Televangelist Jim Bakker, disgraced from sex scandal and fraud, dies at 86

Televangelist Jim Bakker, who built a multimillion-dollar Christian media business with his then-wife Tammy Faye before being jailed for fraud and conspiracy, has died at age 86. His death was announced on Monday by his second wife, Lori Bakker, who called him a pioneer of Christian television. In 1974, Bakker and Tammy Faye founded The PTL Club, which at its peak drew 13 million viewers per day. The empire began to collapse by the late 1980s after Bakker’s sex scandal and later conviction for mail and wire fraud. Tammy Faye divorced him in 1992 and was never charged. Bakker remarried in 1998 and, with Lori, launched a new TV ministry in 2003. The couple’s lavish lifestyle included a private jet and a 2,300-acre Heritage USA complex in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Bakker resigned from PTL in 1987 after revelations about a 1980 encounter involving Jessica Hahn, who later received a $265,000 payoff from ministry funds.