202 - The Cult of Tony and Susan Alamo

Susan Alamo was a cult leader and televangelist who founded the Alamo Christian Foundation with her husband, Tony, in Hollywood, in the late 1960s. Then they quickly built a compound just north of LA for their growing number of followers. And then they built a HUGE compound in Arkansas a few years later. Susan thought that God spoke to her, and when she died, Tony claimed that Susan spoke to him on behalf of God. And if God did talk to these two, he sure told them to do a lot of horrible stuff. The Alamo Christian Foundation was at the heart of a number of lawsuits and government actions, and Tony was jailed numerous times on a variety of charges, including income tax evasion, the theft of his late wife’s body, and taking underage girls across state lines for sex. Tony started off as a con artist and ended up as a polygamist and pedophile who abused his followers for decades. The Alamos made a lot of money off of these abused followers. Tens of millions of dollars. And Tony also bedazzled a lot of jean jackets. You read that right. The rise and fall of the Alamo Cult, today, on another cult edition of Timesuck! We've donated $6,100 this month to the Innocence Project. The innocence project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. To find out more, visit https://www.innocenceproject.org/ Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/nIti49CR6ME Merch  - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Try out Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact Please rate and subscribe on iTunes and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Wanna become a Space Lizard? We're over 9000 strong! Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast  Sign up through Patreon and for $5 a month you get to listen to the Secret Suck, which will drop Thursdays at Noon, PST. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. You get to vote on two Monday topics each month via the app. And you get the download link for my new comedy album, Feel the Heat. Check the Patreon posts to find out how to download the new album and take advantage of other benefits See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.