Last week a starkly different portrait of Lyons began to emerge. The minister was out of the country, traveling in Nigeria. According to police, his wife of 25 years, Deborah, was going through her husband’s briefcase in their $275,000 home. She allegedly found a deed showing that Lyons had bought a $700,000 house with another woman, a 40-year-old church official named Bernice Edwards, on the luxurious blue waters of Boca Ciega Bay. Mrs. Lyons told authorities that she then got into her Mercedes and drove to the waterfront home; inside she found some of her husband’s suits and other belongings. Enraged, police say, she smashed lamps, kicked over plants and ripped the stuffing out of pillows. According to her confession, Mrs. Lyons then set fire to the gutted pillows. The preacher’s wife drove off, running into a palm tree on the way back home.
Suddenly Lyons - head of a church founded by former slaves -was facing wrenching questions about adultery, arson and just how he’d managed to support a lavish lifestyle. Lyons wouldn’t disclose his income, but he somehow has a collection of cars, including three Mercedes-Benzes (one owned jointly with Edwards) and a Rolls-Royce, and the two houses. The scandal quickly raised issues of money, sex and, inevitably, race. Late last week Lyons, his wife by his side, emphatically denied any wrongdoing, including the charge that he and Edwards were ““carrying on an affair.’’ He called her a family friend.
Figuring out what’s really going on is proving difficult. After Mrs. Lyons’s arrest, she publicly recanted her claim that she had tried to burn the $700,000 house because of her fury at uncovering her husband’s alleged affair, adding that she’d always known about the home. It was, she told the St. Petersburg Times, a national guesthouse for the church and that she accidentally started the fire by dropping a match. But police say the blaze was set in five places, and Mrs. Lyons never called the fire department. (She is pleading not guilty to charges of arson and burglary.)
Prosecutors are looking into whether Lyons and Edwards broke state tax laws by registering a top-of-the-line $135,000 Mercedes-Benz S 600V to the church - a move that allowed them to avoid paying sales tax. There’s no doubt Lyons has his worldly interests: he runs the Revelation Corp., a company aimed at building minority businesses by selling insurance, sausage and motor oil. (This could have been one source of Lyons’s income.) And in 1991 Lyons paid an $85,000 restitution fee, thereby avoiding charges of bank fraud.
Then there’s Edwards, who serves as the national convention’s public-relations director for corporate affairs. In 1994 she was convicted of embezzling from a Wisconsin program for at-risk youth - and using the money to buy everything from furs to cars. She paid restitution. A Florida jewelry company filed suit against her last month after she alleged- ly bounced a $25,000 check. Edwards’s attorney denies all wrongdoing on his client’s part and said her relationship with Lyons was strictly ““professional.''
Facing questions about his future from both his St. Petersburg congregation and the Nashville-based denomination’s national board of directors, Lyons is fighting back. His chief target: the mainstream media. Indeed, NEWSWEEK has learned from a senior Lyons adviser that the reverend plans a PR offensive in the black press. ““They understand the truth,’’ says the adviser. Lyons gave a taste of his pitch last week at a brief press conference, where he repeated that the house was church property. ““I’m proud I’ve enjoyed some financial success,’’ Lyons said, addressing reporters. ““What are you trying to imply? That blacks in this country cannot be successful?’’ Lyons’s supporters murmured ““amen’’ - but others are more skeptical. ““He self-destructed,’’ said lay pastor Anderson Clarke. ““It’s a sad state of affairs.''
