The Bateman Panel: How He Built It, What It Broke, What Comes Next
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 16 April 2026
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is the conversation we've been building toward since we started covering the Samuel Bateman case. Former FBI Behavioral Analysis Chief Robin Dreeke and psychotherapist Shavaun Scott join Tony for a full panel discussion timed to Netflix's Trust Me: The False Prophet — covering the behavioral mechanics, the psychological damage, and the question of whether Short Creek can ever break the cycle.
We go move by move through how a broke, homeless man turned a fractured religious community into his personal supply chain within three years. How public confessions became weapons. How narcissism became a recruitment tool. How loyalty survived Bateman's arrest and allowed him to orchestrate a kidnapping from a federal cell.
Then we go inside the damage. The children who wrote their abuse in journals but couldn't say it to a forensic interviewer. The wives who were victims before they were perpetrators. Donnae Barlow — married to her uncle, terminally ill child, diagnosed with PTSD, convicted for kidnapping kids she thought she was saving. The parents who showed up at sentencing for Bateman instead of their own daughters.
And we land where the documentary can't: the future. Faith Bistline raising the girls her brothers destroyed. Jeffs still directing FLDS operations from prison. The FLDS surviving everything the justice system has thrown at it. Two experts, one question — is this over or not?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | If you're fascinated by true crime, then join us in October 26 for CrimeCon London. Meet the biggest names in True Crime TV, experience live forensic demonstrations and dive deep into the criminal mind with your favourite authors, experts, podcasters and content creators. To secure your place, go to crimecon.com.com.uk now and be part of the UK's biggest true crime community. |
| 0:24.2 | CrimeCon London, partnered by True Crime Channel 3rd and 4th of October, 2026. |
| 0:30.3 | If you're fascinated by True Crime, then join us in October 26 for CrimeCon London. |
| 0:36.5 | Meet the biggest names in True Crime TV, experience live |
| 0:39.8 | forensic demonstrations and dive deep into the criminal mind with your favourite authors, experts, |
| 0:45.6 | podcasters and content creators. To secure your place, go to Crimecon.com.com.com.com |
| 0:51.0 | now and be part of the UK's biggest true crime community crime con London partnered by |
| 0:56.5 | true crime channel third and fourth of October 2026 this is hidden killers live with tony brusky |
| 1:06.0 | and robin green all right if you have uh checked out the new Netflix doc about Samuel Bateman and the FDLS cult, |
| 1:16.9 | you're in for a good episode. |
| 1:18.3 | Samuel Bateman was borrowing $20. |
| 1:22.2 | Originally, sleeping on couches. |
| 1:25.3 | Three years later, fathers were handing him their nine-year-old daughters and businessmen were buying him Bentley's. |
| 1:34.8 | The Netflix stock, trust me, the false profit shows you what he built. |
| 1:39.3 | It doesn't show you how the specific moves a man with nothing used to make 50 people hand over everything. |
| 1:48.7 | What did he see in them that we couldn't see in themselves, that they couldn't see in themselves? |
| 1:56.2 | That's the question that we are asking today as we get into that doc and the thinking of Bateman and the thinking |
| 2:03.7 | of the FLDS members and how people get there. I think that's a big question. So many have is, |
| 2:10.2 | how did you even get here? How did you find yourself falling into this world this hard? |
| 2:17.8 | Joining Robin Drake and myself to discuss |
| 2:20.8 | Chavon Scott, psychotherapist and author, |
| 2:24.0 | Nightbird is her book. |
... |
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