Bakkers Fly Home to S. Carolina; Hope to Be Back on TV in 30 Days

Saying they hope to return to their television ministry within a month, former PTL evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker left Palm Springs and returned home Wednesday night to claim belongings at the Tega Cay, S.C., house they left in January.

“Our goal is to be on the air in 30 days,” Jim Bakker told reporters for The Charlotte Observer during a stopover at the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport.

Bakker, 47, declined to be specific, saying, “We haven’t gotten all the bugs worked out--we haven’t bought cameras yet.”

It was not clear whether his intentions were related to or independent of PTL, the ministry he joined in 1974 and built into a $129-million enterprise near Fort Mill, S.C.

Sexual Encounter

Bakker has said he wants his old ministry back. But the Rev. Jerry Falwell, to whom Bakker gave control of PTL in March, after acknowledging an extramarital sexual encounter, has declared Bakker unfit to minister.

“I assume he is talking about somewhere else, not on PTL,” Mark DeMoss, a Falwell aide, said when told of Bakker’s comments.

Bakker, with his wife, Tammy Faye, and son, Jamie, waited together in the terminal during the layover late Wednesday, chatting and signing autographs as they were recognized.

In Charlotte, Harry Hargrave, appointed PTL chief operating officer by Falwell in April, said he had been informed by the Bakkers’ aides that the couple’s return to Charlotte was strictly to settle personal affairs and visit family members.

The Bakkers have repeatedly said they were homesick.

“We’re going back mainly to see family and friends,” Jim Bakker said. “We left for the weekend and haven’t been back in six months.”

Entered Center

The Bakkers left the $1.3-million Lake Wylie house in January, when Tammy Bakker was being treated for pneumonia. She later enrolled at the Betty Ford Center near Palm Springs for treatment of a longtime drug dependency problem. They have been living in a home they bought in Palm Springs.

Earlier in the day, the PTL said it will seek to negotiate with the Internal Revenue Service to avert a threatened loss of tax-exempt status that Falwell said could destroy the embattled ministry.

“It appears that funds were raised under false pretense,” Falwell said during a break in a seven-hour meeting with auditors and lawyers. “We advised counsel to seek negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service.”

Falwell also confirmed that the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Postal Service have begun formal investigations of the ministry’s operations and said they may be looking into allegations of wire fraud and mail fraud.

Luxury Hotel

In a move perhaps designed to demonstrate its good intentions, Falwell said, the board decided Wednesday to form a separate, profit-making corporation for PTL’s holdings, such as the Heritage USA park, its luxury hotel and the ministry’s television satellite. Bakker had included those entities under the church tax exemption for the organization.

“We’ll pay taxes on the parts of the organization that compete with other tax-paying organizations,” Falwell said.

Speaking briefly to reporters outside the offices of his own television ministry, the Old Time Gospel Hour, Falwell said: “Today we had our first long and in-depth look at the finances of the company. We owe 1,400 creditors $70 million. Twenty-three million is delinquent. We obviously have some problems.”