Also media.
Oh, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. We're all doing just so good. Uh, just so good. I'm talking about Jesus grifters, and there Jesus grifting with one of my very favorite people and guests, the great Samantha McVeigh. Samantha, how are you doing?
I am here, you're here.
Yes, you've just been talking about how how tired and slightly broken we all are already this year.
Uh huh h yeah, but hey, we exist.
We're still alive technically, you know, 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 a few times that she is good and dead. She is.
She is real dead. Oh you are. I don't know if you're ready for the amount of dead. This lady is just the deadest, uh, Samantha, are you ready to get back into it?
Let's go.
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?
Put?
Yeah, you put sunglasses on her.
You did guess weekend at Bernie's, And that's what they do. It's I you are correct, because basically what they do is he has her embalmed, He brings her corpse home and he late, 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 that's the plan.
Here.
Tell me she's in that white suit though, like she Lea's 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 mm hmm, like 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. It's not great.
Did he did he did like remarry her like renewed vowels there too. I mean there's a lot that I'm I.
Think he was waiting for her to be resurrected to do that.
Right, Uh, you got to marry her for the fifth time, right.
Yeah, he has the fourth or 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, 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 fifty five, but he goes up to like one hundred and twenty 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 trauma.
Yeah yeah for a lot of people. And it's going to start with some dead body related trauma because 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 twenty four hours a day. Cult funds are used to engage in nearby florists to deliver flowers every day, probably to deal with the smell.
Right, I was gonna ask about that, but you know, yeah, yeah, it's.
Not great, Sam, it's not great. One remember later recalled to a reporter, I believe one percent 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. That's some good DJ. That's some good radio DJ shade.
I mean, yeah, you can yourself.
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, I know this is this is bad.
What again, he's serial killers?
Yeah? Those those kids went through it. We'll say that much, right. One of them, Elijah Franco, weeks 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 doing an interview like, yeah, you're so like you slept with a dead body? Tell us about that experience you grew up with thom Sorry, yeah, no, Yeah, I.
Think that that's basically what it was. Is like 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, Like, I'm getting the fuck out of this place. The fuck is wrong with these people and my parents Jesus. Yeah, so this goes on, This whole corpse thing goes on for six months.
Oh, I was waiting for six days.
No no, no, like a like a wildly long time, and the body was okay, no, no, no, it's not okay. It's it's very, very gross. Greta Allendorff 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, because the kids are being physically punished for not bringing this woman back from the dead. Good cult stuff.
Yeah, the.
Dead lady.
You know, I don't know what's supposed to happen.
Well, she was supposed to come back to Tony.
Like 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? No, this is we are now in rarefied colt Air. We do a lot of cults, but this is some of the cultiest cult stuff we've ever culted on this podcast. Yeah, 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, oh yeah, I was joking. That's not great. I mean, I guess it is.
But you don't have to give breaks Amos conceding, 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 And 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. You're not ready for wear this head, Samantha. I was not ready for where this head. This is a unique
cult business, right. We talked 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. Uh, fucking David Koresh was a musician, you know, 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. Yeah, it's Hollister. This is where Hollister comes from. Tony Alamo invented Hollister. No, so the 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 forced children to labor for free manufacturing high quality but dazzled denim vests and jackets for celebrities, which
is exactly what he does. They are These have like in rhinestones and Swarovsky diamonds, like the La skyline on them, or like Nashville. They are the tackiest fucking jackets that have ever been made. I think some of them are stone wars of them are clearly like black denim or leather. Even they're not just denim, but there's a lot of denim. Yeah, this is this is by now we're in the eighties, right, maybe.
Dazzel, but Dazzle did their thing. Yeah, so this makes sense, also is kind of horrifying. 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 Fraser of The Chantel Clear, 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 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 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 er blew my fucking mind.
Yeah, that's gonna take me a minute.
That's gonna take a second. Right.
The fact that that means he had to have sold so many more after the pot.
Oh yeah, yeah. Oh. 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 mid early to mid eighties, 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 La Times. He makes jackets for all the stars, said Shirley Blinner, a saleswoman at Twist, a boutique on Melrose Avenue, where three Alamo jackets were on sale last week for prices ranging from three hundred and sixty dollars to six hundred and eighty dollars. Blinner pointed to a display of photographs behind the cash register of mister T, Mike Tyson, Hulk Cogan, and Dolly Parton, all wearing what appeared to be a Lamo design jackets.
I was waiting for her name, but by mister T to cut off gene.
Mister 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 mister T wearing a Tony Alamo original standing next to Tony Alamo himself. Hmmm, oh man, it is if you're a big mister T fan like I am, a harsh moment of the soul here look at them.
Look at the two of them together.
That him, that's him. That's Tony.
Off brand like country musicians, like he looks like Haggard, Like 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. Yeah. So there's this picture. They're both wearing these just I gotta say, hideous denim jackets like these are the Michael's you know, the jacket from Bad looks good on Michael, you know, like that's that's a that's a that's a look iconic. I do not understand these denim jackets that mister T and Tony are wearing.
Here again, mister T, I remember him with a cut off jean jacket, Like that's what I am picturing.
When you say, mister it's like American. Yeah, no, it's not a huge leap, right, And this is mister T younger maybe certainly worst judgment. Let's all assume that modern mister T wouldn't make this same mistake. But yeah, the picture I've got, which will we'll put up that this will probably be the background of one of the parts of this episode. But it just says mister 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 the these. I haven't found that information, but I can. I'm very curious.
Prince Charleston, 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.
You know, that was the question. How is it market It was? It marketed as just a hands owned from this church.
It's marketed with that line. Their little hands can put the ryanstones on best.
The only way we could fit the tiny stones on there above the.
Tag we don't pay the children.
They pay us by Yeah, they pay us with their labor, you know, for 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 sequin gowns, often including Swarovski crystals and diamonds as a koutramas. To beyond that, his ministry expanded to control a string of gas stations in the area around the towns of Dire 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.
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 the at this point.
At this point, there are some people who have left. If you really wanted to look, you could find some al legations, right, but there's no lawsuits yet, no one like the the 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, but the the worst stuff hasn't really come out yet. Sore that said, when it does,
they keep selling the jackets. 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 done. Really yes, yes, it's amazing stuff.
It is still named then jacket Jacket Company, and people like, yeah, I really need that. He's they're not gonna make it anymore. I have to have one. It's a little bit of addition, Sam.
He think about it this way, if if Osama bin Laden had sewn had like been selling jinkos while he was on the run, I would have wanted a pair of those jinkos, the bin laden jinkosh my go.
I mean, maybe you could resurrect him from the dead. All you gotta do is cuddle him.
That's right, that's right.
I think we can write this work for you.
I'm gonna have to go to the sea. In his two thousand and five book My Life, Clinton described Tony Alamo as Roy Orbison on speed, a description that doesn't make a lot of sense to me, because we listened to him and he's not a fast singing or speaking guy. I don't know why he just yeah.
Maybe he needs to 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.
Maybe we heard him preach.
I have heard him preach, and.
So he's still that slow.
He's faster, but he's not like a as somebody's watched a lot of like preachers who are definitely coke feeds. He's not like that fast right spirit. And I was gonna say, maybe Bill Clinton doesn't know much about speed, but Bill Clinton definitely knew a lot about speed. Young Bill couldn't do it. Knew a little bit about speed. I'll tell you that much right now.
He knows a lot of things.
Yeah, he knows a lot of things you 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 follower slept in sleeping bags on the floor in crowded meeting rooms. Workers owned five dollars a day. Shifts could last as
long as twenty hours. I think there were just twelve to fifteen on average. But you know, when there's a big when mister T needs a bunch of jackets, you know, you make that shit happen.
You gotta make it happen.
You've got to make it.
Calls, you got show coming come.
Yeah. So, within a few years of Susan passing, Tony started seeking companionship, and while Susan had to begin been like ten years older than him. Chris's experience that Susan's daughter had been an early because again Tony rapes her, right, and that was an when she's like fourteen or fifteen, that was an early warning that Tony's preferences skewed much younger.
And he starts chaking taking child brides. I think he starts with sixteen seventeen 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 to get very young, right. An article for THHV two News notes quote in an old radio program, Alama 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 thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and in some cases if
they have menstruateed already at twelve 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 US have not banned child Yeah. So, and I'm sure Arkansas is probably one of those places.
No. No, And in fact, were those explicitly legal to marry, you know, fourteen year olds and.
A lot of the twelve does the mama say, yeah.
Younger than is allowed anywhere. But I don't actually want to be quoted on that because I might be wrong. 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, twelve is going to be old for him. But we're getting there, Samantha. Let's distract ourselves with some ads first, though. We're back. How you doing.
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 be probably be in office and or an advisor at this point, Like that's just the level 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's 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 tin, 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. God impregnated Mary when she was about eleven years old. So the government, idiots, the people that don't know the Bible, what you're going to have to do is get a
hold of God. Now you're gonna have to get up there and cuff him and send him to prisatory for statutory rape. And yeah, if God fucked an eleven year old, yeah, he's thousands speak of a power imbalance.
He's also God, right right, there's 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, maybe he didn't for a plan to impregnate adolescence.
And it's this whole thing like I I can remember because I grew up you know, in and around evangelicals in the post nine to eleven period constantly hearing about how the fundamental evil of Islam was that it allowed fourteen mom and married like a fourteen year old girl a twelve year old girl, 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 people for that group of people.
Right, we met Gates. Matt, He's fine, he's great, exactly, Matt Gates. We call this the Matt Gates coda. Right, so right up for the splc continues. It's a theme that Alamo keeps coming back to. In a radio show Justice February twenty fourth, 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 having 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 fifteen 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 year olds having sex thousands of times and be like, yeah, that's how that's the that's the way things work. I 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 section. You're like, well, that's basically sex, right, right, I don't know, I don't know fully what, Like, 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. Right,
just a thing that keeps happening. It happens with Christians, it happens on the left. It happens and every religion and every political movement. It happens all the time with conservative Christians. It's just a uh I I. It's 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 with their daughter. Yeah, she was like upset with the daughter for seducing her husband at such an age.
Give her credit.
Yeah, you're 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 you did. You're 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 I agree with me. Yeah, it works, they do.
Yep, yep, yeah, and it works for him for way too long. In nineteen ninety three, 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 the 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 these guys get along.
Wait, I would think that because he would be older than David Koresh. Right, I'm trying to geh. Oh, Yeah, I think he's a bit he's 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 one hundred percent 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 will 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
thought wear the same thing. And we're responsible for both Nazism, communism, and pornography, all of it could be traced back to the Vaticans, 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 frie Did he just see some value because these guys are preaching similar things vis a VI 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, the foundation and again the church doesn't have to pay taxes because that's how churches work, unfortunately, But like his massively successful business is business selling denim vest to mister t has to pay taxes?
Does it it was under like the actual umbrella of his cult that 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. We know that from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy six, the foundations reported income went from forty six one thousand dollars a year to one point three million dollars a year. And again, this is nineteen seventies money. It is obvious under reporting the Colt's numerous businesses and fleet of cadillacts would have
required much more than this and income to maintain. What got Tony in trouble for the first time was the Fair Laboral Standards Act. No matter how many Fire and Brimstone speeches about how Tony gave, some number of his followers left each year, and as they re entered 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 nineteen seventy six the Department of Labor sued
the Foundation for exploiting workers. It alleged that they'd been made to work twelve to fifteen hours a day, six to seven days a week without salary. Now that starts in seventy six, 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 the Supreme Court, here's this case and rules nine to zero that workers, even an 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.
Say, exactly, one hundred percent 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 ten years for him to lose his case, but nothing really changes about the way the colt actually operates its business.
In the early nineteen nineties, Tony and the Tony and Susie Alamo Susan Alamo Foundation embarks on a bold new scam, one that was surprisingly petty given the other businesses operated by the cold 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. Peter and Georgiadas of Pittsburgh, lawyer who sued Alamo on behalf of EX Followers in the nineties, said ministry workers accepted donations of food near its expiration dates, wiped off the dates, and resold the items to grocers. It's plain, flat out fraud, the lawyer said. Mary Koker, who helped X Followers contact federal agents, said that the ministry has been selling outdated government donated food
since it moved to FUK in the nineteen nineties. 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 gonna lie that's a hustle.
That's a hustle, huz these people. You know, he's got a lot of minds working for There's a lot of dudes who's 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 reasonable grocery stores model. Yeah, but like grocery stores actually buying from them, that's I guess at different times. It's different times.
It definitely was. In nineteen ninety one, the fence carried out a raid on Alamo's HQ and 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, eighty two pews, fifteen hundred Alamo jackets, photos of Tony with Larry Hackman, 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?
Wait what what are we trying to resurrect? Our two point zero was? It's 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. 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 one hundred thousand dollars 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 keep her from being buried where her daughter can be a part of it. Because he's a real piece of shit. Yeah, very some reason.
I feel like she would Susan would have enjoyed that her daughter after death.
Also that yes, yes, Tony probably was following her wishes. Tony spent the first half of the nineteen nineties on a 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 M fourteen 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 skin send sketches from his Heidi Holes to different manufacturing facilities. He gains the.
Way they fought, the parents are making their children still make these jackets. Oh he's still the children.
Oh yeah, yeah, it's still primarily the children. 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 La Times everything I do is a work of art. I do the designs
wherever I'm at. And there's this 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 right and happening?
Why? Oh my god.
The La Times is reporting indicated that Alamo jackets continue 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 nineteen eighty five 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 five dollars a week stipend, plus room and boarded in the Lamo commune, he said. Now the article struck a bemused tone, veering from these store owners and customers praising the artistry of the jackets. We felt differently about rhyin Stones back then to former cult members describing the labor conditions as that of an unpaid sweatshop that primarily employed children. One question 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 gonna want my jackets.
First of all, the voice is fantastic. Did he take all like hippie speak in order to like sell this? After all?
Oh, he comes out of that world, you know, I think he is. At one point I think in the late sixties he probably was trying his hand at being a hippie. You know, he's in La around that time.
I guess hippie and Jean Jacket Denham maybe they didn't go hand in hand.
I don't know sure he is in 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 after shocks of the anti war movement in the Summer of Love. And you know, Tony is Tony and his initial cult followers are those people. 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 gen jackets in Hollywood. Quote. FBI spokesman Jim Neilson said the bureau is continuing at search for Alamo, but refuse to elaborate on the investigation. Now, if you're thinking, boy, isn't the fact that this serial child molester and child traffick are manufacturing expensive clothing for the most famous people on Earth and giving interviews will 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 nineties. Bro, I don't know what to tell you that this is actually kind of low. Now, some of the money from jacket sales was reinvested into the cult, primarily into the production of vast numbers of flyers complaining that Tony was being wrongfully targeted by the government on behalf of the Vatican.
His Christian soldiers, largely followers, braced out of his Sauga's compound, trolled the streets of Hollywood and West LA putting leaflets on the windshields of thousands of cars from that article. The leaflet's rambling denunciations claimed that the District Attorney's Office, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of Labour are linked to a terrorist plot against the Alamo Church led
by Pope John Paul the Second. 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 and 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 sauga's phone number as glossy brochures
used by Alamo Designs to promote the sequin jackets. By dialing the number of 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, Warren Bad, same guy, what.
A deal, what a deal, A good conversation, and jackets, beaded jackets on beaded jackets.
Yes, it's so funny how they would talk about rhinestones like serious art, Like, oh my god, the rhinestones on these are amazing.
Are so good.
What a special period of time that was for America. Speaking of special our sponsors, all of them, beautiful, special beat 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 and we're back. So by this point, there are numerous reports in the media that Tony was molesting children.
I hate coming back on a line like that, but this is the story that it is, he argued on his own TV program for polygamy and marriage of children as young at twelve. Yet major stores, including Macy's and Bullocks continued to sell his jackets until they were literally hounded by the press. 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
told report. Bradley's spokesperson told reporters, I guess Alamo was known for his sequin jackets something else at this point too. Man, I don't know what 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, that's not like the Jaws moment. Yes, pretend like no one's dead. No, pretend likely there's not a giant shark attack. Were she gonna enjoy the summer. Let's chill.
I can't imagine the mayor from Jaws like arm in arm with Tony Alamo very easy Now. While he evaded law enforcement with almost comical ease, Tony continued to take new brides. One of the oldest of them was a seventeen year old girl named Yale, who was married to another man in the colt and gave birth in nineteen ninety three while on the run with Tony in his inner circle. As soon as she finished giving birth, Tony
kicked her husband out of the colt. Yale had to beg to have him reinstated, and Tony told her he would on one cognition, 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 Yale years to accept that what happened was not consensual. But obviously she was seventeen and he was sixty and the leader of her cult. Right, 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 prayed 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 cold situations, it doesn't matter usually the parents, whether their present or not. They're somewhat like complicit parts 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.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's pretty standard cult behavior, and 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, it's he's doing all the marrying. Yeah. Yeah, some people are allowed to be married. But as Yale's get like, you can get forcibly separated by him if he doesn't, if he gets jealous of your relationship. In nineteen ninety four, 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 nine million dollars
and sentenced to six years in prison. Again, it was evidence by this point that he was practicing polygamy with children. But a year or so before his arrest in February of nineteen ninety three, the BATF and the FBI had had a bloody standoff with Tony's friend David Carey and his cold outside of Waco. The whole thing had ended with several dead agents, many dead coltists, 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 at all responded by pulling back from going after figures like a Lamo, which is why I suspect no one did the fairly minimal work necessary to charge him
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. Neale says she was still in awe of Alamo. She worked eighteen hour days transcribing the tapes a Lama would record for his followers, She says, editing out his curse words. I would have killed for him. It 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 and telling people horrible things on orders from Tony. Oh oh boy, what cult dynamics, Like I know two to zero one 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 rumors, Like they already know they're these rumors, but then they let them in. Yeah, this is completely normal.
Yeah, I mean a big part of the Tony Alamos 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 the like these government often these appointee jobs to just not upset the apple cart and piss off, you know, certain segments of the country by trying to stop the mass rape of children. It's cool, right, I love it.
The amount of like, first of all, just just from what I remember working as a social worker for defacts. Having a child sex abuse case literally costs a dude six thousand dollars in probation. Yeah, that was, and that's if we had proof dead to rights. Yeah, I mean, like had to be forensic proof or the child had to be able to explicitly tell in detail what it happened to them. But that's the like it. 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 vin 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 guys, the same base. Yeah.
Absolutely.
Tony ultimately served four years of this sentence, leaving prison in nineteen ninety eight and immediately booking it for the town of Folk, Arkansas. Fouke. He repeated the same well worn tactics that had helped him build an inviable 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, instability, The town even honored him with a certificate of appreciation in February two thousand and six 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 question.
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 gonna 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. 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 two thousand and six. 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. 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 its 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 Fraser, a small business owner in town, started looking into the dark and
documented history of Al Alamo ministries. She starts publishing stuff, she starts organizing the accounts of former members, and she's going to be like one of the most effective ground level activists against Tony. Ex followers start going to the media with increased frequency. One of them, a former school teacher, claims Tony ordered her daughter, who suffered from epilepsy, beaten while she was having a seizure because said seizures were
caused by the devil. Another Sue Balsley, told the SPLC that her teenage boy was held in the air by four men and beaten one hundred and forty times as punishment for sending a lovel letter to a female classmate his own age. And it just keeps getting worse from there. There's the case of a girl, Cindy Joe Angelo, when she was fifteen 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 nineteen ninety five, which is when she finds out that her eleven year old sister had also been made a bride. Nicki Farr told the SPLC report that she had fled Alamo's house in nineteen ninety nine at age fifteen 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, I was.
Was this a documentary at any point, because some of these stories sound or ministry.
It might have been a BBC documentary about this.
I may have watched parts of it because some of this sounds, especially like the town being like this is getting weird to finally getting to that point familiar.
We've crossed the line for small town.
Right, like we would mind our business. But then when you start doing this and like.
Devalu on the streets, the girls fleeing barbed wire. Yeah, okay, so from this point on the dam was broken. Reporting in February of two thousand and seven linked to Lamo to a warehouse of three thousand 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 temper pedic mattresses from a lot of eight thousand 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 four thousand of them for half a million dollars. So like, you're stealing mattresses for Katrina victims.
Well, there's so many level God, like, I want to know this is like a fast and furious operation. Yeah, yeah, Like there's a there's a package coming, there's a truck imaged.
Pretty so and furious. It's going to take a lot of trucks to move eight thousand mattresses. God how they didn't have mail order mattress technology like we do today. Thank god you 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. You could do it with Casper's. You can get eight thousand of those in a couple of box jobs. So state and federal law enforcement rated the Alamo compound in September of two thousand and eight, 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 miners. The youngest of these women
had been eight at the time. After decades of horrific crimes, Tony Alama was convicted in two thousand and nine of taking girls across state lines for the purpose of sex. He was sentenced to the maximum one hundred and seventy five years in prison. Now he ultimately serves only a fraction of that because in May of twenty seventeen. He dies at the age of eighty two, 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 prisoner's cuddled him. Yeah, I'm just kidding, do it?
I 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, 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 loved a majority Do you have his adulthood in luxury and like infamy, people respected his stuff. That's really disgusting. It makes me, yeah, angry at the entire system, like the fact that people are okay with this, Like I want to know, did Michael Jackson obviously can't now, but like mister t die pardon anybody ever talk about, you know, having a shame in that or like renouncing any of those things? Did they at least burn.
I haven't run into it. I mean, what are you gonna say, like Hey, you know this guy who so you bought a jacket from turned out to suck. So like, it's not like, you know, it's not like they were like working together, you know, like it's not like Dolly Parton was in business with him specifically she liked, she did some shows at a venue he owned, She owned a jacket. Like, I don't know where we lock that in in terms of responsibility at a moral level.
Right, I mean it's very least like acknowledging that the victims existed, including the child labor, yeah, 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, they wouldn't. Yeah, 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 ryanstoned denim vests.
I mean I feel like Bill Clinton probably had one, Yeah, 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. All right, yeah, well that's the episode.
I need to stage my computer. How do I do this?
Just just burn it? Just burn your computer? Oh man, good stuff? Well anything you want to push out there, Samantha at the.
End, you know, talk about stuff on 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 McVay and check out Maybe don't check out social media too much, but you'll if you do find Sam on it. 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.
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