what happened to jim and tammy faye bakker

Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were married televangelists who created an evangelical empire that encompassed a Christian ministry, broadcasting network, and theme park. In the late 1980s, Jim Bakker resigned from the PTL ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce. Jim was accused of sexually assaulting a secretary and paying her off, which he denied, saying their relationship was consensual. Then in 1989, Jim was convicted on 24 counts of fraud and sentenced to 45 years in prison. (The sentence was later reduced, and he was released on parole in 1994.) Bakker divorced Jim while he was in prison. Tammy Faye later remarried Roe Messner, a building contractor, in 1993. Messner was convicted of bankruptcy fraud and sentenced to 27 months in prison. Tammy Faye died in July 2007 at the age of 65 due to colon cancer, which spread to her lungs. She was still married to Messner at the time of her death.