destroy incriminating evidence. Despite that, Bateman was briefly released, only to have the FBI raid his home in Colorado City a couple of weeks later.

That’s when Bateman and several of his adult followers were taken into custody.

Nine underage girls found at the homes were also placed in the care of Arizona DCS. Among them were two of Faith’s sisters.

“It’s very disgusting,” Faith said. “Very disgusting and so these young girls who are roped into these situations, they don’t know anything about sex, and now how are they going to know what normal is and what’s not normal.”

After his second arrest, Sam Bateman’s “new normal” would then take him to a federal detention facility in Florence, where Bateman would share a pod with multiple other inmates. A source revealed to us that Bateman was well-known within the pod where he frequently monopolized one of four tablets used by inmates to communicate with the outside world. Prosecutors now say that’s how Bateman then pulled the strings to plot his next crime.

In late November 2022, three of Sam’s adult wives allegedly kidnapped eight of the nine underage girls from Arizona protective custody. The women and girls were tracked down a few days later, hundreds of miles away, hiding out in a vacation rental near Spokane, Washington. The three adult women, all “wives” of Bateman, were charged with kidnapping.

“They absolutely should be held responsible,” Faith said. “They’re adults. It sucks. Their minds are being controlled by someone else, but they are adults, and child abuse, child sexual assault is a very black-and-white issue, and if there are children who are in danger, people have to pay for these things. You can’t just let the children stay in an unsafe situation.”

Faith and other family members are now actively involved in the lives of her two teenage sisters who were rescued from Bateman and his cult.

“How are those young women doing and what is going on in their lives?” I asked.

“Different for each but overall good, in school, all deciding they don’t believe in Sam and want to live their own life,” Faith told me.

For his part, Sam Bateman—facing 51 criminal counts and a mountain of evidence—struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors earlier this year—pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of a minor and conspiracy to commit kidnapping.

As part of the plea, Bateman had to acknowledge his three-year crime spree in open court—starting in 2019 when he began proclaiming himself a prophet—admitting to taking daughters and wives of his male followers, transporting underage girls across state lines and having sex with those young victims on multiple occasions. Bateman now faces at least 20 years in prison.

“I don’t think he deserves to be walking around,” said Faith’s brother, Worth Bistline. “He’s too manipulative. He has too much influence over too many people, and he’s done some very terrible things.”

“Sam is just one in a long line,” Faith added. “I think they’re gonna keep coming as long as there’s people who don’t have critical thinking skills and who are looking for a prophet.”

Faith also believes that Bateman continues to pose a significant threat even while behind bars. Because, she said, Bateman still has devoted followers living in homes full of children.

We recently knocked on the door of one of Bateman’s Colorado City homes, and while we could hear there were people inside, no one answered.

“There are a lot of little children,” Faith said. “There are a lot of little children that are being cared for by followers of Sam.”

“I think as long as Sam doesn’t have communications with his followers, those kids are safe,” Faith added. “But the minute he starts to have communications with those followers, that’s when the door opens for them to no longer be safe.”

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