Some crimes are so heartbreaking or shocking that they change laws, change society, or even

earn the label Crime of the Century.

But the stories that made headlines in decades past aren't necessarily remembered today.

I'm Amber Hunt, a journalist and author, and in each episode of this show, I'll examine a case that's maybe lesser known today, but was huge when it happened.

This is Crimes of the Centuries.

Music This is Crimes of the Centuries. This is Crimes of the Centuries. There were just two kids who met at North Central Bible College in Minneapolis and figured that they would spread the gospel.

She was born poor in a family of eight children,

all crammed into a three-bedroom house in Minnesota that did not have the benefit of indoor plumbing.

She figured anyone who owned a dishwasher was rich.

His family had one.

That impressed her, but it wasn't the dishwasher that swayed her into saying yes to his proposal after just

three dates. It was his strong faith and his belief in himself that did it. If anyone had suggested

she simply wanted out of the life she was living, no one said. They were both theatrical,

one might even say overly dramatic, and both had been raised

Pentecostal, or, as folks derisively called them back when the pair were growing up,

holy rollers, as the believers in this highly excitable version of Christianity were known

to be the most evangelical of evangelicals before that was even a thing.

Pentecostals became spirited while in prayer, often speaking in tongues and gesticulating wildly

as filled they were, as they say, with the Holy Spirit. I'm guessing that belief and desire to be touched by the Lord you worship

makes you a fervent kind of zealot, and that they both were.

At their peak, from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s,

Jim and Tammy Fay Baker were histrionic buffoons to some,

...