Disgraced preacher Tony Alamo dies in prison at 82

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Tony Alamo, a one-time street preacher whose apocalyptic ministry grew into a multimillion-dollar network of businesses and property before he was convicted in Arkansas of sexually abusing young girls he considered his wives, has died in prison. He was 82.

Once known for designing elaborately decorated jackets for celebrities including Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, Alamo died on Tuesday at a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

The disgraced preacher was convicted in 2009 on charges that he took underage girls across state lines for sex, including a 9-year-old. The judge who sentenced him to the maximum 175 years in prison told him: “One day you will face a higher and a greater judge than me. May he have mercy on your soul.”

Alamo started preaching along the California streets in the 1960s, advocating a mixture of virulent anti-Catholicism and apocalyptic rhetoric. He claimed God authorized polygamy, professed that gays were the tools of Satan, and believed girls were fit for marriage even at a young age.

“Consent is puberty,” Alamo told The Associated Press in September 2008, during the same weekend state and federal agents raided the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in the tiny southwest Arkansas town of Fouke to investigate possible child abuse and pornography.

Witnesses in the ensuing trial said Alamo made all key decisions in the compound: who got married, what children were taught in school, who received clothes, who was allowed to eat. They said he began taking multiple wives in the early 1990s, including a 15-year-old girl in 1994, followed by increasingly younger girls.

Alamo was convicted after five women testified they were “married” to him in secret ceremonies at his compound when they were minors — including one when she was only 8 years old — and later taken to places outside Arkansas for sex.

John Wesley Hall, a lawyer who had represented Alamo, said Wednesday that several former members of the evangelist’s community had reached out to him to see if news of his death was true. Hall said “everybody expressed relief.” Hall noted that Alamo “denied that he ever did anything (wrong).”

Former followers said Alamo grew increasingly unhinged after his wife, Susan, died from cancer in 1982, while the couple operated their ministry near Fort Smith in northwestern Arkansas. Her body was kept in a room at the ministry, and his followers kept a vigil, praying for months for a resurrection.

Eventually her body was buried in a crypt on the ministry’s 300-acre compound in Dyer. But in 1991, Alamo ordered his followers to pack up before federal marshals seized the property to satisfy a court judgment.

Authorities found Susan Alamo’s concrete crypt smashed open and her coffin gone. Alamo returned his wife’s remains to her family seven years later, after being threatened with jail.

Before it became widely reviled for its leader’s actions and teachings, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries attracted hippies and youngsters alienated from their parents when it started in the streets of Los Angeles in the 1960s. Calling themselves “Jesus Freaks,” Alamo’s followers preached hellfire and a wrathful version of Pentecostalism, which is known for its spirited worship style and belief in modern-day revelation and miracles.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, members of his ministry made elaborately designed denim jackets that were sold to celebrities including Presley, Jackson and several country music stars. The iconic red leather jacket Jackson wore on the cover of his “Bad” album was a Tony Alamo original, and it was later sold at auction to settle federal tax claims against Alamo.