REELING from 150 blows with a wooden paddle, 10-year-old Justin Miller felt blood trickle down his leg and turned to his mum with pleading eyes.
But mum Carol returned his pleas with an ice cold stare, telling him he deserved the brutal punishment – which left him unable to walk or sit for weeks – because cult leader Tony Alamo had ordered it.
Justin’s only crime was having a dad who escaped the evil Alamo Christian Foundation – where hundreds of kids endured brutal and bloody beatings with the “board of education” for being “devil-possessed”.
Sadistic leader Tony also took a harem of “wives”, the youngest of whom was just eight years old when she was forced to consummate the “marriage.”
He also kept the rotting corpse of ‘true love’ Susan at the compound, after her death from cancer, for a year.
The cult, formed in the 1960s era of peace and love, features in a new BBC documentary, which hears founders Susan and Tony Alamo used brainwashing, polygamy and horrific child abuse to control their followers.
Using slave labour, they built up a millionaire business empire – which included a line in rhinestone-studded jackets worn by celebrity’s like Mr T, Miley Cyrus and Nikki Minaj.
Justin Miller, the adopted son of Foundation member Carey Miller and wife Carol, was just 10 in 1988 when he was publicly swatted 150 times with the paddle by burly followers – as Tony barked instructions on speaker phone from another room.
It was on God’s orders, Tony decreed, because Justin still loved and missed Carey, who had been chased away from the compound by armed men when he had tried to escape with his son.
“A man picked the paddle up and you’ve got to remember that this is what the Lord is demanding so he put his back into it,” Justin tells Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo, now on BBC iPlayer.
“Halfway through, another guy took over because the other was exhausted. It was an insane amount of pain.
“There was blood on me and people in the crowd. I looked up at my mum and I said, ‘It’s not fair,’ and she said, ‘Shut up. You deserve it.’
“There was coldness in her eyes. When she was watching and not stopping it, that was one of the things that affected me the most because that’s who is supposed to protect you.
“Afterwards, I laid there for days on my stomach and then proceeded to move around with two pillows to sit on and a bunch of bandaging, wherever I went.”
Threats to kill daughter
TV evangelists Tony and Susan began broadcasting their weekly Alamo Christian Foundation TV show in 1969 in Hollywood, with gospel testimonies, songs and the message of ‘repent or perish’.
They were a striking pair – Tony with jet black hair and sunglasses and Susan with blonde tresses like Hollywood film star Betty Grable.
Susan’s daughter Christhiaon Coie says her mother was the driving force behind the religious sect.
“She was the founder,” she says. “Tony was just ‘extra baggage.’ She started this mess.
“Mamma wanted to be a movie star and had a knack where she could walk into a room full of people and everyone would look. She was a good con artist.
“She had met Tony in a bar and was impressed when he said he was a big music producer. I was 13 or 14, and had a good singing voice and she wanted to get me a deal.”
As their relationship progressed, Susan taught him the Bible and they married in 1966.
There was blood on me and people in the crowd. I looked up at my mum and I said, ‘It’s not fair,’ and she said, ‘Shut up. You deserve it.’
Justin Miller
Susan was the power in their TV evangelist show and she took care of the preaching while he managed the business.
By 1970, the Alamos had over 200 followers living in a three-bedroom house.
On their sprawling land, the unpaid converts started sowing cotton, picking grapes and lopping roses to sell, with all the money going to the Alamos.
No one complained. After all, they were told, this was ‘God’s will’, and they were convinced that Susan was the true prophet who directly talked to the Almighty.
Members would pray for her after she told them she had cancer, and that she was “suffering for their sins.”
“Her stories just became more and more outlandish,” says Christhiaon. “She had faked cancer for years.”
As the couple’s behaviour became more controlling Christhaion, who had two young children, vowed to flee the cult.
“I wanted to make darn sure that they never ended up with my kids,” says Christhiaon.
“I was 20 when I went to see my mum and told her I wanted to go. She replied, ‘You know way too much about how everything’s done, what’s where and who’s who.’ You’re not going anywhere. I’ll f…ing kill you.’
“I ran into my room and quickly packed anything I could find, when some of the boys from the Foundation came in, followed by my mother who grabbed my hair, and they beat the crap out of me. When I came to, my kids were gone and I called the cops.”
The police arrived and Christhiaon was eventually allowed to leave with her two daughters.
Rotting corpse
As Tony and Susan’s wealth escalated the authorities began noticing the ministry’s growing income and suspected that workers were not being paid.
To escape scrutiny the Foundation moved from California to Arkansas where they built several lucrative businesses – restaurants, retail outlets, service stations, freight companies.
Churches are not subject to taxes but by 1975, the Alamos had a revenue of over a million dollars. Tony explained in a TV interview that all the money was going into the ministry adding, “The disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ never thought that they needed a pay cheque.”
But Tony and Susan were living like celebrities, wearing expensive clothes, driving around in a Cadillac and bringing in country and western singers to entertain at their restaurants, including Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, Tammy Wynette and Hank Williams Jr.
Some of the boys from the Foundation came in, followed by my mother who grabbed my hair, and they beat the crap out of me. When I came to, my kids were gone
Daughter Christhiaon Coie
Ironically, Susan’s lies came back to bite her when she really did get cancer, which Christhiaon says “was the biggest surprise in the world to her.”
Susan died aged 56 on 8 April 1982. Worried he would lose his grip on power, Tony refused to bury her and instead kept her in an open casket in the house where followers would pray for God to raise her from the dead.
A year later, when the body still lay rotting in the house, he was persuaded to place her in a mausoleum built for her on the land where he still considered God could bring her back to life.
24 wives as young as eight
“As long as my mother was alive, there was brutality, but it wasn’t like the brutality that occurred when Tony took the place over,” says Christhiaon.
Tony ordered regular beatings of young children with the “board of education” paddle and began to practise polygamy, taking several underage wives after decreeing that, as soon as a girl reaches puberty, she is a woman and can be married.
Incredibly, as well as the restaurants and bars Tony built up a thriving fashion business selling self-branded, Tony Alamo Designs – gem-studded jackets with airbrushed landscapes emblazoned on the back.
The children of the Foundation worked until late at night on an assembly line, sticking on hundreds of rhinestones to make the garments, which were sold in mainstream stores and made popular by such celebrities of the day as Dolly Parton, Mike Tyson, Brooke Shields and Mr T.
But Tony’s hold was slipping as word about what was going on behind closed doors began to leak out.
Carey – who tells the documentary he fled after finding out kids were being ‘beaten blind’ but wife Carol refused to come because she would “burn in Hell” – went to the police after running for his life.
A few months later, he got a court order to have his son returned to him and in October 1988, Tony was charged with child abuse. He was ordered to pay the Millers £1.5m ($1.8m) although Carey claims they just saw £5,600 ($7,000) of it.
With the I.R.S (Inland Revenue Service) estimating he owed them approximately £6.4m ($7.9m) in unpaid tax, the police ordered a raid on the complex.
Alerted in advance, Tony fled and, via telephone, bizarrely ordered two of the members to remove Susan’s body, which they drove away in a van. His clothing stores and other properties were seized.
Despite several potential charges against him, including a death threat against the judge who ordered the seizure of his property, the authorities initially convicted him on tax charges and, on 8 June, 1994, jailed him for six years.
But he continued to run the organisation by phone, from behind bars, and even sent out taped sermons to his disciples – and the abuse continued as soon as he was freed.
“After Tony was released from prison, the nightmare started right away,” recalls Amy Eddy, who was then 14.
“He put a ring on my finger and said we were now husband and wife. It wasn’t like I wanted to marry Tony. I just thought this is what God wants me to do.
“I knew nothing about sex. When he was raping me I was pushing him off, telling him it hurt. I was crying. All I kept thinking was, ‘When this is over I am just going to go play outside.’”
Of his 24 wives, nine were underage. The youngest, Desiree Kolbek, was just eight.
“He said we had to consummate the marriage,” she says. “I didn’t really understand what that meant and that’s when he started placing his hands up my shirt and down my pants. I felt really scared.
“My mum came to visit me and I was on my hands and knees saying, ‘Mum, take me home.’ She said she couldn’t unless she got permission from Tony.”
As stories of the underage sex and physical and verbal abuse of his ‘wives’ spread, several of them, along with other members, started to turn. Experiences were shared on an online forum which attracted the attention of the FBI.
In 2006 Amy, then 22, managed to escape, followed by Desiree, 15. It was their testimonies, along with others – including an 11-year-old ‘wife’ Summer, who said he raped her on a bus – that eventually led to a police raid, where the children were rescued and put into care. Tony went on the run but was apprehended in a hotel in Oklahoma.
At his trial in July 2009, he was indicted on 10 counts of interstate transportation of a minor for sex and found guilty for each one, receiving a life prison sentence, where he died in 2017.
Incredibly, despite his toxic legacy of abuse, vintage Tony Alamo’s jackets still sell for an eye-watering £9,000 online and have been sported by the likes of Nikki Minaj, ASAP Rocky and Miley Cyrus.
*Ministry of Evil: The Twisted Cult of Tony Alamo, is on BBC iPlayer