The Preacher in Prison

In April of 1979, Jenkins was arrested again. Though he had assured his congregation that he would not be convicted, he was, on two counts of conspiracy to commit arson, and one of assault, for attempting to have reporter Rick Ricks of the Anderson, S.C., Independent beaten up for certain comments he had made in that paper. It was revealed in court that Jenkins had hired two men to torch the home of a state trooper who had given Jenkins’s daughter a traffic ticket. That home, and another in Anderson, were burned to the ground by two men Jenkins had hired. Local rumor—and Jenkins endorsed the rumor—had it that the trooper also had taken advantage of Jenkins’s daughter, but this was never brought out in the trial. If it did indeed occur—and Jenkins has been known to make statements and accusations that are not exactly true—Jenkins’s offenses might be more easily understood. In his world, personal, direct vengeance is often preferred over legal procedure. Jenkins began serving a 12-year prison term back in Delaware, Ohio. Behind bars, he managed to keep his evangelical operation alive, though only on a bare survival scale. But he continued to run afoul of regulations that lesser mortals may not ignore. In September of 1980, when two bottles of contraband Scotch whiskey were discovered in a room for which he carried the key, Jenkins lost the valued “trusty” status he had until then enjoyed, and went into the regular lockup awaiting transfer to another, more secure institution. Evidence of the vendetta against him by the authorities continued to surface. Though it would not have been unusual for the authorities to have granted him parole when he asked for it at several points early in his prison stay, it was repeatedly denied until June 1985. However, Jenkins had already been freed on work release in December 1982. Though this was far short of a real parole, and he was severely limited in his travels and activities, it meant that he was able to get the ministry rolling again. One of his first actions was to sue television producer Jimmy Rea, Jr., proprietor of JR Productions. Rea had prepared Jenkins’s broadcast films and tapes until the sudden demise of all the Jenkins shows in 1979 when the preacher went into prison. There was a feud over some $200,000 worth of electronic equipment used to produce the Jenkins show. Countersuits flew about wildly; theft and bad debts were claimed by both sides. But Jenkins’s big problem wasn’t the money involved in the lawsuits; he was more concerned with Rea’s demand that he reveal in court how much money was being raised through solicitations by the Jenkins broadcast operation. To Jenkins’s relief, that figure was never disclosed, and the case was settled out of court.

Enter a New Character, the Reverend Peter Popoff

Another comic episode in the Jenkins soap opera came to light in 1984, when he disclosed that some unnamed person had illegally sold his very valuable mailing list of potential donors to a rival, California-based evangelist Peter Popoff. Jenkins went to court over this matter too, and the National Graphics Corporation, which did Jenkins’s mailings, was named as a co-defendant in the action. His Columbus attorney, Henry Eckhart, managed to have the court order Popoff to surrender the list and to immediately stop using it to solicit contributions. But, said Eckhart, the name of the mystery individual within the Jenkins organization who actually sold the list to Popoff would be disclosed only on order of the court. Jenkins’s reluctance to have that name known is quite understandable. While Daddy was in the slammer, his son, Danny, had been running his operation for him. And he was the one who had copied and sold the list to Peter Popoff through All-American Video television director Rod Sherrill. Danny and Rod were almost brothers. They had been raised together, Rod being an adopted son of Leroy. In fact, they had started up QC Video—W. V. Grant’s operation—together. QC at one time was taping shows for as many as 20 different evangelists. Popoff had paid Danny $25,000 for this list of 15,000 to 20,000 names, all of them “Code Seven” items. He told the court that he hadn’t even recovered the cost of the list by using it. But his former controller, Ira McCorriston, described Popoff’s income from use of the list as “unbelievable.” It was $1.2 million to $1.4 million.