Evangelist’s Trial on Child-Sex Charges Starts Monday

Evangelist Tony Alamo (uh-LAW-moh) goes on trial in federal court at Texarkana Monday. Alamo faces charges accusing him of taking young girls across state lines for sex in violation of a nearly century-old morality law called the Mann Act.

He previously pleaded not guilty, denying the charges while at the same time saying the Bible described the age of consent as when young girls first reach puberty.

A guilty verdict on one charge from the 10-count indictment could place Alamo behind bars for the rest of his life.

A federal judge sentenced him to six years in prison in 1994 for tax evasion, making him a candidate for harsher sentence. But Alamo previously beat a federal criminal indictment in 1991, something the flamboyant evangelist will hope to do again.

FBI: Alamo’s followers sell suspect goods

Evangelist Tony Alamo once said God never wanted his ministry to be poor, but money raised by his followers only seems to go his way.

As Alamo, 74, faces accusations he took five preteen girls across state lines for sex, he presides over a multi-million-dollar empire held in his followers’ names. Trucking companies, residential property and a number of questionable ventures fund the work of his 100 to 200 acolytes.

“A substantial amount of income is generated that’s utilized for the organization, all of which is controlled by Mr. Alamo,” FBI agent Randall Harris testified at an October bond hearing. “However … none of that property ever shows legally as being in his name.”

Government agencies show Alamo built his fortune on the backs of his followers, setting them up in commercial operations rather than rely on donations like traditional ministries. By the 1980s, the Labor Department said Alamo had to pay his followers at least minimum wage; the IRS later laid claim to millions of dollars in taxes.

At the end of a four-year prison term for tax evasion in 1998 — after the government seized assets and courts rejected his charity status — Alamo paid $250,000 to cover a fine and penalties.

“How in the world could Mr. Alamo come up with a quarter of a million dollars … when the entire time he hasn’t been able to work, he hasn’t held a job other than what he may have been employed in inside a federal penitentiary?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyra Jenner asked during Alamo’s bond hearing last October.

At its height, Alamo’s ministry owned gas stations, a hog farm, grocery store, restaurant and concert venue in Alma, a town near Dyer. Alamo’s Nashville, Tenn., clothing store catered to celebrities who bought elaborately decorated jean jackets. His line also carried sharkskin boots, leopard-skin jackets and sequined gowns popular with musicians at the Grand Ole Opry, which Alamo occasionally haunted in the 1980s.

His wife Susan once arrived for an interview wearing a floor-length red-and-white dress and lynx jacket. “God wants his children to go first-class,” she once said.

But life at the Alamo compound could be paradise or hell, depending on who you ask. Alamo and his wife enjoyed a heart-shaped pool near a mansion in Dyer, but federal agents said they found followers’ sleeping bags in a meeting room. Marshals said some workers earned $5 a day, with shifts lasting as long as 20 hours.

In the latest case, prosecutors allege girls under age 18 were taken across state lines from the current compound in Foulke and raped or sexually abused between 1994 and 2005. A trial starts this week.

If convicted, Alamo faces 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each of 10 counts.

Whether all the business ventures linked to Alamo are legal isn’t known.

Peter N. Georgiades, a Pittsburgh lawyer who sued Alamo on behalf of ex-followers in the 1990s, said ministry workers accepted donations of food near its expiration dates, wiped off the dates and resold items to grocers. “It’s plain, flat-out fraud,” the lawyer said.

Mary Coker, who helped ex-followers contact federal agents before a recent raid, said the ministry has been selling outdated government-donated food since it moved to Fouke in the 1990s.

In March 2007, FBI agents arrested Leslie Ray “Buster” White at the flea market he ran in Texarkana, Texas, and seized $100,000 after charging him with selling counterfeit goods including CDs, shoes and handbags. White, who has identified himself as an associate pastor at Alamo’s church, pleaded guilty to trafficking and was initially sentenced to 180 days of house arrest.

On June 30, he was ordered into jail for eight weekends after health inspectors and the FBI said they found copycat designer labels and outdated food, over-the-counter drugs and cosmetics at the flea market.

Investigators say invoices listed Action Distributors and SJ Distribution as sellers of the goods. Court documents and testimony during Alamo’s criminal detention hearing in October said both companies are owned by Tony Alamo Christian Ministries members.

White denounced his association with Alamo and the ministry in December, but his lawyer won’t say whether he is cooperating with the government.

Also in 2007, FBI agents questioned Thomas Scarcello, who helped incorporate an Alamo-linked charity at Fort Smith, after he was found in a warehouse filled with Tempur-Pedic mattresses intended for Hurricane Katrina victims. A lawsuit says $7 million worth of donated mattresses were offered for sale from trucks and elsewhere until a federal magistrate stopped their sale.

In a deposition, Scarcello denied Alamo had any connection with the businesses, then claimed his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination when asked about his business finances or where he kept his records.

Ernest Peia, a wholesaler, testified in a deposition that he bought clothes, food and candies from Scarcello. Among businesses operated by the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation, Arkansas records show, are the Alamo Candy Co. and Wholesale Candy.

Two Fort Smith trucking companies are registered in followers’ names: Action Distributors and Advantage Food Group. Federal transportation records show those companies logged more than 1.1 million miles in 2006 and 2007. The FBI said those companies likely have as many as 30 tractor-trailers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks Alamo’s church as a hate group, said it had no estimate on its net worth. Even the FBI acknowledged in court that it has trouble untangling a web of related businesses, though there’s no question about who is in charge.

“It’s my understanding from the interviews we’ve conducted that hardly a penny is spent without ultimately (Alamo’s) authorization,” Harris said at Alamo’s hearing last fall.

Alamo trial to hinge on witness testimony

The young girls came by passenger van or bus to Tony Alamo’s compound in the southwest Arkansas town, past the guard shack and armed patrols to meet the aging evangelist at his personal command.

Federal prosecutors say the girls came for one reason – to have sex with Alamo when he demanded it through the intimidation and fear that permeates his secretive ministry.

Alamo will appear in federal court Monday for the start of a trial on charges he took young girls across state lines for sex – in violation of a nearly century-old morality law. He previously pleaded not guilty, denying the charges while at the same time saying the Bible described the age of consent as when young girls first reached puberty.

A guilty verdict on one charge from the 10-count indictment could place Alamo behind bars for the rest of his life. A federal judge sentenced him to six years in prison in 1994 for tax evasion, making him a candidate for harsher sentence. But Alamo previously beat a federal criminal indictment in 1991, something the flamboyant evangelist will hope to do again.

Arkansas State Police troopers and FBI agents investigated Alamo long before launching a Sept. 20 raid on his compound in Fouke, a town of 845 people near Arkansas’ border with Louisiana and Texas. Police descended on the 15-acre complex a day after a federal prosecutor accidentally sent an e-mail to reporters that detailed plans to have specialists on hand to help children who allegedly suffered sexual abuse at Alamo’s hand.

Initially, FBI agents looked for evidence Alamo produced child pornography at his ranch home on the compound. Agents seized a Polaroid camera and film during their search – a favorite of child pornographers as the film doesn’t require developing. However, the agents recovered no nude photographs, according to court filings.

Alamo, arrested Sept. 25 in Flagstaff, Ariz., instead faces charges that he violated the Mann Act, a federal law that bans carrying women or girls across state lines for “prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.” The 1910 act gave federal authorities powers to prosecute vice crimes over fears about “white slavery” – that young women from rural areas moving to the city were being abducted by immigrants and forced into prostitution.

Over time, prosecutors used the act to ensnare the famous. Entertainer Charlie Chaplin, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, musician Chuck Berry and heavyweight champ Jack Johnson all were accused of violating the act; Berry and Johnson, a bareknuckle fighter who held the title from 1908 to 1915, served prison time over it.

The Mann Act came back into the news when New York Gov. Elliot Spitzer resigned over a call-girl scandal. Some of those involved in the incident face Mann Act violation charges, which can carry a 10-year prison sentence.

Using the Mann Act against Alamo allows prosecutors to skirt proving whether the sex actually occurred, said David Langham, a research professor at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law who studies the act’s history. In court documents, prosecutors have said they don’t plan to offer any forensic evidence at trial, meaning the case against Alamo largely will hinge on victim testimony.

“It’s not the kind of crime where there is DNA or blood. It’s usually testimony, often in the old days it was testimony of the woman herself,” Langham said. “Whether they had sex or not doesn’t matter. It was his intent.”

Alamo’s lawyers can argue that the evangelist didn’t intend to have sex with the young girls when they crossed state lines, but that could be a technicality lost on jurors, Langham said. A previous defense lawyer for Alamo said the evangelist’s defense would rely on questioning whether the 74-year-old was physically capable of taking part in a sex act. Defense lawyers likely also will try to prove the sex acts took place in spaces too constrained for Alamo to maneuver, such as showers and on a ministry bus.

Don Ervin, the Houston lawyer now leading Alamo’s defense team, declined to say whether he’d raise similar issues at trial. Court officials expect jury selection in Alamo’s case to end Tuesday, with opening arguments starting on Wednesday.

Alamo, whose ministry grew into a multimillion industry on the backs of his followers, was convicted of tax evasion charges during a 1994 federal trial. Alamo served four years in prison after the Internal Revenue Service said he owed the government $7.9 million.

However, Alamo previously beat another federal criminal charge. In 1991, a jury found Alamo innocent of charges accusing him of threatening a federal judge.

Prosecutors then claimed Alamo threatened to have then-U.S. District Judge Morris S. Arnold kidnapped to stand trial in front of the evangelist. A newspaper quoted Alamo as saying Arnold “should be hanged as a traitor.” Arnold handled an IRS case that stripped Alamo’s foundation of its tax-exempt status and sought $7.9 million in back taxes.

That case too hinged on testimony, with both the newspaper editor who quoted Alamo and the judge serving as star witnesses. This time, it will be from Alamo’s alleged victims who suffered abuse as far back as 15 years ago.

Tony Alamo Goes to Federal Court for Trafficking Minors for Sex

Famed leader of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries Tony Alamo himself will make an appearance in federal court Monday for the start of his trial on charges he took young girls across state lines for sex.

The Joplin native’s religious sect headquartered in Arkansas has been under scrutiny for years because of such accusations.

Alamo pleaded not guilty while at the same time saying the bible describes the age of consent as when girls reach puberty.

A guilty verdict on one charge from the ten-count indictment could place the preacher behind bars for the rest of his life.

He served six years in prison the 90s, making him a candidate for the harshest sentence this time around.

Alamo trial to hinge on witness testimony

Tony Alamo heads to federal court Monday for the start of a trial on charges he took young girls across state lines for sex in violation of a nearly century-old morality law.

Alamo previously pleaded not guilty while at the same time saying the Bible described the age of consent as when young girls first reached puberty.

A guilty verdict on one charge from the 10-count indictment could place Alamo behind bars for the rest of his life. A federal judge sentenced him to six years in prison in 1994 for tax evasion, making him a candidate for harsher sentence.

Alamo faces charges that he violated the Mann Act, a federal law that bans carrying women or girls across state lines for “prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”

Lawyer wants Alamo followers released from jail

An attorney representing two Tony Alamo Christian Ministries members with children in foster care wants a Miller County judge to let his clients out of jail.

Circuit Judge Joe Griffin locked up Don Thorne and Bethany Meyers in January when they refused to tell him where their missing children and spouses were hiding.

Thorne was in a custody hearing concerning one of his children when he declined to reveal the location of his other two children. Meyers was cuffed when she wouldn’t disclose where three of her six children could be found.

On Thursday, Florida attorney Joe Quick filed motions requesting jury trials and bail for the jailed parents, Griffin said.

“It is a motion for a jury trial in juvenile court,” Griffin said. “Historically, there are no jury trials in juvenile court.”

Because the documents were filed in connection with the pending custody cases concerning children who’ve been placed in state care, they are not public record.

“I’m also not aware of there being a possibility for a jury trial for contempt,” Griffin said. “You can get a jury trial in the criminal division of circuit court. You can get a jury trial on civil lawsuits. But contempt is in the power of the court, not a jury. What is a jury going to decide? There is no question of fact to be determined. The court’s already found them in contempt.”

Griffin said he will probably schedule a hearing to address the situation once the Arkansas Department of Human Services has filed a response to Quick’s motion.

Since a raid on ministry property in Fouke, Ark., in September 2008, 36 children have been taken by the state of Arkansas’ child welfare agency. More than 90 juveniles whose names appear on removal orders
signed by Griffin and Circuit Judge Mark Hewitt of Sebastian County have not been found.

Quick said he could not comment because of a gag order preventing him from discussing the case.

Quick recently replaced Christopher DeSantis as the parents’ attorney, Griffin said. Quick is associated with the parent advocacy group CPS Watch.

The Florida lawyer once worked as a prosecutor for that state’s child welfare agency but was fired when he refused to carry out a directive he believed was unethical, said Desere Howard of CPS Watch. Howard added that Quick sued for wrongful termination and won under the Whistleblower Act.

Judge denies request to suppress evidence in Alamo case

A federal judge Friday denied a defense request to suppress evidence collected in a raid on Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in Fouke, Ark.

But the embattled evangelist’s legal advocates may get some of what they wanted regarding what the jury may hear when Alamo’s trial starts Monday.

Lawyers for Alamo met with prosecutors and U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes privately Friday morning.

According to a federal court filing, Barnes denied the defense’s request to suppress evidence collected during a September 2008 raid of ministry property in Fouke, Ark., and denied a request for more
specific information about how, when and where Alamo allegedly broke the law, as well as four other motions.

The docket entry notes that a request to limit what jurors can hear during the trial, such as words like polygamy, cult and compound, has been granted in part and denied in part. The entry doesn’t note what
was granted and what was denied.

“He’s going to reconsider all those motions, we believe, on Monday,” said Houston attorney Don Ervin, Alamo’s lead defense attorney. “So it’s kind of hard to say what he’s actually going to rule.”

Chris Plumlee with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Arkansas said Barnes will likely make an on-the-record announcement concerning his rulings next week before trial begins.

Prosecutors want the jury to hear about Alamo’s alleged polygamy because, “…the defendant often recited wedding vows with the victims of the charges listed in the indictment in this case,” according to a
motion filed late Thursday. “There will be evidence presented that the defendant purchased wedding rings for the victims in this case and would refer to the victims as his ‘wives.’”

The defense doesn’t want the jury to hear anything about Alamo or his associates allegedly beating ministry members.

“He used the fear of physical abuse that he instilled in the victims as one way to control them, thereby permitting him to commit the crimes alleged in the indictment…,” the government’s opposing motion
said.

Alamo’s federal indictment accuses him of bringing young girls across state lines for sex.

The government’s motion argues that talk of Alamo’s previous criminal trial and conviction for tax evasion is unavoidable.

While traveling from Arkansas to West Virginia to prepare for trial, Alamo allegedly took one of the girls named in the indictment with him and had sex with her, the motion states

After his release from federal prison, Alamo was supervised by federal probation officials.

During his supervised release, Alamo allegedly got permission from the officer in charge of his case to travel from Arkansas to another state, the motion said. Alamo allegedly sexually assaulted a young girl on the trip, the motion states.

The jury selection process begins Monday in downtown Texarkana.

Alamo Ministries member convicted

It was 1988, and Justin Miller, 11, was pinned face-down over a sofa, waiting for pain.

His mother and other members of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries in a compound near Saugus held him there as they recited into a telephone a list of charges against him - from giggling in the chapel to disrespecting an adult.

On the other end of the line, church founder Tony Alamo briefly deliberated before handing down a “sentence” for each transgression: a total of more than 140 heavy-handed paddles with a wooden plank.

The beating, described by a former attorney for Miller, lasted about an hour and a half and left Miller severely injured.

And on Thursday, nearly 21 years later, the very first person was convicted in the case.

Douglas Christopher, a 55-year-old associate of the embattled church, pleaded no contest this week to being an accessory to the child abuse, said Los Angeles County District Attorney’s spokeswoman Sandi Gibbons. He was sentenced to 164 days in jail, which he had already served, and three years of supervised probation.

He had been accused of being one of Alamo’s followers who pinned Miller over the couch.

Christopher’s plea comes as Alamo is on trial on federal charges of bringing children across state lines for sex. Alamo’s church has had a headquarters on Sierra Highway north of Saugus for more than 40 years.

And it comes years after a troubled Miller dropped out of contact with many who knew him, said his former lawyer, Peter N. Georgiades.

“He was missing for some time,” Georgiades said Friday.

The Pittsburgh attorney, who represented Miller for six years in successful lawsuits against Alamo’s church in the 1990s, said he was overjoyed to hear someone was finally convicted in a criminal case. He said he felt so threatened by Alamo’s followers that he wore a bullet-proof vest to work during that case.

Georgiades described the beating: “They were savage, inhumane, barbaric - I mean, the legal term for it is ‘intolerable in a civilized society,’” he said. “I’ve never seen a case where that phrase fit so well.”

Alamo defenders lose two rulings, win part of another

Prosecutors at evangelist Tony Alamo’s trial next week will be able to present evidence that investigators gathered during a Sept. 20 raid on Alamo’s compound in Fouke, a judge ruled Friday.

U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes also ruled that prosecutors will not have to provide Alamo’s defense attorneys with the names of two informants who gave authorities information that led to the search.

During a closed conference in his chambers in Texarkana, Barnes also granted part of a request to bar prosecutors from presenting jurors with information that defense attorneys argued would be inflammatory, but the details of the ruling weren’t known Friday.

Alamo’s lead attorney, Don Ervin of Houston, declined to comment on Barnes’ rulings, saying he expects Barnes to take further action on defense requests Monday.

Ervin spoke with Alamo in jail on Friday, he said, and the evangelist is “strong and ready to go.”

“We expect to be vindicated,” Ervin said.

Alamo, the 74-year-old leader of a multistate ministry, is charged with transporting five underage girls across state lines for sex from March 1994 through October 2005. His trial next week in Texarkana is expected to last two weeks, including two days for juror selection.

While reporters were not allowed into the conference in Barnes’ chambers Friday, minutes of the meeting filed in court indicate that Barnes rejected a request by defense attorneys to throw out evidence seized during the Sept. 20 raid by more than 100 law enforcement officers and child welfare caseworkers and to prevent authorities from telling jurors what they saw. Authorities seized Polaroid cameras, documents and photographs during the raid.

Barnes also rejected the defense attorneys’ request to compel prosecutors to reveal the names of two informants who provided authorities with information before the raid, and he said prosecutors will not have to provide defense attorneys with the mental health records of witnesses who will testify against Alamo.

In a court filing this week, defense attorneys also asked Barnes to bar prosecutors from presenting evidence about Alamo’s views that the Bible does not prohibit polygamy and teaches that girls are ready to be married when they begin menstruating, saying the information would unfairly prejudice jurors against Alamo.

Defense attorneys also want to suppress evidence that Alamo lived with multiple women he had taken as wives and has had sex with two other underage girls besides those named in the indictment against him. The attorneys asked Barnes to ban any reference to Alamo’s conviction on tax evasion charges in 1994, as well as any evidence that he ordered beatings or fasts. They also don’t want Alamo’s ministry referred to as a “cult” or ministry property referred to as a “compound.”

The minutes from the conference say Barnes granted the request in part and denied it in part, but it doesn’t elaborate. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris Plumlee said Friday he didn’t have any further details on Barnes’ ruling.

In another Alamo-related matter, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office said Friday that Douglas Christopher, 56, pleaded no contest to a felony charge in the 1988 beating of an 11-year-old boy at the ministry’s compound in Saugus, Calif.

Christopher, who had been sought in connection with the beating for more than a decade, surrendered to California authorities on Jan. 20, less than two months after child welfare authorities seized his six children from his home in Valaparaiso, Ind.

As part of an agreement with prosecutors, Christopher pleaded no contest in Los Angeles County Superior Court to a charge of “being an accessory after the fact” to child abuse and was sentenced to three years of probation, which he can serve in Indiana, district attorney spokesman Sandi Gibbons said.

Court orders issued in Miller and Sebastian counties after the raid on the Alamo compound listed Christopher’s children among 128 at the ministry considered at risk of abuse.

Thirty other ministry children also have been removed from their homes and placed in foster care.

Prosecutor: Jailed Evangelist Tony Alamo ‘Married’ Girls He Allegedly Sexually Abused

Federal prosecutors say jailed evangelist Tony Alamo “married” underage girls he had allegedly had sex with, exchanging wedding vows and giving them rings.

Prosecutors made the claim in a filing to U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes in Arkansas. Prosecutors want to include evidence of Alamo’s alleged marriages in his trial on a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking young girls across state lines for sex.

Alamo’s trial is scheduled to start Monday. Prosecutors and defense lawyers met with Barnes in a closed-door session in at the federal courthouse in Texarkana on Friday.

Defense lawyers for Alamo filed a set of motions Thursday requesting words like “polygamy,” “cult” and “compound” not be used at trial.