Cult Leader Pleads Not Guilty to Charge

Religious cult leader Tony Alamo pleaded not guilty Monday to threatening to kill a federal judge and was denied a request for bail in Fayetteville, Ark., officials said.

Alamo, 56, who was a fugitive on a Los Angeles County child-abuse charge for nearly three years before being captured this month in Tampa, Fla., entered the plea in a courtroom packed with about 50 followers and media representatives, deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Blevins said.

U.S. Magistrate Beverly Steites denied Alamo’s bid for bail, based on a contention that Alamo initially did not know that he was wanted by authorities and later was afraid to turn himself in. Steites set Sept. 9 for the start of Alamo’s trial.

Alamo is charged with threatening the life of a federal judge in an interview with a Fort Smith, Ark., newspaper earlier this year. The judge, Morris Arnold, had ordered Alamo to pay two former followers and their families $1.8 million in damages in a lawsuit alleging that Alamo beat the followers’ children, alienated them from their families and violated labor laws by forcing the children to work long hours for little or no pay.

Alamo is the leader of a cult known for its anti-Catholic and anti-government views that got its start 25 years ago in Hollywood, where the fundamentalist preacher ministered to young dropouts, drunks and drug users. Although several hundred followers once lived at communes in Saugus and the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, experts say Alamo’s following dwindled to 100 people or fewer while he was a fugitive.