All language subtitles for s 11 e 6

I believe Tony Lomo to be probably one of

the more evil human beings that the

United States has seen.

I want to be here to tell this story, to

set the record straight, and to

shed light on the nature of this

cult and the

atrocities that he committed in the name

of God.

A year or two after I had escaped,

I purchased a gun

and was going to drive down to

Arkansas, and I was going to try to kill

him.

He was a monster of epic proportion.

The way he terrorized human beings, it

was second to none. I

would call hima sadistic,

narcissistic

sociopath, and he used

religion as a cover. Females

in today's world, and they've been told

that they are not only man's equal, but

that they are even greater than men.

According to the word of God, the woman

should be stoned to death, and I go to

hell.

Tony and Susan Alamo,

probably in the early 70s,

and I see the congregation in back of

them. In 1969,

Tony and Susan Alamo married each other

and also incorporated the Tony and Susan

Alamo Christian Foundation. At this

point, they've probably got 300 to 500

followers. I think they saw

themselves as parents, in a way.

Everyone called Tony Alamo Papa Tony,

and most people called Susan Alamo

Grandma Susie. And then all of the people

inside the church, we called them brother

and sister.

Tony is pictured here without his dark

glasses. He's smiling. He looks like a

pretty regular guy. But he was

an evil, sadistic,

megalomaniac, narcissistic

monster.

As a child, I did not know my biological

mother. I grew up believing that my

mother was an evil person.

One of the things that I would hear often

from the pulpit was that my mother was

an adulterer and that she left the group

and that she had died and gone to hell.

As a result, I grew up passed around from

family to family. My relationship with my

father was spotty at best. Tony

Alamo sent the men away and

kept them working, and the children, in

turn, had to look to Tony as their father

figure.

The rule was that everyone had to go to

at least one service every single day.

When Tony Alamo would preach, he would

start walking around in a circle.

God hates evil.

What God says is evil is what is going

to condemn and to damn a person's

soul into the pit of hell. Amen?Amen.

He was a commanding figure. He always

wore these dark sunglasses, so you

couldn't see into his eyes, and

he said he was the prophet of God, and

he said that he spoke to and heard God's

voice. My word is

power. My word is light. My word is a

lamp. Anything other than my word is

evil. Tony Alamo's

religious style was extreme.

Fear was the cornerstone of his doctrine.

When Tony talked about hellfire and

brimstone, I used to have really bad

nightmares. You're going to die,

and then you're going into hell, where

you never rest. You never eat,

sleep, or drink anything.

Tony Alamo's sermons were full of hate

and conspiracies against the Catholic

Church, conspiracies against the United

States government, and hate for

anyone that was not in our organization.

The Pope is the Antichrist, the

unholy one. Amen?Amen. You

have to believe that if you want to live.

Amen?Amen.

He positioned himself to be the

savior. The only place for salvation was

inside of our organization. People

outside in the world were not saved, and

they were all going to hell. I don't

remember a single individual ever

questioning Tony Alamo's connection to

God. We believed

everything he said.

In Arkansas alone, we had 29 businesses

that employed only church members.

Everyone who worked turned over their

paychecks. Tony said, You were giving it

to God. Additionally, in

1985, Tony Lomo started

designing rhinestone jackets that he was

selling throughout the United States.

Those jackets were made by the

members of the church.

The children of the church did the

rhinestone settings. We would work from,

say, after dinner, say 5:00 to

midnight and or even later, sometimes

at 2:00 AM in the morning. And we would

be put in small rooms where you'd have

like 10 to 15 kids at a

desk and they'd all have little trays.

And we would have to set hundreds, if not

thousands of these rhinestones in in the

metal casing. And the metal casings had

really sharp ends on the ends, so our

fingers were always cut and bloody.

But we thought of this

as a godly pursuit. We

thought we were making money so that we

could fight the beast, so that we could

fight the one-world government. So we did

this with with gusto, with

enthusiasm. It was a privilege to go

do this, because we didn't know anything

else.

A lot of celebrities bought these

jackets. I know for a fact that Don

King wears them, Mr. T wears them, Nicki

Minaj has worn them. Miley

Cyrus was photographed wearing this,

and the children never got a penny

for making any of these, and Tony Alamo

made millions of dollars off of these,

literally millions.

One time, a seamstress who had been

working on these jackets came in to

explain to Tony Alamo that this portion

right here was too tight. They were like

this. And when you put the jacket on, you

couldn't move your arm. She questioned

him, and no one questioned this man

without some sort of repercussion. I was

nearby playing with some toys.

I have a suggestion about the jackets.

We need to open up the seams here more

so that they can move.

Toni became irate, accusing her of not

being connected to the spiritual

nature of the design and that she had to

get her soul right with God. And when

she still persisted saying this design

doesn't work, he accused her of

essentially being filled with the devil.

Are you questioning the word of the Lord?

That startled me, and I

obviously focused on Tony to see what he

was gonna do next. This design came

from God. You understand me?

And he's, you know, like, pointing at

her, and he's telling her, You're not

filled with the Spirit of God. You know,

I am filled with the Spirit of God. You

know, I am the apple of God's eye. You

know, how dare you bring this to me?

You're a damn disgrace, you know that?He

was just so angry at her for questioning

him. The majority of people who lived

on the property were afraid of Tony.

You go and pray. Something would trigger

him, and he would go from being like a

nice, sort of cordial guy,

and then in an instant, he would just

flip.

One of the first times that I really saw

Tony was beating people. I think I was

eight years old.

I saw a boy who was three years older

than me walking by himself.

And the way he was walking, he was

limping. He was, like, almost dragging

his leg, but he was hunched over.

He was a close friend of mine, so I I ran

up to him and I said, hey. What's going

on?What happened to you?And he said, get

away from me, because Papa Tony just just

beat the devil out of me. I didn't

understand. What are you talking about?

And so I pressed him a little more, and I

said, why are you walking this way?And he

said, Papa Tony just beat me with a belt.

And he lifted up his shirt.

And he had red welts on his back.

That was one of the first times I had

seen blood and marks on a child.

He told me that all he did, he had a a

note that he passed a girl in

class. Tony found out about that. Why

would he do that?Because I have

Satan in me. When my friend told me to

leave him alone for fear that I would be

beaten for spending time with him, I

thought there's no way I could be beaten

like that. I did not

think that could ever happen to me.

God hates doubters. Do

you like it till God hates you?

The Bible states that these that are

fearful and don't believe

will wind up in hell.

Fear was the primary motivator in the

church. Tony Lama was

crystal clear that God spoke to

him, and because God spoke to him and God

knew what we were thinking, he told him

what we were thinking.

And as a child, I grew up

believing that if I had an impure

thought, God was telling him these

things. An

impure thought could range from anything

from thinking your parents

didn't know what they were talking about,

to something

lustful.

And if I had an impure thought, we were

taught to say this mantra, The

blood of Jesus is against you, Satan.

And you kept saying that. You kept saying

it, okay, until your thoughts were

cleared. The

blood of Jesus is against you, Satan. The

blood of Jesus is against you, Satan. We

would often be walking around the

property, and you would just hear people

saying, The blood of Jesus is against

you, Satan. And you would know that

person was thinking something, and they

had to cleanse their their mind. The

blood of Jesus is against you, Satan.

We were trained to tattle on each

other.

So you had to be careful when you said

it. Oftentimes I would say it under my

breath. If somebody had heard me saying

the blood of Jesus against you, Satan,

they had an opportunity to ask me, why

are you saying the blood of Jesus, which

would then open me up to explaining to

them that I had sinned. And if I had

sinned, then they could put me on report.

There were repercussions for that. It

would get back to Tony that somebody was

having impure thoughts and then he would,

he would eventually deal with them in his

own way.

Tony had a clipboard in the

office that had a list of all of the

reports, and he called it the reports

list. Everyone knew that if your

name ended up on the reports list, that

something was going to happen to you.

When Tony would read from the report

list, he always made sure there were

groups of people. large groups of people,

and you saw it all.

Once there was a mother with her

son, and the son had reported his

mother, saying that she had

misinterpreted two verses in the Bible.

Your son says that you tried to teach him

the verses of King Saul. Yes.

And Tony became irate.

Told her that she had no right to

interpret the Bible. He told her that she

was a sweat hog. He

often used to call women sweat hogs. You

make me sick. He told the child to go up

to his mom and hit his mom in the face

and to tell her may the devil be driven

from you and then smack her.

And the child smacked his mom, barely

smacking her. And Tony said no harder.

Do it again. The child hits the mother

again. This time it's a little harder,

but still not hard, and Tony says, If you

don't hit her hard enough that the demon

is hit out of her, I'm gonna beat you.

Harder!

So the child hits his mother as hard as

he can. The mother is crying, the child

is crying. I'm standing there watching

this, just like... not able to

believe my own eyes.

And Tony was just delighted,

just happy, smiling from

ear to ear. Tony Alamo is now

ordering children to commit

violent acts. And the Bible says, Lay

your hands on no one. The Bible says

to not smite anybody. So

I began to see that and look at the Bible

and say, This doesn't make sense.

What he's saying doesn't line up.

But if I had moments of doubt, the only

thing I would think was that I was

evil. You know, I was the one that had

the problem, because Tony was theprophet.

Because I was special in Tony's eyes,

I knew that Tony would take my word

over other kids' words and often over

other adults' words. And I used that

advantage in the reporting system

to seek revenge against people.

When I was about 12

years old, my friend and I

managed to get a hold of the teacher's

edition of our science book.

And we took it into the the boys'

bathroom, and we're looking at the

anatomy of of a woman. We had never seen

anything like it, and our teacher caught

us. Boys?What's going on in here?

And he threatened to put us on

report. You know, I'm going to have to

tell Tony about this. So I began

to sort of mimic what Tony Alama was

doing, using fear and

retribution as a control method. I'll

tell Tony you gave it to us. I told

him that if he put me

on report, that I would report him for

giving me the book. I would basically lie

about it. You wouldn't dare. Didn't Papa

Tony tell you to rip out those pages

anywhere?He was supposed to have taken a

black pen and blotted out the

anatomy, but he didn't do that, so that

would have got him in trouble. I won't

say anything if you won't. Because he

realized my status with Tony,He

agreed not to say anything.

But then, a week later, when I got put on

report for not doing my homework,

I then ratted on him and said that he

left the book in a place where me and my

friend could get it. He's lying.

I never gave him that book. He called me

a liar in front of Tony, and Tony was

like, No, Benji doesn't lie.

Benji has God's blessing. I

believe his word. So the

teacher was eventually

beaten. Get him out of here. No. Look,

Benji, Benji, tell him the truth. Tell

him the truth, Benji. Please, tell him

the truth! I witnessed him getting

10 swats. He was bent over a

table while a man with a pretty

big board hit him 10 times in the butt.

It was one of the first times that I

began to get a taste for power.

When I lied to Tony about other

people, I had a feeling

of euphoria,

of power that I had never experienced

before. I enjoyed it,

and I remember feeling invincible.

I knew that there was something

desperately wrong. And Tony took

me from one doctor to another,

and finally they found it. It was

breast cancer.

The people at the foundation would all

pray, Lord, please don't let Susie die.

And I began to know in my heart

that I was not going to die. Because

Jesus died, I can live, and

I will live.

Susan was the spiritual guru, if you

will. I think she was a con artist,

but not evil. She

definitely wanted to advance her

agenda and she wanted to have wealth.

I don't think she wanted to hurt people.

The day she died, they brought her into

the church and put her in a casket, an

open casket, and everybody came and said

their their their respects.

Tony and Sue prepared the ministry for

Susan's death by saying that

she would eventually raise from the dead.

During the first three days after Susan's

death, our entire ministry, we were

praying and it was almost

non-stop. It was just like,

OK, she's gone to heaven. She's going to

hang out with Jesus, hang out with God,

and she's going to come back. that she

would just literally sit

up in the coffin, step out of it,

and begin her ministry again.

I seriously thought she'd be able to heal

the sick upon touching them, raise the

dead. I thought she would have basically

superpower, godly

superpowers.

For me, it was an exciting moment. She

would have been with God and Jesus, and

she's gonna come back to us?It was like,

it was the most exciting thing in the

world.

I believed with all my heart and all my

soul, as did all the other people in the

church, that she would come back from the

dead three days after her death.

When Susan didn't resurrect on the third

day, Toni immediately began to

blameThe congregation, they

didn't believe enough. Because of you,

she's still lying there. Because of your

sinful hearts and your lack of faith.

We kept praying over her body for

six months in an open

coffin, around the clock,

24 hours a day. Nobody's leaving

this room until their prayers reach

heaven. After Susan Alamo

died and she didn't raise from the dead,I

began to to really question what Tony

Alamo was was preaching.

It was a big moment of doubt.

That's when I initially began to say,

he said she was coming back and she

hasn't come back. He must be a false

prophet.

One of my friends, who was

African-American, got caught

doubting Tony's veracity as a prophet.

His stepdad was the one that had

found out about his stepson's

thoughts. And so he put his own son on

report. Your father tells me that you

doubt that I hear the voice of God. When

my friend first got called in, he told

Tony, Yeah, I don't think you're a true

prophet because your prophecy didn't come

true. Take a hold of the sinner.

Tony congratulated the dad, saying, Thank

you for reporting this. You know, we have

to drive the devil out of this child.

He got beat pretty bad that day.

They would count the beating

and close to 30, he just couldn't take it

anymore. He started moving around a lot,

too much. And whenever they would move,

they would start the beating over. 30

would end up turning into 60.

And I watched it just

imagining that it would have been me

because he believed the same exact thing

as me, but he had the courage to say

something and I didn't.

Around 1992, he began to preach about

polygamy. And over the years, Tony

collected multiple

spiritual wives. The last count that

I heard of was 24.

Almost all of them were under the age

of 16 years old, the majority of them.

He slowly began to groom

these women and his followers so that

they would believe that marriage

and sex with him was appropriate and

sanctioned by God. Are we to doubt the

law of God?No. Does the law

state that it's all right to have two

wives?Yes. Is that

evil?

As Tony began to progress in marrying

younger and younger women, he went

on to say that puberty

was consent, that once a girl

reached puberty, that that was her body

consenting to sexual relationships with

her husband. Tony Alamo

justified both polygamy and marriage

to underage girls,By finding

verses in the Bible, he

quotes multiple sources in the Old

Testament where different kings had

multiple wives. Now the Lord

gave these great patriarchs other

wives, and this is the law. It's clean

and pure. Tony

began doing this thing

with the young girls, young girls as

young as eight. He would invite them over

to his house for Bible reading and Bible

education. for either a night, a

weekend, or even sometimes a week.

Read with her, and pray with her, and

teach her my word. And I want you to

do the same thing to the congregation.

When the girls went over for Bible study,

I didn't think anything of it. When Tony

would select a child for this sort of

Bible reading,It was an esteemed thing,

because Tony was the prophet, and the

adults were happy that their child was

selected to spend time with the prophet

of God. The Lord does not give

a wife to a person that wouldn't

lead that woman into the kingdom

of heaven. Years

later, I found out that

Tony had multiple houses

whereby these women were beingheld

against their will.

The Lord gave David

the daughters of

Saul and the wives of Saul,

and he stated that if that wasn't enough,

that he would have given him double

the amount. Amen?Amen.

In this recording, you can hear him

saying, Amen. Amen is a

code forYou agree.

And he even says right. Amen. Like you

agree with me. He's getting the

followers to regurgitate

and to process what he's programming

them to believe. He was a

master at that. He

keeps mentioning if these men of

God wanted more women, that God would

give them more. So he's trying to

show his followers. that he's okay,

that it's okay for him to have as many

women as he wants. It's clean and

pure and sweet for me to have

all these wives. I didn't look for them,

God. I didn't ask for them that you gave

me. All the daughters, that's all you

gave me. All the wives, that's all you

gave me. All these women.

It's disgusting to hear him use Old

Testament gospel to justify what he's

doing. This is the man that

I learnedto hate over

time, but it's also the man that

I grew up loving and not knowing

that he was such a monster until many

years later. This is Tony Alamo,

rightly dividing the word. Praise the

Lord.

Oh, my. Okay.

So this photo is...

Part of the entrance to the mansion that

I grew up in, the doors that are shown

here in back of those doors is a

room. Many horrific things happened in

the room back there. The irony

of this photo is that on the left hand

side of this of these doors is a

painting of Jesus Christ and it

looks like he's casting out

Satan. The irony being that on

the other side of those doors,

hundreds of children suffered

unspeakable crimes

and endured untold amount of pain.

These are the doors I went through on the

night that I was called in. When I

exited, I was not the same person as when

I had went in. I had been traumatized

too much.

Early one cold morning in November,

I was woken up by this man saying that

Tony wanted me.

There was one section in that room that

had a two-way mirror, and in the middle

of the room was a desk, and on top of

that was a solo speakerphone,

and on that phone was Tony Alamo.

Benji, you've been put on report for

lustful touching. What do you have to say

for yourself?Tony then

began to question me and says one of the

sisters says that you touched another

girl on her breast. Is that true?

Did you really touch her?And

I was like trying to figure out how do I

get out of it?So I immediately said

I I did do it, but. It

was an accident. When the bus stopped

once, I I touched this girl. I fell into

her, and I touched her breasts. That

wasn't the truth, obviously. In reality,

she and I had been kind of going out

for a year at the time, and he said,

Don't lie to me, Benji. You know God

talks to me, and your sisters have

already reported you. You're a liar,

and the devil must be beaten from you.

You have no control over what's about to

happen to you, and all you

experience is pain. One man called

me up in the air, and then a man took the

Board of Education and

beat me with it. Stop!

Stop

I don't have the words to express my my

disbelief at it. that another human being

can do that to children.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know about

that.

Just take a minute.

Sad.

You IRS don't run this country

yet. All the different

United government agencies, all these

people, their minds have been poisoned

against me, and the entire

government is a liar. Amen?

Tony was preparing the congregation

for the inevitable attack by

the beast, as he put it, by the IRS,

by peppering all of his sermons with

things that would eventually occur.

Things like the seizure of ourproperties,

but before they could seize our property.

Tony had me and six other

boys my age go throughout the all of the

properties and pick up all the valuable

furniture,

antique pieces, collector's items,

things that were in excess of $100. And

we hid it from the IRS and storage units.

And we did that around the clock for at

least a week straight. We took millions

and millions and millions of dollars

worth of stuff. and hid it, all so

we could avoid paying taxes.

And then it was a few months after that

that the IRS and the federal agents

showed up on our property. And they

came with guns, and it was like, This is

the beast. So it appeared as if his

prophecies were coming true. The agents

told him that we had one week to leave

the property or face being put in jail.

Within one week, the

250- or 300-acre-rich property was

completely abandoned.

Tony Lama was in hiding in Florida.

My family planned on going to

Long Island, where we would stay with our

grandparents.

Initially, I felt afraid

because I still thought the ground would

open and swallow me alive. That was one

of the things Tony used to preach was

that any if you left the church that the

ground would open up and that's how you'd

go to hell. And it took me a couple of

weeks to actually walk on the asphalt

until I realized it's not going to open

up and swallow me alive. I began

to literally and openly

question the existence of God as I knew

Him.

I went to a roller skating rink and

flirted with girls. I went to parties. I

met friends, guys that took me

out to play football and arcades and

swimming pool parties, and, you know, we

just did things that kids did, and

God didn't strike me down for that.

For me, that represented

a pivotal moment whereby

I began to question Tony Alamo yet

once again. Tony Alamo was a liar.

About nine months after we had been

living in Long Island, Tony ordered our

family to go back to Arkansas to restart

the church. Even though I was

16, my options were pretty limited.

I didn't have a Social Security number. I

couldn't stay on my own. I had to go back

with the family and start the church. I

had no other choice when we moved

back to Arkansas. I was supposed to fold

gospel tracts and stuff them in

envelopes. And while I was in the

office and I was putting away files, I

came across a file of birth certificates,

and one of them was mine.

I had no idea that this document even

existed, but there's my name in print,

and it's got my mom's name, my mother's

maiden name, which I had no idea who this

woman was, what her name was. or anything

about her, and here she is in print.

This is a copy of my birth certificate

that I found while I was rummaging

through the files.

And along with this, I found this photo

of my mom, this photo

of this beautiful woman with long,

brunette hair, smiling, looking off into

the camera. Most of my life, I thought

my mother was dead and in hell.

And when I saw this, I I fell

in love with her and

could not believe that I was holding

a picture of her. I kissed the photo. I

cried next to the photo. My tears wetted

this photo. According to this, my mother

was from Brooklyn, New York. I called

information and began asking for

these last names. and eventually

find one relative of my mother who had

never remarried and kept the same

maiden name as my mother's maiden name.

And that woman knew where my mom was, and

she confirmed that my mom was alive.

And she put me in contact with her in

California. All the years and all the

lies suddenly just faded

away, and I

suddenly had a window to a

new life. I began to

plan my escape myself at 16 years old.

I called a cab early in the morning.

Around 5:00 AM, the cab rolled up.

And it was rolling on the gravel that was

in front of our house, and so it woke up

everyone in the house. I got into the

car. And my

stepdad chased me all the way to the

airport. Please, you got to help me.

The cab driver asked me, who's the man

following us in the van?And I said,

that's my stepdad. I just found out that

my own mom is alive. I thought she was

dead for my whole life. And the place

where I come from, they'll beat me if

they catch me. And that's when I said, if

you stop him, I'll give you $50 to stop

him and hold him back from coming into

the airport. I have to get on that plane.

And he said, well, if they're going to

put a hurting on you, I'll do what I can

to stop them. And with that, he

sped up.

When I was in the airport, I was shaking.

My stepdad came out with a cell phone

yelling, Tony Alamo wants to talk to you.

Tony wants to talk to you. He said, You

can marry any girl you want. Just come

back. And I said, Tell Tony Alamo he's a

liar. I found out my mom is alive, and

I'm going to go live with her. And that

was it. and never looked back.

My mother picked me up from the airport

in Fresno, California.

And I began to really understand who she

was as she began to tell me her story.

I'm sure you have a lot of questions.

She told me about how her decision to

leave was the most difficult decision in

the world, and how the day she went to

escape from this group,My father had come

and taken me from the nursery, and she

couldn't find me. And so she decided to

leave without me. If I didn't leave

then, I didn't think I'd ever get out.

One of the things that my mom talked

about was the three times that she tried

to come get me. She hired a private

investigator twice, and

twice that private investigator got

shunned away by the church. And then the

third time, her and some of her friends

tried to actually kidnap me off the

streets, and that didn't work out.

But she did try. You never gave up,

Benji. I understand.

And that actually made me feel

really good. It showed me that she cared

and that she didn't actually just forget

me. She might have left me, but she

didn't forget, and that was important.

I forgave her.

It was about two years later. I learned

that Tony had married some of these

underage girls that he had been taking

for Bible study.

And I called the church,

and I wanted to talk to my sister, and

they told me that I couldn't talk to her.

She was now married to Tony, despite her

only being 15 or

16 years old.

When I learned that my sister had been

raped by Tony, I wanted to get

revenge. I wanted to kill the man.

I had, like, a little 35, little

revolver. Hey.

What are you doing with that?Give me

that. No. And

my mother talked to me, and she said,

it's not your fight. You need to stop.

So I never went.

never killed him, but I wanted to. His

day is coming. You have your whole

life ahead of you. Don't waste it

on doing something silly like this.

I'm glad I did not kill him. I'm glad I

didn't drive down there. I'm glad I

didn't go through with it. Taking someone

else's life is never a good, a good

option, even if they are a pedophile,

rapist, child-abusing

preacher who stole millions of dollars

fromThousands of people.

It's still not the right solution.

In 2008, I got a call from

a former church member who was assisting

the FBI in investigating

Tony Alamo. They informed me that they

had been investigating Tony Alamo for

several years. For transporting minors

across state lines for the purposes of

sex. But they wanted to add on to that

additional charges of child abuse.

They had enough to probably put Tony away

for the rest of his life.

I was ecstatic when I heard that he was

arrested and that he was going to stay

behind bars for 170 years.

But the way I understand it, there's

roughly probably close to 100

people, maybe 150 people, who are

still either running the

church or members of the church and who

follow the doctrine. That Tony Alamo had

set forth. I have a few

friends who were in the group up

until a couple years ago, and when

they got out, I began talking to them and

telling them, look, this is what Tony did

to me. This is what he did to the kids.

And they were in complete denial that

Tony Alamo could ever do any of those

things.

When I learned that he passed away, I was

relieved. I struggled for most of

my life to find some sort of

balance, to find peace of

mind. It has taken me

30 years to come out the other

side and to recover.

I still see the beatings, I still can

hear the sounds. It's not something that

goes away. But through his

hate, I have learned that we all

suffer and that we all have a

common goal, which is to live life as

much as we can, freely as we can. And I

refuse to ever live my life in fearagain.