Televangelist Tammy Fay Bakker Messner dies

Television personality Tammy Faye Messner gestures during an exclusive interview with talk show host Larry King as she announces her recent diagnosis of inoperable lung cancer, on the CNN program 'Larry King Live' in Los Angeles at the CNN studios, in this March 18, 2004 file photo. [Reuters]

Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, the televangelist who helped lead the PTL ministry before its collapse in a sex and corruption scandal, has died at age 65, her Web site reported on Saturday.

Messner died on Friday after a long battle with cancer, CNN said. CNN's Larry King, who interviewed Messner on his "Larry King Live" talk show on Thursday night, said her family had asked him to make the delayed announcement of her death.

"She died peacefully," King said on CNN's Web site.

"I believe when I leave this Earth because I love the Lord, I am going straight to Heaven," Messner told King in the interview.

On May 8, Messner posted a message on her Web site, www.tammyfaye.com, saying she had withered to 65 pounds (30 kg) and that doctors had decided to stop treatment, leaving her fate "up to God and my faith."

Messner was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996 and announced in 2004 it had spread.

With her former husband Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye became a household name in America through the PTL organization ("Praise The Lord" or "People That Love") that he founded in 1974.

Their television evangelical empire brought in close to $130 million annually at its height in the 1980s and reached 13 million homes daily.

Tammy Faye was a fixture of her first husband's ministry, her heavy mascara running riot as she tearfully beseeched TV viewers to open their hearts to Jesus and their wallets to PTL. The ministry's empire included Heritage USA, a Christian theme park in South Carolina.

Finance and sex scandals brought it all crashing down after the Internal Revenue Service started investigating whether the Bakkers were illegally using their tax-exempt ministry to pay for an opulent lifestyle that mushroomed to include several homes, servants, luxury cars, jewels, furs and an air-conditioned doghouse.