Now, more than a year after Bob was found on the railroad tracks, his parents were fighting back. In the past, they had tiptoed around the Temple, afraid to offend, hoping the postfuneral visits from their granddaughters would continue. Since the girls had been spirited away to South America without their mother, the grandparents were desperate. They feared the worst about Jonestown. “If my grandchildren are happy and it’s real—they can stay,” Sam said. But he added, “It would be a great memorial to my son if we eventually proved a salvation to the people who got into this.”
Before printing Sammy Houston’s story, I researched his son’s death and interviewed Bob Houston’s ex-wife and his widow. The conversation resolved nothing about conditions in Jonestown nor about the mysterious death. “I last heard from [my daughters] about a week ago and they said they really like it there,” said Phyllis Houston. “There also is a condition that if they don’t like it there, they can come back.”
“I figure many of the adults down in Guyana made their choice,” Joyce Shaw had told me. “But children don’t have the same choice.”
Our conversation gravitated toward the question of Bob Houston’s death. Was it accident, suicide or murder? If it was an accident, why were his brakeman’s glove and lantern neatly left on the train which sliced through him? If it was suicide, why did he leave no note and choose such a painful way? If it was murder, why was his wallet untouched and why were there no signs of struggle? None of the possible explanations could either be proven or excluded—the suspicions of foul play would not go away.
Joyce Shaw, probably the person who knew Bob best, could not provide any more conclusions than the district attorney’s office, coroner’s office or police reports. No, she said, Bob never had been suicidal, though he spoke in terms of life being grim with little reward. As for an accident, she said, Bob was known to be careful. On the question of murder, there were also counterbalancing factors. The death followed the defections of some others from the p.c., and the church did put out the story that Houston had written a resignation letter the day before he died. But there was no way to know whether Houston had, in fact, turned traitor, thus subjecting himself to retaliation—or whether the resignation letter was a phony to allow Jones to explain Houston’s death as a bolt of God’s lightning.
“There will always be lingering doubt in my mind,” Joyce Shaw concluded. “Always.”
The front-page Sunday article on the Houston family brought about 150 Temple protestors to the Examiner, waving signs, shouting and chanting to the beat of drums. But more significantly, it produced results for Sam Houston: his old friend, Congressman Leo Ryan, had promised to do what he could to help Sam’s granddaughters.
FORTY-ONE
Sins of the Father
On November 18, 1977, one year to the day before the end, Grace Stoen, Marshall Kilduff and I found each other outside a courtroom in the San Francisco City Hall. We were joined soon by Grace’s attorney, Jeff Haas, and by an owlish-looking man in his late thirties, who pecked Grace on the cheek and shook hands all around. Tim Stoen was as I had imagined him: handsome in a square-jawed way. His physical resemblance to Jim Jones was remarkable—black hair, the same compact body type minus a couple of inches. He could have passed for Jones’s studious little brother from Stanford Law School.
For unstated reasons, this onetime Temple official now was joining his estranged wife to wrest away a child of disputed paternity from their former pastor. It was a strange turn in the story. My own deepest misgivings related to his status vis-à-vis the Temple: had he really turned against Jones? Or was he going to stand up before the judge and lambast Grace as an uncaring mother who abandoned her child? Would he claim Jones was the father?
Inside the tall court chambers with high windows along the left wall, Grace ventured a thin smile. She sat near Stoen, her legal adversary in these custody proceedings related to her divorce suit. A glance around the court revealed no one from the Temple, not even an attorney for Jones. Actually, the church lacked legal grounds for fighting the custody award. Under California law, a child born in wedlock is presumed legitimate—the offspring of the married couple—regardless of true paternity.
When their case was called, Tim and Grace approached the bench. The judge asked them questions about the child’s whereabouts, then asked Stoen, “What is your opinion of Grace Stoen’s fitness as a mother?”
“She is a very fit and proper mother,” he said—though previously he had tried to keep the boy from her. “An excellent mother....” He then stipulated, as the legal father, that Grace could have John as long as he had visitation rights. With that, the judge awarded the mother physical custody and the estranged couple joint legal custody. The quick simplistic solution did not touch upon the more complicated issues—and did not even allow for the possibility that Jones might be the father. Without fanfare, the judge ordered Jones, wherever he might be, to hand over the child to Grace Stoen.
Their legal standing affirmed, the Stoens strolled out of the courtroom. They were no closer to regaining the child, but they had closed one more avenue for Jones; now, if he returned to California yet failed to turn over John, he could be cited and jailed for contempt. Further, having exhausted all legal remedies in the United States, they could use that fact in making their plea to authorities in Guyana, where a California court order was not binding.
Stoen was still trying persuasion on Jones. That day he showed me a letter asking Jones to cooperate in delivering the boy to Grace and him by November 25,1977. The faintly threatening tone offered little to Jones. The minister’s paternity claim had been leaked to Chronicle columnist Herb Caen—so he was effectively on record. Acceding to Stoen’s request could spare Jones a court fight in Guyana and a public relations fight in the States—but those were hardly trump cards against a man who already had run from U.S. publicity and stalled the Guyana court system. The only concessions were Stoen’s assurances that the child would be reared in an “interracial, sharing environment consistent with the highest teachings.” The way Stoen couched his own faded commitment and spoke about the treatment of John must have galled Jones to no end:
“I have received reliable information to the effect that Grace is being seriously discredited in John’s eyes,” the letter said. “Not only is this deeply offensive to me, but it could easily cause irreparable emotional harm to John. I ask you to immediately reverse the hate campaign and to advise John repeatedly what you and I both know to be true: that Grace loved him deeply and has never abandoned him.... May the goals we shared be realized at Jonestown.”
By joining Grace, Stoen was at last exerting his independence. His unwillingness to give up the child, whatever the reasons, had multiplied the stakes profoundly. Stoen knew the battle involved more than ego, even more than the life of John Victor. And he must have realized that Jones would not back down after this opening skirmish.
Outside the courtroom after the custody hearing, Stoen told me that he had promised himself that unless John Victor was back with Grace by January 1, 1978, he would personally go down and get him. But such fighting words and the letter to Jones produced nothing but enmity. Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s passed without positive results. In early January 1978, the Stoens were forced to venture into Jones’s territory, Guyana, again with negative results.
In February 1978, for the first time, Stoen turned to the press. He called me and said he was ready for the open-ended interview I had requested.
High in a monolith along Montgomery Street, Tim Stoen looked up from his desk. The lawyer had finally arrived at the polished world of Mont Blanc pens and appointment secretaries. Almost at the outset, Stoen acknowledged that he had signed the most important single document in Jones’s paper-intensive church:
“I, Timothy Oliver Stoen, hereby acknowledge that in April 1971, I entreated my beloved pastor, James W. Jones, to sire a child by my wife....”
By leaking it to the press, the Temple had provided a rationale for Jone
s’s self-imposed exile and, no doubt, embarrassed Stoen. Why would the lawyer ever have committed his name to such a document?
Stoen maintained that Jones had wanted it to ensure John would be raised communally in the Temple if anything ever happened to Tim and Grace. Stoen said he had signed the document, expecting Jim Jones to place it in a safe somewhere. Trusting Jones with the life of John, he said, was the most regrettable thing he ever had done.60
While conceding that Jones had genuine affection for the boy, Stoen declared: “I am the legal, biological father and because John identifies with me far more than Jim, I am his spiritual father. He’s holding my son because he needs an excuse not to come back to America.”
The phone rang around 7:30 A.M. on February 17, 1978. “It’s Jean Brown of Peoples Temple,” my wife whispered urgently. The Temple was the last organization I would entrust with my unlisted phone number, so I made a mental note to find out how they got it and to change it that same day.
Leaping out of bed, I grabbed the phone with an abrupt “Hello.” A woman blurted, “Mr. Reiterman, the Rev. Jim Jones is on the radio-telephone line from Guyana, ready to take your questions.”
My head whirled. Sitting there in my shorts, fuzzy-headed, blurry-eyed, without a pen or paper, let alone a tape recorder or a list of questions, the Temple was offering me an unrequested and completely unexpected interview with the most elusive character I had ever experienced. If Jones had wanted to catch me off guard, he certainly had succeeded.
I had been seeking out the Temple’s side for an article about the custody fight. At the suggestion of Charles Garry, I had left a message at the Temple for Marceline Jones, who recently had been interviewed by the New York Times. Two days had elapsed without a word. Now, suddenly, I was being given the first—and only—such interview with Jones after his flight to Guyana.
“I don’t have the written questions we submitted to the Rev. Jones,” I told Brown as my wife brought me a legal pad and pen.
“The Rev. Jones will only answer questions about John Stoen at this time,” she said curtly.
She explained the procedure. My questions would be relayed through her to a radio transmitter at the San Francisco temple for radio routing to Jones. The answers could come in reverse order through a process that precluded rapid follow-up questions. The Temple would be controlling all circumstances of the interview.
“My first question.... Who is the father of John Victor Stoen? And how can the claim be supported?”
Over radio interference, my question was relayed to Jones. “Do you copy? Do you copy,” Brown asked.
“Roger, roger. Roger,” said a fainter voice in Guyana. Then Jones’s voice cracked through the radio speaker so loudly and clearly that I could hear it before the words were repeated for me. “I am the father!!” he said in a chilling staccato. “I have taken statements from both parents —one sworn under penalty of perjury. I have sworn statements from hundreds of people. I challenge him [Tim Stoen] to take all the blood tests and challenge him to take polygraph tests under objective circumstances or truth serum.”
“Why,” he asked rhetorically, “would I risk my reputation for a child they have abandoned unless it was mine? I have spent thousands of dollars for legal defense in the custody [matter].”
Jones quickly proved his reputation as a compulsive talker. His thoughts tumbled out in a strident voice, with the abandon of a man accustomed to captive audiences. His answers strayed almost immediately from the questions.
“Would you be willing to come back to the United States or some neutral turf and take the same tests?” I asked.
“It can be done here,” said Jones stiffly. “We can do it in the capital, with advertisement [in the Pegasus Hotel] if necessary.” Then he became snide about being asked to leave Guyana for scientific tests. “... They would not be calling this country biased or backwards, would they?” And after only two questions, he rambled into a speech, frustrating his own relay people as they tried to keep up. ”
“This is ceasing to be an interview,” I interjected angrily to Brown. “I’ve got other questions to ask. Please stop him.”
When Jones became calmer, I asked about the biggest subject of speculation: “Are you willing to come back to the United States?”
“Absolutely,” he said. “If they want to put the child through it, I will comply. I do not want to put my child through this publicity, but I will naturally defend my right of parentage and use every legal means possible not to let my child be used as a pawn by them....”
“Why haven’t you claimed in a court of law that you are the father of the child?” I inquired.
“My lawyer is there doing so now, if he hasn’t already,” Jones replied, an apparent misunderstanding or lie. “I would have done so earlier but would not want to cause embarrassment for a little child.”
“Why have you not returned to the United States to answer allegations?” I continued.
“Certainly not because of lying allegations,” he said defensively, “but because this is the way I have been advised to protect my child, and furthermore I am doing valuable humanitarian work....”
“Why were you not present at the birth, why is your name not on the birth certificate and why did you not rear the child after the child came home from the hospital?” I asked.
“I was present at the birth, at the hospital, Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, and she introduced me as the father in front of people and took me around to see the child in the nursery,” Jones said. “She made out the birth certificate and did not consult me. Naturally, I did not want the child stigmatized....”
I knew almost certainly that Jones was lying because I had already talked to the attending physician, who recalled Stoen, not Jones.
Jones, the Guyana radio operator, San Francisco radio operator Tom Adams and Brown all seemed to be shouting, so my voice kept climbing too. “How did you come to sire the child? Or why were you having relations with Mrs. Stoen, if that’s the case?”
The minister shot back. “See Stoen’s sworn affidavit. It was printed by Herb Caen.” A smart answer—Stoen was to bear the embarrassment.
“Why, as an advocate of adoption, did you feel it was necessary to sire a son for one of your church members?”
After a long pause, Jones evaded the question. “I would rather not embarrass the relatives of Mr. and Mrs. Stoen, because it has to do with Mr. and Mrs. Stoen’s very personal lives, and I am sure they do not want it aired.”
That nettlesome question had caused the most severe crackling and popping on the radio—interference and fading signals that I later would learn were manufactured by the Temple. Aides and advisers in the radio room with Jones had become concerned that he was fumbling, and that he had told at least one lie that could be exposed as such.
As the transmission faded, I requested that Jones call me again so we could discuss some written questions submitted by the Examiner. His answer was pieced together between garbles: “I am working on them very thoroughly now. Your fairness with the information you got today ... will determine whether I ... give interviews here to your paper....”
The same day, Temple attorney Gene Chaikin sent a similar warning to Examiner publisher Reg Murphy, dangling as bait the Jonestown interview with Jim Jones that I wanted. The heavy-handed approach continued the next day when Jean Brown called with another teaser. If the Examiner article was fair and if the Examiner also “exposed” Joe Mazor, she said, I would be provided with an opportunity to get “fantastic insights” into Jonestown and the life of Jim Jones.
Later the Temple agreed, at my request, to supply a tape of my interview with Jones for the sake of accuracy and completeness. However, a transcript—not a tape—was delivered to me. Oddly, the transcript carried less, not more, information than my notes. Some key passages—such as Jones’s claim that he was present at the birth and was introduced as the father of the child at the nursery—did not appear. The transcript had been censored. My efforts that day to h
ear the Temple tape itself were unsuccessful—and finally a church spokesman confessed angrily, “It’s been erased. It had no importance after the transcript was checked against it.”
On Saturday, the day preview editions of the Sunday paper appeared, the Temple hand-delivered an undated letter from Temple attorney Chaikin. “This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the letter said. “Tim Reiterman has now shown the most outrageous bias by refusing to accept the answers ... because undoubtedly they were not to his liking.... We ... will litigate.”
Contrary to the threats, no lawsuit came. The bannered story was balanced and did not identify either Stoen or Jones as the father, but it did signal a new escalation in the war of words between Jones and the defectors. Stoen, knowing the harm the paternity debate would do to his reputation, nonetheless had gone after Jones with the same zealotry he had poured into the Temple. He told me frankly that he was now trying to tear down what he had spent eight years building. Once part of the problem, he now felt responsible for providing a solution.
The exchange of claims in the Examiner tore Jones’s credibility beyond mending. Jones himself anticipated negative fallout from the article. Though he had initiated the interview, he did not want Temple friends and supporters to learn of the paternity tangle in the newspapers. On his orders, the San Francisco staff scrambled to contact them all to prepare them for the latest publicity blast.
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