All language subtitles for Evil Lives Here - S11E05 WEB.eng

I believe Tony Alamo to be
probably one of

the more evil human beings

that 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 him a sadistic

narcissistic sociopath.

And he used religion as
a cover.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, um,

that employed only
church members.

Everyone who worked turned
over their paychecks.

Tony said you were
giving it to God.

Additionally, in 1985,
Tony Alamo 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 five o'clock to midnight,
and... or even later,

sometimes at two a.m.
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'd 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 end.

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.

Tony 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.

Flynn!

He was a close friend of mine,

So 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 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 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.

Fear was the primary
motivator in the church.

Tony Alamo 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,
and you kept saying it

and saying it 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
against you, Satan,"

and you would know

that person was thinking
something, and they had to

cleanse 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 ex...

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 gonna 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 smacks
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.

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 the prophet.

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 boys' bathroom

and we're looking
at the anatomy 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 Alamo

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 anyway?

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,
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. No. Benji, Benji,
tell him the truth.

Tell him the truth, Benji.
Please, tell him the truth!

I witnessed him
getting ten 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.

And Tony took me from one
doctor to another,

and finally, they found it...
It was breast cancer.

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 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 nonstop.

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,
Tony immediately began to blame

the congregation.

- They didn't believe enough.
- It's 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 is 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 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...

Three!

...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.

Thirty 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.

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.

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.

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.

Years later, I found out
that Tony had multiple

houses whereby these women
were being held

against their will.

In this recording, you
can hear him saying, "Amen."

Amen is a code for,
"You 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 disgusting
to hear him use.

Old Testament gospel
to justify what he's doing.

This is the man that I learned
to 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.

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 lefthand 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

that on the night
that I was called in.

When I exited,

I was not the same person as
when I had went in.

I've 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 speaker phone,

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 touched this girl,

I fell into her,
and I touched her breast.

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 his pain.

One man held me up in
the air,

and then a man took the "board
of education" and...

beat me with it.

Uh, I don't have the words to
express my disbelief at it,

that another human being can
do that to children.

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

Let me just take a minute.

It's sad.

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
our properties.

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
ranch property was

completely abandoned.

Tony Alamo 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 gonna 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 five a.m.,

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 gotta 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,

and 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 gonna put

a hurting on you,
I'll do what I can to stop him."

And with that, he sped up.

Thank you.

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 gonna go live with her,"

and that was it.
I 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.

- I 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.

I 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 pedophile
rapist child abusing preacher

who stole millions of dollars
from thousands 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

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 gonna 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 run...

Either running the church
or members of the church

and who followed 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 fear again.