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From Mafia Playboy to Ministry

“My early childhood was happy,” Jim recalls. “To me, it was picture perfect.”

All of that changed when Jim was seven years old and he discovered the true identity of his father.

“I looked down and I saw all these police cars and everything around my house. And find out that the police were there, the FBI were there, looking for an escaped prisoner, somebody who had escaped from a Missouri state prison a number of years before, and found out it was my dad.”

A pastry chef by day, a mobster by night - but now he was a fugitive. He came back home a few weeks later, only to leave again. But this time he took the whole family with him.

“So my childhood was being on the run. We would go and move a lot. Changed identities. I had all sorts of names.”

Nearly seven years on the run, Jim learned a lifestyle of deceit and robbery from his father.

“I always remember, my fondest Christmas memory of being with my dad was when we stole. We would go out and steal a Christmas tree every year. So I was pretty much, as a little boy, learning to, not only to steal and lie but I was also learning that the only way I could be accepted was by doing things. If I did things, I’d be accepted.”

Living that life finally caught up with his dad. He had a racket giving safe combinations to the legendary gangster, John Dillinger. Eventually the FBI figured it out. Dillinger got away, but Jim’s father was busted and sentenced to 25 years. As Jim got older, he tried to live on the up and up, even trying Catholic school. But like his father, Jim started working with the mob. He was soon making millions, but he felt restless and discontent.

“I was void of everything. So you’re trying to fill up. You think the lifestyle, the money, the success, that’s going to fill it up.”

Then he met Judy, and they got married in 1982. Judy had three daughters from a previous marriage, so at home, he was a family man. And away from the family, the mob business was getting dangerous.

“Get a phone call from my Baltimore office and saying the FBI has just raided us.”

Jim’s attorney explained the situation to him.

“There’s going to be an indictment going down and it was going to be for racketeering. It had minimum sentences that were very high, it takes all your money, everything away. So I’m going, ‘I don’t think I like this.’ But I wasn’t about to give up. So they offered me an opportunity to turn state witness.”

Jim refused at first, but when he learned his business partner planned on killing the judge, he knew it was time to get out. He took a deal, pled guilty to fraud, and got 3 1/2 years. One night in his cell, he picked up a copy of the only book allowed at Eglin Federal Prison Camp – a Bible.

“Here I am, laying in the bed, on top of my bed, in my bunk, reading a Bible for the first time in my life. And the words came alive. And they just started to penetrate my heart. And right before the lights are going to be out, as the lights go like this [Jim claps], just at that moment, I read, ‘And I set the prisoners free.’ And I realized that I’ve been in prison all my life. I just didn’t know it. And I hugged that Bible and I wept.

“And then I heard, to me it was audible, it was as audible as speaking to anybody right now, I heard, ‘Jim, I am your Father. And I love you so much I gave you My Son.’ It was amazing. He said, ‘All you have to do is come to Me.’ And I came.”

While Jim was in prison, Judy had recommitted her life to Christ. She began attending church and the entire congregation started praying for Jim. He was released from prison in 1983.

“There was a church waiting for me, ready for me, and wanting me to be involved in them.”

Jim got involved immediately and he and Judy were baptized together that same year. Jim worked 15 years with the Walk Thru the Bible ministry, and today, he’s a business consultant, and offers hope to others by sharing his dramatic story.

“If you’ve got an emptiness inside, that’s because God put it there,” says Jim. “And that emptiness is the desire for Him.”

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