A 15-acre church compound was quiet Sunday following a raid by federal and state law enforcement officers as part of a child-abuse and pornography investigation. A prosecutor said an arrest warrant was likely.
A man at the gate of the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries turned away an Associated Press reporter Sunday morning. He refused to give his name and said no one was available to comment.
Police said the church complex would be allowed to open for Sunday services.
More than 100 state officers and FBI agents hit the compound Saturday in a raid that ministry leader and convicted tax evader Tony Alamo claimed in a telephone interview was part of a federal push to legalize same-sex marriage while outlawing polygamy.
Prosecutors once labeled Alamo as a polygamist who preys on girls and women.
In 1991, Alamo and his followers disappeared when U.S. marshals stormed his complex near Alma in western Arkansas—taking with them the remains of Alamo's late wife Susan, who had died in 1982 and from whom Alamo anticipated a resurrection.
The marshals moved in after a judge awarded $1.8 million judge to six of his former followers. The judge found that Alamo owed them money for a number of violations, including alienating the affections of two men's wives.
In the raid, marshals took 1,500 to 2,000 elaborate denim jackets to be sold off to pay $1.8 million to former Alamo church followers who had claimed violations under federal labor laws.
Alamo followers made and sold the jackets to finance the ministry. A 1981 federal court ruling had said Alamo's followers were employees under the law and that they should be paid at least the minimum wage, plus overtime as appropriate.
The Internal Revenue Service also said at the time that Alamo owed $7.9 million in taxes. He was ultimately arrested on tax-related charges and convicted in 1994.
As a condition of his release from prison four years later, a court ordered Alamo to return his late wife's body to her family. A chancery court judge stipulated that if Alamo did not produce the body, he would be sent to the local jail upon his release from federal custody.
Susan Alamo's body was eventually put in a crypt at Tulsa, Okla.
In 1988, California state officials raided Alamo's complex in Santa Ana to seize three boys and return them to their fathers' custody. Justin Miller, then 11, told police that Alamo directed four men to strike him 140 times with a wooden paddle as punishment for minor offenses.
Alamo briefly faced a child-abuse charge but a prosecutor directed that the count be dropped, citing a lack of evidence.
In 1991, Alamo was acquitted on a charge that he threatened to kidnap a federal judge.
OK, Lehman Bros. is bankrupt, AIG is on the ropes, and we have the highest unemployment rate in the last five years.
Yet Bush and McCain tell us "the economy is strong."
Whew, I sure feel better now!
