HOUSTON -- Evangelist Lester Roloff will be buried in an elaborate outdoor service expected to bring 10,000 fundamentalist Christians to south Texas, aides said Wednesday.
Roloff, 63, and four female employees were killed Tuesday in the crash of his light plane.
An autopsy on Roloff's body, required by the Federal Aviation Administration, was completed Wednesday. A spokesman for the Harris County medical examiner's office said it showed nothing unusual, but that details could only be released by investigators in Leon County where the crash occurred.
The Rev. Mike Rios, assistant pastor of Roloff's People's Church in Corpus Christi, said his funeral was scheduled for Friday at the city coliseum.
'We're expecting at least 10,000 people down here in Corpus Christi,' Rios said. 'We've had calls from around the world since the word spread.'
Rios said the funeral service would be an elaborate outdoor ceremony with burial in Memory Gardens near Roloff's complex.
'Probably every fundamental preacher in America will be down here,' Rios said.
Rios said Roloff accepted the risks associated with flying as he accepted the controversy that surrounded his stern positions on child-rearing, correction of delinquents and keeping government out of church schools.
'Storms surrounded his life, and he always had a way of getting through,' Rios said.
'He wasn't suicidal about it or anything like that, but his trust in the Lord was so great. He was talking to a preacher. He said don't ever learn to fly because he said, 'The weather's going to kill me. It'll kill you, too, if you learn to fly.''
Investigators said it appeared the single-engine Cessna 210 Roloff was piloting broke apart in a thunderstorm and crashed as he flew from his Corpus Christi headquarters to Liberty, Mo., for a Tuesday night speech.
'That seems to be the logical conclusion at the present time because of the separation of the (airplane) parts,' said Federal Aviation Administration spokeman George Burlage in Fort Worth.
The wings and tail landed a half-mile from the fuselage in the crash at 10:18 a.m. CST three miles north of Normangee, which is half way between Houston and Dallas.
'He had long years of experience,' Burlage said. 'He was instrument-rated. He was flying on instruments, and that was his privilege to do so.'
The others killed were Elaine Wingert, 30, Roloff's secretary; Susan Lynn Smith, 29, a teacher at Jubilee Home; Cheryl Palmer, 24, a Roloff missionary in Arizona, and Enola Slade, 25, a counselor at Jubilee. They were to sing in Liberty.
Roloff left a wife, Marie, and two grown daughters.
