Tony Alamo, Christian preacher convicted of child abuse, dies at 82 -reports

[May 04, 2017]  By Alex Dobuzinskis

(Reuters) - Tony Alamo, a disgraced Christian preacher who closely controlled the lives of his followers in several states and who was convicted in 2009 of sexually abusing children, has died in prison at age 82, according to media reports.

Alamo died on Tuesday at a U.S. Bureau of Prisons facility in North Carolina, according to television station KARK in Arkansas, where Alamo's religious organization was once based.

Representatives for the Federal Bureau of Prisons and for Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in California could not be reached for comment late on Wednesday.

Alamo was listed in the federal court system under his given name, Bernie Lazar Hoffman.

In 2009, Alamo was convicted in federal court in Arkansas on charges of transporting five girls across state lines to sexually abuse them, according to court records. He was sentenced to 175 years in prison.

One of the child victims told investigators she was 8 years old when Alamo first molested her at his home in Fouke, Arkansas, and that when she was 9 he began calling her his wife, according to court records.

Alamo, an evangelical Christian who often promoted conspiracy theories about the Roman Catholic Church, founded his religious organization in the late 1960s in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles and in the mid-1970s moved the group's headquarters from California to Alma, Arkansas.

At the height of his influence, Alamo had thousands of followers, including some who worked at one of the ministry's several businesses such as a printing press he used to spread anti-Catholic messages. His religious group, which critics described as a cult, had branches in other states including New Jersey and Tennessee.

Alamo once controlled the finances of members of his ministry and told them to distrust the government, according to a 2012 decision by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a case that awarded millions in damages to ex-followers who were beaten as children.

In the 1990s, Alamo served four years in prison after he was convicted of income tax evasion.

Aside from appearing on television in the 1970s along with his then wife Susan, who died in 1982, Alamo was also known for making designer jackets that were popular with celebrities in the 1980s, according to a 2009 report on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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