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Feds storm Alamo, Ministries target of child porn probe
Texarkana Gazette ^ | 09/21/2008 | Jim Williamson

Posted on 09/21/2008 8:14:12 AM PDT by TheDon

FOUKE, Ark.—Federal and state authorities, prompted by allegations of child pornography being produced on site, executed search warrants Saturday evening at Tony Alamo Christian Ministries.

Shortly before 6 p.m., agents from the FBI, Arkansas State Police and the Arkansas Department of Human Services converged on the multiresidential compound, which sits on the equivalent of a half-mile square. For about an hour, search teams were seen entering the church and several neighboring buildings belonging to the Alamo Ministries.

Allegations that children living at the Alamo facilities were being sexually and physically abused were central to the state investigation, said Bill Sadler, a spokesman for the Arkansas State Police.

“Every minor child residing inside the Alamo compound is being interviewed by law enforcement officers and state human services officials,” he said.

“If parents of these children can be located elsewhere on the premises, officers will strive to ensure a line of communication is maintained between the children and the parents. State and federal authorities are committed to reuniting the children who may have parents at the site as quickly as possible.”

....

A voice from a passing pickup truck on U.S. Highway 71 yelled “good job” to the Arkansas State Police troopers blocking the entrances to the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries.

...

Jeanne Philyaw, who lives next to the ministries’ property, said the raid “was a long time coming.”

“I’m on the edge of tears. It’s both for joy and frustration,” she said. “How can people not know what was going on with Tony Alamo’s history?

...

Fouke Mayor Terry Purvis also watched the activity after the raid started.

“My fear was another Waco, but it appears to have gone smoothly. Praise the Lord,” he said.

...

(Excerpt) Read more at texarkanagazette.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: christian; cpswatch; flds; muslims; polygamists; polygamy
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To: TheDon

what is that a motel 6?


21 posted on 09/21/2008 8:54:43 AM PDT by dalebert
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To: tbone56
He started out in Saugus, CA in the late 60’s. Sadly, 2 brothers that I knew in high school joined his cult.
Tony & Susan Alamo had law problems there also.


Oh no. You mean this could be a kiddie porn thing?

Imagine the broad brushing this will give legitimate Christianity and their retreats. GEESH!

22 posted on 09/21/2008 8:56:21 AM PDT by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: TheDon

Putting the wife’s body on display and waiting for her to be resurrected makes him a wacko...


23 posted on 09/21/2008 8:56:57 AM PDT by usmcobra (A vote for McCain & Palin is a vote against Obama bin Biden)
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To: Abigail Adams

“Can someone expound on this for those of us who have never heard of this guy? Thanks!”

Same here.

I’ve never heard of them.


24 posted on 09/21/2008 8:57:30 AM PDT by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: dalebert

LOL! It does have that look!


25 posted on 09/21/2008 8:57:36 AM PDT by TheDon
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To: fieldmarshaldj
Yes.....he lived at the corner of Tyne and Lealand in Oak Hill where he left his dead wife's body in the home awaiting resurrection

Tony Brown, head of Universal South records and his very pretty socialite and minor celebrity wife Anastasia live on the property now.

Around 10 years ago they raze Alamo's digs and I hear had it blessed anew to rid the Alamo darkness and then rebuilt a really cool fieldstone spread...

26 posted on 09/21/2008 8:58:42 AM PDT by wardaddy (Sandra Bernhard should not be allowed around livestock unsupervised.)
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To: RadioCirca1970
I wonder if this was politically motivated like the case was in Texas? I wonder if the state of Arkansas received a bogus phone call and then proceeded to ruin 100 kids lives because of the lies given in that call before they even tried to verify the information or the caller? I also wonder if it will take an appellate judge to return legal sanity to the case like happened in Texas. I wonder if a very few charges are made after such a big political show like happened in Texas.
You can say what you want and wish it to be true but only provable truth supports what are known as "FACTS." Our nations courts are supposed to be based on provable truth and not on a neighbors disagreement with another's religion. In the End in Texas they have next to nothing that they can prosecute and because of the massive mess the prosecutors and the initial judge made those charges will probably never hold up either. This incident in Texas is not a good example of anything positive it is a great example of a colossal legal and a prosecutions professional ethical screw ups. I hope that the state of Arkansas learned what not to do and acted and reacted on properly verified information in a legal and reasonable manner. Texas was found by their own judicial system to have failed on each and every one of these points. I hope Arkansas is honest enough, professional enough, and ethical enough to do it right and actually protect it's children from real and true threats and not the untrue and unsupported allegations made up by a criminal calling in from Colorado.
27 posted on 09/21/2008 8:58:55 AM PDT by oldenuff2no (Retired AB ranger and damn proud of it!!! I served to support our constitution and our way of life.)
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To: TheDon
Lovely guy. Whatever the facts are in the current controversy, one look at Wikipedia and his web page give an unsubtle hint at the con man Alamo (aka Hoffman).

From Wikipedia: "Did you know that the Pope and Ronald Reagan are a couple of Anti-Christ Devils and that they are selling us all down the drain?"

His web page is enough to supply any conspiracy theorist for a lifetime. What a con man.

28 posted on 09/21/2008 8:59:09 AM PDT by JimSEA (just another liberal-bashing fearmonger)
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To: TheDon

“In October 2007, Tony Alamo Christian Ministries was listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center on account of its anti-Catholic rhetoric.”


29 posted on 09/21/2008 9:05:15 AM PDT by dsc
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To: Mean Maryjean

He was a fixture in Nashville for awhile. His big flashy clothes store in downtown on Lower Broad, the even creepier big billboards over the interstate featuring him and his wife... and, of course, what he did with his wife’s corpse. If Rev. Jim Jones had a brother, it’d be Tony Alamo.


30 posted on 09/21/2008 9:11:41 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: TheDon

Ummm, he meant she’d resurrect separate from the rest of the believers, kind of like Christ.

Alamo is nuts and a crook. He’s one who insisted that Pope John Paul II and Ronald Reagan were the anti-Christ.


31 posted on 09/21/2008 9:12:24 AM PDT by SlapHappyPappy
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To: TheDon

Think “reanimated corpse.” This fella should’ve spent a long time in the nervous hospital next to Karl Childers.


32 posted on 09/21/2008 9:15:12 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~"This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps !"~~)
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To: oldenuff2no

uhm...okay, and where do you come down on 13 year old girls marrying 55 year old men...just wondering..


33 posted on 09/21/2008 9:17:37 AM PDT by RadioCirca1970 (Welcome to the Terror Dome....)
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To: TheDon; Alice in Wonderland; hocndoc; deport; patton; Rutabega

Thank you for posting this article.


I wonder if anything will come of this?


34 posted on 09/21/2008 9:20:54 AM PDT by UCANSEE2 (The Last Boy Scout)
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To: DorisCCC

Excerpt:

...

Probably the strangest incident surrounding Tony Alamo Christian Ministries has to do with the body of Susan Alamo, who died of cancer on April 8, 1982. Tony Alamo quickly predicted that she would be resurrected and kept her embalmed body on display at the Arkansas compound for approximately six months before placing it in a mausoleum. In February 1991, Alamo ordered his followers to vacate the Arkansas compound prior to a federal raid and to bring along the body of Susan Alamo. A chancery court judge ordered Alamo to return the body in 1995 in response to a suit filed by Christhiaon Coie, Susan Alamo’s estranged daughter. On July 23, 1998, after a three-year legal battle, his followers brought the body to a funeral home in Van Buren (Crawford County). The following month, Susan Alamo was re-interred in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Alamo’s various marriages are controversial and difficult to number. Following Susan’s death, rumors spread that he had taken two fifteen-year-old girls as “wives.” On June 23, 1984, he married Swedish native Birgitta Gyllenhammar in Las Vegas, Nevada, though this marriage ended two years later; she later claimed that Alamo wanted her to have plastic surgery to look like Susan and that he regularly beat and drugged her. In the midst of his supposed third marriage, a 1986 Arkansas Gazette report concluded that Gyllenhammar had actually been Alamo’s sixth wife, as he had apparently been married four times prior to Susan. Between 1986 and 1990, the preacher remarried twice.

When Alamo was released from federal prison in 1998, he quickly reassumed his status as the head of a now smaller Tony Alamo Christian Ministries, which is currently headquartered in Miller County, with branches in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) and Los Angeles. He currently can be heard on over a dozen radio stations in the U.S. and more in Africa, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. He has claimed that the government actions against him were merely the machinations of Satan, and his followers still attract controversy for distributing his printed literature across the U.S. and beyond.

...

Another derranged kook.


35 posted on 09/21/2008 9:24:12 AM PDT by nmh (Intelligent people recognize Intelligent Design (God).)
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Thanks for the info....what did he do with his wife’s corpse?


36 posted on 09/21/2008 9:27:21 AM PDT by nfldgirl (Tribe Member: 'Runs with Rush')
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To: fieldmarshaldj

Thanks...I went back and read up-thread...all I need to know. Creepy!


37 posted on 09/21/2008 9:28:27 AM PDT by nfldgirl (Tribe Member: 'Runs with Rush')
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To: TheDon

bump


38 posted on 09/21/2008 9:33:59 AM PDT by VOA
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To: VOA

If God is going to resurrect someone, he can’t do it if they’ve been buried in a tomb?

(I think that’s a hypothesis that’s been disproven.)

So why did he feel he had to keep the corpse around for years?


39 posted on 09/21/2008 9:38:21 AM PDT by CondorFlight (I)
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Comment #40 Removed by Moderator


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