6 Tony Alamo properties scheduled for auction
Associated Press/December 15, 2013
Texarkana, Arkansas -- Six properties in Fort Smith owned by convicted evangelist Tony Alamo have been scheduled for auction next month.
The Texarkana Gazette reported Sunday that the properties include the Alamo Ministries church building, a gym, warehouse, restaurant, restaurant parking lot and a house.
The sale is intended to raise funds to pay $15 million that Alamo was ordered to pay to each of two men after a jury found that he ordered the men beaten, starved and abused when they were children in his ministry.
Several members of Alamo's ministry had claimed they, not Alamo, own the properties but a federal magistrate rejected those claims.
An order signed by a U.S. marshal filed Friday gives notice of the public sale. The highest bidders can walk away with titles to any of the six Fort Smith properties at the sale on the steps of the Sebastian County Courthouse on Jan. 22, the order states.
The order stems from rulings by U.S. Magistrate Judge Barry Bryant that the properties, though held in the names of Alamo loyalists and not Alamo himself, are actually maintained for Alamo's benefit and profit.
Alamo, 79, is currently serving a 175-year prison term after being convicted in 2011 of conspiracy, battery and outrage for taking young girls that he claimed to have married across state lines for sex.
Attorneys for the two men the jury found that Alamo had ordered beaten and abused, David Carter and Neil Smith, are seeking permission from Bryant to sell other properties in Fort Smith and Fouke, Ark., including the ministry's Fouke church building. Also at stake is the house where Alamo allegedly raped and sexually assaulted women and girls, a gym in Fouke where Alamo allegedly directed public beatings, and a residence known as the "House of Scorn" that Alamo was said to have used as a semi-prison for girls and women who fell out of favor with him.
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