Word: bakkers
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Days of reckoning have seemed to come and go with nightmarish frequency for PTL since Jim Bakker's admission that he had had a sexual tryst with Jessica Hahn, a church secretary from Long Island, N.Y., and had paid out $265,000 in hush money. Last week Hahn's lawyer announced that she would cash in further on the incident by telling her story in Playboy for an undisclosed...
...headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C. The officials were readying material for a federal grand jury hearing, scheduled to begin in Charlotte, N.C., on Aug. 17. The focus, according to sources close to the investigation: the possibility of criminal tax fraud, wire fraud and mail fraud by Jim Bakker and other PTL leaders who have left the ministry since Falwell took over...
...further. Within weeks of losing his grip on power at the Fort Mill ministry, Bakker began denouncing Falwell as a usurper. A solid core of Bakker loyalists at PTL apparently believes him. One complicating issue is that Falwell is a Fundamentalist, a group that rejects the faith healing and speaking in tongues practiced by the Pentecostal PTL faithful. Amid last week's emergency pitch for donations, Falwell disclosed an apparent plot by dissident PTL members to sabotage his fund-raising efforts. During the funding telethon, PTL lines were jammed by crank and obscene calls. Falwell eventually announced that no pledges...
...million homes, and the splashy, 2,300-acre Heritage USA theme park, the ministry's entertainment centerpiece. PTL's Hargrave denied at the bankruptcy meeting that Falwell had usurped PTL's 518,000-donor mailing list and that checks made out to PTL had gone to the Lynchburg ministry. Bakker loyalists remain unconvinced. Said Robert Zanesky, the lawyer for a group of PTL contributors intent on removing Falwell: "His credibility stinks." Says Ryan Hovis, a bankruptcy lawyer representing Bakker: "No stockholder in Chrysler would sit still if Lee Iacocca were chairman of the board for Ford...
...central protagonists of the PTL turmoil, meanwhile, continued to parade their opulent life-styles. The couple breezed into San Francisco on July 11 as guests of their flamboyant tort lawyer, Melvin Belli, who is now laying the legal groundwork in his effort to have Bakker reinstated at PTL. During their week-long stay, the Bakkers were billeted on Belli's 105-ft. ocean-going yacht, The Adequate Reward, and were taken to parties, dinners and exclusive stores by Belli's wife Lia. Tammy enjoyed a makeover at Lia's favorite hair salon, 77 Maiden Lane...