Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

  By and large, Jones’s people seemed to abide by the rules. The Temple-run homes were clean, and when Denny’s inspectors showed up unannounced, they found everyone in the homes to be eligible for aid. They did not know that the operators were required by written agreement to turn over all extra money to the Temple—and that some were squeezing every last dime out of the homes. Denny believed that he was staying on top of the Temple situation, in part through a Temple member on his staff, Sharon Amos. Seemingly playing double agent, she leaked him information. For instance, when Mendocino State Hospital was closed down in 1972 and church members lost jobs there, Amos told him about top-level Temple meetings to figure out ways to recoup the resulting loss of income. The solution was simple: with state aid, the Temple would set up foster homes housing orphans or problem children imported from the San Francisco Bay Area. Soon, as planned, probation offices from all over California were sending children to the Temple, bypassing Denny. The welfare director told the Temple that they had to license their foster homes. After twenty-four months of being stalled, he threatened prosecution. The Temple then circumvented the law by securing “guardianships” for the children, obviating the need for foster home licensing.

  Several other problems put Denny at odds with the Temple. In one, a Temple child was beaten by a Temple member with a cat-o’-nine-tails of copper wires. There also were reports of patients at Temple homes being herded to church services. And Denny got a call from a woman who said that her brother had been “abducted” from a Temple care home and farmed out to a Pasadena convalescent hospital. The church invariably backed off, but Denny began getting late night and early morning phone calls from Jones. In defense, the minister took the offense; he attempted to make Denny feel guilty for impeding good works. Once, however, he said in a 2:00 A.M. call, “Do you know what God does to those who destroy his humanitarian efforts?”

  “I’m taking that as a personal threat against my body,” Denny said, and reported it to the authorities. Nothing came of it.

  SEVENTEEN

  The System at Work

  In just a few years, Jones had mastered the trick of being all things to all people. The church population had climbed from about 150 settlers to perhaps as many as 3,000 members by the mid-1970s. The racial makeup shifted from mostly white in the early California years to predominantly black because the Temple, as always, built its following on the revival circuit, and that circuit, in California’s urban centers, was more black than white.

  Most California recruits were people of little education who sought to ease the aches of a hard life or to smooth the transition to the hereafter. The largest numbers of people and funds came from the black neighborhoods of San Francisco and Los Angeles, but the Temple also established outposts in Fresno and other cities in the white Central Valley, California’s version of the Midwest. The people came for the healings, the charisma of Jones and, to a lesser extent, the interracial experience and activist religion. Black or white, they were largely working class, people with no earthly hopes beyond a decent job, a family, perhaps eventually owning a home. Only a minority were on welfare, and a substantial portion had marketable skills or small businesses of their own.

  These people, 70 to 80 percent of them black, constituted the Temple rank and file, “the troops,” as they became known by outsiders in Jones’s political heyday. They set up the chairs for the meetings and filled the offering boxes. They brought in thousands of dollars in the form of donations, tithes, signed-over government checks and property, personal savings and possessions that could be converted to cash at flea markets or church-owned secondhand stores.

  Such people were the lifeblood of the Temple—its primary source of sustenance and the proof of its espoused social aim of lifting burdens from oppressed peoples. Most made the leap from Christianity to Jones’s quasi-socialism in part because they were responding to the form rather than the substance of his services, in part because they were exposed to political reeducation. Yet despite all Jones’s talk of integration and brotherhood, his condemnation of elitism, very few of these people were elevated to the church hierarchy.

  To mobilize a smooth-running organization, Jones surrounded himself with several dozen mostly white, privileged young people in their twenties and thirties. He relied increasingly upon them because they were effective. They brought him skills in law, accounting, nursing, teaching, music and administration. They carried out public relations and financial duties and more mundane chores while bringing in good salaries from outside jobs. He, in turn, bestowed responsibilities, and power and personal attention on them.

  The most trusted of the trusted around Jones were those guarding his secrets. Information was the measure of an individual’s power in the Temple, and the most sensitive information was distributed on a need-to-know basis. Since the Indiana days, Jones had been relying quite heavily on Patty Cartmell, a portly mother with a coarse wit that made her an ideal partner for Jack Beam in raucous church skits. She always stayed close to Jones on the buses or in services, yet she was more than the simple bundle of loyalty she often appeared to be.

  Her true role had remained a secret until the early 1970s when Jones established a hierarchy in his socialistic model—from planning commission (p.c.) to church council of guidance counselors to “staff.” Staff was at the top, under the direction of Cartmell. This select group undertook sensitive missions for Jones. Intelligence, resourcefulness, absolute loyalty and unquestioning obedience were their qualifications. At peak, only eight to ten members achieved such status. All were women, all were white. Virtually all were college-educated.

  One of the earliest arrivals was Sandy Bradshaw. In 1970 she was working for Head Start in the Western Addition of San Francisco and living with a black man named Lee Ingram. Both were New Yorkers, Lee from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Sandy from Syracuse. Sandy, at twenty-four, considered herself a socialist and an atheist, though she had been raised a Methodist. She first rejected God at the age of seven when she wrote a nasty letter criticizing Him for letting her dog die. When a woman at work told her about the Temple healings, she shut her ears. But she listened closely to an account of Jones’s all-night drug counseling sessions. That was worth a trip to Redwood Valley.

  Then she was impressed with the church’s detoxification program and its attempts to feed and help the poor. She also responded favorably to Jones, who exuded warmth and compassion while remaining uncompromising. He did not sugarcoat. “If you don’t like it, leave,” he said in effect.

  The stumbling block for Bradshaw was the very idea of joining a church, but she and Ingram gave it a try. Almost immediately, they took a major step at Jones’s request—they married. As an interracial couple, they would be highly visible in Ukiah, and living together without legal sanction would be undesirable.

  Sandy’s dedication soon attracted Jones’s attention. While working at Juvenile Hall with Patty Cartmell, she often covered while Cartmell was occupied with Temple business. Jones could think of no better way of immersing this new recruit in the church than by asking her to join the staff. She accepted the honor.

  Her baptism involved cloak-and-dagger work. The explanation: though Jim could do all the revelations and healings on his own, they sapped such tremendous energy that for years, Cartmell had collected information to give his powers a respite and save him from self-destruction. Now, with the church expanding, she needed help.

  On their first outing together, Cartmell and Bradshaw visited a house in Pittsburg, California. Their task was to weasel their way into the home of a person who had written Jones and would be attending a service; they would try to collect as much information as possible about the furnishings, the interior spaces, the residents, their health, their family background, their friends—anything that could be gleaned by total strangers in a few minutes of snooping around or asking questions under other pretenses.

  Bradshaw mistakenly assumed she would simply observe her partner at work. When the door of the Pittsburg hou
se opened, Cartmell, without the slightest warning, said, “Can we get a drink, please? My friend’s pregnant.” Caught off guard with her hands in her coat pockets, Bradshaw quickly pushed the material into a bulge in front, and the two went about their intelligence-gathering.

  By that time, Carolyn Layton already was helping Cartmell gather “supplemental information” for Jones’s miracles. Still others would be added to the inner circle and assigned various geographic jurisdictions and duties. Among them were Sharon Amos, who worked at the Social Services Department, Cartmell’s daughter Trish, Christine Lucientes and Teri Buford, a Navy-brat-turned-pacifist.

  To be on staff, these women necessarily acclimated themselves to the philosophy: “The ends justify the means.” Their jobs were not pleasant. They had to accept, in essence, what some organizations call “heavenly deception.” Only by keeping their attention and their ethics riveted to the greater good—the advancement of Peoples Temple and the principles espoused by Jim Jones—could they have brought themselves to help deceive so many people. Only by surrendering moral reservations could they lure poor black people to the church and help strip them of their possessions in the name of liberating or saving them. The rationalizations were fed to them directly and indirectly by Jones. Because of the intensely secretive nature of their work, they had no opportunity to explore it with outsiders. And they could not trust each other.

  Probably more so than any other members, the staff was isolated. Scorned as elitists in an egalitarian organization, they were seen as a villainous secret police. Sometimes they were blamed for the unpopular deeds and policies of Jones, which is just what he wanted.

  Because they could do tremendous damage if they turned on him, Jones selected them carefully. He praised them and sometimes flattered them. Their biggest reward was trust—getting to know him, to see his frailties, to love him in spite of them. He also made love to some and convinced more than one that she alone would have absorbed his attentions were it not for the needs of the organization.

  In the eyes of the rank and file, staff members were treated to special privileges. For instance, their special membership cards allowed them to enter the church without a body search or inspection of their ever-present suitcases. They had a special locked room for their files. Some members thought them snobbish and standoffish, too closemouthed about their precious duties, too close to Jim. Members begrudged them their cars and freedom of movement. And some blacks resented the rapid rise of college-educated whites, especially bossy or bitchy women.

  The resentment cut both ways. Staff members felt they were doing the unglamorous, exhausting and dangerous tasks. Bradshaw and perhaps some others believed that men were excluded from staff because they would not do the humiliating dirty work. They saw themselves as unsung heroines, commandos in the people’s army, armed with wiles and disguises.

  A few were afraid to conduct nighttime garbage raids. But the rest, dressed in dark clothing, scaled backyard fences, often in black neighborhoods such as the Fillmore District in San Francisco and Watts near Los Angeles. Avoiding watchdogs, they would make their way to the garbage cans of church members or potential members, then sift through decaying vegetables, Kotex, dirty diapers, dog feces—everything imaginable—looking for information. Eating habits could be discerned from discarded cartons and cans. Phone bills would lead to friends and relatives, as would used envelopes. Old credit cards, canceled checks, papers and discarded letters all helped. It was risky. If caught by the police, a staffer was on her own. Certainly, she would not point the finger at Jones or confess to her true mission. Once Patty Cartmell, taken into custody disguised as a black woman, won release with the outlandish story that she was sneaking over to her black boy friend’s house.

  Jones wanted particulars, not generalized or easily obtained information such as the description of a home exterior. To serve his purposes, the details could not have emanated from public records, not even close friends, but only from divine revelation. So staff members gained entry to a house through some ruse, often in disguise, in case they were seen later at a meeting. A visit to the bathroom might lead to the medicine cabinet and a wealth of personal health data—prescriptions, doctors’ names, ailments, hygiene, dates. Such medical evidence could be further supplemented by a book of personal phone numbers, grabbed on the way there and copied down inside, in privacy. The reports Jones ultimately received were typed on cards containing the name, address, race, political background and an assessment of the person’s intelligence plus assorted “revelation” material. Despite such obvious fakery, most staff members were true believers, convinced that Jones did indeed possess great powers.

  Some believed Jones could rub his hands over the briefing cards and pick up the information. Bradshaw saw him time and time again correct mistakes on the cards, made by his staff in gathering information or typing —mistakes he seemingly could not have picked up without some “psychic” powers. They believed in Jones although they knew the cancers were being palmed by nurses who went into bathrooms with these aging men and women and put fingers down their throats or got them to “bear down” over a toilet. They knew because they had gone to market for the chicken livers. And they knew that the blood which poured out of Jones’s palms, like the stigmata of Christ, would heal nothing, although the faithful daubed it on their failing eyes, their arthritic wrists, their clogged-up hearts. Staff knew because they had provided him with blood from their own arms.

  Through clever use of theatrical makeup, young white women could be healed as elderly black women—or as crippled old white women. One night in Seattle, Jones called out an old white Swedish lady in a wheelchair. It was revealed that she had been crippled for years, ever since she saw her husband and children killed in a car wreck. Jim summoned all his energy while his kindly voice caressed her. He coaxed her. She strained with her atrophied legs and pushed with her arms. Her fat cheeks bulged, and sweat seeped from her wrinkled skin. With hundreds urging her on and Jim Jones leading the cheers, she came up, a little at a time. That daring lady fought every weak fiber in her body—and in the space of five minutes, five excruciatingly tense minutes, managed to get to her feet—and walk.

  Linda Dunn hated herself for it, and was petrified. Yet she did it, with help from old Salvation Army clothing and shoes, the Kleenex in her cheeks, the wig, and dried egg whites wrinkling her skin, the leg padding and the face powder, the artificial quaver in her voice.

  The planning commission was not conceived as a secret society. It was the official church governing board in what always would be described as a democratic organization with collective decisionmaking. But commission membership also was a symbol of status and a measure of trustworthiness, because it was the central institution in an incestuous family.

  Since the Temple was everything to them, members were consumed by a desire for information about church operations and the activities of their “brothers” and “sisters.” As he brought fifty, one hundred and more of his members into the p.c., Jones was able to chart everyone’s attitudes, job performance, economic situation, family, love lives. He enlisted his members to inform on each other and divulge private things about themselves through criticism sessions, written assignments, questionnaires and reports. Gossip and tattling were refined into art forms.

  Jones appointed some to p.c. because they were jealous that other seemingly less worthy members were honored. Spouses sometimes were brought into the group to keep an eye on spouses already in p.c. Jones used p.c. to reward those who were assets, or who might be wavering in commitment. Some were named for reasons known only to Jones. The composition was largely white, more women than men. And a p.c. developed within the p.c., dominated by staff and some men, such as Tim Stoen.

  Meetings convened during the week at various locations in Redwood Valley—often in the claustrophobic surroundings of the “Loft,” an A-framed area under the peak of the laundromat complex roof. The meetings ran as long as or longer than services, sometimes until dawn.
Some were so intense that Jones would get on a tear and would not stop speaking even to urinate; instead he would use a bucket while someone held a towel in front of him.

  Hours and hours were spent discussing the people in the church, from their work habits to their sex lives. Meetings also covered less intimate matters—organizing and expanding the church, purchasing buses and other equipment, upcoming events, travel, projects and political difficulties in the community. Everything was talked about—from getting Mrs. Smith’s rent paid, to upcoming elections, to flirtations, to guardianships, to the legality of selling guns collected from members. Debate went on interminably. Sometimes Jones would say nothing at all until the others settled on a decision. Then he would offer his opinion, stating his reasons so convincingly that the others could see their own faulty reasoning.

  Jones probably devoted more time to catharsis than business. Gradually, pseudopsychotherapy sessions were installed as a regular fixture. The weaknesses of certain individuals—often their sexual interests and practices—were explored in unsparing fashion. Jones often targeted the victims and orchestrated punishments through his surrogates. It was necessary to strip away ego to become a good collectivist, he said. Sessions started with verbal sniping, slipped into verbal brutality that brought people to tears, and gradually plunged into the sphere of physical violence. The residual effects of the larger society needed to be ripped away like dead skin, maintained Jones. It took repetition and confrontation to crush ego problems and jealousy games, to excise the ugly scar tissue of racism and sexism, agism, classism, and to replace it with the healthy muscle of equalitarianism.