Alamo Convicted, Clearing Way for L.A. Case

Flamboyant evangelist Tony Alamo was convicted on federal tax charges in Memphis, Tenn., on Wednesday, clearing the way for him to return to Los Angeles to stand trial on charges that he ordered the beating of a young boy at his onetime Saugus commune.

A hearing in the Saugus case is scheduled today in Los Angeles Superior Court. Alamo is accused of directing four men via telephone from another location to strike 11-year-old Jeremiah Miller 140 times with a large paddle at the Mint Canyon commune in 1988.

A Memphis grand jury indicted Alamo in April, 1993, on charges of filing a false income tax return in 1985 and failing to file tax returns the next three years. Federal court jurors in Memphis found the former country singer guilty on all counts Wednesday.

Alamo faces a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $550,000 fine, said Dan Boone, an Internal Revenue Service spokesman.

Alamo, whose real name is Bernie Lazar Hoffman, had blamed Satan for his woes when he was arrested. But Alamo cannot find a defense for his tax problems in the Bible, said Justice Department lawyer Christopher Belcher, who noted in his closing arguments that the Bible says Christ was born after Joseph and Mary returned to Bethlehem to pay their taxes.

“All Tony Alamo had to do was go to the mailbox and drop a return in the mail,” Belcher said.

Alamo’s attorney, Jeffrey Dickstein, blamed Alamo’s legal troubles on his ex-wives, overbearing government agencies and former church members, many of them former drug addicts. He said Alamo’s businesses operated at a loss and that Alamo had no income.

IRS officials say Alamo and his wife, Susan, who died of cancer in 1982, shortchanged the IRS an estimated $10 million in taxes on income earned from a variety of businesses, using the tax-exempt Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation and later the Music Square Church.

The Alamos founded the Holy Alamo Christian Church in the 1960s, taking young dropouts and drug users off the streets of Hollywood and providing them with food, shelter and anti-Catholic religious sermons.

Their religious following grew to hundreds of members in California, Arkansas and Tennessee in the 1970s and 1980s, when communes and church-owned businesses staffed with free labor from their followers earned millions of dollars, particularly off production of glitzy, rhinestone-studded denim jackets that sold in exclusive boutiques for as much as $600 each.