BUTCHER, PROFESSOR JOE

Contributed by: The James Bond Movie Encyclopedia by Steven Jay Rubin

Soft-spoken international televangelist portrayed by Wayne Newton in Licence to Kill. In reality, he’s a sleazy, lecherous henchman of South American drug kingpin Franz Sanchez (Robert Davi).

Like real-life televangelist and convicted con man Jim Bakker, Butcher is a high-rolling charlatan who lives in a pleasure palace called the Olimpatec Meditation Institute. But his institute actually houses the laboratories that dissolve Sanchez’s cocaine in gasoline.

And through a code developed by Sanchez’s financial expert William Truman-Lodge (Anthony Starke), Butcher’s television show actually broadcasts the current price of cocaine to an international clientele. Thus, in addition to receiving donations from devoted viewers, Butcher’s telephone operators also take major drug orders. His cushy lifestyle is disrupted when Bond (Timothy Dalton) and Pam Bouvier (Carey Lowell) destroy the institute and its cocaine cargo.

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