"I think the weight of that trial and the weight of everything that he had done, good and bad, just crushed him." "He was curled up underneath his attorney's couch," Hardister said. The next day, Jim Bakker "had a psychological breakdown," Wigger said, saying he was hallucinating that “the reporters outside the courtroom looked to him like giant bugs." 06, 1989, after undergoing a psychiatric evaluation. That was it."įallen evangelist Jim Bakker (C) is escorted by federal marshals as he arrived at the Federal Courthouse in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. but in terms of what had the greatest appeal to the greatest number of people. Reflecting on that interview today, Koppel said, "Over the years, I did over 6,000 'Nightlines,' that was number one. "You start out at the top," Jim Bakker finished for her. "And you know, when you're negotiating -" "He asked us what we felt that, after all these years of the ministry, of leaving the ministry, what we should have," she told Koppel at the time.
In a May 1987 interview with Ted Koppel for "Nightline," Tammy Faye didn't deny making that list of demands. "The other thing that comes to light is that Bakker allegedly had a number of same-sex relationships."Īt a press conference in May 1987, Falwell said the Bakkers were no longer fit to lead PTL, accusing Jim Bakker of being secretly gay and claimed that Tammy Faye Bakker made a long list of demands in order for them to give up plans to come back to PTL that included large annual salaries, two cars, a maid for one year and a furnished house on a lake, among other things.
they're bleeding two million dollars a month," he said. I need to take some time with my wife and family,'" said Mark DeMoss, a former Falwell spokesman.īut what Falwell didn't know at the time, Wigger said, was that PTL was "deeply in debt." "Bakker said, 'I'd like you to take the helm of PTL and hold it together. Needing to lay low at the time, Jim Bakker resigned from PTL and turned to Jerry Falwell, another well-known televangelist and minister, to step in and run the ministry until the Hahn scandal blew over. But then they were rocked again when their hometown newspaper, The Charlotte Observer, published an expose revealing Jim Bakker had a sexual encounter more than 6 years earlier with Jessica Hahn, a young church secretary from Long Island, New York.Įx-PTL church secretary Jessica Hahn wipes away a tear as she answers questions on the "Donahue" show in New York on June 24, 1987, about her alleged sexual encounter with evangelist Jim Bakker and another PTL official in a Clearwater, Fla., hotel room. Two months later, the Bakkers disclosed to their viewers in a videotaped message that Tammy Faye was being treated for drug dependency. We all knew she had some prescription drug problems." "And I couldn't believe I'm there by myself with this lady and she'd taken her clothes off, and Tammy didn't do that kind of stuff around me. "They left me in the house alone with Tammy, and that's when she started hallucinating," he said. Hardister said he was with Tammy Faye when it happened. Then in January 1987, Jim Bakker had just broken ground on a $100-million dollar ministry center he dubbed the Crystal Palace when Wigger said, "Tammy Faye had a breakdown." (MORE: Would Jesus take the wheel? Televangelist asks followers to help him buy a $54M jet plane because God 'wouldn't be riding a donkey') "He sold more than 66,000 lifetime partnerships in the Heritage Grand, which amounted to more than 100 percent occupancy in that hotel," Wigger said. "Problem is, there were way too many people giving $1,000, not nearly enough hotel rooms," said Mark Becker, a reporter for Charlotte-based ABC affiliate WSOC-TV, who reported on the Bakkers. "He sat back and said, 'Why can't we have a Christian version of Disneyland?"īakker asked followers to give $1,000 for "lifetime partnerships" that would entitle them to an annual three-night stay at the Heritage Grand hotel, but this would be one of the first of many cracks in the Bakkers' empire. "Bakker had always been fascinated by Walt Disney," he said. The income from their satellite network allowed the Bakkers to purchase a total of 2,300 acres of land for a new venture - a 500-room hotel and waterpark complex they called Heritage USA, located in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
WIFE TAKES HUSBAND TO GAY SEX CLUB TV
Tammy Faye Bakker and her then-husband, television evangelist Jim Bakker, talk to their TV audience at their PTL ministry near Fort Mill, S.C., in this Aug.