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Tony Alamo’s Enforcer On The Run

Cops: Fugitive Beat Followers For Slip-Ups

While Tony Alamo might be in jail for transporting minors over state lines for sex, another dangerous member of his church is still on the run. Cops say John Kolbek helped keep the Alamo followers in line… by beating them into submission.

The Full Story Below:

The Alamo Empire

In the late 1960s, Tony Alamo and his wife Susan began the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Ministries by recruiting the hippies and homeless off Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, Calif. The group officially incorporated into the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation on January 29, 1969.

Cops say Susan Alamo was the brains of the foundation and instructed Tony Alamo on how to act and what to say. The couple bought airtime and began spreading their message on the airwaves. Tony, a self-proclaimed singer and record promoter, performed religious songs live, while Susan preached the Bible.

While the group continued to gain followers, the Alamos gained power. However, their empire faltered when Susan was struck down with breast cancer. Ex-members say this was when Tony Alamo began to show a darker side.

He allegedly forced his followers to pray around his dead wife’s body all day and night, convinced she would rise from the dead. When her body decayed instead of resurrecting, ex-followers say Alamo told them Susan would return to him in the body of a younger woman.

In the early 90s, Alamo was sued by the IRS for back taxes, and became a fugitive for two years. After he was captured and served jail time, he returned to his church and took up old habits.

This is when cops say Alamo began to prey on young women in his church. In order to do this, he needed to control his followers. This is where John Kolbek entered the picture.
According to later testimony, Kolbek’s daughter was married to Alamo when she was only eight years-old.

The Enforcer

Ex-members say Kolbek got into Alamo’s good graces when he allowed his daughter to live with Alamo when she was six years-old. According to later testimony, the child was “married” to Alamo when she was only eight. After this precious gift, Kolbek became Alamo’s right-hand man.

Alamo allegedly became extremely controlling in every aspect of his follower’s lives. They had to submit their phone records to him, and they could not purchase clothing, food, or any other item without his approval. Ex-followers said they could not watch television without Alamo’s consent. In exchange, Alamo gave his followers salvation.

According to ex-followers, church members believed that God was actually speaking through Alamo. Alamo preached fire and brimstone, saying that the end was coming and that he would bring those who followed him into heaven. He threatened his churchgoers, saying those who left the church would become insane or homosexual, and would burn in hell when they died. This type of fear kept his flock from straying.

If anyone were to question Alamo, they would be summoned to see Kolbek. Kolbek had what was known as the “board of education,” a three foot long, six inch wide wooden board used to beat followers into submission. Ex-members said it was unpredictable when they would get beaten. There are documented records of members being beaten for playing in the dirt, making a joke about Harry Potter, playing with squirt bottles, making repairs that didn’t hold, and other meaningless “crimes.”

But while the crimes were meaningless, the beatings weren’t.
Here’s Johnny!

Ex-members say the beatings would consist of person holding each limb, while the victim was held aloft. Kolbek would then take out the board and beat the person relentlessly, sometimes to the point of unconsiousness. In one case, Alamo was quoted as introducing John Kolbek by saying, “Here’s Johnny!” Another time, he was reported as saying, “Do you think I like doing this? I love doing this!”

These beatings were allegedly given to adults and children alike. In one case, ex-members say Alamo even ordered Kolbek to “beat the devil” out of a little girl with epilepsy.

When two teenage boys escaped the Alamo compound, they reported the alleged abuse to police. The beatings one boy sustained were so intense, there was still visible bruising from a beating six months prior.

Police raided the Alamo compound on September 21, 2008 and removed the girls living in Alamo’s house. They raided the area again in November, seized more children, and placed them into foster homes.

Alamo has since been convicted of transporting minors over state lines for sex, and sentenced to 175 years in prison. Kolbek was able to escape authorities, and is on the run. He might be traveling with this wife, Jennifer, and four children belonging to another member on the church. The children are under the guardianship of Jennifer Kolbek, and police are concerned for the children’s safety.

Wanted For:

* Second Degree Battery , Fort Smith , AR ; Oct 16, 2008

(Information valid as of December 11, 2009)

Child Labor Made These Jackets

Locking Away Evil – Finally

On this Thanksgiving weekend I want to tell you about a group of young people who are giving thanks for the first time in their lives. This year they are extremely thankful that their tormentor, the self proclaimed preacher Tony Alamo, has finally been brought to justice.

In U.S. District Court in Texarkana, Arkansas the 75 year old Alamo was recently sentenced to 175 years in prison on charges of engaging in sex with minor members of his so-called “church.” One of the five brides identified was just 8 years old. My sources, escapees of the church, tell me there were many more Alamo brides.

Alamo’s real name is Bernie LaZar Hoffman. He was a phony from the get-go. Back in the early 70’s he and his wife, Susan, dreamed up the “Alamo Christian Ministries” to rescue drugged out homeless people from the streets of Hollywood. They gave the unfortunates a cot to sleep on, food to eat, a rousing sermon and an odd job or two to perform as payback. City fathers donated money to show appreciation for the more tourist friendly streets. Those first Alamo followers settled in, coupled up and gave birth to a second generation. The poor kids never had a chance.

The Alamos had up to three dozen money making enterprises – from restaurants to hog farms –and their loyal disciples were their workforce. Instead of a salary the workers got meager living arrangements, irregular meals (many consisted of whatever food had been donated to the ministry) and all the preachin’ about Jesus the Alamos could muster.

The Alamos got rich. When Susan began to suffer from cancer they moved their headquarters to a hilltop near tiny Fouke, Arkansas – far away from the prying eyes of outsiders.

A big source of income was the uber-expensive, handmade rhinestone and sequined studded denim jackets the disciples churned out. In the day it seemed all of Hollywood was wearing one! Dolly Parton, Brooke Shields, Mr. T, among others, wore the flashy fashion statements and sales sky-rocketed.

In 1994, Alamo went to prison for failure to pay taxes on the jacket earnings. At the time of the trial there was evidence that children at the compound were being brutally beaten, held aloft by four burly church men while Alamo beat them bloody, “baseball style” with a wooden paddle. However, that testimony was never allowed at the tax trial. Once in prison Alamo still ruled his flock with an iron fist.

In a series of exclusive interviews with those born into the Alamo cult I’ve heard unforgettable horror stories.

The children were schooled but now realize, as adults, that on orders from Alamo their education was sorely lacking. If they asked an inappropriate question about the day’s lesson they were beaten. If they were tardy, laughed too loud or wore the wrong clothing they were beaten. After classes they were ordered into hours of mandatory prayer. One young man named Jared remembers after Susan died of cancer in 1982 all followers were ordered by “Papa Tony” to keep up a round-the-clock kneeling prayer circle for her “certain resurrection.” Alamo kept Susan’s corpse for 16 years until a court finally ordered him to return it to her family.

These Alamo captives now reveal it was them – the exhausted, terrorized children of the group who often worked until midnight laboriously turning out those denim jackets. A young mother named Becca tells me that growing up in the ministry brought no joy – ever. She worked in the communal kitchen cutting away the rotten parts of donated food. She fantasized about Papa Tony’s promise to get her a “jar of pickles for my birthday.” There was no real medical care, not even for one poor epileptic child. Jared remembers watching the girl beaten every time she had a seizure. Several other former Alamo Ministry children who wish to remain anonymous told me how underage girls were routinely married off to much older male church members. After Alamo got out of prison in 1998, they say, Papa Tony chose multiple underage brides for himself.

Finally in September 2008, at a roadside stop in Arizona, Alamo was arrested with 6 girls in his vehicle and charged with transporting them across state lines for sexual purposes.

I tell you this story because society needs to learn from it. Our justice system took way too long to stop this monster, knowing since the early 90’s that children were suffering at his hand. The doctrine of separation of church and state caused authorities to shy away.

We need to do better. While the second Alamo generation is now thankful he’s locked away authorities admit there are other religious based predators out there. No one wants to curtail freedom of religious practice but allowing charlatans to victimize the innocent and enslave people isn’t acceptable either.

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Appeals court upholds removal of children from Alamo compound

State human services officials were justified in removing children living at the Tony Alamo Christian Ministries last year for their own protection, the state Court of Appeals ruled today.

In three separate opinions, the court concluded there was enough evidence to support the state Department of Human Services’ decision to remove the children following a September 2008 raid on the Alamo compound in Fouke.

Among other things, the rulings said the children faced danger of beatings and forced fasts ordered by the 75-year-old evangelist convicted earlier this year of transporting underage girls across state lines for sex and sentenced this month to 175 years in prison.

Since the raid by state police and the FBI, DHS has seized about three dozen children. Three men with children taken by the state appealed rulings by Miller County Circuit judges Joe E. Griffin and James Scott Hudson Jr. that allowed the children to remain in protective custody.

In one of the appeals court rulings today, Judge Robert J. Gladwin wrote that the evidence “presented a clear picture of the danger to children in the ministry compound at Fouke.”

“Given the juvenile code’s goal of preventing the abuse of children before it occurs, if at all possible, we have no hesitation in affirming the circuit court’s finding that these were children dependent-neglected,” Gladwin wrote.

In a separate opinion, Chief Judge Larry Vaught wrote that the “evidence … overwhelmingly demonstrated that the environment at the compound in Fouke is potentially dangerous for the children of its members.”

Though the custody hearings were closed, today’s appeals court rulings offered new details about the lives of children at Alamo ministries, outlining how children suffered burst blood vessel and passed out after “spankings” over perceived slights to the 75-year-old preacher.

Some testified that Alamo began sexual relationships with the young daughters of followers and ordered others that reached puberty to marry men at times more than twice their age. Witnesses at Alamo’s federal trial testified he took child “brides” as young as 8.

“My childhood was robbed from me. I can’t ever speak to my mother. My children think that I don’t love them,” according to testimony quoted in the opinions from one woman forced to marry a 35-year-old man when she was 15. “I still think that I have this thing in the back of my mind if I testify to show what my mindset was that somehow I am going to be cursed by God, because God is going to cause me to be sick.

“Because you know, Tony says he is a man of God, and all he brings him and he repairs lives and heals people’s hearts, but all he’s done is destroy mine.”

Alamo testified at the custody hearings. Gladwin’s opinion today says the preacher told the court he believed polygamy is acceptable and that girls can be married after they reach puberty, though he denied permitting practicing those beliefs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

‘Little girl’ determined not to be Alamo ‘wife’

‘I didn’t know what freedom was until I left Tony’s house’

When Nikki Farr ran away from Tony Alamo’s house in Fouke, Ark., she was just 15 and was the first to escape on her own steam.

“I knew when Tony got back I was really going to get it,” Farr said, referring to one day about 11 years ago when she’d been caught a second time making an unauthorized phone call. “There was no way I was going to get beat again. It was fight or flight, and there was no fighting.”

Farr, now 26, has no doubt she was being groomed to become a wife.

After being sent to visit Alamo in federal prison during a stint he did for tax evasion from 1994 to 1998, Farr said she was directed to move in with the “sisters in the house,” a term loyalists use to describe Alamo’s plural spouses.

“I fled for hours,” Farr said of her impromptu trek through the unfamiliar woods she traversed in Fouke. “I crossed barbed-wire fences and two little rivers … I knew I could never go back but I’d decided that if this was heaven, I’d rather have hell.”

Farr said she could never “wrap my head around” the idea of becoming an Alamo bride even though many considered it “their way into heaven.”

“I had two ulcers by age 14,” Farr said. “I fit the profile. I looked like a little girl.”

Farr was not listed in Tony Alamo’s indictment but testified against him at trial. She said July 24, 2009, was the “happiest day” of her life.

“To sit there next to (the Jane Does) and know that I was on the right side,” Farr said. “I finally belonged.”

Farr wasn’t given the opportunity to give victim impact testimony at Alamo’s sentencing because she wasn’t named in his indictment.

“I would have said, not to him but for all that could hear, ‘I wonder who I would have been,’” Farr considered. “I don’t want to use the word robbed … but I feel I could have made such a difference had I been able to find out who I was and what I was good at.

“I didn’t get to appreciate what it was to be an American,” she said. “I was born in the United States of America but I didn’t know what freedom was until I left Tony’s house.”

Farr said she spent her years in Alamo’s house getting in trouble so she wouldn’t be worthy of an Alamo-led wedding ceremony in his bedroom that ended with a forced consummation. The first time she’d been caught using a phone without Alamo’s blessing, she said he shoved her and banged her head into a bookcase. Other floggings she’d suffered were much worse, Farr said.

Farr said she watched video feed in the house from an outside camera until she saw Alamo approaching, knowing one of his wives was about to “report” her for her second phone infraction. That’s when she slipped through a window and into the unknown.

“I had to go. I was thinking, ‘Maybe I’ll die. Maybe I’ll go to hell. Where do I go? I go to the woods,’” Farr said.

After about five hours of running, Farr said, she came upon a house.

“That’s a long story in itself,” she said.

As she recalled the day she began the end of her life in Alamo Ministries, Farr’s breathing increased, her body stiffened and her face flushed.

“A family helped me. I got from Texarkana to L.A. on a Greyhound bus,” she said. “I was convinced that if Tony found out I was still in Fouke he would’ve gotten me back. He had them out searching for me.”

Farr described the days between her escape and debarkation in Los Angeles as “surreal.”

“There was some old guy with a bottle of whiskey on the bus and he kept trying to offer me some,” Farr said. “We passed through Indian towns and weird places.”

On the trip, Farr listened to the “Titanic” movie soundtrack on a Walkman she’d quickly stashed in a leather backpack that carried a change of underwear and a few other personal items.

“It was the first secular music I’d ever heard,” Farr said. “I’d snuck it in.”

Farr, born and raised in the “cult,” had never been alone in the outside world.

“You’re leery of men. You’ve never been allowed to be around them before,” she said. “All the people you should be able to go to for help, police, you are taught to fear. They’re all out to get you.”

Farr’s journey to L.A., melodied by “beautiful music,” ended in a bus station on the east side of the city. Farr, attractive and petite, said she waited for “a few hours” before her mother arrived and took her to ministry property in California.

“She had a couple of banana boxes that had ‘Nikki’s stuff’ written on them,” Farr said.

She was told Alamo was kicking her out of the group and that she could not stay with her mother.

“I was told I could go to juvenile detention or find somewhere to go,” Farr said. “I was given $50.”

Farr said her family had once lived in Chicago, so she chose that as her destination. The isolated life she’d lived left her with little understanding of society and a fear of those among whom she now existed.

“At 15, I had to support myself. I was working two jobs, going to school four hours a day, sleeping two hours a night, it was crazy,” she recalled.

While in Alamo’s house Farr said she had become accustomed to laboring long hours with little sleep and virtually no opportunities for relaxation or entertainment.

“I had to be 30 at 15, but in so many ways I was like a little child,” Farr said.

Farr remembered one day when she was 17, working for a communications business in Chicago, as she stood outside on a smoke break.

“I don’t smoke anymore, but I did then,” she said.

Down the street, Farr said, she could hear a school bell ring and watched as teenaged children walked from the campus with their backpacks and friends.

“Why couldn’t that be me?” she asked. “The older I get the more I realize how much had been taken away from me. I look back and think, ‘Holy crap.’”

Farr said others in Chicago considered her wise beyond her years because of her self-sufficiency. But Farr said she knew she didn’t have a basic understanding of the culture in which she now functioned.

“When I first got out, I loved ’80s music,” Farr said of her taste in 1999. “I didn’t know I was behind.”

When her peers spoke of the television shows and historical events—which her cohorts used as life markers—Farr was at a loss.

“I’d try to cover it up,” she said. “Now, I realize how stupid some of the stuff I said must’ve sounded.”

Farr said she still lives with a hyper-vigilance that makes her appear “jumpy.” She inhaled deeply as she explained how she still feels at times like she’s in water that reaches just below her nose. Her dream is to help children at risk of becoming victims of abuse.

“If you can save them before something happens, then you’ve truly saved them,” Farr said.

An open letter from Christhiaon Coie [Susan Alamo’s daughter]

I wanted to thank Tony Alamo News for bringing the truth about the Tony Alamo cult to all of us.

I want to thank Federal Prosecutor Kyra Jenner for having the guts to finally bring justice to this coward who has hidden behind a Bible for decades. 

She introduced truth and justice where no one else (other then IRS) had the chutzpa to tread. 

Had she and Special Agent Harris and Bishop not brought this evidence from this den of iniquity Tony would still be raping, beating, and starving these victims. 

None of these people will ever truly understand what they have put a stop to.





To the victims, especially the ones who took the stand, I do know how hard it is to take the stand and relive being violated. 

You told the truth and you guaranteed that he will never put his filthy hands on anyone again. 

You are my heroes. 

To any member or relative who have treated you badly because YOU were brave, they should drop to their knees and beg you to forgive them.



To the people who remain controlled by Tony, take a moment and try to remember what shame is. 

Try to remember what right and wrong are. 

Try to remember what freedom was. 

Today is your first day of freedom. 

I would not attempt to tell you what God wants you to do. I can sure tell you what he doesn’t want you to do. 

He doesn’t want you to hurt or allow anyone to hurt. 



I wish I could tell you my mother [Susan Alamo] was mistaken, that she meant well, or that she started out with a good idea to help. 

I can’t. 

She was cruel, violent, power and money hungry. 

She was really smart and when she found her puppet (Tony) she used her weak kneed, starving for love and approval daughter to lie for her and bring in her first and second victims. 

I have spent almost 40 years of my life trying to stop this.

Please stop and think, you have a chance to show your families that you have a brain along with that soul. 

Call the local authorities and tell them where weapons, documents, etc are hidden. 

Don’t let Tony destroy anymore of your lives. 

Remember what the Bible says. 

When you know the truth the truth will set you free.



Two former Alamo followers speak out

An ex-member of Tony Alamo Christian Ministries and witness to the beating of 12-year-old Justin Miller in California in the 80s spoke to reporters Wednesday before the trial got under way.

“That was the last straw for me,” said Barry Haynes. “I came in and the beating was in process. Tony was directing it over the phone. What I remember was about 140 whacks with a board.”

Haynes’ wife, Connie Haynes, left the ministry in 1996 after becoming sickened by Alamo’s polygamy and control over the group.

The couple said they are in Texarkana to watch portions of Alamo’s sex abuse trial.

“I’m prepared to see justice,” Connie Haynes said.

“He was always talking about the Pope and the anti-Christ,” Connie Haynes said. “What they’ve done is make him their Pope.”

Woman: Alamo asked, ‘Think I’m a dirty old man?’

A former follower of evangelist Tony Alamo told federal jurors at his sex-crimes trial Monday that the preacher lashed out at her when she grimaced at the sight of a 9-year-old girl rubbing his thighs.

“Do you think I’m a dirty old man?” Alamo asked, according to the witness, whose daughter became one of his young brides at age 14.

Alamo faces a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking five girls across state lines for sex, including the 9-year-old. The woman testified that while she thought it odd that a young girl was touching Alamo on his thighs, she never thought that her children were in danger.

“I didn’t want to think anything bad about Tony. We were taught that everything Tony did was of the Lord,” said the woman, now 38 and living in Texas.

Alamo’s lawyers say prosecutors targeted him because they disagree with his religious beliefs. Alamo has said the girls were traveling to support the ministry’s work, and that the Vatican is ultimately behind the charges.

Under cross-examination, the witness who said she grimaced at what she saw said that, at the time, she didn’t know what to make of the touching and eventually didn’t do anything about it. She said she still questions herself about it.

“I’m just trying to figure out why a 29-year-old woman would be confused about what she saw,” said the woman, whose daughter testified earlier that she had sex with Alamo in California after flying there from Arkansas.

Jurors heard from all five alleged victims last week. In graphic testimony, they said that they traveled to California, Tennessee and West Virginia for sex with their pastor or responded to his call and returned to Arkansas from out of state and had sex with him. Each count in the indictment is punishable by 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The 38-year-old woman also testified Monday that she served as a bookkeeper for one of Alamo’s trucking companies and that he had called her and others in 2000, concerned that the operation was making too much money and would have a major tax liability. She said Alamo directed that the books be altered to show that the company had given money to a group thatAlamo had set up as a charity.

“We basically had to juggle the books” to avoid taxes, the woman said.

Tax charges are not listed in the current indictment. Alamo served four years in prison on a tax evasion charge beginning in 1994.

While lawyers argued Monday over whether an FBI agent could say he worried about the safety of Alamo’s followers after a Sept. 20 raid on the Arkansas compound, Alamo blurted out a reference to the Branch Davidian religious compound in Texas that federal agents stormed in 1993. Leader David Koresh and dozens of followers died as the complex burned.

“After Waco, they are looking for safety from the FBI,” Alamo said from the defense table.

Earlier Monday, a woman whose sister had claimed to be another underage bride of Alamo misidentified the preacher from the witness stand. She pointed him out correctly when given a second chance.

The woman, 20, spoke slowly and often appeared confused. Prosecutors had summoned her to verify details that her 17-year-old sister gave Friday, including that Alamo said the Lord had told him to choose a wife from between the siblings. The 20-year-old woman, a former Alamo follower, told jurors that several people were present when the preacher picked her then-11-year-old sister as a “wife,” but the previous witness had said only three people were there.

Alamo’s defense team hammered on the difference.

The mother of the two witnesses told jurors she had no problem with the girls going to Alamo’s home, calling him “a holy man of God” who had been blessed by “the blood of the Lord.”

Prosecutors also summoned the sister of a woman who still lives in the compound. The woman, 19, said her sister moved into Alamo’s home at age 12 and later became one of his wives. She said she often heard Alamo refer to several woman as wives and saw them massaging Alamo’s thighs, giggling and whispering in his ears.

She also said she helped prepare Alamo’s tour bus for a November 2004 trip. The 17-year-old who testified Friday said she had sex with Alamo on the bus while she was underage.

Girl feared punishment for using phone

When she realized Tony Alamo was going to find out she’d secretly used a telephone for the second time in a couple of weeks, a 15-year-old former office worker said she ran away.

She was living in Fouke in Alamo’s house when she took her back pack and ran through the woods for five hours, testified Nicole Farr.

“Yes. Thank God,” Farr said when asked if the people in the house she chanced upon helped her.

Farr said she was afraid because when Alamo caught her with the phone the first time, he’d screamed at her and slammed her head into a book shelf.

Other witnesses testified this morning about life in the church, including one who described seeing 8-year-old Jane Doe No. 2 rub Alamo’s legs.

Armenia Rodriguez said the incident occurred during a meeting Alamo called to instruct administrators in the church to cook the books for one of the church’s businesses that had made “too much money that year.”

‘Almost like a boot camp’

Ex-Alamo followers say ‘you never have peace in that place’

When his first child died less than a day after birth, a grieving father was reportedly told by Tony Alamo that God was punishing him.

“Tony said the Lord killed my son because I was meddling in his business,” the former Tony Alamo Christian Ministries member said. “I know he’d be alive if we’d just had some prenatal care or gone to a hospital.”

He was 21 when he married a 14-year-old girl.

The baby’s mother, now 26, said she didn’t know something was wrong when she didn’t give birth for nearly four days after her water broke.

“The midwife said he had water in his lungs but he’d be OK,” the woman said of her infant son. “Eighteen hours later my baby was dead. Tony blamed us.”

The man and his wife asked that their names be withheld because they still have family in the ministry. Testimony being given in Alamo’s criminal trial coincides with what the couple said about life in the controversial church. However, the couple’s view of life at the compound sits in stark contrast to a much more parochial and affirming lifestyle and ministry described recently by current members of the ministry.

At 14, the woman asked Alamo if she could marry her husband.

“He turned around and told one of the wives to call (the man) and tell him he’s getting married,” the woman said.

“I didn’t know how old my wife was until our wedding night,” said the man, whose parents brought him into the ministry when he was 11. “And I didn’t know then it was against the law to marry a 14-year-old girl. They don’t tell you stuff like that.”

The man and woman, who’ve stayed together and are raising their family in Arkansas, said most followers are completely cut off from the outside world, especially “baby Christians,” a ministry term for followers with fewer than five years in the church.

“We attended a service in New York. That was on a Sunday,” the woman recalled about first joining the church. Her mother and two sisters, then ages 10 and 7, also attended. “The next Wednesday they had us on a bus to Arkansas.”

The grieving father said Alamo controls the lives of everyone in the group.

“When you come in, it’s almost like a boot camp. You’re not allowed to leave. You have to be supervised all the time by ‘older Christians’ and they’re constantly reporting back to him,” he said. “You can’t work. You stick with the Bible and you pray and you pray and you pray. If you don’t do it, you’re out.”

Many of those who join the church do so because they’ve hit “the bottom of the bucket,” the man said.

“They say all you have to do is serve the Lord and we’ll take care of the rest. He says that everything will be taken care of, but then he treats you like you’re a burden to the church,” he continued. “The way it is set up is that you’re a wretch to be there.”

The couple said new recruits are often moved to a property away from family and other outside ties. Families within the church can be split up at any time.

They said that once while living in a dilapidated trailer on church property in Oklahoma, their daughter was stricken with a respiratory infection so severe she needed to be hospitalized.

“Tony said she got sick because we were sinners,” the woman said. “Since he thought it was us he sent her away to live with someone else in Texarkana. We didn’t see our little girl for three months. She was only 3.”

“You have no parental rights in the church,” the man said. “If Tony says take them away, they’re gone.”

The man said Alamo discourages women from giving birth in hospitals because he doesn’t want children born in the ministry to be documented.

“He says a Social Security number is a gateway to the mark of the beast,” the man said. “There’s been a lot of people who’ve grown up that way. They’re like ghosts.”

The former followers said members are subject to a search at any time, both physically and in the form of “house checks” where other members rifle homes for contraband like money, cell phones and radios.

“You’re not allowed to watch TV or listen to the radio,” the woman said. “I got in so much trouble once for listening to Christian radio. You’re only supposed to listen to Papa Tony. He gives you the true words of God and you’re not supposed to listen to a different preacher.”

The woman said members are not allowed to vote without permission.

“And then if you do get to, he tells you who to vote for,” the woman said. “You can’t even pick your own president.”

Alamo had a way of making it seem like he knew what was best. His word was often accepted without question, the man said.

“He makes it seem like he’s looking out for your soul. In the meantime, it’s just to control you,” he said.

Members are not permitted to leave church property alone and can make phone calls only when supervised by another member, the couple said. Members are expected to “report” each other if there is questionable behavior.

Spouses reporting each other, parents and children telling and the “two by two” policy kept members in line, the couple said.

Different forms of punishment exist for breaking rules, they said.

“If you miss services you might get put on a two-week fast. Sometimes you might be on a fast, ‘off bucks’ and ‘off driving,’” the man said.

“Bucks” is a term used to describe a weekly allowance Alamo would allot members.

“It was usually about $20,” the man said. “Once Tony had them come and search our house and take every coin. He makes it so hard for you to leave because you have nothing. You are totally dependent. Most families there have like four or six kids.”

The couple said life is different for an “inner circle.”

“If you’re one of the people out there getting big donations and then turning around and selling them for a 100 percent profit, you get a nicer place to live and a new vehicle,” the man said. “But most of the people in the church live below the poverty line.”

When a member needs clothing, toothpaste or another necessity, it must be put on a list and approval from Alamo is needed to get the goods.

“He’ll make you feel bad for putting stuff on the list,” the man said. “He’ll say you’re just sponging off the church. You’re always working or going to services. You have a job and then you have to do watch.

“You’re constantly getting in trouble, getting put out and then you have to beg your way back in,” the man said. “You never have peace in that place. It makes it where you can’t stop and think.”

“Often, you’re up to the wee hours, pulling watch, putting literature together and then your regular work,” the woman said, admitting that when the church’s number dwindled after Alamo’s incarceration, women and “even the pregnant sisters” had to take “watch duty” in addition to their regular jobs. At tax time, her husband said, he would be required to sign a return that indicated he owned a print shop and had lost money in the business. When he received an IRS refund check, he signed the back of the check and the money went into the church’s coffers.

The woman said that when she married at 14, she was forced to quit school a few weeks shy of finishing the ninth grade.

“They said, ‘If you’re old enough to get married, you’re old enough to go to work,’” she said. “They immediately put me into baby-sitting and kitchen work and then I started teaching kids. They had me teaching third grade and under. That’s what I did most of the time I was there.”

But things were different for girls invited to live in the house, the couple said.

“He called it ‘office work,’” the woman explained. “But it meant you were going to be one of his wives.”

The woman said her sister, who’s now 24 and the only member of her family to remain in the ministry, became an Alamo wife when she was 12.

“I never really saw her again after she went down there to Tony’s house,” the woman said. “The only times I was allowed to visit her we had to be supervised by one of the other wives.”

Alamo was the only person who had satellite television, the couple said.

“Down there it was like a carnival,” the man said. “They had the pool, TV and movies you hadn’t seen. It was very enticing to the girls.”

The man said the parents of girls who go to live in the “School and Mission” in Fouke, Ark., where Alamo occupies a bedroom, are treated preferentially.

“There was a time when I was in the church that I would think it might be OK for one of my daughters to be with Tony because your life would be a little bit better,” the man said.

The last time the man was kicked out, his wife was pregnant with their third child.

“I asked them to inform him when the baby was born. They didn’t do it for like eight days,” the woman said. “They didn’t know I was still keeping in contact with him. I was sneaking him in when I was doing night watches and letting him see the baby, see his kids.”

The woman said she stayed in the church a little longer than her husband because she didn’t know how else to provide for her children.

When she did leave, her husband borrowed a car and drove to pick her up.

“One night I didn’t go to church and I took the first watch,” the woman said. “There were brothers on the property and they called Tony. Other church members were there in a couple of minutes. We were loading up our kids’ furniture and few of the other things we’d bought with our bucks during all the years we were there. They loaded it all off the vehicle. Tony said we could only take our clothes and a couple of our kids’ toys.”

Because their “bucks” had once been church owned, anything they bought with them was, too.

The man said he relied on the kindness of a friend to help him get on his feet well enough to support his family and get them off church property.

The couple has now bought a house and each has a car.

When asked why they chose to stay together, the husband said, “I love her.”

“We’ve been through so much together,” the wife said. “I can’t see it any other way.”