Samuel Bateman called them “atonement ceremonies.” Federal prosecutors called them organized child sexual abuse. Bateman wrapped the acts in religious language, framed them as commandments from God, and told his followers — including children — that participation was the path Read more…
You’ve heard what Samuel Bateman did. Twenty wives. Children as young as nine. Fifty years in federal prison. But the part the Netflix doc Trust Me: The False Prophet can only gesture at is the how — the behavioral mechanics Read more…
One of the central questions in the Nancy Guthrie investigation is whether Sheriff Nanos built his department around loyalty instead of competence — and whether that structure put the wrong people in positions of influence over a case they weren’t Read more…
Defense attorney Bob Motta and retired FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program Chief Robin Dreeke examine the legal strategy and behavioral dynamics across three cases that converged simultaneously — each one revealing something different about how the justice system processes violent Read more…
At 4:42 PM on January 7, 2021, a camera captures Maya Millete walking toward her front door. No camera in the neighborhood ever records her walking away.Between that moment and 6:45 the next morning — when Larry Millete drove the Read more…
The federal grand jury indictment returned against Anna Kepner’s sixteen-year-old stepbrother fundamentally reshapes the public understanding of this case. Early reporting indicated there was no evidence of an assault beyond the mechanical asphyxia that caused the eighteen-year-old’s death aboard the Read more…
The sealed case is open. The charges are public. And they are worse than anyone anticipated. Timothy Hudson, the 16-year-old stepbrother of Anna Kepner, has been indicted by a federal grand jury as an adult on charges of first-degree murder Read more…
The Advanced Training Institute didn’t educate children. It produced members.ATI was IBLP’s closed homeschooling system — fifty-four “wisdom booklets” filtering every subject through Bill Gothard’s theology. Families couldn’t just enroll. They had to attend both the Basic and Advanced Seminars Read more…
The guilty plea Rex Heuermann entered in Suffolk County Court did not come from a sudden crisis of conscience. It came from a legal defense that had exhausted every option and a defendant who chose to negotiate the terms of Read more…
The first civil lawsuit filed by a Gilgo Beach victim’s family member doesn’t just target Rex Heuermann. It goes after the people who lived with him. Benjamin Torres — the son of Valerie Mack, whose dismembered remains were found in Read more…
