Televangelist Jim Bakker, brought down by 1980s PTL scandal, dies aged 86
Jim Bakker, who built the PTL Club into a television empire with ex-wife Tammy Faye before his 1987 resignation and fraud conviction, has died aged 86. His widow Lori announced the death on Monday.
Televangelist Jim Bakker, who built a Christian television empire in the 1970s and 1980s before losing it to one of the decade’s defining scandals, has died aged 86, CNN reports.
His second wife, Lori Bakker, announced his death on Monday evening via The Jim Bakker Show’s Instagram page. “It is with a broken heart that I share that my beloved husband, Jim Bakker, went home to be with the Lord this evening,” she wrote, adding that the family asks for privacy. No cause of death has been disclosed.
Bakker and his then-wife Tammy Faye Messner launched The PTL Club in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1974. At its peak the ministry took in more than $128 million a year, reached 12 million cable subscribers, and drew more than six million visitors a year to its Heritage USA theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
He resigned from PTL on 19 March 1987 after paying $279,000 to keep a church secretary, Jessica Hahn, quiet about an affair, and in 1989 was convicted of 24 counts of fraud and conspiracy. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison but served just under five, paroled in December 1994.
Bakker later returned to television with The Jim Bakker Show from Branson, Missouri, alongside Lori. He was portrayed by Andrew Garfield in the 2021 Oscar-winning film The Eyes of Tammy Faye.
Sources: CNN, People, NY Post, Entertainment Weekly
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