Part Two: Tony Alamo: The Worst Preacher
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Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're all doing just so good. Just so good. Talking about Jesus grifters and their Jesus grifting with one of my very favorite people and guests, the great Samantha McVeigh. Samantha, how are you doing?

I am here. That's the answer, right? You're here, alive. Yes, we've just been talking about how tired and slightly broken we all are already this year. Very broken. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But hey, we exist. We're still alive, technically, you know? Yes. Not in the ways that matter, maybe, but like technically, you know? Yes. Yeah. Just like, well, actually not at all like Susan Alamo because she's just dead as hell. She is super fucking dead. You told me.

You told me a few times that she is good and dead. She is real dead. I don't know if you're ready for the amount of dead this lady is. Just the deadest. Samantha, are you ready to get back into it? Let's go.

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So you're a cult leader and your wife, the Lamb of God, has died even though you both told everyone on your TV show God would protect her from that sort of pedestrian end because the world can't end unless you're both alive, right? So what do you do when she passes on?

Right. Yeah, you put sunglasses on her. You put sunglasses on her. You did Guess Weekend at Bernie's and that's what they do. You are correct because basically what they do is he has her embalmed. He brings her corpse home. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. He puts it on a table and he's going to have his followers pray over it for days on end. Right. That's the plan here. Yeah.

Tell me she's in that white suit, though. Like, is she at least in that suit? No, she's in her wedding dress. Does that make it worse? Is that creepier or less creepy? That's just setting up for a haunting. Like being cursed and unhaunted. Well, and the way it's described to me is he had he ordered them to dress her corpse in its wedding dress. So I don't think she came in that dress. He just makes his followers put her in it.

Not great. Did he, did he like remarry her? Like renewed vows here too? I mean, there's a lot that I'm, wow. I think he was waiting for her to be resurrected to do that. Right? Fair. You gotta marry her for the fifth time, right? Yeah, yeah. For the fifth time. Yeah. Now I will admit that the relationship dynamics of the Alamos are a little bit murky to me, but my interpretation is that while she was alive, uh,

Susan did a lot of work to keep Tony on something that resembled an even keel. He's still doing some sex crimes, right? But a lot less than he will be once she dies because she is she's exerting some control to limit his behavior. Right.

And once she is gone, there is no one left to keep this man in check. And he loses his fucking mind. Like he goes from, well, not from zero. He's at like 55, but he goes up to like 120 very quickly. I feel like he's just waiting for his moment, though. Is it one of those things like, yeah, now I'm doing this. This is it. This is my time. And then it just becomes...

Yeah, yeah, for a lot of people. And it's going to start with some dead body related trauma. Yeah, yeah, it's gross. So he has Susan's body taken to the cult's dining room and his followers are ordered to take shifts praying for her resurrection so that there's people praying for her to be resurrected 24 hours a day.

Colt funds are used to engage in nearby florists to deliver flowers every day, probably to deal with the smell, right? I was going to ask about that, but you know. Yeah, yeah. It's not great, Sam. It's not great. One Colt member later recalled to a reporter, I believe 100% that she was going to rise from the dead.

On their local access TV show, Tony gave daily sermons promising his wife would be reborn any day now. It became a joke for local radio DJs who reported on this while repeatedly playing Wake Up Little Susie. Oh! That's some good DJ. That's some good local radio DJ shade. I mean...

Yeah. He kind of wrote it himself. No. You can just see how you'd cut this together, though, in like the HBO version of this story. You know, do a little montage or something. Unfortunately, it also gets very creepy very fast because one thing that Tony demands is he wants the children in the cult, he makes them cuddle with Susan's body at night. Yeah, no, this is bad. What?

Again, he's lost his mind. And those kids became serial killers. Yeah, those kids went through it. We'll say that much, right? One of them, Elijah Frankiewicz, later said, she smelled. She was cold and really, really hard. She was dead, which I feel like we didn't need at the end there. But yeah, it's just good to reinforce that to yourself when you've been told for six months that she's alive. So was this during an interview, like...

Yeah, years later. So they just found him. You slept with a dead body. Tell us about that experience. You grew up in this cold. Also, to those people, I'm so sorry. Yeah, no. Yeah, I think that's basically what it was. Because eventually there are court cases and eventually there's prosecution. And a lot of these kids get out and then go talk to the media about like,

Because these are the folks who were not, they were true believers in that they were kids raised in this cult, but they also, they're not converts, right? If you grow up, you know, in a different religion somewhere and you convert to something like this, you tend to stick with it for a long time. Whereas a lot of these kids raised in this, like as soon as they can, they're like, I'm getting the fuck out of this place. What the fuck is wrong with these people and my parents? Jesus. Yeah. Oh.

So this goes on, this whole corpse thing goes on for six months. Oh, I was waiting for six days. Six months? No, no, no. Like a wildly long time. And the body was okay? No, no, no. It's not okay. It's very, very gross. Greta Allendorf writes that every day Susan remained dead, the children were beaten. So it's even worse than just the things about this that are obviously gross.

um because the kids are being physically punished for not bringing this woman back from the dead good cult stuff yeah were they not cuddling enough is that is that yeah were they not cuddling the dead lady i don't know what's supposed to happen well she was supposed to come back to tony like how like by the kids like laying on her oh i think something like that i think something like that

Oh, this is where I need adult supervision. What the hell? What the fuck, right? So this is, we are now in rarefied cult air. We do a lot of cults, but this is some of the cultiest cult stuff we've ever culted on this podcast. That is a new level. Yeah. New level. Fascinating stuff. Incredible work, Tony. Eventually, and this is, you know, you got to give him some credit for personal growth. He comes to accept that his wife is dead, right? You know? Growth?

Yeah, I was joking. That's not gross. I mean, I guess it is, but you don't have to give him credit for it. It's conceding. It's conceding. Yeah, it's conceding. Yeah, okay. So he has his followers build an elaborate mausoleum for her, which included a grave for him. So apparently at this point, he came to accept his own mortality. Now that Susan was gone, he began to adapt other parts of his life to this new reality, which ended with him launching a new and shockingly successful business for the ministry. Okay.

You're not ready for where this head, Samantha. I was not ready for where this head. This is a unique cult business, right? We talk about cult businesses a lot on this show. Restaurants are common, right? Bands are weirdly common. You know, the Mansons tried to do that, right? You get, I mean, Tony Alamo does kind of that version of things. Fucking David Koresh was a musician, you know? Oh, yeah. Right? Right.

What's weird is like launching through your cult an incredibly popular fashion brand that is beloved by the most famous people on Earth, which is what Tony does next. Yeah. Yeah. Shocking stuff. He launches a clothing brand? He does. He does. High fashion, too. It's extremely successful. How successful? Well, we're getting to that. Yeah. It's Hollister. This is where Hollister comes from. Tony Alamo invented Hollister. Right.

No. So the answer, like, because Tony's got to ask himself, hey, you know, as a pedophile cult leader who has just been reminded of his mortality, what's the next thing to do? And the answer, obviously, is force children to labor for free manufacturing high quality bedazzled denim vests and jackets for celebrities, which is exactly what he does.

They are, these have like in rhinestones and Swarovski diamonds, like the LA skyline on them or like Nashville. They are the tackiest fucking jackets that have ever been made. Stonewashed? Stonewashed? I think some of them are stonewashed. Some of them are. Oh.

Clearly like black denim or leather even. They're not just denim, but there's a lot of denim. Yeah, this is by now we're in the 80s, right? Bedazzled did their thing. Yes, yes. So this makes sense. Also, it's kind of...

Yeah. Who wore this? Oh, everyone. So he designs each product himself and sells them under the brand name Tony Alamo of Nashville. And despite that name, their big market is in Hollywood, particularly rich and famous people who wanted clothing that delivered a little bit of Southern charm and credibility.

Tony Alamo jackets took off initially with the Grand Ole Opry set, but in short order, they become like the most desired fashion item in the music industry. According to an article by Lindy Frazier of the Chanticleer, Alamo said he used children when he realized their, quote, hands were the perfect size to embellish the jackets with tiny rhinestones.

Now, why do they all say this? Given given all of that, it might not surprise you to hear that one of the brand's biggest fans was a man famous for being responsible around small children. Have you guessed who it is? No, I can't. Michael Jackson.

That's right, baby. And in fact, if you want the most famous touchstone, Michael Jackson wears a Tony Alamo jacket on the cover of Bad. That's a Tony Alamo original on the cover of Bad. There's so many things to this. Why? Why?

Oh, well, I think there's a couple of reasons why, given some things that we've learned about Michael in the intervening years. But it is when I realized it was that he the jacket from bad was a Tony Alamo or blew my fucking mind. Yeah, that's going to take me a minute. That's going to take a second, right? The fact that.

And that means he had to have sold so many more after the fact. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. These are a massive brand. These are incredibly successful. And Michael is the most famous person on earth at this point in like the fucking early to mid 80s. So he is probably the most famous person to wear a Tony Alamo original. But he's got real competition. And I want to quote from an article on the brand in the L.A. Times.

He makes jackets for all the stars, said Shirley Blenner, a saleswoman at Twist, a boutique on Melrose Avenue where three Alamo jackets were on sale last week for prices ranging from $360 to $680. Blenner pointed to a display of photographs behind the cash register of Mr. T, Mike Tyson, Hulk Hogan, and Dolly Parton, all wearing what appear to be Alamo-designed jackets.

I was waiting for her name. But wait, Mr. T, the cutoff jean jacket? Mr. T! Oh, oh my God! Samantha, I would not be doing my job as the host of this podcast if I did not show you the picture I have of Mr. T wearing a Tony Alamo original standing next to Tony Alamo himself. Mm-hmm.

Oh, man. It is, if you're a big Mr. T fan like I am, a harsh moment of the soul here. Look at them. Look at the two of them together. Oh, is that him? That's him. That's Tony next to Mr. T. He really looks like off-brand country musicians. He looks like Haggard. He's Merle Haggard. Like, what the hell? If Merle Haggard had let his drinking get even more away from him, right? Like, yeah. If Merle Haggard had been doing his body weight in cocaine. What?

Yeah, so there's this picture. They're both wearing these just, I gotta say, hideous denim jackets. It's so bad.

The Michael's, you know, the jacket from Bad looks good on Michael. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's a look. It's iconic. I do not understand these denim jackets that Mr. T and Tony are wearing here. Again, Mr. T, I remember him with a cut-off jean jacket. Right, right. Like, that's what I'm picturing when you say Mr. T. And this one, it's got, like, American flag arms. This doesn't sound like a big leap. Yeah, no, I mean... That doesn't sound like a big leap. It's not a huge leap, right? And this is Mr. T, younger, maybe certainly worse judgment. Yeah.

Let's all assume that modern Mr. T wouldn't make this same mistake. But yeah, the picture I've got, which we'll put up, this will probably be the background of one of the parts of this episode. But it just says, Mr. T pictured here with Pastor Tony Alamo. Both are wearing Tony Alamo designer jackets, which are worn by thousands of actors, entertainers, recording artists, sports figures, presidents, politicians, kings, queens, princes, princesses, and others who are able to afford them.

I don't know which presidents wore these. I haven't found that information, but I'm very curious. Prince Charles definitely has one of these. Queen Elizabeth has one of these things. But Queen Elizabeth had it because she would not buy a jacket if she didn't know child labor had gone into it. That's the question. How is it marketed? Was it marketed as just a hand sewn with love from this church? It's marketed with that line, their little hands can put the rhinestones on best.

This is the only way we could fit the tiny stones on there with the tiny hands. There's a little quote above the tag, we don't pay the children. They pay us by... Yeah, they pay us with their labor, you know, for saving their souls. And cuddling with dead bodies. Yeah, well, and cuddling with dead bodies. Now...

In addition to jackets, Alamo's clothing line sold sharkskin boots, leopard skin jackets, and sequined gowns, often including Swarovski crystals and diamonds as accoutrements. Beyond that, his ministry expanded to control a string of gas stations in the area around the towns of Dyer and Alma, Alabama. They ran a hog farm, grocery stores, and a concert venue, as well as a restaurant where a young Bill Clinton once watched Dolly Parton perform. Um, the

The number of famous people who are just like bit parts in the fucking Tony Alamo story, unreal.

So did people not realize it was a cult? They just assumed it was just a foundation and a children's home or like a halfway house type of thing at this point? At this point, there are some people who have left. If you really wanted to look, you could find some allegations, right? But there's no lawsuits yet. No one, like the, there aren't any like major cases about like the worst things. There's, this is right around the period of time where there are some lawsuits about them, like not paying workers. Right.

But the the worst stuff hasn't really come out yet. So there that said, when it does, they keep selling the jacket. So I'm not letting anyone off the hook for the fucking jacket thing because they keep being a popular product even when he's on the run from the FBI. As well. Really? Yes. Yes. It's amazing stuff.

And it's still named the Tony Alamo Jacket Company. And people are like, yeah, I still need it. I really need that now. Now I need it. They're not going to make it anymore. I have to have one. It's a limited edition. Sam, think about it this way. If Osama Bin Laden had been selling JNCOs while he was on the run, I would have wanted a pair of those JNCOs. The Bin Laden JNCOs? Oh my God. I mean, maybe you could resurrect him from the dead.

Yeah.

That's why he needs the speed, right? Oh, no, that's what he sounds like. Yeah, that's what he sounds like. And he kind of sounds like a slower Johnny Cash to me, who also sucks at singing. Anyway, I don't know why Bill describes him this way. Have we heard him preach before?

I have heard him preach. And so he's still that slow. He's faster, but he's not like a, as someone who's watched a lot of like preachers who are definitely coke fiends, he's not like that fast, right? You mean in the spirit. And I was going to say, maybe Bill Clinton doesn't know much about speed, but Bill Clinton definitely knew a lot about speed. Young Bill Clinton knew a little bit about speed. I'll tell you that much right now. He knows a lot of things that Tony knows. Yeah, he knows a lot of things he shouldn't.

So Tony may not have been on speed, but he did demand speed from his laborers, who from early childhood on were dosed with vitamins and massive amounts of caffeine in order to meet tight labor deadlines. While he lounged by the heart-shaped pool he and Susan had purchased with his new child brides, we'll get to that, his followers slept in sleeping bags on the floor in crowded meeting rooms.

Workers are owned $5 a day. Shifts could last as long as 20 hours. I think there were just 12 to 15 on average. But, you know, when there's a big when Mr. T needs a bunch of jackets, you know, you make that shit happen. You got to make it happen. You got to make it happen. You've got show coming. Come on. Yeah.

So within a few years of Susan passing, Tony started seeking companionship. And while Susan had to begin, been like 10 years older than him, Chris's experience that Susan's daughter had been an early, because again, Tony rapes her, right? And that was when she's like 14 or 15. That was an early warning that Tony's preferences skewed much younger. And he starts taking child brides. I think he starts with 16, 17 year olds.

But like every year he'll go down a couple of years in terms of like what's acceptable to him. Right. And it's going it's going to get very young. Right. An article for THV2 News notes, quote, In an old radio program, Allama once said that when women start their periods, then they are women. According to God's word, they should be able to be married at 13, 14, 15. And in some cases, if they have menstruated already at 12 years old.

So like, capital P pedophile, we're talking. Yeah, for sure. But you know, this does go along the biblical ideals. And that's also why a lot of the states in the U.S. have not...

uh, band child brides. Yeah. So, and I'm sure Arkansas is probably one of those places. Sorry, I don't know. And in fact, it's explicitly legal to marry, you know, 14 year olds and a lot of the United, I think 12 is younger than is allowed anywhere, but I don't actually want to be quoted on that. Cause I might be wrong. Um,

But you're right, like there is a biblical basis for what Tony is saying, right? He's able to cite passages from the Bible in justification of the things he's doing. Now, I will say by the time he reaches his apex, 12 is going to be old for him. But we're getting there, Samantha. Let's distract ourselves with some ads first, though. Never settle unless it's in the electrifying BMW i4.

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I'm just honestly, the problem I have is knowing that this man, if he was under trial now, guarantee he'd be fine. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. He would be so fine. Like he would probably be in office and or an advisor at this point. Like that's just the level. If he has gone that well. Oh, yeah. I think he could have people marching in the streets with guns protecting him for sure. I mean, he does get that. It's just that it kind of pisses off everyone around him because America is in a little bit of a different place at this time.

So as Tony gets older, his beliefs on the proper age to marry a girl get looser. He moves the age limit down to 10, arguing that as long as a girl had started to menstruate, the men around her didn't just have the right but a duty to marry her off, quote. And again, when you say there's a biblical basis, here's his argument.

And yeah, if God fucked an 11-year-old, yeah!

He's thousands. Speak of a power imbalance, he's also God. Right, right. Well, I mean, that's the point. I know there's a lot of debate as to the ages and stuff here, yeah. But I mean, like in general, like he's also a God, obviously. Maybe he didn't resurrect his wife, but that was for a plan to impregnate adolescence.

And it's this whole thing like I can remember because I grew up, you know, in and around evangelicals in the post 9-11 period, constantly hearing about how the fundamental evil of Islam was that it allowed 14 – Muhammad married like a 14-year-old girl or 12-year-old girl or something like that. You know, that's okay in this religion. That's part of like the reason why it's –

But like you if you you can look at any religious text from that period and find a justification for fucking a little kid. Right. That's just the reality, in part because of the time period in which those things were written. Ultimately, my stance is that outside of specifics of the faith that they claim to be people who want to fuck kids find a reason to justify fucking kids. Right.

And people who want to put those people on pedestals will justify why this is okay. Sure. Exactly. For that group of people. For that group of people. Right. I mean, Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz. He's fine. He's great. Exactly. Matt Gaetz. We call this the Matt Gaetz coda, right? Yeah.

So a write-up for the SPLC continues, it's a theme that Alamo keeps coming back to. In a radio show just this February 24th, the preacher cited that the alleged promiscuity of first graders as grounds for marrying them before the illegal age of consent. I found out from people's parents that their daughter started having sex when she was six years old and had sex every day of her life, he said at one point. So right there, by the time she's 15 years old, she's had sex thousands of times. I mean, this is just reality.

The alternate reality, you have to like create for yourself to exist within these things. And people have to listen to him be talking about like six year olds having sex thousands of times and be like, yeah, that's how that's the that's the way things work. Right. That's what kids do. I've never seen a child, but this seems accurate. Like, oh, my God.

I think some of it is literally a lot of these people will justify. You see like a kid, like look at another kid of the opposite sex. And you're like, well, that's basically sex. Right. Right. Um, I don't know. I don't know fully what, like the,

there's a lot to dig into here, but like, this is some of the most vile pedophile justification stuff I've ever heard. And this is not like a subject we cover, you know, sparingly on this show, because it turns out that like, wherever you find the worst people in a society, you'll find a lot of them finding reasons to justify having sex with little kids. Uh,

Right. Just a thing that keeps happening. It happens with Christians. It happens on the left. It happens in every religion and every political movement. It happens all the time with conservative Christians. It's just a...

These people are predators, and predators are good at taking advantage of power dynamics. Tony's a predator who wound up at the head of a cult, and he understands how to manipulate people. And as time goes on, and he's kind of freed further from any influence of his dead wife, he gets more and more extreme with the things he's willing to justify to his followers. And he keeps getting away with it, so he keeps going further.

Right. My question, though, is that the wife wasn't necessarily trying to protect the children as much as she was jealous of the children. She's his wife, right? Which is what happened with her daughter. Yeah. She was like upset with the daughter for seducing her husband at such a young age. I'm not trying to give her moral credit. Right. But this is that conversation is that no one really takes responsibility because they're just like, well, he's the one bad character. We didn't know better. But the thing is, yeah, you did.

Yeah. Yeah, you did. You're like the parent or the people who are like watch these children grow up or haven't grown up. And then that's like, oh, everything about this. And the fact that this continues to be a justifiable conversation as if eventually someone will believe me and agree with me. Yeah. And it works. They do. Yep. Yep. Yeah. And it works for him for way too long. Mm-hmm.

In 1993, he releases a tract titled The Polygamists, where he justifies his behavior by arguing the Holy Scriptures proclaim polygamy to be righteous. And he's doing a lot of what like there's a chunk of the Mormons, the FLDS Church, very similar justifications for polygamy and for fucking kids, you know, that you find between the two of them. Very similar to the kind of stuff David Koresh is saying, right? Because David Koresh is a friend of his, right? Of course.

Of course. Of course. Of course these guys get along. Wait, I would think that is because he would be older than David Koresh, right? I'm trying to think of my timelines. Oh, yeah. I think he is a bit. He's definitely older. So maybe he was mentoring this dude at this point? I think there's a bit of that going on. I don't know how Koresh, because obviously Koresh is no longer able to give interviews. So I'm not sure 100% how David would have described what their relationship was, but we'll talk about a little later how Tony describes it.

In a broadcast for his TV network talking about polygamy, Tony expounded, they're condemning polygamy when it's never condemned. God never says no polygamist shall enter the kingdom of heaven. But these bastards, these homosexual Vaticanites, they condone homosexuals and they condemn marriage. And a man that would take care of his, they say you're a polygamist, that I married too many wives. Well, find out, prove it. And even if I was, there's no law in the Bible against it.

Now, as you may be noticing here, Tony saved much of his hatred for gay people and the Catholic Church, who he thought were the same thing, and were responsible for both Nazism, communism, and pornography. All of it could be traced back to the Vatican. And while Tony didn't get along with the Catholics, he could be open-minded when it came to other cult leaders. He was friends particularly with David Koresh. Tony told an interviewer that David was, quote, like a brother to me.

No, I don't know. Does that mean they were really super fr- Did he just see some value because these guys are preaching similar things vis-a-vis pedophilia and polygamy? I don't know. It's hard to say precisely how much money came into the cult because Tony was not a fan of paying taxes. I know you're going to be shocked by that, right? What?

The foundation and again, the church doesn't have to pay taxes because that's how churches work, unfortunately. But like his massively successful businesses, business selling denim vests to Mr. T has to pay taxes. Does it? Yes. Under like the actual umbrella of his cult, he still does? Yes. Yes. Because it's not I mean, like it's an actual like business, you know, like Tony's arguing it shouldn't have to. But the IRS will feel differently.

Um, we know that from 1970 to 1976, the foundation's reported income went from $46,000 a year to $1.3 million a year. And again, this is 1970s money. It is obvious underreporting. The Colts' numerous businesses and fleet of Cadillacs would have required much more than this in income to maintain. What got Tony in trouble for the first time was the Fair Labor Standards Act.

No matter how many fire and brimstone speeches about hell Tony gave, some number of his followers left each year. And as they reentered the real world, some of them caught on to the fact that Tony had actually broken the law by not paying them.

Some of these people wound up talking to the government, and in 1976, the Department of Labor sued the Foundation for Exploiting Workers. It alleged that they'd been made to work 12 to 15 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week without salary. Now, that starts in 76, but the case takes a decade to wind to conclusion, right? This is not a fast-moving case, and it reaches the Supreme Court. This is a—the Supreme Court hears this case, and—

and rules 9-0 that workers even in a cult are entitled to minimum wage and overtime benefits.

Which you would think, oh good, Tony's going to have to pay everybody now. He does not. He finds workarounds, he delays payments as long as possible, and he orchestrates ways to recoup the money. Now that he was paying his workers a legal salary, what he would do is every couple of weeks he would give everyone their paychecks, and then they would have a big to-do of everyone handing their paychecks back as donations to the church, right? Tithing, right? That's what I would assume. Exactly. 100% tithes.

Still, the case had been as high profile as cases get, which drew the attention of federal law enforcement. So at this point, Tony has gotten sued. He's lost his case. It takes 10 years for him to lose his case. But nothing really changes about the way the cult actually operates its business.

In the early 1990s, the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation embarks on a bold new scam, one that was surprisingly petty given the other businesses operated by the cult, but it gives you the level of contempt that they have both for like Christian charity and for the law. And I want to read a quote from an article by NBC News.

So,

Part one of their businesses is taking food donations and then operating a business to sell to grocery stores, expired foods that had been donated for free. I'm not going to lie. That's a hustle. That's a hustle. Look, these people, you know, he's got a lot of minds working for him. There's a lot of dudes. His only thought every day is how can we make more money for Tony Alamo? And they keep coming up with ways, you know, that is, I would have never thought of that.

There's a reason you wouldn't have thought of it. I can't believe grocery stores. Because you're not a monster. Yeah. But like grocery stores actually buying from them, that's – Yeah. I guess it's different times. It's different times. It definitely was. That's amazing. In 1991, the feds carried out a raid on Alamo's HQ in Georgia Ridge. He had enough warning that he was able to flee ahead of the authorities along with most of his valuable property.

The cops who raided his place found piles of Bibles, 82 pews, 1500 Alamo jackets, photos of Tony with Larry Hagman and dozens of mirrors. But they did not find Susan's body. That's the mausoleum had been smashed open.

Wait, so, wait. Her body's missing now? Oh, yeah, yeah. Missing again. Wait, what? What? Are we trying to resurrect our 2.0? Is this like... No. What's happening? It's so much pettier than that. So...

Chris, Susan's daughter, despite how much her mom had abused her, still loved her mom and wanted to give her a proper burial. And Tony hates this girl. So once she sues him, being like, you have to give me my mom's body, he has his followers steal it away and store the corpse in a storage unit to hide her. Yeah.

It would take like seven years for Chris to win the right to have her mom's body returned and reburied. Alama was eventually ordered to pay $100,000 in damages. But like that's it's just he's not even trying to raise her from the dead. He's just trying to like keep her from being buried where her daughter can be a part of it because he's a real piece of shit. Yeah.

For some reason, I feel like Susan would have enjoyed that, torturing her daughter after death. Also a piece of shit. I feel like she would approve of that. Yes, yes. Tony probably was following her wishes. Tony spent the first half of the 1990s on the run from the law. The FBI put out wanted posters for him, which stated, Alamo is always accompanied by bodyguards who have access to numerous weapons to include M14 rifles. He is known to be hostile to law enforcement and is considered armed and dangerous.

Now, that's all true. What's wild to me is while he is on the run, his followers keep making jackets and he keeps designing them. He uses a fax machine to send sketches from his hidey holes to different manufacturing facilities. So wait, the parents are making their children still make these jackets? Oh, yeah. It's still the children? Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's still primarily the children. Yes. Yes.

And he keeps giving interviews to journalists about the jackets. He even visits his Hollywood storefront while he's on the run from the FBI. He tells the L.A. Times, everything I do is a work of art. I do the designs wherever I'm at.

And there's this LA Times article that I'm going to be quoting from is amazing because it's like he's talking to the people who are running these shops, selling these jackets, being like, but you know, like he's on the run for a bunch of crimes, right? Like kids have accused him of molesting them. He's on the FBI's most wanted list. Why are you still selling his jackets? Yeah.

How is this happening? What? Oh, my God. The LA Times' reporting indicated that Alamo jackets continued to be manufactured in California, New York, and primarily Arkansas. No one working at any of these factories received any pay, and apparently nothing meaningful had changed after that 1985 ruling. Quote,

One former member who left the cult last year said working conditions at Alamo clothing shops have changed little since the ruling. The former member who asked not to be identified said he has seen young children working in the shops with their parents. Workers were paid only a $5 a week stipend, plus room and board at an Alamo commune, he said.

Now, the article struck a bemused tone, veering from the store owners and customers praising the artistry of the jackets. We felt differently about rhinestones back then. To former cult members describing the labor conditions as that of an unpaid sweatshop that primarily employed children. When questioned about this, Tony told a reporter, the clothing is so groovy. Everyone wants it no matter what they think I am. No matter what, the superstars are going to want my jackets. Yeah.

First of all, the voice is fantastic. Did he take all like hippie speak in order to like sell this after all? He comes out of that world. You know, I think he is at one point, I think in the late 60s, he probably was trying his hand at being a hippie. You know, he's in L.A. around that time.

I guess hippie and jean jacket denim. Maybe they do go hand in hand. I don't know. Sure. He is. And all this whole cult is shrapnel of the hippie movement, right? The hippie movement doesn't really change anything. A lot of people wind up on the street and mentally damaged in the aftershocks of the anti-war movement and the summer of love. And, you know, Tony is Tony and his initial cult followers are those people. Mm hmm.

So, being decent reporters, the LA Times crew reached out to the FBI about the fact that this guy, who's apparently one of their most wanted, seems to still be selling jean jackets in Hollywood. Quote, FBI spokesman Jim Nielsen said the Bureau is continuing its search for Alamo, but refused to elaborate on the investigation.

Now, if you're thinking, boy, isn't the fact that this serial child molester and child trafficker manufacturing expensive clothing for the most famous people on earth and giving interviews while on the run from the FBI, isn't that a hideous indictment of our federal law enforcement agencies? And my answer would be, oh, man, they were up to so much worse shit than this in the mid-90s, bro. I don't know what to tell you. Right. Oh, fuck, man. I'm thinking that's low on the totem pole. This is actually kind of low. Yeah.

Yeah.

His Christian soldiers, largely followers braced out of his Saugus compound, trawled the streets of Hollywood and West L.A., putting leaflets on the windshields of thousands of cars. From that article, the leaflets' rambling denunciations claim that the district attorney's office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Labor are linked to a terrorist plot against the Alamo Church led by Pope John Paul II.

The leaflets have become a common sight on Los Angeles streets with titles such as Government Subversion Against Alamo and Tony Alamo, My Side of the Story. They have at various times appeared littered along the sidewalk on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, at a county courthouse in Lancaster, and on the windshields of cars at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles International Airport.

The leaflets bear the same saga's phone number as glossy brochures used by Alamo Designs to promote the sequin jackets. By dialing the number, callers can learn how to obtain more of Alamo's religious literature or which Los Angeles-area stores carry Alamo's jackets.

You can get it all. Propaganda or the jacket Michael Jackson wore in bad. Same guy. What a deal. What a deal. A good conversation and jackets. Beaded jackets on that note. Beaded jackets. Yes. So many rhinestones. It's so funny how they would talk about rhinestones like serious art. Like, oh my God, the rhinestones on these are amazing. They're so good.

What a special period of time that was for America. Speaking of special, our sponsors, all of them, beautiful, special people. None of them are on the run from the FBI, hiding in the mountains. You know, that's not any of our sponsors, except for maybe that food box company that just got caught with child labor stuff. Anyway, whatever. We'll be back.

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This is the story that it is. He argued on his own TV program for polygamy and marriage of children as young as 12. Yet major stores, including Macy's and Bullock's, continued to sell his jackets until they were literally hounded by the press. These

These LA Times reporters even came up with a photo of Tony shaking hands with Los Angeles Mayor Tim Bradley, and the picture was taken while Tony was on the FBI most wanted list. Wow. Bradley's spokesperson told reporters, I guess the llama was known for his sequined jackets. Something else at this point, too. Man, I don't know what to... Very LA Mayor thing to do, though. Like...

Look, famous people wear his stuff. I don't care what crimes he's committing. Right. I mean, this is kind of like the Jaws moment. Yes. Of like, pretend like no one's dead. Pretend like there's not a giant shark attack. We're just going to enjoy the summer. Let's just chill. I can't imagine the mayor from Jaws, like, arm in arm with Tony Alamo. Very easy. Yeah.

Now, while he evaded law enforcement with almost comical ease, Tony continued to take new brides. One of the oldest of them was a 17-year-old girl named Yale who was married to another man in the cult and gave birth in 1993 while on the run with Tony and his inner circle. As soon as she finished giving birth, Tony kicked her husband out of the cult. Yale had to beg to have him reinstated, and Tony told her he would on one condition. She'd have to marry him. From a write-up by the SPLC,

Alamo's five wives played with her young daughter in another room as she pondered her fate. "It's like having a loaded gun to your head," she says now. Refusing Alamo meant not only might you get beat half to death, but you'll go to hell on top of it.

So pretty bleak. She says, yes, the thing that you would expect happens. It's as awful as you would guess. It took Gail years to accept that what happened was not consensual, but obviously she was 17 and he was 60 and the leader of her cult. Right. Um,

So they're not married long, and during their brief period, because he is free for about a year after marrying her, before he finally gets caught, and during that brief period, he marries a nine-year-old girl and a ten-year-old girl. Here's how Yale described his grooming practice. Every little girl starting to develop wants to feel beautiful, and he was very good at making them feel that way. He preyed on the fact that we were alienated from our parents. They worked and worked, and some of us hadn't seen our parents in a very long time.

yeah that makes sense yeah no i was i mean to be fair in these cult situations it doesn't matter usually the parents whether they're present or not they're somewhat like complicit part complicit again i think a lot of these yeah but then like separating them makes a lot of sense which it does happen in a lot of cults yep yep it's a pretty it's pretty standard cult behavior and it i mean it makes sense that that's how tony works

So he was okay with other people having multi-relationships too? It wasn't just him? Or did he do all the marrying? Oh, he's doing all the marrying. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Some people are allowed to be married, but as Yale's kid, you can get forcibly separated by him if he doesn't, if he gets jealous of your relationship. In 1994, the year after their marriage, Tony was finally arrested in...

This is not going to surprise anyone. Florida, where he had been living for most of the time he spent on the run under a fake name. He was convicted of tax fraud to the tune of $9 million and sentenced to six years in prison.

Again, there was evidence by this point that he was practicing polygamy with children, but a year or so before his arrest in February of 1993, the BATF and the FBI had had a bloody standoff with Tony's friend David Koresh and his cult outside of Waco. The whole thing had ended with several dead agents, many dead cultists, and dozens of dead children.

The disaster at Waco, which came right off the heels of the bloody ATF standoff at Ruby Ridge, had galvanized the American religious right against what they saw as federal overreach. The fact that the feds had fucked up hideously and made a very bad situation even worse made all of this a lot more problematic, and the FBI, et al., responded by pulling back from going after figures like Alamo, which is why I suspect no one did the fairly minimal work necessary to charge him afterwards.

over his polygamy and child molestation at this stage. In fact, while he is in prison, he is allowed to have visitation rights with his wives, per the SPLC. The children? Yeah! What? Yeah!

Although he was incarcerated during most of their marriage, Alamo kept in touch through regular prison visits, where Yale and other wives present at the time alleged that he would fondle the younger girls as older wives blocked the view of the prison security cameras. He allegedly spoke to the girls in graphic terms about group sex and whips, says Yale, who became terrified of him.

At the time, Yale says, she was still in awe of Alamo. She worked 18-hour days transcribing the tapes Alamo would record for his followers, she says, editing out his curse words. I would have killed for him. I would have killed my child or anyone for him, even though I hated him, Yale says now. I'd become his little demon, finding sick joy in telling people horrible things on orders from Tony. Oh. Oh, boy. What? Cult dynamics like, I don't know, 201 there. The whole...

Older wives hiding what's happening. But also the fact that like, why are you prison officials letting children come here? There's so many questions. I have so many questions. Like there's already rumors. Like they already know there's these rumors, but then they let them in. And they're like, this is completely normal. Completely normal.

Yeah, I mean, a big part of the Tony Alamo story is that our legal system is set up to enable certain kinds of cult leaders, even when they molest children on a grand scale, because that's a lot easier for all of the people who have these government, often these appointee jobs, to just not upset the apple cart and piss off certain segments of the country by trying to stop the mass rape of children. It's cool. I love it. The amount of like... First of all, just...

Just from what I remember working as a social worker for DFAX, having a child sex abuse case literally cost a dude $6,000 in probation. Yeah. That was... And that's if we had...

Dead to rights, yeah. I mean, it had to be forensic proof or the child had to be able to explicitly tell in detail what had happened to them. You would talk about the fact that it only costs a bit of money if you want to do this. It's disgusting. And the Venn diagram of guys who would like

shoot elected officials if those laws were changed to make the punishments be more substantial. And guys who own kill your local pedophile shirts is just a circle, right? The same guy, the same guys. Yeah, absolutely. Tony ultimately served four years of this sentence, leaving prison in 1998 and immediately booking it for the town of Folk, Arkansas, F-O-U-K-E.

He repeated the same well-worn tactics that had helped him build an enviable role of properties and businesses in two other Arkansas small towns and in Hollywood up to this point. For nearly a decade, Tony enjoyed wealth and stability. The town even honored him with a certificate of appreciation in February 2006 for deeds that he and his church did to aid those in need in our community and for his Christian love and kindness.

And this is why I don't trust Christians. Yeah, I mean, this is why I have a lot of trouble trusting anybody who runs a church. I'll say that much. Right. Yeah. I mean, I was going to say a lot of this is hand in hand, once again, with the current church leaders today. It is. I will say there's a difference in that it's these local small town residents who are, I assume, also evangelical Christians generally, who are some of the first people to stand up to Tony. Right.

Um, because here's the thing about pedophile cult leaders. Again, if you give them an inch, they wind up setting up armed guards on public streets, which is what an increasingly paranoid and elderly Tony did later in 2006. By this point, the feds had started investigating him again, this time finally over the child molestation and trafficking. Alamo responded by ordering his armed guards to line the public street approaching his property. Um,

It is an unfortunate but undeniable reality that when you give a man a rifle and tell him to patrol the street, regardless of his legal position, he'll start questioning random strangers. This happened, and it seriously pissed off residents who complained to the local government, and then the local government did nothing because they were almost certainly being bribed by the cult or were just scared of it. And thus the government took no action until the abuses grew too numerous to ignore. So residents had to take actions into their own hands.

One resident, Judy Frazier, a small business owner in town, started looking into the dark and documented history of Alamo Ministries. She starts publishing stuff. She starts organizing the accounts of former members, and she's going to be one of the most effective ground-level activists against Tony.

And... It just keeps getting worse from there. Uh...

There's the case of a girl, Cindy Jo Angulo, when she was 15 and married to someone else. Because again, not great dynamics outside of being married to Alamo in this cult. Alamo calls her into his house and makes her his wife in 1995, which is when she finds out that her 11-year-old sister had also been made a bride.

Um, Nikki Farr told the SPLC report, uh, that she had fled a Lama's house in 1999 at age 15 after three years of basically showing up for those prison visits and being sexually harassed by Tony. She didn't want to marry him once he got out and she escaped from the cult by crawling through ditches and over barbed wire after he caught her making an unauthorized phone call and knocked her out.

Pretty bad stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Was this a documentary at any point? Yes, yes. Because some of these stories sound familiar. Or Ministry of Evil. It might have been a BBC documentary about this.

about this I may have watched parts of it because some of this sounds especially like the town being like this is getting weird yeah finally getting to that point you've crossed the line for small town right like we would mind our business but then when you start doing this and like devaluing our property the girls fleeing barbed wire yeah yeah

Okay. So from this point on, the dam was broken. Reporting in February of 2007, linked a Lamo to a warehouse of 3,000 stolen mattresses owned by two of his wives. I wouldn't bring this up because like mattress theft, not a huge crime, except these were Tempur-Pedic mattresses from a lot of 8,000 that had been donated by the company to victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Tony's men had wound up stealing them somehow and sold an estimated 4,000 of them for half a million dollars. So like you're stealing mattresses for Katrina victims? That is evil. There's so many levels. Oh my God. But mattresses, how? Like, I want to know this is like a Fast and Furious operation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In which they're like, there's a package coming, there's a truck coming. I imagine pretty slow and furious. It's going to take a lot of trucks to move 8,000 mattresses. But I,

They didn't have mail order mattress technology like we do today, thank God. You can't do that with Tempur-Pedic. No, no. You could do it with like those, what were those? The podcaster mattresses. Now they're at Costco? Yeah, now they're at Costco. Casper or something? Yeah, Casper. You could do it with Casper's. You could get 8,000 of those in a couple of box trucks. Yeah.

So state and federal law enforcement raided the Alamo compound in September of 2008, charging him with child abuse, possession of child pornography, sexual abuse, and trafficking. He was convicted on the testimony of five women who claimed they'd been married to him in secret ceremonies as minors. The youngest of these women had been eight at the time.

After decades of horrific crimes, Tony Alamo was convicted in 2009 of taking girls across state lines for the purpose of sex. He was sentenced to the maximum, 175 years in prison. Now, he ultimately serves only a fraction of that because in May of 2017, he dies at the age of 82, but he still spends a decent bit of time in prison and he dies there. So I guess that's as good as this story was ever going to end. I want to know that the prisoners cuddled him.

Yeah. I'm just kidding. Don't tell me. I want to know that like... Yeah, did they try to bring him back?

I don't know. I hope he had a bad time. I hope it was all bad from that point on. Right. Because he didn't get nearly what I would describe as a fair punishment, like nine years in prison for what's really a dizzying array of crimes. Right. And the fact that he lived a majority of his adulthood in luxury and infamy, people respected his stuff. That's really disgusting. It makes me angry. Yeah.

The entire system. The fact that people are okay with this. I want to know, did Michael Jackson, obviously he can't now, but Mr. T, die pardon, anybody ever talk about having a shame in that or renouncing any of those things? Did they at least burn? I haven't run into it. I mean, what are you going to say? Like, hey, you know this guy you bought a jacket from turned out to suck. So it's not like...

It's not like they were working together. It's not like Dolly Parton was in business with him specifically. She did some shows at a venue he owned. She owned a jacket. I don't know where we lock that in in terms of responsibility and a moral level.

Right. I mean, at the very least, like acknowledging that the victims existed, including the child labor. Yeah. That went into her work. Yeah. I mean, I think it would have been good to say something for all of these people who bought Alamo jackets, but I'm not surprised they didn't. Of course not. Yeah. They wouldn't. Yeah. I mean,

I mean, we don't know who the queens and kings and presidents are at this point. No. Yes. I do want to know. Yeah. I do imagine the king of Saudi Arabia has a nice collection of rhinestone denim vests. I mean, I feel like Bill Clinton probably had one. Oh, yeah. Like I could see him putting one of those on and playing his saxophone. Oh, yeah. On par. Yeah. I wouldn't be shocked. I wouldn't be shocked, especially since we know he was a fan. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, that's the episode. I need to sage my computer. How do I do this? Just burn it. Just burn your computer. Oh, man. Good stuff. Well, anything you want to push out there, Samantha? You want to plug at the end here? You know, we talk about

Stuff Mom Never Told You about how the world is awful and similar to these bad people. And hopefully solutions or at least positive things. So if you want to come listen to us, you can find me on Blue Sky, McVeigh, Sam. I do have Instagram and all that, but I'm rarely on there. Yeah. Well, check out Sam McVeigh and check out, maybe don't check out social media too much. Don't do it. If you do, find Sam on it.

And above all else, don't buy a denim jacket. They're all made by cult leaders. Especially if it's bedazzled. Yeah. Yeah. Especially if it's bedazzled. Just avoid that for your own soul's sake. All right. And that's the episode, everybody. We're done.

Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday. Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at Behind the Bastards.

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