# Who was this Christian speaker I saw as a kid? (ex-con, more details inside) **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 6, 2018, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152 "2018-08-06T03:06:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![MeanJoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanjoe/32/5693_2.png) [@MeanJoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanJoe)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/21 "2018-08-16T14:16:26Z")
I remember Warnke, Cruz, and Wilkerson. There was another famous guy in the fundamentalist/evangelical speaking circuit from the 80s. who spoke at our church or maybe it was a larger event. Was he a taller, skinny white guy with an afro? Your description of his testimony and history, other than the throat thing, is really resonating with my recollections but I’ll be damned if I can remember his name. This is going to drive me crazy… Haha ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/22 "2018-08-16T19:26:30Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Mahaloth, the problem is not that “this all sounds nuts when put together”. Far from it. The problem is that various aspects of the life you’re describing are so similar to many other prisoner/Christians that it’s too hard to search on what you’ve told us. Tell us more. Give us the most complete physical description of this person you can and anything else about him. Tell us everything you can about how you saw this film. Tell us when you saw this film. Tell us who made this film. Tell us anything that would allow us to distinguish him from other prisoner/Christians. There are hundreds of people vaguely like this guy, and we can’t figure out who you’re talking about with this little information. I think he was balding and about 50 years old. White. The balding part I’m not sure on. He was white and at least 50. I saw this film at church in the evening service on Sunday. They showed him over the course of a couple evening services. I think sometimes the pastor didn’t want to have a message in the evening, so they used films like this. He is at a pulpit speaking in the films. The most memorable things were: “Drive, drive, I shot a man!”, the story about selling drugs in prison, and the esophageal/tracheal tube that he inserted and removed. He said he was super-competitive in life and that he can insert and remove the tube faster than anyone. This was almost for sure in 1988-1989. 1990 would be the latest. It isn’t a movie with dramatization, just a guy speaking at a pulpit. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/23 "2018-08-16T19:31:46Z")
> [@MeanJoe](#): > > I remember Warnke, Cruz, and Wilkerson. There was another famous guy in the fundamentalist/evangelical speaking circuit from the 80s. who spoke at our church or maybe it was a larger event. Was he a taller, skinny white guy with an afro? Your description of his testimony and history, other than the throat thing, is really resonating with my recollections but I’ll be damned if I can remember his name. This is going to drive me crazy… Haha No afro. I didn’t think he was skinny either, just normal. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/24 "2025-10-20T02:26:12Z")
**7 years later I BUMP this because it has been found.** It was “Twice Pardoned” by Harold Morris Time stamped to the “drive drive, we shot a man” moment. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/NCfOJY8xSu8/maxresdefault.jpg "The Life Story of Harold Morris my two friends said drive drive we shot a man!") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCfOJY8xSu8&t=220) ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/25 "2025-10-20T03:24:36Z")
Wow, congrats! ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 20, 2025, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/26 "2025-10-20T04:35:30Z")
Turns out he’s dead: [https://www.beckfuneralhome.com/obituary/Harold-Morris](https://www.beckfuneralhome.com/obituary/Harold-Morris) I love how it claims he was sent to prison for “a crime he did not commit.” Bull shit. I would bet anything he was convicted of exactly what he did: being the getaway driver (or worse) for an armed robbery that resulted in death. Felony murder. In fact, I think it’s entirely possible he _did_ pull the trigger and the whole “I was just the poor wittle getaway driver” schtick is his way of dodging responsibility for being a murderer. That or he made the whole thing up to sell books. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/27 "2025-10-22T03:08:11Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Bull shit. I would bet anything he was convicted of exactly what he did: From personal experience, and my friends, and the friends of my friends, it is extremely common to be convicted of crimes different to the crimes actually committed. It’s also not unknown to plead guilty to crimes that one did not commit, on the advice of lawyers, or because the police tell you to, or even because you feel it would be better to take a couple of years in jail and your wife can stay out. It’s mostly not terribly unfair, (“all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God”) and often is completely overshadowed by much bigger problems. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/28 "2025-10-22T03:52:05Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > From personal experience, and my friends, and the friends of my friends, it is extremely common to be convicted of crimes different to the crimes actually committed. > > It’s also not unknown to plead guilty to crimes that one did not commit, on the advice of lawyers, or because the police tell you to, or even because you feel it would be better to take a couple of years in jail and your wife can stay out. Christian grifters are even more common, though. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/29 "2025-10-22T04:04:50Z")
Even grifters tell mostly the truth. It is what makes the grift plausible. Of course, I am in Australia, but I understand that the USA has around 2 million people in prison. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/30 "2025-10-22T04:09:41Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > Even grifters tell mostly the truth. It is what makes the grift plausible. Sure. And I really do believe he is a murderer, much as he says he was convicted of murder. I just don’t buy the part where he insists he was a poor, hapless getaway driver framed by his accomplices. But if he isn’t a straight-up murderer, my money is on completed made up. ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/31 "2025-10-22T04:22:51Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > r, hapless getaway driver framed by his accomplices. And yet that specific partly is completely plausible. I don’t know ~anybody~ who has shot anyone in civil life, but even I have known people who have been falsely named. as part of “co-operating with the police”. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 22, 2025, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/32 "2025-10-22T22:33:49Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Christian grifters are even more common, though. I won’t really defend him too much since I have no clue who he really was, but I can tell you he was not exactly making big bucks or asking for tons of money. He seemed pretty genuine. Guilty of his crimes? Possibly. Possibly not. Guilty of choosing to be involved with a crime that included murder? For sure. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/33 "2025-10-23T18:40:55Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > From personal experience, and my friends, and the friends of my friends, it is extremely common to be convicted of crimes different to the crimes actually committed. If you say so. I would question the “extremely common” part. Not that that’s not what they told you, but that they were probably lying to you. My personal experience is that my friends who committed crimes and got caught, lied about their participation. > [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Christian grifters are even more common, though. This. I loved the part where he was reeling off the bad qualities of his prison buddy and included homosexual in the list. The cad! ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/34 "2025-10-23T18:42:29Z")
The only info I can find on this guy comes from those promoting/selling his book. Is there any independent reportage on him? ---
**Author:** ![Melbourne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b5e925/32.png) [@Melbourne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Melbourne)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/35 "2025-10-23T21:34:25Z")
As we see in his story: he claimed that his friends lied about their participation in the crime. You can’t use “people lie” to prove this case one way or the other. On the other hand, I claim that I’m not lying about my participation in crime: the crimes I have been convicted of are different than the crimes I’ve committed. And for my friends, and the friends of my friends, and the cases known to me through the judge I am related to by marriage, clearly there was lying involved in some of them: the police lied, the guilty lied, the innocent lied, the witnessed lied. The schizophrenic and the deeply depressed didn’t even know the truth. In amongst all that lying, it is common for people to be convicted of crimes that are different than the crimes they have committed. It’s not like anybody cares. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/36 "2025-10-23T21:54:23Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Is there any independent reportage on him? I might have found his appeal. The details match up, except the name. Looks like he swapped his first and middle name (which leads me to believe he was trying to make it harder for people to uncover details of his case): [https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1971/26619-1.html](https://law.justia.com/cases/georgia/supreme-court/1971/26619-1.html) That said, there’s not enough information on the facts of the case at the trial level specifically to asses just how full of BS his public image is. Other than he definitely was convicted of murder and robbery. Still, swapping his first and middle names shouts “lying liar who lies” to me. ---
**Author:** ![ASL\_v2.0](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asl_v2.0/32/3525_2.png) [@ASL\_v2.0](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ASL_v2.0)\ **Post date:** [October 23, 2025, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/37 "2025-10-23T22:15:23Z")
Ok, I did pick out something that implies he’s lying about the basis for his conviction: > 1. There was no error in failing to charge the jury as to the law of alibi, which appellant avers was his sole defense. However, there was no evidence to warrant giving a charge on this subject. As already stated, the evidence showed that the appellant waited near the scene of the crime while the robbery and murder took place and then whisked them away. There was no evidence showing the impossibility of appellant’s presence at the scene of the crime at the time of the commission. See Jackson v. State, 172 Ga. 575 (158 SE 289). That reads to me that he was only ever accused of being the getaway driver and was thus properly convicted of felony murder. By contrast, he seems to have built his life’s lie on the notion that he was only convicted of murder because his accomplices lied and said he pulled the trigger, as if he couldn’t have been convicted of murder any other way. A lying liar who lies. QED. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/38 "2025-10-24T02:09:08Z")
I appreciate people digging deeper into this guy. I don’t know he was a total fraud, but at least partially it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/39 "2025-10-24T17:05:20Z")
> [@Melbourne](#): > > You can’t use “people lie” to prove this case I’m not referring to this case, I was questioning your declaration that “it is **extremely common** to be convicted of crimes different to the crimes actually committed”. But in this case, if he was the driver in a felony murder case, he was guilty of murder. > [@Melbourne](#): > > And for my friends, and the friends of my friends, and the cases known to me through the judge I am related to by marriage, clearly there was lying involved in some of them How would a judge know? A judge should only know what is presented to them in court. > [@Melbourne](#): > > In amongst all that lying, it is common for people to be convicted of crimes that are different than the crimes they have committed. Saying you know some people it happened to doesn’t mean it’s common or the norm. If someone steals a car, and you have evidence of that, the easiest thing to do is try and convict them of that - not trump up some other thing. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2025, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152/40 "2025-10-24T17:06:53Z")
> [@ASL\_v2.0](#): > > Other than he definitely was convicted of murder and robbery. Still, swapping his first and middle names shouts “lying liar who lies” to me. I agree with this. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-was-this-christian-speaker-i-saw-as-a-kid-ex-con-more-details-inside/819152.md?page=3)