Jim Bakker, the U.S. televangelist who built one of America’s largest religious broadcasting operations before it unravelled in a sex and money scandal that led to a prison term, has died at the age of 86, his wife said.
Lori Bakker announced his death on social media pages linked to his current television ministry, saying he died on Monday evening. She described him as a pioneer of Christian television and said he had devoted 66 years of his life to preaching. No cause or circumstances of death were given.
Bakker rose to national fame in the 1970s and 1980s with his first wife, Tammy Faye, as the host of “The PTL Club,” a Christian talk and variety show whose initials stood for “Praise The Lord” and “People That Love.” The couple grew a small television ministry into an enterprise with about 2,000 employees, and opened Heritage USA, a 2,300-acre Christian resort and theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. At its height, the ministry reached about 13 million viewers on some 200 stations and took in around $129 million a year.
Bakker resigned from the ministry in 1987 after it emerged that he had a sexual encounter in 1980 with a church secretary, Jessica Hahn, and that $265,000 in ministry funds had later been paid to keep her quiet.
In 1989, a federal jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicted him on all 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy after a six-week trial. Prosecutors said he defrauded supporters of about $158 million by selling lifetime vacation packages at Heritage USA that could not be delivered, and that he diverted about $3.7 million to fund a lavish lifestyle that included multiple homes, luxury cars, furs, jewellery and an air-conditioned doghouse.
He was sentenced to 45 years in prison, a term later cut, and served four and a half years. The trial judge sharply rebuked him at sentencing, criticising religious figures who exploit believers for money. Bakker told the court he had sinned and made mistakes but said he never intended to defraud anyone.
His chief aide, Richard Dortch, served 18 months of an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to reduced charges and testifying against him. Tammy Faye Bakker, who was never charged, stood by her husband during the trial but divorced him in 1992 while he was imprisoned. She died of cancer in 2007.
