Where “Keep Sweet” documented the arrest of corrupt fundamentalist leader Warren Jeffs, “Trust Me” follows his even more sadistic successor, Samuel Bateman.

18 most shocking moments from Trust Me: The False Prophet, Netflix’s follow-up to groundbreaking *Keep Sweet *docuseries

Where "Keep Sweet" documented the arrest of corrupt fundamentalist leader Warren Jeffs, "Trust Me" follows his even more sadistic successor, Samuel Bateman.

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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April 8, 2026 6:40 p.m. ET

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Julia Johnson in 'Trust Me'. Credit:

- Filmmaker Rachel Dretzin is taking Netflix viewers back to the fundamentalist Mormon sect at the center of 2022's *Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey* with *Trust Me: The False Prophet*.

- This new docuseries explores the intrepid work of former fundamentalist Christine Marie and videographer Tolga Katas in bringing down the sect's sadistic leader, Samuel Bateman.

- *Trust Me *contains hours of footage Katas and Marie captured inside the so-called Samuelite Group of Short Creek, Utah, before Bateman's arrest and imprisonment.

Four years after Netflix first plunged viewers into the corrupt world of Warren Jeffs, the megalomaniacal leader of an extreme offshoot of the fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), the streamer is inviting us back to Short Creek, Utah, to examine an even more shocking case of abuse and exploitation.

*Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey *became one of the most-watched docuseries in the history of the platform when it released in 2022. Emmy and Peabody-winning director Rachel Dretzin was granted unprecedented access to Jeffs' victims, investigators, files, and other personal materials. What emerged was a startling portrait of manipulated devotion that culminated in Jeffs' 2006 arrest by the FBI.

In 2011, Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison for the aggravated sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl, and an additional 20 years for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl, both of whom he claimed as his wives.

Christine Marie in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

Short Creek had been through more than enough after Jeffs was cleared out of their compound. But in his wake, an even more malicious malefactor arose, taking advantage of a gaping spiritual void to double down on Jeff's sadistic coercion.

Once ekeing out a hardscrabble existence on the margins of the Short Creek FLDS offshoot community, Samuel Bateman eventually rushed to fill its center. He claimed Warren Jeffs was dead. He claimed to be his direct messenger to his own offshoot group, where he assumed the new role of prophet. Everything he did was captured on camera.

*Trust Me: The False Prophet *picks back up in Short Creek in 2021. Former-fundamentalist-turned-cult-expert Christine Marie and her husband, videographer Tolga Katas, embedded with the sect there for years, gaining the entire community's trust as they worked behind the scenes to take Bateman down. The married couple uncovered astonishingly cruel criminal acts were being perpetrated on a near daily basis, and in *Trust Me*, Dretzin returns to Short Creek to chronicle their fight to rid the community of Bateman once and for all.

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Samuel Bateman in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

Samuel Bateman was eventually arrested thanks to their efforts, pleading guilty in 2024 to conspiracy to commit transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity and conspiracy to commit kidnapping. He is currently serving a 50-year prison sentence, followed by a lifetime supervised release.

But this is all just the tip of the iceberg, and the result of years of intrepid work by Christine, Katas, and several members of the sect who finally broke free from Bateman's web. What follows are the most shocking moments from the four-part docuseries chronicling it all.

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The prison prophecy

*Trust Me*'s first episode catches up with the Short Creek FLDS offshoot group before Bateman's infiltration, but after Jeff's imprisonment.

Mike Watkiss, a local reporter who was interviewed for *Keep Sweet*, notes in *Trust Me *that Jeffs "became more powerful" after his arrest, because it turned him into a "martyr." Jeffs started to "put out edicts. He told his congregation, 'No more marriages.' He told them to stop having sex. Because he's not having any sort of intimate contact, apparently no one else could."

The rise of Sam Bateman

Despite not being adherents themselves, Christine and Katas already ingratiated themselves into the Short Creek FLDS offshoot group by the time Bateman began to rear his head.

Christine notes she met Bateman when he asked for their help fighting an eviction notice. Within a year, he had completely usurped Jeffs' status as prophet, and taken on dozens of "wives" (not legally, but spiritually speaking, Christine explains).

"People thought of Sam Bateman as kind of a schlub. He could never make money at his jobs, he was looking for a lifeline," Christine says. Bateman created that lifeline for himself in 2021, when he "reappeared with a new wife," shocking the community still obeying Jeffs' edict not to marry. "The next time I saw Sam, he had a new wife," Christine explains, "the younger sister of the first wife."

A trailer full of wives

In a few short months, Sam went from two wives to dozens.

Norma Richter, a FLDS offshoot community member who runs the local Short Creek Cottage goods shop, recalled that one day, "Sam showed up outside in the back. He was in a vehicle with a trailer, a flatbed trailer. I went out, and it was just dripping with women."

Dretzin cuts to footage of dozens of women dressed in traditionally modest garb, packed behind the low gate of a trailer, singing a hymn. "He showed up with all these wives. I was like, 'Really? How did that happen?'" says fellow sect member Esther Bistline. "There were babies too, it was like they clear forgot some of our core beliefs. It was really strange."

Norma Richter in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

“There were rumors he’s married to the children”

Christine, Katas, and even some devout members of the Short Creek sect began to grow concerned with a number of very young women regularly seen with the so-called Samuelite Group. During the first family dinner Bateman invited Christine and Katas to, Christine recalled, "I had alarm bells ringing everywhere. I knew that Sam was married to some of these women, even these young women. But there were rumors he was married to the children."

In a horrific clip captured by Katas and included in *Trust Me*, two young girls in floor-length blue dresses clutch a guitar and a ukelele after dinner. When Katas asks how old they are, one of them responds, "We're both 10."

The Warren Jeffs death hoax

How did an outsider without much economic sway or deep roots in Short Creek's FLDS offshoot community suddenly migrate to its very center? Shirlee Draper, an ex-member of the sect there, noted that "it had been five, six, seven years since some of these people had heard from Warren."

Bateman took advantage of that longing for the guidance of the old "prophet" by peddling the lie, per Christine, that "Warren Jeffs has actually died. 'The media is lying to you as they always do, and it's just a mannequin in his room,'" she recalled Bateman telling his followers. "Then Sam said, 'I am now Warren Jeffs' messenger, he is giving me this direction from the other side of death."

Viewers don't have to take Christine's word for it. *Trust Me *contains excerpts from Bateman's diary that the FBI ultimately obtained. One entry reads, "It is not Warren S. Jeffs in that prison cell!... Uncle Warren made me a prophet to do His will."

”Those girls love him”

Bateman was able to secure such a strong grip on Short Creek's FLDS offshoot group by securing three of its male leaders as followers — Torrance Bistline, LaDell Bistline Jr., and Moroni Johnson.

"Moroni was the first person to believe in Sam," Christine explained. "Because Sam was now the prophet, he agreed to turn over his daughters, even his very young daughters."

LaDell eventually did the same, commanding his wives and daughters to betroth themselves to Bateman. In one *Trust Me *scene, he explains to Christine and Katas, "However it might look to an Earthly mind, you don't have any clue. Those girls love him."

The primary *Trust Me *watching experience is one of shock and horror. But Bateman's treachery also had a distinctly silly side. In one scene, Christine and Esther explain how Bateman acquired a "fleet of vehicles" — luxury vehicles — to cart them around the dusty desert town.

"They have a whole motorcade with a Range Rover and two Bentleys and another Range Rover, and they'd drive around and show off," Esther recalls with a disapproving grimace. One Bentley is shown with the vanity plate: ASKFTHR.

Samuel Bateman's Bentley in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

Bateman’s darkest crime

Just a few months into being welcomed into the growing Bateman family fold, its leader invited Christine, Katas, and three particular sister-wives on a drive one night in his Bentley. Which wives were invited was not a coincidence.

"Sam starts talking about how much he suffered. It seems as though he's trying to build up to something. I thought, 'Where is this going to go?'" Christine recalled. Katas wan't recording in the front seat, so Christine, seated beside the wives in the back, surreptitiously pulled out her phone to record Bateman.

"On Monday, I had the most humbling damn impression of my life," he says in the recording played in *Trust Me*, an "impression" being Bateman's term for a direct transmission from God. "I'm sitting in the middle of the office when Heavenly Father told me, have [name withheld] be with Moroni. Screw her."

Bateman admits to directing his three main male acolytes to have sex with the three young wives riding in the Bentley. One of them was 13 years old. "It was clear for the first time that there was sexual abuse of children," Christine reflected.

Moroni was eventually sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to transport a minor for sexual activity, stemming from an arrest of Bateman in Aug. 2022. LaDell was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted on charges including receipt of child pornography and transportation of a minor for criminal sexual activity. Torrance was sentenced to 35 years in prison for aiding in Bateman's conspiracy to transport minors across state lines to engage in criminal sexual activity.

”Every one of them referred to him as the devil”

Christine and Katas hold a secret meeting with a young member of the Short Creek FLDS offshoot group named Warren Levi, the son of Moroni Johnson and Julia Johnson. Levi's mother eventually follows in his suit, flipping on Bateman to aid Christine and Katas in his takedown.

"Starting in 2019, Sam married seven of my sisters ranging in age from 20ish, down to nine years old," he tells them by a campfire in one scene. "There was none of them that went easy to get married to Sam. Every one of them referred to him as the devil."

Julia Johnson and Christine Marie in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

“There goes my whole life”

There's ample evidence of Bateman's wives' misery and resistance in *Trust Me*. Even the most zealous, like young Naomi Bistline, who was eventually sentenced to prison time for her role in Bateman's criminal conspiracy, show the cracks in their belief on camera.

"Father Samuel said, 'Heavenly Father impressed me to tell you that you belong to my family,'" she recounts in one scene, while still living in Short Creek with Bateman. "I went stone cold, like, 'No way. There goes my whole life, there goes everything.'"

Naomi eventually reasons, "This has to be right. If its not, what is?"

Bateman’s goals

Bateman would hold daily "teaching" sessions with his young wives, where he would read to them from Jeffs' diary, extemporize about faith, and in one scene, candidly share his goals.

"My goals are to be the most influential person on Earth, and to govern North and South America. And probably England. And to bring the Queen of England to my home. I believe that's part of my mission," he says.

Julia’s confession

Fed up with local law enforcement's slowness and unresponsiveness, Christine and Katas eventually get FBI agent Dawn Martin on the case. Martin explains that Julia Johnson, Moroni's first wife, "never agreed to giving her daughters, especially her minor children, to Sam Bateman."

Julia knew it was wrong, but also knew "she had to obey what the prophet said, and what her husband said," Martin explains.

Sensing Julia's reluctance to submit brings out the first glimpse of Bateman's vindictive nature. In a message to Julia "from Uncle Warren" recorded in Bateman's diary, he writes of Julia's one-year-old, "That pure innocent son will be taken from you and given to another in a way you think not of!"

Bateman also made Julia "stand in front of the group, and 'confess' she was a bitch," Christine recalled.

One of Bateman's wives' notebooks in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

“Whip the hell out of you”

Sam started turning on the men too, as he grew more paranoid and power hungry.

An excerpt from Bateman's diary included in *Trust Me *reveals he scorned Moroni for using "big elaborate words" that Bateman "of course" did not understand in front of the family.

On camera, Bateman cites "principles in our religion of punishment. If men do wrong, they get punished. That's all there is to it." In another diary entry, Bateman records that he felt "impressed to send this to LaDell. 'I know God loves you, that's why he's going to whip the hell out of you!'"

The music video

The primary hold-up in the case against Bateman is the lack of an on-record statement from a minor victim of his sexual abuse. As Christine and Katas work to gain the young wives' trust to obtain such a statement, they witness wilder and weirder goings-on at the Samuelite compound.

"He's been having impressions that he needs to do a music video," Christine tells Dawn over the phone in one scene. In the next, captured by Katas in one of Bateman's homes, he tells his wives, "It is not for self-aggrandizement. It is for the sole purpose to get the Queen over here, because that's the next step in my mission."

Christine explains to Dawn, "He wants to put it on YouTube so somehow it will get to the Queen, and the Queen will come here and become his wife."

Finally, on Aug. 28, 2022, Samuel Bateman was arrested. Overwhelmed with concern, he packs his truck and a trailer full of his wives and sets out on the road. Police officers witness small fingers sticking out over the top of the trailer doors, holding them in from opening, as Bateman rockets down a highway.

*Trust Me *includes body camera footage from the arrest, which eventually led to the federal charges that took him down.

Samuel Bateman in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

“I need an AR-15"

The FBI finally obtained enough evidence to put together a raid on the Samuelite compound, which was executed on Sept. 13, 2022.

Assuming something of the sort may be coming after Bateman's arrest, the wives began to speak apocalyptically about what they might do if the law enforcement came for them next. When they finally did, Christina and Katas were there to capture it all on camera.

"This could be dangerous," one wife can be heard shouting, after an agent first pounds on the door and announces the operation. "If they try, they die, and we die. And they'll be accused of murder," another says.

One more wife asks the others, "Where's my pepper spray? I need an AR-15."

"We are following a false prophet”

The raid was ultimately not met with violence. Though crying and protesting, the girls and women of the Samuelite Group went with authorities, the minors being placed in Child Protective Services care in Arizona, and the others being questioned, with charges to follow for some.

Eventually, the scales began to fall away from some of Bateman's followers eyes. Moroni asks Julia to go on a night drive after the raid, during which she recounts, "I talked to him like I never talked to him before in my life. I say, 'We're adults. We're parents, and we're following a false prophet, and he is leading us right to hell."

"'We're either damn right or we're damn wrong,'" Julia says her husband told her, to which she replied, "Moroni, we're damn wrong."

Naomi Bistline in 'Trust Me: The False Prophet'.

“He’s lying to me”

Moroni eventually collaborates with the FBI, and several wives follow suit. Even Naomi, once Bateman's fiercest defender, began to have doubts when she was transferred to prison for her involvement in Bateman's trafficking scheme.

"I was really lost. My whole life I was taught obedience is everything, the first law of heaven. And here I am in prison, for my perfect obedience," Naomi shared in an interview with Dretzin after her release. "That was when I started to wonder about my beliefs."

In one harrowing turn during her detention, Naomi was accidentally placed in a cell next to Bateman before a status hearing. "He talked to me for four hours. He got all emotional and said, 'I haven't been able to talk to anyone for a whole year.' He hadn't even been there for a year. That's the first time I realized, 'He's lying to me.' After that, my whole mind shifted. Once I questioned one little thing, then a whole flood, like a tsunami of questions came in."

Naomi eventually went to live with her aunt, and left Bateman's FLDS sect. She revealed in *Trust Me *that she decided to study psychology in school, to understand how Bateman was able to manipulate an entire town the way he did. Though some in Short Creek are still loyal to Bateman in prison the way their predecessors were loyal to Jeffs, others like Naomi have broken free.

*Trust Me: The False Prophet *is now streaming on Netflix.

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