The Reverend Freak

Sheppard squeezed Jones' hand. They held each other, shaking and sobbing. The man who ruined so many days of their lives would now have many days of his own taken away.

Renee Hornbuckle couldn't leave the courtroom fast enough. As soon as the judge finished reading the sentences, she was up and out of her reserved bench seat. She didn't stay to hear the victims' impact statements read by Sheppard and Jones. Her husband would be called a devil, unfit to be kept alive.

She dashed past the cameras waiting outside, armor-bearers in tow, and vanished.

But inside, as Bishop Terry Hornbuckle looked down in defeat, Sheppard and Jones bowed their heads as if in prayer.

"We did it," Jones whispered. Sheppard nodded, tears falling from her eyes. "We did it."

Postscript

Hornbuckle will serve his sentence terms concurrently, potentially putting the bishop behind bars for the next 15 years, though he will be eligible for parole after serving half that time. The jury fined Hornbuckle a total of $30,000--the maximum allowed--for the three criminal cases.

Soon after the sentencing, Hornbuckle was fired as pastor of Agape Christian Fellowship. Renee, who'd been filling in as pastor while the bishop was in jail, has been given four months to prove whether she can lead the church on a permanent basis. After years of preaching prosperity, assuring his congregation that they could achieve material wealth through faithful giving, Terry Hornbuckle is now broke.

Last week, Hornbuckle said he is too poor to hire an appeals lawyer, even though his wife still owns a $742,000 home in Colleyville, and another $202,000 property is registered to his name in Dallas County. The Agape church property in Arlington is valued at around $4 million, and when he was arrested in 2005, Hornbuckle was driving an Escalade. But the bishop also has the civil lawsuit pending against him, and if he loses that, he may owe millions more to the other women who claim he raped them.