Christine Marie Says Samuel Bateman Never Saw Her Coming

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:06)
Samuel Bateman thought two outsiders with a camera at his table were gonna make him famous. He had absolutely no idea who Christine Marie was or her past, and that she had fallen for a prophet once herself. He had no idea he'd be the subject of a Netflix documentary series about his coercive control and far worse actions. He had no idea Christine Marie would lead to a 50-year prison sentence. Today, Christine Marie joins us to have a conversation about her experiences living with and filming what became, trust me, the prophet. She joins myself and retired FBI Special Agent, Chief of the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, Robin Drake, to discuss.
Christine, let's start with this. You and Tolga came to Shore Creek for something else entirely. You didn't necessarily show up there expecting to meet Samuel Bateman, not to chase a man like that. Let's back up before Sam even enters the picture.
What's your original project? What's your original inspiration to go to Shore Creek before Sam even enters your life? What's your thoughts on what the next five to 10 years are going to look like for you before Sam?

**Christine Marie** (1:38)
Interesting question because we were living in Las Vegas. I was finishing my PhD, so I was at the point where I was working on my dissertation research and I could live wherever I wanted.
I wanted to move out of Las Vegas and help the people from Shore Creek believing that all of them were victims of some kind, and some kind of religious trauma. Because I had experience with that and developed an expertise in that, I thought, let me go and help the people who've left the FLDS, understand what happened to them, and then things unfolded from there.

**Tony Brueski** (2:18)
Did you go into that understanding how difficult it might be to reach someone who has gone through that? I know obviously you've had your own experiences, and you are so uniquely qualified for everything that you did and everything that you went through. But having that experience for oneself and making those own realizations are very different than helping others necessarily get to that point.
What kind of wall did you face or what kind of hill did you climb? Was it as steep as you expected?

**Christine Marie** (2:56)
Oh my goodness. It was more complicated than I imagined because the FLDS at this time were very reclusive.
They were encouraged not to even talk to outsiders. I didn't expect that I would ever really have any FLDS friends. I was focusing on the ex-FLDS. But even then, they have this in-group, out-group bias that's been ingrained in them from birth. Either you're a member or you're a non-member, you're from a high status family or low status family. I mean, this us versus them thinking was very strong. Even though I thought I will do my best to try to help the XF audience, I was still an outsider to them. So that was tough and it took a lot for me to have any breakthrough at all.

**Tony Brueski** (3:52)
What is it like there in Short Creek? I mean, you came in as a complete outsider. Is it, I mean, as an outsider coming into a very closed-knit community, you had to have stood out like a sore thumb, I would think. I mean, tell me about that and how long were you trying to become part of the fabric of this community that is in a bit of chaos at the moment prior to meeting Sam?

**Christine Marie** (4:23)
Well, I started trying to build trust with the community, actually the year before I moved there in 2015 What I did was, I decided that since the FLDS don't have Christmas, and since Warren Jeffs had apparently banned all the toys, now that there was a group of ex-FLDS, I needed to teach him about Christmas.

**Robin Drake** (4:53)
You're going against the burger meister, Meister Burger.

**Christine Marie** (4:57)
Oh, my goodness. It was like I was going to be the antidote to the Grinch who stole Christmas.

**Robin Drake** (5:02)
Yes.

**Christine Marie** (5:03)
And I had this alter ego as Mrs. Gingerbread, which you might have seen a little clip of me as a ventriloquist. So I'm like, I'm going to do my puppets and bring Christmas to these children that don't even know about Christmas. So that my first foray into gaining trust in the community happened the year before I moved there. Then we brought in semi-truckloads of toys and we had this big dinner called the first Christmas where we explained what the Christmas tree is for and what candy canes represent and all this stuff. So that was number one. So that was just trying to earn the trust of the XFLDS. And that was a lot of fun. Then, my husband and I noticed some evictions going on and started realizing that something didn't feel right the way they were being handled. And we took photos and we shared them on Facebook. Like, what the heck is going on here? And then that created sort of a World War III among the town, among the FLDS, ex-FLDS. And because they just thought, as outsiders, we can't possibly know, like, the ins and outs of why people were being evicted that way.