Accused Cult Leader Offered Daughter Doritos and $50 if She’d Marry Him: Feds

Federal authorities appear to be closing in on an alleged polygamist cult leader accused of abusing underage girls, court documents show. In a new affidavit, an FBI agent claims Samuel Rappylee Bateman, 46, has more than 20 wives, many of them below the age of 15, that he sex-trafficked children, and that he even attempted to marry his own daughter, at one point trying to bribe her with snacks and money.

According to the FBI, Bateman was raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist subset of the fundamentalist Mormon denominations, before breaking off to lead his own sect. The mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ended the practice of plural marriage in 1890 and now strictly prohibits it. The FLDS, active since the 1950s, still practices polygamy. It is run by self-declared prophet Warren Jeffs, who is attempting to hold onto his control of the group while serving a life sentence for child sex abuse charges related to underage marriages. 

Bateman has been in jail in Arizona since September, when federal agents raided his homes in Colorado City, on the border with Utah. They were looking for evidence of underage marriages or sexual activities between adults and minors, according to reporting by the Salt Lake Tribune, which obtained a copy of the search warrant. Bateman was arrested and charged with three counts related to destroying records in a federal investigation. After Bateman was jailed, nine girls between the ages of 11 and 16 were taken from his homes and into the custody of state child welfare officials. The girls were placed in group homes in the Phoenix area but disappeared last week. They were found Thursday in Spokane, Washington.

At the time of the raid, Bateman was out on bond for three counts of child abuse, after state authorities stopped him in August on the highway and found three girls between the ages of 11 and 14 locked in a cargo trailer with a bucket for a toilet and no ventilation. He has pleaded not guilty to both the state and federal charges.

In the new affidavit, ​​filed Friday in federal court in Spokane, FBI Special Agent Dawn A. Martin said the FBI has probable cause to believe that between May 2020 and Nov. 2021, Bateman and coconspirators transported minors between Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Nebraska to engage in illicit sexual conduct, and that Bateman then destroyed the evidence. Defense attorneys for Bateman did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

In 2019, Martin alleges, Bateman began claiming that he was a prophet of the FLDS. He was married to one woman at the time. On a road trip he told his daughter, then 14, that he felt like she was his wife, scaring her, according to an interview his daughter gave advocates in 2020. At a rest stop, he gave her a bag of Doritos and $50, and asked her what kind of car she would want to own, “like a bribe,” Martin said. He also allegedly gave his daughter “nasty,” and “slobbery” kisses and described in graphic detail how he would make a baby with her. When Bateman told his wife he wanted to marry their daughter, she took the child and left him. 

Bateman began taking other wives, amassing more than 20 of them — most of them under the age of 15 — and gathered around 50 followers. Most of his wives are from two families of his followers, the filing alleges.

Portions of the affidavit draw on recordings made by a couple who gained Bateman’s trust while trying to help people in the FLDS community and also filming a documentary. They described Bateman introducing them to a nine-year-old as his wife. They also turned over a recording from a 2021 conversation recounting an incident known as “the Atonement,” in which Bateman “gave” three of his wives, one of whom was only 12, to “wicked bastards,” or three of his adult male followers, for sex. He said God had told him to “give the most precious thing he has, his girls’ virtue,” to the three men — while he watched. He claimed the girls had “sacrificed their virtue for the Lord,” the affidavit quoted him as saying. “God will fix their bodies and put the membrane back in their body,” he allegedly continued. “I’ve never had more confidence in doing his will. It’s all out of love.”