Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker | Bringing Down the Bakkers | 4

American Scandal

Wondery

True Crime, Exhibit C, Society & Culture, History, Documentary, History Daily, American History Tellers, Lindsay Graham

4.6 • 18.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When investigative reporter Charles E. Shepard began covering televangelist Jim Bakker and his ministry, Praise the Lord, he knew it could be the biggest story his paper was following. Throughout the 1980s, he documented Bakker’s extraordinary wealth, financial crimes, and sexual assault of a former PTL secretary named Jessica Hahn. Shepard’s efforts helped win his paper a Pulitzer Prize for meritorious public service. Today, he joins Lindsay to talk about his book, Forgiven: The Rise and Fall of Jim Bakker and the PTL Ministry, and the discoveries that helped bring Bakker and his ministry down.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wundry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American scandal early and ad free right now.
0:05.7	Join Wundry Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. from Wundery I'm Lindsay, and this is American scandal. In December 1984,
0:44.4	1984, investigative reporter Charles East Shepard was working at his desk at the Charlotte
0:48.9	Observer Newsroom in North Carolina.
0:51.4	He was writing an article about a new hotel in Jim Baker's nearby
0:54.6	Christian theme park called Heritage USA, but he was interrupted when a woman rang
0:59.2	the newsroom and said she wanted to speak to someone about Jim Baker's praise the Lord Ministry, PTL.
1:05.6	She wouldn't give Sheppard her name.
1:07.4	She talked about a friend of hers who she said had been forced to sign a statement protecting
1:12.0	PTL from legal action. She said her friend had met
1:15.5	Jim Baker in a Florida hotel room and that she had been, quote, brought into a situation in which
1:20.8	she had no control.
1:23.0	Charlie Shepard suspected that there was no friend, the woman was talking about herself, and
1:28.1	that her name was Jessica Hahn.
1:30.4	He was right, and this phone call opened up a whole new angle on the reporting that Shepard had been doing about the lavish spending at PTL.
1:38.0	Reporting this story took Shepard on what seemed like a wild goose chase at times with dead ends and even threats both to the paper and himself,
1:46.1	but Shepard stuck with the story and convinced people to talk to him.
1:50.0	He documented the $265,000 hush money payment made to Jessica Hahn, and he exposed
1:55.9	Jim Baker's lifetime partner hotel scheme at Heritage USA.
2:00.5	His persistence paid off.
2:02.4	Jim Baker eventually resigned from PTL, was prosecuted and went to prison.
2:07.0	Shepherds coverage of PTL and its misuse of funds helped win the Charlotte Observer of Pulitzer for Meritorious Public Service in 1988.
	...

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