Many witnesses can verify that Amy has been severely beaten by Alamo on many occasions. The first time you log in to our catalog you will need to create an account. Dear Abby advises a woman whose boyfriend is using her. She moved into the house with the other wives and was wearing a wedding ring given to her by Alamo, while he was still in prison. I doubled the business at the Alamo of Nashville store. Members usually lived in a commune and worked at an Alamo-owned business, turning over much of their salaries to the church. She later claimed her husband beat and drugged her and demanded she undergo plastic surgery to make her look like Susan. In November of that year, the judge sentenced him to 175 years in prison. Theyd been tipped off by three former members, all men whose sons had been taken to California after their ex-wives married other Alamo Church members. He's a convicted tax evader and a flamboyant evangelist who once ran what authorities called a multimillion-dollar, Saugus-based cult. Ill tell you how bad a shape theyre in. In 1975, the Alamos purchased land in Dyer, near Alma, and there established the main branch of the Music Square Church, which later was called the Holy Alamo Christian Church Consecrated before its present name was adopted. The miniseries describes their founding and running of the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation which the program characterizes as a "cult" through which the Alamos became rich by exploiting their followers who truly believed in them. Alamo also claimed that UFOs are divine messengers from heaven and signs of the end times. In September 1994, the Federal District Court for the Western District of Tennessee sentenced Alamo to six years in federal prison in Texarkana, Texas. She had just turned 16 years old. Today, the girl born into the Alamo church is a grown woman, as is her younger sister, and Coies pride in both her daughters is immense. Factories are calling me and asking me why he doesnt pay his bills. [11], In 2016, award-winning playwright Ernest Kearney produced his one-man show My Alamo War for the Hollywood Fringe Festival in Los Angeles, California. While Alamo was tied up in the courts on federal tax evasion charges, other allegations were levied against him from various quarters. Amrhein doesnt believe the children went to school while they lived at the foundation in Dyer. When he was a teenager, Alamo left Joplin for the West Coast. Major funding provided by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. The show related his four-year struggle against the Alamo church on the streets of Hollywood. The Alamo Christian Foundation was an American cult founded in 1969 by Christian evangelist Tony Alamo and one of his wives, Susan Alamo. Among the businesses which Alamo started was decorating denim jackets and airbrushing them with bright, colorful designs. 1416, 18. I called the State Department to look out for my former wife in case she applied for a passport, Amrhein said. He built her a heart-shaped mausoleum, and the church kept her body on display. They also ran a nationwide network of lucrative, church-owned businesses, authorities said, including a distributor of designer denim and leather jackets, studded with rhinestones, that sold for $1,000 or more. Ill get my children back, said Nick Amrhein of Huntington, West VA. And when she was 17, he took her virginity after making her one of the three "wives" he had at the time. Tony was a street preacher and his ministry would offer . Tucker, Maria Luisa. The jackets sold profitably and began making real money for the church members and the church itself when celebrities began purchasing them for several thousand dollars each. A few years later, her estranged daughter, Christhiaoan Coie, successfully sued him in 1995 for access to her mothers body for burial. Sensing that a panicky Alamo might move the body, Coie had obtained a restraining order, taped to the tomb, that forbade anyone from disturbing it. Association chose him as entertainer of the year in 1985. 25-May-1964) Wife: Edith Opal Horn ("Susan Alamo", b. For instance, as an Amazon Associate, Religion News Blog earns from qualifying purchases. I still do, said Coie, who last saw her mother in 1971 when she quit the sect against her parents wishes. Always the promoter, the Alamos established their theological foundation as staunchly anti-Catholic, promoting conspiracy theories about how the Pope, United Nations and mainstream media stood behind the US.. Presidency. Son: Mark Anthony Hoffman (b. They have a son, Tabor, together. He was convicted on July 4, 2009. July 11, 1993. They named the group the Alamo Christian Foundation before forming the . But the church began to falter in 1985, when the Internal Revenue Service stripped it of its tax-exempt status, charging it was nothing more than a front for Alamo-owned businesses. He left me with all the bills, she said. Little Rock, AR. Sign up to receive breakingFront Page Detectivesnews and exclusive investigations. Alamo turned fugitive in 1989 and wasnt captured till July 1991, after a tip came in from a viewer of Americas Most Wanted.. When Tony got back into the business in 1999, he immediately went on the air. The child on the right is Lizzy and Alamos daughter, Antoinette. Like a cheap carnival act, Coie recalled last week, he kept it on display in an open casket, telling church followers that Susan Alamo would rise from the dead. In October 2007, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center on account of its anti-Catholic rhetoric. Preacher Alamo Told to Return Wife's Remains. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. Pebbles agrees: I dont think it will ever be easy. Alamo is the president of the Alama-based Alamo Christian Foundation. Lydia and Tabor are no longer in associated with the group or Tony Alamo. Buchanan, Susy. In return, Jody says, Tony Alamo took away her childhood at the age of 10 by putting her to work eight hours or more a day in the church's denim jacket business. In 1966, Tony was arrested on a gun charge, a felony for which he served jail time. Also he owned the Little Mark, Alamo, and Talamo Records record labels. [11] The church's projects included Nashville's largest country and western clothing store. The Alamo Christian Foundation had churches in Chicago, Nashville, Miami Beach and Brooklyn. Sharon Ast-Kroopf-Hoffman Legal wife of Tony Alamo. The court concluded Alamo also owed another $5 million to ex-members for unpaid labor. Jordan (Kenyas son) was born in Alamos house and Alamo currently refers to him as the bastard and the nigger. For about a decade, beginning in the mid-1990s, Amy and Pebbles lived as child brides of Alamo and were regularly starved, beaten and raped. On November 13, he was sentenced to 175 years in prison and also was fined $250,000. . Specific details about his death were not immediately known, though he reportedly suffered from a number of health problems, including diabetes and a 2011 heart attack. I dont get the feeling he is very smart.. Alamo was living at the time in Tampa, Fla., a fugitive from charges that he had ordered the beating of an 11-year-old church member at the Saugus commune. Alamo followers still pepper the IRS with legal challenges, help with his defense, and make their presence known through their trademark brochures. 1A, 10A. Rate and review titles you borrow and share your opinions on them. Additional support provided by the Arkansas General Assembly. Tony and Susan Alamo on one of their album covers. Picture taken in 1993. What my mother did was wrong. 1A, 11A. Again, followers worked in these businesses for practically nothing. The U.S. Attorney's Office argued that the owners were "owners in name only" because the properties were still under Alamo's control. Theyre messed up children, Amrhein said. In July 1998, he was transferred to a Texarkana halfway house, from which he was released on December 8 of the same year. Nailing Tony Alamo. This Rock 1 (October 1990). Bernard was born in 1934 and took a bus to Hollywood before graduating high school. The girls grew up in Fouke, Arkansas, where they lived on a compound of the eponymous religious organization created in the late 1960s by Tony Alamo and his wife, Susan. By now, he was a millionaire with a large staff of workers. The full weight of the crimes hed committed was finally coming to light, and in 2014, a judge from Miller County, Arkansas, ruled in a case brought by seven ex-cult members. In the midst of his supposed third marriage, a 1986 Arkansas Gazette report concluded that Gyllenhammar had actually been Alamo's sixth wife, as he had apparently been married four times prior to Susan. They were even told who they were going to marry: the 62-year-old leader of their apocalyptic group. She is seeking a sizeable monthly alimony so she can take care of the bills she claims he hasnt paid. Staff of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Gyllenhammar is seeking a five-figure monthly alimony as part of her settlement. Years earlier, sheriffs deputies showed up at Alamos Saugus, California compound. He sent their record to all my friends in Los Angeles to make me mad. Bowden, Bill. He eventually moved his headquarters to Arkansas with his wife, Susan, where he held secret ceremonies at his compound to authorize his marriage to girls as young as 15-years-old. Miss Gyllenhammar says when the romance cooled, he would often beat her. Alamo Ministry Resurrected. Arkansas Times, November 29, 2007, pp. All Rights Reserved. Online at http://www.religionnewsblog.com/8506 (accessed February 23, 2023). Dear Abby: My boyfriend is using me for sex and money. Additional support provided by the Arkansas Humanities Council. History: In 1989 Alamo married Sharon Kroopf (now Sharon Miriam Hoffman), in her late 30s at the time. I mean, you cant put a good face on that, she continued. Alamo quickly declared bankruptcy, and his related businesses collapsed. Even so, why werent my children in school last week? Both members of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, they were forced to follow countless rules and required permission to go outside. He and his wife legally changed their names to Tony and Susan Alamo after they married in Las Vegas in 1966. After he hooked up with Susan, his ambition, combined with her knowledge of Pentecostal life, along with the burgeoning pro-Jesus counterculture movement of the mid-1960s, resulted runaway success. The civil contempt differs from his criminal incarceration in that Mr. Alamo holds the key to the jailhouse in his possession, Spears wrote. The church quickly expanded its holdings, buying several businesses and establishing a compound in nearby Saugus. Tony Alamo was born on 20 September 1934 and his place of birth was in Joplin, Missouri, US. Our website includes affiliate links, which means we get a small commission -- at no additional cost to you -- for each qualifying purpose. Many of the businesses have closed down. She was already married to Kenya Williams (African American) and pregnant with his child at the time. Just why Alamo had the corpsewhich he claimed spoke to him from the graveremoved from its tomb was not explained in Spears order. Sunday October 1, 1995 Alamo Christian Ministries, Tony Alamo. Then in 1991, as federal authorities moved to seize the churchs myriad assets, the mausoleum in Dyer was broken into and Susan Alamos body disappeared. 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