Evangelist Tammy Faye Bakker Messner dies
Last Updated: Saturday, July 21, 2007 | 10:15 PM ET
CBC News
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, who helped lead a U.S. televangelical empire before its fall from grace amid sex and corruption scandals, has died of cancer, her agent announced Saturday.
Tammy Faye Bakker smiles while taping an infomercial in 1987.
(Mark Humphrey/Associated Press)
The former wife of Jim Bakker, Messner is best known for co-hosting televangelism program The PTL Club with him in the 1970s and 1980s.
She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996 and eight years later, she revealed that it had spread to her lungs.
In early May, Messner posted a message on her website saying she weighed only 65 pounds and doctors had decided to stop treatment.
"Now it's up to God and my faith," she wrote.
According to her booking agent, Joe Spotts, Messner died on Friday.
Her former husband, Bakker, stepped down from his television ministry after his affair with a church secretary became public.
An Internal Revenue Service investigation found the two were illegally using their tax-exempt ministry to fund extravagant personal purchases. The ministry went bankrupt and the two still haven't cleared their shared debt.
Messner divorced Bakker in 1992, then married a contractor who also served time for bankruptcy fraud.
The former evangelist also appeared on a 2004 VH1 reality television series, The Surreal Life, in which she stayed in a Los Angeles house with a porn star, a rapper and several actors.
With files from the Associated Press
