Tony Alamo, Hollywood street preacher convicted of sexually abusing girls, dies at 82

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

Once known for designing elaborately decorated jackets for celebrities such as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley, Alamo died on Tuesday at a federal prison hospital in Butner, N.C., according to the Federal 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, on the same weekend that 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 on 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 — and later taken to places outside Arkansas for sex.

John Wesley Hall, a lawyer who had represented Alamo, said Wednesday 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, Ark. 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 on the streets of Hollywood 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 such as Presley, Jackson and several country music stars. The iconic black leather jacket that 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.

At its height, Alamo’s ministry claimed thousands of members nationwide. It was perhaps most known for leaving fliers on car windshields that outlined such topics as Alamo’s feared “one-world government,” his belief in flying saucers and his hatred of the Vatican and gays. Hall said the ministry still produces the fliers.

“My staff still gets them in the mail,” Hall said Wednesday.

In a 2008 interview, Alamo claimed to be unique among Christian preachers because he was born a Jew and had a “supernatural experience” through which he became a born-again Christian.

From his compound in northwest Arkansas, Alamo presided over several businesses — including gas stations, a hog farm, a grocery store and a restaurant — that funded his ministry. Ultimately, the IRS claimed Alamo owed $7.9 million in taxes, and federal agents raided his properties in 1991.

He was convicted of tax evasion and served four years in prison despite claiming he had no tax liability because he received no salary.

Alamo also was accused in 1991 of child abuse after an 11-year-old boy told police he was paddled 140 times by four men on orders from Alamo in 1988 at the church’s compound in Saugus. Prosecutors eventually dropped the charges, saying too much time had passed. The same year he was charged with threatening to kidnap a federal judge in Arkansas, but was acquitted by a jury.

It was after he left prison in the 1990s that he started the compound in Fouke with about 100 followers.

Alamo was born Bernie Lazar Hoffman on Sept. 20, 1934, to a Jewish family in Joplin, Mo. He arrived in Los Angeles in the 1960s, claiming he was a music promoter with clients such as the Beatles. He and his wife legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo after they married in Las Vegas in 1966.

Kissel writes for the Associated Press.