Evangelist convicted for killing wife, storing her body in freezer and sexually abusing teens

MOBILE, Ala. - An Alabama evangelist preacher and former paratrooper was convicted Friday of murdering his wife and storing her body in a freezer for four years.


After deliberating for 1½ hours, a jury in Mobile also found 39-year-old Anthony Hopkins guilty of rape, sodomy, incest and sexual abuse of a child between the ages of 12 and 16.


Hopkins was arrested in 2008 while preaching at a rural revival on charges that he killed 36-year-old Arletha Hopkins, a mother of eight.


He showed no reaction on Friday as deputies handcuffed him and led him from the court.


Children who grew up in his home and who had testified against him stood in the front row and hugged each other and cried as the verdict was read.


"There is nothing pleasing about any of this, it is all very disturbing," Ashley Rich, the prosecuting attorney said. "A number of children have been harmed and the chances of them fully recovering are slim."


Authorities said a teenage relative who Hopkins had abused and impregnated led police to the body of his wife in 2008.


Investigators say Hopkins killed his wife in a violent fight in 2004 after she caught him having sex with the teenager. They said he then stuffed the wife's body into a freezer at the home he shared with her, the couple's six children and two of her children from a previous relationship.


In closing arguments Friday, Assistant District Attorney Jill Phillips said Hopkins terrorized his wife and young children, isolated them and used the Bible to manipulate them.


"He was the supreme commander of his own little army," Phillips said.


Hopkins told jurors Friday that he came home on a December evening in 2004 and found his wife dead on the floor, with the youngest of her eight children, an infant, beside her.


"I was shocked and I began to shake her, and I was like 'Letha, Letha are you alright?' I began to shake her, tilt her head back and do CPR," Hopkins testified.


Hopkins served in the U.S. Army in Kazakhstan in the late 1990s and earned a medal for his service. He was arrested in 1998 for being absent without leave from the Army in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from June 15, 1995, until April 6, 1998.


He testified Friday that he decided to leave the Army after he got orders to serve in Korea and could not take his family with him.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/100409/world/us_body_in_freezer

Pastor has sex with his own daughters...To show them how to behave infront of their future husbands

A 54-year-old pastor of a church had sex with his daughters to educate them on how to 'behave for their husbands.' The girls were abused for nearly a decade when they were 13 and 15.

The man said that the abuse was not 'about fulfilling his sexual desires' but teaching 'as dictated in scripture.'

He was sentenced to eight and a half years for seven counts of incest.

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=64653

There's a small sentence in the end of the link that says: Judge David Lovell stated, "misrepresentation of scripture...defied belief.....he had hypocritically betrayed his religious principles."

Uh huh. The 100+ articles on "Sex Crimes" we have, nearly all the Christian's believed it was correct to rape/sexually assault. BUT the REAL, IMPORTANT reason is: The holy spirit guides ALL.