Electronics to the Rescue

At first, when Peter Popoff began his TV ministry, says a cameraman who helped prepare the earlier shows, “there was nothing happening.” Popoff was not very good at what he was doing. Former controller Ira McCorriston told me:[Popoff] can’t preach a complete sermon. He’ll start, then he’ll begin rambling and telling you things that happened to him when he was 10 years old, and his father ...

But Rod Sherrill was there to improve that performance electronically. A former photographer who learned video techniques from his foster father, evangelist Leroy Jenkins (he left that ministry just before Jenkins went to prison), Rod was well able to create appropriate TV images for his employers, and had no illusions about the strictly businesslike approach he was expected to take. Before the Popoff ministry collapsed, he told an independent filmmaker in San Francisco, “There are two kinds of people in the world.” He said there were those who believed and those who didn’t, and that he was dealing with the former. The latter were of no interest to him. Cameraman Gary Clarke echoed Rod’s conviction, saying, “We have a certain kind of client ... they just want to believe.” It was also Rod’s opinion that “a real Christian can’t work in a Christian organization.” But he did, and in case faith in his employer began to fade, Rod Sherrill was there to reinforce it by whatever means necessary.

The “Russian Bibles” Vandalism Scam

But Rod Sherrill did more than just enhance certain aspects of the Popoff performance. He was involved as well in at least one of Popoff’s major deceptions. It was one that brought Popoff a huge financial return. A leading actor in this drama was Mike Delaney, the young handyman at the Peter Popoff Evangelical Association headquarters. Just before he left that organization, he had second thoughts about a scheme in which he had been intimately involved the year before while working for Popoff. To protect himself, he began asking questions and making notes. He felt that the whole organization would eventually unravel and that this plot would come to light. It did. Delaney told us that he had known nothing of the electronic device with which Popoff accomplished his miraculous “Word of Knowledge” stunt. In fact, he said, no one then in the office but the Popoffs, Tisha Sousa, Volmer Thrane, and the Sherrills knew about it until my exposure of it on the “Tonight Show,” though they were all aware of other fakery. Through 1985, Popoff promoted a huge project. He begged his audience to send him money for the purchase of Russian-language Bibles that he promised to send behind the Iron Curtain by means of couriers who would smuggle them in their baggage to thousands of eager Soviet citizens starving for the Word. Several other totally hilarious, harebrained schemes were also suggested as alternatives to keep up the interest of potential donors. Up ahead, I will detail the “Great Balloon Caper” that he came up with to further flatten his fans’ wallets.