The elder Gorman confronted Swaggart when he emerged and promised he wouldn’t release the pictures if Swaggart would publicly apologize to Gorman, admit to the Assemblies of God that he had lied about the affairs and use his influence to have Gorman reinstated.īut for some reason, Swaggart never made good on his end of the deal, and in January of 1988 Gorman told Swaggart his time was up. On a day when Bailey expected Swaggart to visit Murphree, Randy Gorman rented another room and secretly took pictures of her clients coming and going when Swaggart arrived Randy snapped his picture entering the room, then let the air out of his tires and called his father (who lived only a few minutes away). It didn’t take long early in 1987 they discovered that he regularly employed the services of Debra Murphree, a $35 streetwalker who worked out of the Travel Inn on Airline Highway. So, he hired a private detective named Scott Bailey and assigned his son Randy to assist him, and the two set out to discover whatever Swaggart might have to hide.
JIMMY SWAGGART 2016 TV
Gorman was defrocked, his TV ministry collapsed and he was forced to file bankruptcy as one might expect, he wanted revenge. In 1986 Swaggart discovered (possibly through the use of a private detective) that Gorman had a mistress, and exposed him to the AoG Presbytery with claims of “several affairs” (though Gorman only confessed to one). and pulled in about $150 million dollars a year.Ĭousin Jimmy had come a long way from sleeping in church basements and preaching from the backs of trucks, but instead of rejoicing in his good fortune and helping other struggling preachers as Christian morality demands, Swaggart instead grew jealous of his position and schemed to bring down rival Assemblies of God televangelist Marvin Gorman, whose television show was becoming increasingly popular. By the mid-1980s his broadcast appeared on more than 250 television stations across the U.S. His television ministry quickly expanded in 1978 the show grew to an hour, and in 1980 went from weekly to daily. That was the year he founded his Family Worship Center in Baton Rouge, bought an AM radio station and started a weekly 30-minute television broadcast which was later syndicated. He soon had his own radio show, and by 1969 it was popular throughout the Bible Belt. He entered Bible college, began recording Gospel music albums in 1960 and was ordained by the Assemblies of God after graduating in 1961. But showmanship ran in the family, and by 1957 Swaggart was popular at revival meetings all over the South. The Swaggarts lived an itinerant existence as Jimmy preached in small rural Louisiana churches, bringing in roughly $30 a week and staying wherever people would let them. He married Frances Anderson when he was only 17 years old and was a father at 19, despite the fact that he had neither residence nor income. Jimmy Swaggart was born in Ferriday, Louisiana on March 15, 1935, just six months before his cousin, rock and roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis and a year before another cousin, country star Mickey Gilley. But let’s not put the car before the whores, as it were the story makes more sense told chronologically. That earlier scandal had almost ended his career, and the second one sharply curtailed his comeback. Nor was this Swaggart’s first time caught with his hand in the crumpet tin four years earlier it was another streetwalker in a seedy motel on Airline Highway in Metairie, Louisiana.
JIMMY SWAGGART 2016 DRIVER
And the cops might’ve accepted that, or given him a ticket and gone on their way, except for two things: the woman was a known prostitute named Rosemary Garcia, and the driver was well-known televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. The driver explained that he had pulled over to give a ride to a young woman who was standing on that side, and was in the process of pulling back over when he was stopped. Twenty years ago today, the California Highway Patrol pulled over a white Jaguar in the town of Indio for driving on the wrong side of the road. The Lord told me it’s flat none of your business.