Perhaps you have run across the website Spiritually Smart in your online travels. It was a sprawling and exhaustive archive of Jesuit perfidy, Catholic misdeeds, and general paranoia, established and maintained by a young Long Island native who renounced his Catholic upbringing after reading some Chick tracts and the outrageously bogus stories of Alberto Rivera. Thomas Richards believes that the Holocaust was engineered (not just enabled) by the Vatican, that Alex Jones and other alternative media figures are Jesuit agents (or, as he calls them, “temporal coadjutors”), that Jim Jones was a really nice guy and that Vatican-affiliated government agents colluded with Timothy and Grace Stoen to destroy his beautiful commune, and a lot of other things that really don’t make much sense. Richards is gullible in a big way, but he seems like an earnest, likable person who’s just trying to make the world a better place in his own special way.
So I was surprised to learn that he threw in the towel on Sunday. As he explains in his parting message, Spiritually Smart was established not just to share Christ’s message, nor only to expose the Catholic Church and the Jesuit order, but to defend a minister named Tony Alamo.
You see, Richards believed that the Catholic Church tried to destroy the ministry of Tony Alamo by falsely implicating him as a child molester.
Bernie LaZar Hoffman converted to evangelical Christianity from Judaism in the late ’60s, changed his name to Tony Alamo, and founded Tony Alamo Christian Ministries with his second wife. They created an outreach program for alcoholics, drug addicts, and the homeless.
Based in Hollywood, the couple also launched a line of sequined jean jackets. Alamo also claims he was a top talent agent during his time in California, and has said he possesses a never-released album recorded by the Beatles when Pete Best was still the drummer.
In the ’70s, Susan Alamo became a televangelist, with Tony as her sidekick. Her death in 1982 left an opening for Tony to become a full-time preacher for the first time in his life, and he got off to a shaky start by proclaiming that Susan would be resurrected. Thirteen years later, her lifeless body was still enshrined in his ministry compound, and Susan’s daughter had to sue Alamo to get it back for proper burial. Despite this booboo, Alamo became a successful evangelist. He also married a woman who worked in clothing design and manufacturing and built up his retail clothing business. He re-established himself in Arkansas.
Alamo’s preaching relied heavily on conspiracy theories: depopulation, Reagan as an antichrist figure, the Vatican as a seat of great evil, the government assassination of JFK, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as false flag operations, etc. He also said he and his second wife were swarmed by UFOs while driving near Vegas; he took these to be angelic visitations, another sign of the endtimes. Many of his teachings were published as tracts that Alamo’s followers handed out on street corners.
In the ’80s and ’90s he had a few setbacks relating to his reluctance to pay income tax. His property was siezed, and he served most of 1994 to 1998 in federal prison. In 2006 he told a reporter that the tax evasion charges were totally false, created by a cabal of drug-addicted and sexually immoral church members who resented his rebukes. And Vatican agents, of course.
By 2008, Alamo’s kingdom was restored. He had a small but devoted corps of followers, and a large ministry compound in Fouke, Arkansas. Then local law enforcement began to receive reports of strange behaviour on the part of Tony Alamo: “Marriages” to underage girls, sexual molestation, physical abuse. Federal and state law enforcement agents served a search warrant on the compound in September 2008. Alamo was arrested a week later and charged with violating the Mann Act with two little girls. Later, charges involving four more little girls were added.
Just as he did when charged with income tax evasion, Alamo chalked up the allegations to a complex conspiracy involving those who wanted to silence his godly truth-speaking. Namely, Catholics and the government. Alamo’s website message of July 17th declared, “My trial is government vs. the Bible. The five young women who are falsely testifying against me have all been convinced to do so by the FBI”, which is “against the Bible, Christianity, God, and all Christian churches.” Never mind that a huge percentage of FBI agents are Christians.
Weirdly, Alamo didn’t attempt to deny all the charges against him. Instead, he quibbled over the age of consent, arguing that the Bible says a girl has reached sexual maturity when she begins to menstruate. Nor does the Bible condemn polygamy, he points out.
Way to be innocent, guy.
Another page at the Alamo Ministries website lays out all the reasons why he was framed.
Alamo’s trial began on the 13th of this month and concluded on the 24th, with Alamo being found guilty of all charges. Young women testified about being forced to “marry” the preacher when they were children or teens. One 18-year-old woman described how she was “married” at the age of 8, then sexually assaulted by Alamo from the age of 9 until her escape from the compound in 2006. He was already “married” to a 15-year-old when he took the third-grader as his wife. A 25-year-old woman testified that she “married” Alamo while he was serving his tax-evasion sentence. No parents have been charged in connection to these crimes, though numerous young girls were removed from their families during the investigation. Many of them have not been returned.
It was this testimony that finally convinced Thomas Richards that Tony Alamo wasn’t framed. In his farewell message, he wrote, ” I am embarrassed now that I EVER even mentioned ‘Tony Alamo’ and I’m sorry to all my readers for this… I probably wont even come back to spirituallysmart.com after this. And I gladly suffer the reproach in public for my errors in the past.”
He is at the end of the road that paranoia leads you down; mistrusting everyone except for the people you should trust least, blaming shadowy conspirators for personal failures, enabling deeply troubled people to do the same, and generally wasting your life looking for the bad guys. Far too late, he realized that Tony Alamo’s conspiracy theories were completely untenable smokescreens for his own evil plot: To sexually assault as many little girls as he could.
Swallowing The Camel 
"He is at the end of the road that paranoia leads you down; mistrusting everyone except for the people you should trust least, blaming shadowy conspirators for personal failures, enabling deeply troubled people to do the same, and generally wasting your life looking for the bad guys".Beautifully said, and "right on the money". Thank you.
It would be nice to be capable of convincing people not to take that path, but on the other hand we all have to make our own mistakes, don't we?
That's right and you will see just how mistaken you are when you face your creator. I hope you will repent and seek God and read his word so you will be born again in the spirit and understand the things of the spirit before it's everlastingly to late. Hell is real, perfect torment of burning there forever. Time is running out! WAKE UP! and look at what is going on around you! Jesus is coming soon. are you ready to stand before him? or will you be one of those wanting the rocks and mountains to fall on you? People like you need prayers..I will be praying for you.
lol wut
Camel, I dont know where you get your info from, but you should do a little more investigating before you write this garbage. Tommy richards turned because he was threatened by state and federal goons telling him they would take his kids away (which they have done to many other ppl who are not members of this church but just didnt have anything bad to say about them)he said in his own words that it was the most terrifying night of his life ( the raid on his home was around 4 or 5 in the morning).And as far as the vatican having something to do with the holocaust being a conspiracy theory, its a well documented event, its even exposed on the history and miltary chanell that the vatican as high up as the pope helped nazi's escape europe to other country's after ww2,ever heard of the vatican rat lines? You post a lot of bad info, if you want to be taken seriously you should do a little more investigation before you start flappin yo lips.
When and where was Mr. Richards allegedly threatened, and how did you come to learn of it, Anon? Can you provide any evidence that this alleged "threat" to remove his children had anything to do with the Alamo situation? I've found comments remarkably similar to yours on other blogs, and to date Mr. Richards has not responded to any of them. Richards contended the Holocaust was planned and initiated by the Vatican. There is no evidence to support this. He did not dwell on Church officials' post-war aid to Nazi fugitives, for which there is some evidence. Rather large difference.
I moved to Arkansas in the middle of my Senior Year in high school. I was a troubled teen and a perfect target for the Alamo organization. I called the ministry and joined. I can tell the truth here. Yes, he did have the casket in a room where people would take shifts to ressurect her. There was a compond with guns.Tony Alamo used brain washing techniques to control his flock.I couldn't leave on my own, so I escaped. Yes escaped. Tony Alamo is crazy and an idiot.
I was in the Tony Alamo cult a couple years before they busted him for child molestation. When I was there, I always would ask the married guys, how old is your wife? Because they looked so young. I saw a picture of one guys wife, because we weren't allowed to talk to women at the cult and she looked about 11 years old. They all marry young girls. I was brainwashed for over 2 years with Tony's garbage. I finally left that place by God's grace. Thank you Jesus!