Getty ImagesUS televangelist Jim Bakker, who built a multimillion-dollar media empire before being jailed for fraud and conspiracy, has died aged 86.
Bakker and his then-wife Tammy Faye founded a Christian television programme called The PTL Club in 1974, which at its peak attracted 13 million viewers per day.
The 86-year-old’s death was announced on Monday by his second wife Lori Bakker, who described him as “a pioneer of Christian television”.
By the late 80s, Bakker and Tammy Faye’s empire began to fall apart after he became embroiled in a sex scandal and later convicted of mail and wire fraud. Tammy Faye, who divorced him in 1992, was never charged.
Lori Bakker described her late husband as “my best friend, and the man I was honoured to walk beside through so many seasons of life and ministry”.
She did not specify the cause of death.
However, Bakker’s first program The PTL Club – short for ‘Praise the Lord’ or ‘People That Love’ – was what cemented his fame with his first wife Tammy Faye.
The couple built their empire with 2,000 employees and a 2,300-acre (930-hectare) Heritage USA theme park complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
The Bakkers had a famously opulent lifestyle, owning a private jet, multiple homes, luxury cars, jewellery and even an air-conditioned dog house.
In 1987, Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry after revelations of a 1980 sexual encounter with a former church secretary Jessica Hahn.
It later emerged Hanhn received a $265,000 payoff with ministry funds, resulting in Bakker being defrocked of his ministerial credentials and right to perform religious duties.
Getty ImagesHahn also accused Bakker of sexual assault, though the evangelist denied this, claiming the encounter had been consensual.
Bakker was then convicted in 1989 of 24 counts of mail and wire fraud and conspiracy in a scheme involving their Christian theme park, and served more than four years in prison.
Tammy Faye stayed with her husband throughout the trial but divorced him in 1992 while he was in prison. She died of cancer in 2007.
Following Bakker’s release from prison in 1994, he wrote a book titled I Was Wrong and married his second wife Lori in 1998.
The couple began a TV ministry together in 2003 and in 2008 they began taping The Jim Bakker Show.
