Earlier the Temple had required everyone to obtain a passport so that they could leave on short notice. If they did not have the money, the Temple paid. If they did not have birth certificates, the Temple wrote away for them. In some cases this was very difficult, since some older black people from the rural South had been born at home and their births were never recorded—but the church managed.
The Temple treated each of its immigrants as an important element in the new settlement. They were not simply herded aboard buses to airports. Extensive efforts to make the migration orderly required incredible paperwork for each individual. A check list for each traveler called for a submission of address change forms to the post office, disposing of pets, transfer of car title to the church, giving home keys to spouses staying behind, notification of relatives, payment of outstanding bills, discontinuation of some government payments, rerouting of others. The church collected brief medical histories on each settler. People signed medical releases and gave the church power of attorney over their children. Social security and bank account arrangements were made so the church would not lose those sources of income. In essence, the church took responsibility for putting in order the personal affairs of each future Jonestown resident.
In like manner the church straightened out its own business affairs. Before Maria Katsaris joined the exodus, she and other financial officers went around San Francisco closing many Temple bank accounts—one with at least $1 million—so the money could be moved overseas. The aides wired money to Guyana, sometimes as much as $500,000 per transaction, through local Canadian bank branches and New York. On a smaller scale, the Temple sent down $5,000 with each trusted immigrant. Some cash was carried by hand and declared; other large sums were hidden in baggage or on people’s bodies. Much of this money was deposited in banks; some went into Jonestown, where hundreds of thousands of dollars were kept readily available. In the future, Jones’s penchant for moving funds outside the United States would cause the Temple to wire excess money overseas whenever local bank accounts reached $300,000 to $500,000. To finance what became a $5 million capital investment in Jonestown, the Temple also would be selling off its California properties.50
Money was a serious business to Jones. Tim Stoen’s betrayal had left him feeling financially vulnerable, and for good reason. Stoen—who once wrote “transfer all substantial monies to International Banks” as part of the Temple escape plan—had set up the theory behind the Temple’s investment and monetary practices. His mandate came directly from Jones, who feared the U.S. government someday might freeze or seize Temple assets, which had grown to $10 million by 1975 and kept growing. 51
Despite such wealth, amateurism and incompetence marked Temple finances. Stoen had been no financial wizard, and Jones had placed serious limitations on investments. Always wary, Jones wanted to keep his assets liquid for any sudden emergency. That prevented the church from making any semi-long-term investments that might bear excellent returns. Instead, the church mainly confined itself to thirty-day to ninety-day time deposits.
Secrecy had dominated the handling of Temple funds. Jones not only feared the government and private lawsuits, he also wanted to preserve the image of a poor, hand-to-mouth organization that poured all income into humanitarian endeavors. The deprived and frequently dunned church members would have been shocked to learn the extent of Temple holdings.52 But the financial practices reflected Jones’s frugality, in part inherited from his mother, and his lifelong dread of debt. Fat bank accounts lent a measure of power and security to a man with great and costly ambitions, and potentially expensive problems. He even kept an account for legal defense. And although Jones did not divert millions of Temple dollars to his own luxury, he did take steps through the so-called Valley Trusts to ensure that the Temple would meet his and his family’s financial needs in the long run.
As the Jonestown development accelerated, the Temple had acquired foreign bank accounts so it could conduct its business throughout the world, including in Guyana. For its banking center the Temple had selected Panama because of that country’s proximity and unrestrictive banking laws. Stoen had contacted a pair of Panamanian lawyers who set up two secret corporations. Once those corporations were functioning, control of banking and finances fell mainly on Carolyn Layton, because Stoen was occupied with other duties. Another staff member, Teri Buford, who knew mathematics but not finances, assisted her. And in late 1976 to early 1977, Jones added two other women to the financial circle—Maria Katsaris and Debbie Layton Blakey, sister of Larry Layton and wife of Temple member Phil Blakey. Without any explanation, both were ordered to Jones’s apartment in the San Francisco temple one day.
Jones questioned Blakey closely, looking for signs of hesitation. “Debbie, will you ever leave the church?”
“No,” she said quickly. Maria then passed the same test.
Satisfied, Jones told them weightily, without divulging specifics: “I’m going to send you on a very important mission.”
A few weeks later, Jones sent the two neophytes and Carolyn Layton to Panama City, where they were greeted by Teri Buford and attorney Gene Chaikin. Katsaris and Blakey were instructed to make themselves look “mature.” When Debbie Blakey, then twenty-three, finally glanced at herself and her bulbous “natural” hairdo in the mirror, she thought she looked about fifty.
The group went to several Panama City banks. In each, they signed papers and left in short order. Since no one besides Chaikin spoke Spanish —and his was shabby—everything remained misty to Debbie and Maria as they tagged along. The trip was so steeped in intrigue that Debbie, thinking her discretion was being tested, was afraid to tell one bank official one of the few things she did find out—the name of one Temple corporation.53
That first trip had been merely a preliminary. When Stoen defected in June 1977, a new flurry of financial transactions became imperative. Debbie Blakey, by then Maria Katsaris’s assistant financial secretary, was told: “We’re leaving tonight. Pack for both hot and cold weather. Bring enough clothing for a month.” Maria Katsaris gave her a money belt with $5,000, the legal maximum exempted from declaration. They were to pay cash for everything.
At about 6:00 A.M., Debbie and her senior traveling companion, Teri Buford, made final preparations for their mission. Buford impressed Blakey with the urgency of the assignment by giving her a piece of paper with three phone numbers to call in case of emergency. According to instructions, Blakey memorized the numbers, then ate the paper. At the airport, Buford expressed fear that someone either was watching them or would be during the flight. She told Blakey to pretend they did not know each other, and warned her that agents or enemies might try to pose as friendly men. But the flight was uneventful.
After a couple of days of running financial errands in Panama City, during which Buford kept all specifics from her companion, the two headed for the airport again. “Where are we going now?” Blakey asked. “London,” Buford replied succinctly.
In London, they spent their days at a local library, poring over books about socialist and communist countries, trying to identify which ones offered the most advantageous banking systems and laws. Although she had been told the experience would be educational, Blakey felt like a flunky. She read little, because she was too busy running for change to Xerox two inches of pages on banking systems while Buford did research.
Next stop was Paris, where Buford informed her on arrival: “We’ll be flying to Zurich. We’ll do it late tonight so that nothing will be shown on our passports.” Proceeding according to plan, the two soon found themselves carrying their suitcases over a river bridge in Zurich that night. They hiked up a long series of steps to a building, formerly a convent, and they spent the night.
The next morning, Blakey took a curling iron and straightened her “natural” hairdo. Looking more presentable as a young businesswoman, she accompanied Buford to a Swiss bank. They were ushered from one plush sitting room to another. A bank official checked their identification so
there would be no mistakes. Treating the transaction soberly and seriously, he pulled out some papers that had been prepared in advance.
Teri seemed anxious to reveal as little as possible to Debbie. “We don’t need to discuss anything,” she insisted to the bank official. “Let’s sign the papers.” But he plowed ahead, mentioning something about the Temple having $2 million in the main account. That amount jolted Blakey. Then he read the account number out loud, revealing to Blakey yet another “secret” bit of information.
After completing the transaction, Buford and Blakey retreated to the convent. Since the mission was accomplished, Teri took Debbie to the bus and train depot and sent her to France with a final instruction: “Don’t fall asleep on the flight back home.” Apparently she had seen too many spy movies in which people divulged valuable secrets in their sleep.
Much of the trip, with all its silly cloak-and-dagger games, had left a fuzzy impression on Debbie Blakey; but its purpose was clear and significant. Jones hoped to put money into an Eastern European socialist country, most likely Rumania. He desired to win the good will of the Soviet Union, so it would welcome a Temple migration. Already Jones was looking beyond the Caribbean for a backup sanctuary.
The exodus from San Francisco had begun in May, shortly after the legal conference at Lamaha Gardens. It intensified in June, July and August as the lid came off Temple horror stories. The plan had originally involved transporting 380 people on April 3 aboard charter planes, but the Guyanese had asked for a postponement of several days. They needed time to review the surge of immigration applications; after all, Guyana was a country most people wanted to leave. After Jones described the immigrants as “skilled and progressive” and “most vulnerable to the state repression” in the United States, and after he showed off an envelope he claimed contained $500,000 to be deposited in the Bank of Guyana, Guyanese officials granted permission. Jones had promised to transfer all or most of the church’s assets to Guyana—a promise not kept.
Several weeks after the Guyanese government approved the plan, nearly 400 members arrived in groups of 40 and 50 in Guyana via commercial flights. By the end of July 1977, approximately 850 members had resettled in Jonestown, and by September, nearly 1,000 had immigrated.
The San Francisco temple teemed with activity in the summer months of 1977. The radio room hummed with messages from Jonestown, calls for supplies, instructions about the exodus, reports on progress in Jonestown, reports about press coverage. Outside in the church parking lot, supplies were crated and stacked. Buses were serviced for the cross-country trip. Plane reservations were arranged by phone.
Secrecy covered all departure details because the church feared that someone might attempt either to stop the exodus altogether or else to stop certain people—particularly children. The magnitude of the flight was effectively hidden from news media and others until mid-August. In order to disguise the shrinking congregation, Jones instructed his people to be boisterous at the regular services conducted by Marceline and others in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, small caravans of fifty-passenger buses pulled away from the Temple in the dead of night, loaded with optimistic people, heading to the East Coast—for plane flights south. On Jones’s instructions, they had covered their tracks. In some cases, they told relatives that they were going on vacation or on another routine summer bus trip east. They resigned from their jobs suddenly; some merely stopped showing up for work. A number of them left relatives and friends without even a parting phone call; they were afraid someone might try to stop them.
In their wake, they left pained and confused loved ones. Butcher Freddy Lewis came home from the meat market one day to discover his wife and seven children gone, along with most of their possessions.
The shock for Sam Houston was delayed. One day in August, Phyllis Houston brought Sam’s teen-age granddaughters to see him and Nadyne. He gave the girls $20 each, and they all went on a shopping excursion. The girls, he noticed, were buying warm-weather clothes: straw hats and other light things. Having heard speculation about a Temple exodus, Sam feared the worst. The next day, the girls boarded a Temple bus for what was supposed to have been a “vacation” to New York. A short time later, the Houstons received a letter from Guyana: “Dear Grandma and Grandpa, Real soon, I’ll be going to an agricultural mission and I’m very happy. When I get there, I will write.... Lots of Love....” It was signed by Judy. A letter from Patricia arrived the next month from Jonestown.
The Temple scandal had pushed District Attorney Joseph Freitas into a no-win situation. As chief law enforcement official of San Francisco County, he could not ignore allegations of criminal wrongdoing without being accused of cronyism and coverup. If he investigated and came up with nothing, it would appear that he had gone easy on Jones. If his investigation did turn up something, he and his friends would appear to have been duped in the past. In fact, the first word of Freitas’s investigation did upset some Temple supporters, who believed he had bailed out too quickly.
The six-week inquiry, carried out by the unit Stoen had once headed, was initiated on July 18, 1977, and involved all five Special Prosecutions investigators. They conducted more than seventy interviews. Mostly they heard the same stories that had been given to reporters.
The investigators were hampered by dated information and by lack of a single inside source among current members. As they made the rounds to Temple communes, they found many deserted and others geared up for a quick departure. Whenever they attempted to talk to anyone, they were given the silent treatment; members had been advised against talking by attorney Charles Garry, hired on the eve of the New West story. In one case, the investigators visited a commune with a large number of suitcases stacked downstairs. When they started to talk to the residents, a Jones secretary referred them to Garry. When they returned to the commune the next day, the suitcases were gone, the building empty.
The Temple’s conduct appeared highly suspicious, but there was no lawful basis on which to stop the exodus, and investigators could not penetrate the remaining communes, which were locked down tightly. At one commune on Scott Street, the investigators spotted people peeking out the windows, but no one would admit them or identify themselves. One woman finally exchanged a few words through the door with one investigator, but as someone else approached, she broke off mid-sentence and pretended she had not been speaking.
Although defectors had meanwhile provided hundreds of leads, none firmed up as a prosecutable case. The investigators were running in circles. When they confessed their frustration, Freitas—who was later accused of foot-dragging-pushed them to keep probing. In fact, Freitas’s former assistant, Tim Stoen, soon became one of the best prospects for prosecution.
The investigators turned to other agencies, to see whether they might be of assistance. They found that the FBI was conducting no investigation, although some defectors and relatives claimed they had gone to the agency with their complaints. The lone investigator at the California Secretary of State’s office was looking into illegal use of notaries public. U.S. customs was investigating possible weapons smuggling to Guyana. State welfare officials were checking into possible fraud.
After six weeks, having referred some matters to the Los Angeles and Mendocino County authorities, the San Francisco district attorney’s office gave up. It did not bring the matter before the grand jury, although it had employed the jury in other difficult cases. It quit before Tim Stoen —the single most important potential source—could be interviewed. Impeded by the exodus, outdated information, jurisdictional limitations and the unwillingness of some key defectors to cooperate, Freitas’s office went on to other matters. The special prosecution unit chief wrote to Freitas: “No evidence has been developed that would warrant consideration of criminal prosecution....” The report added at the end, “Obviously nothing in this memorandum should be read as approving of the practices of Peoples Temple, many of which are at least unsavory and raise substantial moral and non-criminal legal qu
estions.” And of Stoen—the original draftsman of the exodus plan which had effectively killed the investigation—the report said, “There are a lot of stories flying around [but] so far, no evidence has surfaced that would link Stoen with any criminal activity in San Francisco.... We have found no evidence to date of misconduct by Stoen as a deputy district attorney in San Francisco.” The report was not made public until a year later, when events in Guyana made it imperative to do so. Failure to do so in August 1977 left a festering climate of severe charges and countercharges.54
Already questions were being raised about living conditions in Jonestown. Phoning Mike Prokes at the San Francisco temple, I asked why Jones would not answer the press allegations. “He’ll be back, but nobody knows when ... ” Prokes replied. When the public relations man mentioned that he was leaving for Jonestown that night, I asked to visit the paradise he had described. It was the first of my four attempts to see Jonestown. “We’ll have to discuss it,” Prokes replied.
The morale of the original Jonestown settlers had shot up as new arrivals poured into the compound. Years of work suddenly took on new meaning, and the dream of a functioning agricultural encampment seemed only short steps away. But construction could not keep apace of the influx, and soon the available housing overflowed. When mission administrators complained to Jones, he said, “Make room.” They stepped up their work, but were always one step behind the population growth.
The crowded conditions irritated and inconvenienced everyone. Because the kitchen was designed for the small pioneer crews, the new settlers had to endure long food lines like those at the San Francisco temple. They ate in three shifts. Living in exceedingly close quarters in jungle cabins and dorms produced friction, too. Some people arrived with unsuitable clothes for the tropics, others with only the clothes on their backs.
The productivity of the newcomers often fell far short of the “skills” they had listed on forms prior to departure. And some could not work at all. So much energy had to be devoted immediately to training them.
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