Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

An uneasiness crawled over Case. His mind raced. He asked Leo whether he loved the Lord Jesus, and said curtly, his voice tense, “I don’t understand the word ‘hot.’ ”

  Leo, unwilling to elaborate, pushed for a meeting, despite Case’s protestations that he was too busy. “I got to see you. You know how we got together before.... How you talked about love and how you loved. ... We can get along, love each other, pet one another....”

  When there was no mistaking Leo’s intentions any longer, Case said abruptly, “I can’t help you, Leo. See if you can find someone else to find that affection.”

  “No one else, no one else,” he entreated clumsily. “... Hey, listen ... I like to feel your lips.”

  Confused and indignant, Case finally hung up the phone.

  Case concluded after some reflection that Jones was trying to alienate him from Leo, so that Leo could not feed Case any information if he left the Temple. But Case had underestimated Jones’s deviousness.

  The genesis of the allegation was this: in discussing ways to destroy Case, Jones remembered that Penny Kerns had once stumbled upon Leo W. having sex with an unidentified man. So Jones coached Leo about ways to draw Case inadvertently into a compromising taped conversation, and made Penny Kerns agree to swear falsely that Case had been Leo’s partner.

  On August 28, a Jones aide phoned Case asking him to come to the church. Supposedly, a young man there was highly agitated about his relationship with Case. Knowing Jones’s kangaroo court tactics, Case passed up the invitation. However, a few days later, on September 4, while Case was readying his classroom for the fall term, he was summoned to the school superintendent’s office. Case arrived to find Leo, Penny Kerns, Temple attorney Gene Chaikin and an unidentified woman making accusations. While Kerns provided corroboration, Leo said that he and Case had engaged in sex the previous October. Therefore, Leo claimed, Case was unfit to teach children.

  After the Temple contingent departed, Case explained the peculiar background to the accusations—and saved his job. The superintendent even seemed ready to testify if Case wanted to sue for slander.

  A little while later, Jones called Case—twice in one night—to apologize, to deny any part in the allegation and to promise to kick Leo out of the Temple. Case responded to Jones with icy skepticism, but that did not prevent Jones from chirping: “Why don’t you and Luella, and Marceline and I get together?”

  Nonetheless, Case reported the harassment to the police and sheriff’s office. Once again, there was no basis for prosecution.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The Eight Revolutionaries

  “Hey, big brother,” Jim Cobb’s sisters and brothers would call when he came home from college. He loved to take them out for an ice cream. Not an alienated college kid, but a hard worker proud to be paying his own way, he enjoyed coming home to bathe in the respect of his younger siblings and the love of his parents. They had a close family, so Jim Jones went to work on them.

  Jim Cobb’s father, who had opposed the move from Indiana, resisted joining the Temple himself, though he allowed his family to be active and he lent a hand around the church. But Jones still viewed Cobb, Sr., as a crack in his fortress. Waging psychological warfare on the churchgoing part of the family, Jones criticized this good provider for smoking, for drinking beer, for eating chicken while the Temple dabbled in vegetarianism. “He’s out to destroy your mother,” Jones told Jim Cobb. Given church peer pressure, young Cobb could not help but feel guilty for liking his father so much.

  Then Jones moved in boldly. A contingent of Temple men, black and white, arrived at the family home in Ukiah and told Jim’s father: “You got no home, no children, no wife, no family. Get your black ass out of here.” They grabbed him by his ankles and threw him out of his own house.

  When Jim Cobb arrived home from school that Friday night, the gang of Temple members was still there. Jim’s father had been drinking heavily, they said. He supposedly had threatened to kill Jim’s mother and kidnap the children.

  “What? He’s gonna do what?” Jim Cobb shook his head, incredulous. But there was no way to escape the Temple verdict. His family, his world, was rent. Baffled and shaken, Jim Cobb was sent to meet with Jim Jones and various church leaders.

  “Are you willing to kill your father?” Jones asked him.

  “I won’t kill my old man, but I’ll see that he won’t hurt anybody,” Cobb responded quickly.

  It would be years before Cobb would hear the true story, from his father. In the meantime, as groundwork was prepared for his parents’ divorce, young Cobb wallowed in confusion. What Jones and the others said made no sense. His father had been a devoted husband, had never missed a day’s work, had always treated him with respect. He had not spanked his son since grade school, and he was not a violent man. At most, Jim thought, his parents might have clashed over the church—but he could not imagine his father threatening to kill his mother. “How could my father come out here and just change like this?” he asked himself.

  While Jim Cobb lived with his doubts, he gradually fixed his rancor on the real culprit behind the white domination, the double standards, hypocrisy and divisiveness within Peoples Temple. He no longer believed that white zealot staff was the major problem; it was Jones himself.

  In fall of 1972, as the Kinsolving series was running, as Jim Cobb prepared to move to San Francisco to start dental school there, he decided it was time to make his break. When classes began, he quit going to services and stayed away from Ukiah altogether. Leaving his mother, brothers and sisters was the hardest part of quitting. There was no middle ground after his defection. He had turned traitor. Still, the family tie remained.

  One day during final examinations, his mother located him at the U.C. library, and they had an emotional reunion in the hallway. Mrs. Cobb wanted to see what had become of her oldest son in the months since he had deserted the cause. She inspected him, critically, frowning at his stubbly face—the church prohibited beards. “What’s my son coming to?” she reproved him.

  Mrs. Cobb had come on a mission—to get back her son. She pleaded with him to return to the fold. She and Jim’s brothers and sisters were living in San Francisco now; the church was not so far away.

  When pressed, Jim, at long last, bared his feelings. “Mama, I don’t want to pop no bubbles. I love my family and I love my friends, and there are good people in the church. But I’ve looked at it, and ya know what? Jones is the one.”

  Mrs. Cobb disagreed strongly. Of course there were failings, she conceded, but they had to be blamed on Jones’s staff, not on the great humanitarian. “No, he isn’t the one,” she said. “He has people who tell him things. He’s like the President. He has advisers. And he listens to them.”

  “No.” Jim knew better. “I’ve seen things you haven’t. I was there at his door, standing guard, and overhearing things.... He’s behind it all; it’s him. It’s hard for me to realize how someone could put together a movement with so many good people and all these different colors of people—attorneys, people with lots of money, and poor ones—yet could be so rotten. Yet it’s true.”

  His mother was unswayed. “If you can’t come back for anything else, come back for the family,” she said. “The kids need you. Your father’s not there, and you were sort of that image. They’re asking where you are and what you’re doin’. It’s in a state of turmoil at home.”

  Jim digested the conversation over the next few weeks, then took a step back. He began to drive his mother to San Francisco temple services. He never went inside, just parked outside or dropped her off and departed. But more and more the church intruded on his thoughts. Like so many others who left later, Jim Cobb missed the Temple atmosphere and the constant message of cooperation and caring for people.

  One day in late spring of 1973, while he was driving his mother to church, the spirit of penitence pulled him through the Temple doors. Though still not convinced he was wrong about Jones, he tearfully stood in front of the congregation and delivered a
standard prodigal-son spiel, believing it at that moment. “I’ve been out in the world and there’s nothing out there,” he said. “There are a lot of bad things and bad people out there, and there are a lot of loving people and good things going on here.”

  As a onetime defector, Cobb’s role had changed. Jones pampered him by honoring his request to be a church photographer. But Cobb felt the disdain of others, particularly white women staffers, who viewed him as an ingrate and snubbed him.

  Staff members had reason to be suspicious of Cobb. He had been openly critical of the holier-than-thou loyalty of the white leadership. Worse, upon his return Cobb became a confidant to many members, particularly young blacks with complaints about the white staff.

  Despite his temporary reconversion, Cobb soon realized the situation was hopeless. In September 1973, just a few months after rejoining, Jim Cobb decided to drop out again. He did not tell anyone, not even family and close friends, for fear they would inform as they were obligated to do. Cobb did not ask his wife Sharon to defect, at least not directly. They had a typically loose Temple-style marriage, and, as a nurse, she had been helping with the healings and was very loyal.

  Cobb figured it would take about a week to get his car ready and to square away his personal affairs in secret. During that time, his dorm friend Wayne Pietila dropped by Cobb’s commune in San Francisco, behaving mysteriously, asking him to come for a ride without telling anyone else.

  Cobb guessed Pietila had come either as a Jones agent or to announce his own plans to leave. Neither young man revealed anything of his intentions over lunch. Finally, while driving back to the commune, Cobb rallied the gumption to say, “I want to tell you I’m leaving the church next week. I wasn’t gonna say that, but I don’t give a shit. If you’re here to spy on me, that’s okay. Whatever, man. But I can’t take it anymore.”

  Wayne exhaled through his teeth in a whistle. “Man, we’re goin’ too!”

  Disillusionment had come gradually for Wayne Pietila but accelerated as he became privy to Temple secrets and more philosophically committed to socialism. Pietila, a Ukiah local, had joined the Temple as a withdrawn thirteen-year-old when his mother, Wanda Kice, and his stepfather, Tom Kice, cast their lot with Jones. Like Jim Cobb, he spent his adolescent years soaking up Temple guilt, feeling horrible when he indulged in a movie or junk food. Then, when he was elevated to the planning commission and became the college dormitory leader, he was exposed to the church scandals.

  The first discovery occurred just after Pietila finished high school, when Jones took him for a walk. The minister disclosed that he was having sex with various women—“to keep them loyal”—and that John Stoen was his son. At the time Jones was telling the church body to abstain from sex altogether.

  On p.c., Pietila was exposed not only to Jones’s excesses but to a disgraceful double standard. Those in the church inner circle—mostly white—went to restaurants and movies routinely and took special privileges, while the rank and file—mostly poor and black—did without. And, though socialism was being preached, Jones’s staff kept coming by to gather up political theory books. Pietila had to bury about three dozen of his books so they would survive the purges. It seemed that as soon as the college dorm residents started to strengthen their group with study of political theory and self-criticism, the larger church cracked down on them.

  Discouraged, Pietila stopped studying and started breaking church rules. He missed regular meetings and went deer hunting with another member, John Biddulph. When Pietila flunked all his classes and dropped out of school in spring of 1973, Jones knew something was wrong. The pastor tried to appease him by making him a key bodyguard, but that just exposed him to more shenanigans.

  Finally, Pietila was called onto the floor in a p.c. meeting. He was accused, falsely, of having sexual intercourse with a fourteen-year-old girl. Even his friends took turns lambasting him. Belittled, he looked over in the corner and spotted Biddulph laughing and pointing at him, out of Jones’s line of vision. The message was clear: “Don’t worry, friend, I’m on your wavelength; this catharsis business is a bunch of bullshit.” For an hour Pietila stood there like a forgotten child while Jones went on to another subject. Then Jones turned his attention back to sex. He implied that Pietila was compensating for homosexuality: “Son, I can understand your problem. In a way, it’s my fault because I didn’t spend enough time with you. I need to spend more personal time with you. It’s something only a true father can cure.”

  Nothing could have scared Pietila more. A private encounter with Jones could mean only one thing. “Oh, no,” thought Mike Touchette, who was living in the same commune with Pietila and Biddulph. “Wayne, what did you get yourself into now?” And Biddulph, who could not keep a straight face, began mockingly making lewd gestures from the corner as Wayne squirmed.

  “Jim, we don’t need that kind of a relationship,” Pietila said, still frightened that the group might pressure him into sex with Jones. Other p.c. members shot him dirty looks, but he escaped.

  After the meeting, Biddulph came up to him. “Father’s gonna fuck you.”

  “No, he isn’t,” Pietila said.

  The two started to talk about leaving the church. They visited the secret cave off Highway 101 where Jones maintained the congregation could hide from nuclear fallout—all they found was a bottomless pit with a rattlesnake in residence. The two began looking for allies. With numbers, they could defend themselves better against search parties sent out by Jones. Their core group numbered four—Biddulph and his wife Vera, Pietila and his wife, Terri Cobb, who was Jim’s sister. The four lived together in a commune with Mike and Debbie Touchette, but after much agonizing, they decided it was too risky to invite the third couple. The Touchettes were too close to their loyal parents.

  The first real recruits were Wayne’s dorm friend Tom Podgorski and his girl friend, Lena Flowers, a black woman whose family came from Indiana in about 1970; the original four had known the outspoken Podgorski felt negative about the church. They then added Jim Cobb and college student Mickey Touchette, Mike’s sister. Cobb had left once already, and Mickey’s attitude indicated that she was fed up. Also, she and Jim Cobb had been interested in each other for years, though Jones discouraged the match.

  These eight agreed to leave. They were four interracial couples—all college students or ex-college students. Because the group had formed quickly and without a concrete plan, they needed time to prepare. Yet delay made them anxious.

  People in planning commission began asking Pietila why Cobb was spending so much time visiting his house on Tomki Road. Then Pietila was brought up for missing some work at Masonite. The eight feared they were on the verge of being discovered. They decided the time for action was upon them.

  One of the last things Jim Cobb did was confide in his younger brother Johnny. “I’m leaving,” he told him. “Sometimes people have to work away from the people they love and go on missions.” In the language of the Temple, a “mission” was an assignment for the cause. Cobb did not want his brother to believe that he was a traitor. “I love you and I love the whole family regardless of what happens and who says what.”

  At the selected hour, the eight converged on Pietila’s place on Tomki Road and packed everything that would fit into an old Dodge, a Ford and a Chevy truck. They stowed a few firearms as well. Defecting was no lark: too many sinister statements and threats had been leveled against those who might desert the cause. And the talk of killing for the cause was not entirely rhetoric.

  The eight correctly suspected that Jones would at least send out a search party or notify the Highway Patrol. So instead of taking nearby Highway 101, they traveled east, then north toward Sacramento. With adrenalin gushing, the “Gang of Eight” headed north toward green and wild Canada, refuge for draft evaders, religious communards, cultists and genuine fugitives. As the miles lengthened into hours and days, and the tires drummed monotonously, the implications behind their flight dulled their euphoria. It hurt
to be leaving behind friends and loved ones, and it hurt to think of the pain they would endure when the eight were denounced. For Cobb, it was especially difficult because he knew that this time he could never go back to the church and his family.

  The group decided against crossing the border into Canada because they were worried about being caught with their weapons. In their fear, they presumed that Jones would have alerted the border authorities to watch for three carloads of “violent revolutionaries.” They wound up staying in the wilds of Montana and having a great time. Smoking cigars, they drove from place to place and exchanged talk about their Temple experiences. They camped at lakes where they fished, swam, partied and got drunk, indulging in all the forbidden pleasures, as Temple defectors often did.

  Within a week, most of the eight knew where the others stood on the Temple and Jones. They had analyzed the church endlessly and shared great volumes of information. As their gripes were aired and argued openly, they began to realize that no one had the total picture, that they could not all agree on something so elementary as an opinion of Jim Jones. Jim Cobb and some others thought him “an asshole”—that for all his gentle protestation, he was the source of all the game playing and double standards, the evil. But Wayne Pietila and others believed that Jones was a positive influence, that staff was to blame for everything. They still could not see the puppeteer for all the puppets.

  After several weeks, when funds ran out, the eight headed for Washington to look for work. When they landed in Spokane, Mickey Touchette and John Biddulph posed as a white nuclear family and rented a house. The other six moved in and lived out of an ice chest until they could find jobs.

  During their travels over about two and a half months, they found it necessary to communicate with Jim Jones. All of them had lived within Jones’s “family” for at least a couple of years, and they were not sure which parts of their experience to discard. Like other important defectors later, they believed it critical that Jones understand their thinking. Furthermore, they needed to know he would not harm them or poison their reputations and relationships with people inside the church, family members included.