Polygamous group leader charged after 3 girls found in enclosed trailer
Global News
American Samuel Bateman, 46, was arrested by a state police agency after someone spotted small fingers in a gap of his trailer's rear door.
A leader of a small polygamous group on the Arizona–Utah state line pleaded not guilty Thursday to federal charges of tampering with evidence, weeks after being stopped on a highway with young girls in an enclosed trailer.
Samuel Bateman, 46, was indicted earlier this month on three counts of destroying or attempting to destroy records, and tampering with criminal proceedings. He pleaded not guilty in U.S. Magistrate Court in Flagstaff, a mountain city where he was arrested in late August by a state police agency after someone spotted small fingers in a gap of the trailer’s rear door.
Authorities found three girls, between the ages of 11 and 14, in the trailer he was hauling through Flagstaff, according to court documents. The trailer had a makeshift toilet, a couch, camping chairs and no ventilation, the documents state. The documents didn’t say if the girls are related to Bateman, and it wasn’t discussed during Thursday’s hearing.
Bateman was a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or FLDS, until he left in recent years and started his own small offshoot group, said Sam Brower, who has spent years investigating the group.
Bateman was once among the trusted followers of imprisoned leader Warren Jeffs, but Jeffs recently denounced Bateman in a written revelation sent to his followers from prison, Brower said.
Bateman’s group still practices plural marriage with a small following of fewer than 100 people, estimated Brower, who wrote a book on the FLDS and appeared in the recent Netflix series, Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.
Federal prosecutor Patrick Schneider said Bateman talked to supporters in Colorado City, Ariz., from the Coconino County Jail in Flagstaff and instructed them to delete communications sent through an encrypted private messaging system, and demanded all women and girls obtain passports.
Schneider said the state child welfare agency has removed children from Bateman’s home in Colorado City where the FBI had recently served a search warrant.
