Although Sam Houston’s health had prevented him from going, his wife Nadyne and their daughter, Carol Houston Boyd, were aboard, hoping to find whether Bob’s girls were happy in Jonestown. The Houstons were not particularly optimistic about retrieving Judy and Patty because they had learned that their mother had been summoned to Jonestown to block attempts to take them.
Jim Cobb and Mickey Touchette had about a dozen relatives between them in Jonestown. They hoped to determine whether their family members were alive and happy—and possibly to bring some back. For the third time, Howard and Beverly Oliver were making the arduous trip to get their sons, despite Oliver’s failing health and the need to borrow money for the trip.
Wayne Pietila—who along with Cobb and Touchette had been branded a member of the Eight Revolutionaries—hoped to see his stepfather Tom Kice and his brother Tommy Kice. Pietila had picked up a report that Kice had tried to escape from Jonestown but had been turned in by his own son.
Clare Bouquet was convinced that her son Brian had been brain-washed and held against his will. Sherwin Harris, who had been rebuffed on the radio by his daughter Liane, said he was going to Lamaha Gardens where the girl lived with her mother, Temple public relations woman Sharon Amos.
The relatives—who would be joined in New York by Steve Katsaris with his son Anthony and by Grace Stoen—had not deluded themselves. Some had trimmed their expectations, pessimistically believing that Jones’s conditioning and coaching would defeat their efforts. But most considered this their last chance; some could not afford more trips, financially or emotionally; all other channels were exhausted. Some felt this trip could signal the end for Jim Jones—or might backfire and render Jones effectively untouchable.
During a layover of several hours in New York, I stayed awake preparing a story, consulted with our editors, and tried unsuccessfully to square away our visa problems with the Guyanese Embassy in Washington, D.C. At the airport, with our plane about to take off, a Guyanese official advised us not to take the Guyana flight because we would be turned back upon landing. “We’ll have to take our chances,” I said. “Please do your best to resolve the problem.” Examiner city editor Jim Willse had told us to stay with Ryan.
Representative Ryan had also ignored warnings and plunged ahead, despite State Department advice that Jonestown was private property, despite the Temple’s discouraging letters. On the plane out of New York on November 14, Ryan sat beside his aides Schollaert and Speier, absorbing briefing papers and their comments while holding court to an audience of press and relatives. Although neither the press nor the relatives were an official part of his delegation, he was counting on the news media to help him get into Jonestown and to bring out anyone who wanted to leave. If Jones stopped him from entering Jonestown, Ryan reasoned, he wanted it on film. In a way, he also viewed the press as a key element in forcing out the truth about Jonestown and as protection; the glare of publicity might inhibit any Temple inclinations to cause trouble. By the same token, the press looked upon Ryan as an entree to a community that had turned down visit requests from me and others. With a United States congressman there, the public relations-conscious Temple would show its best behavior; everything was bound to remain civil, or so we thought.
My problem was avoiding exclusion. Even if the rest of the group rode into Jonestown, I could be stopped, perhaps at the last moment. More than once I had imagined myself standing in the mud at the Jonestown entrance, alone. Ryan had said that he would not turn back just because one reporter was barred.
As the jet banked toward Timehri Airport at midnight Tuesday, Georgetown stood out as a strand of lights between the moonlit Atlantic and the black jungle interior. A couple of us vowed not to use the adjective “steamy” to describe the place, and I made a mental note not to make any comparisons to Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
On the ground, the doors swung open with a rush of Guyana’s hot, wet sticky air that clung to us as we filed in the near-darkness toward the terminal. Several men in powder-blue shirt-jackets swarmed around Leo Ryan and swept him off in another direction. So much for Ryan’s help in getting through the immigration lines, I thought. As we approached the terminal, dozens of faces, mostly black, peered out of windows and from places around the building. I wondered how many were Temple greeters.
We reporters had decided to stick together going through the lines. Greg and I were uncertain whether our last-minute requests for visas really had reached Guyana itself. The immigration officers seemed cognizant of the entourage’s mission. Flick reddened and nearly blew up when one asked him a few too many questions. When I went through the immigration station a moment later, however, a U.S. Embassy official was bringing Ryan’s papers for VIP processing. I struck up a conversation with him, and things went smoothly for Greg and me.
After making it through a customs search, most of us quietly congratulated ourselves. Then two sobering things happened. Some relatives were whispering and gesturing fearfully toward a Mutt and Jeff pair across the room—stocky Sharon Amos and towering Jim McElvane, their arms folded, mouths in mean crescents, eyes hard as drill bits. When Grace Stoen confessed her discomfort, Tim Stoen told everyone to avoid looking at them. The intimidation technique would have worked better with greater numbers.
Next, Ron Javers appeared outside a nearby floor-length window, with a policeman guarding him. He had lagged behind, and now had been stopped. His eyes were wide, his face white, and he pounded the glass, frantically, helplessly. Since NBC had its visas in good order, they volunteered to stay to help Javers while those of us on shakier ground set off for Georgetown itself.
Feeling free and extremely fortunate to be in the country, Greg Robinson, Gordon Lindsay and I savored the ride on good two-lane pavement, through marshy flatlands, past silvery waterways, bungalows on stilts and some small industry. As we breezed along, Greg and I grinned to each other and shook hands; we had passed our first hurdle.
At the outskirts of Georgetown, the cab cut through the sweet smell of rum from a nearby distillery. In spite of the late hour, knots of young men conversed on street corners, and some young women and bicyclists plied the roadsides.
The Pegasus Hotel rose like a toy drum, resembling a truncated Miami Beach or Waikiki highrise. Piling out, we headed for the front desk. “I’m sorry, sir, but we have no reservations for you,” said the clerk. “We are booked up.” We raged and complained that our reservations had been confirmed. The clerk offered regrets, nothing more.
Soon the Concerned Relatives arrived to face a similar plight. “Did Jones deliberately book up the place?” they asked. The lobby became an encampment for a dozen of us, who decided to stay rather than search for another hotel. Since no beds were available, our most immediate need was cold beer.
Shortly before 4:00 A.M., after I had filed an arrival story by phone, the desk clerk came up with a room Greg and I could share. After two days without sleep, the bed sounded great. But no sooner did our heads hit the pillow than the phone jangled. Immigration had called: there was a problem with our passports.
Greg and I headed for the lobby to meet the officer, anxious that we would soon be sharing Javers’s fate. Over two hours later, up strode a black man in an orange motorcycle helmet, blue T-shirt and jeans. Without his uniform, I barely recognized our immigration officer from the night before. He demanded the passports, then with his pen instantly reduced our authorized stay from five days to twenty-four hours. “I made a slight mistake,” he explained. “You must go to the Home Ministry. It opens at eight o’clock.”
It already was approaching seven o’clock, so that precluded sleep. That day, during gymnastics over our visa problems, we visited a number of ramshackle wood-frame government buildings with erratic electricity and poor ventilation. Lindsay, who had suffered the same grind on his previous trip, led the way, first to the security chief for home affairs. After questioning us about published allegations against the Temple, this black man with a bear-trap handshake observed: “The
re must be something to it. I have a feeling we will know more about this organization before this week is out.”
On the cab ride back to the Pegasus, my two companions chided me for perhaps hurting our case by repeating too many negative accusations. But within hours, the government’s treatment became markedly more cordial.
Our own Embassy’s role was unclear. When I had asked for help, they displayed an infuriating laissez-faire attitude—and one official said, “We may or may not be able to influence things.” Finally, the Embassy arranged for the press to see the chief information officer of Guyana. Soon, after a few more bureaucratic hurdles, our visas were extended to five days. And Ron Javers was released after twelve hours of airport detention for an unintentional currency violation.
Whether our passport problems were orchestrated or not, the government clearly wished to control our visit to some extent—they provided us with a press officer-escort and voluntarily arranged a press conference with a government official who had visited Jonestown. The session with Education Minister Vincent Teekah showed that the government wanted to go on record to dispel any notions that the Burnham regime was an unequivocal Temple ally. Teekah noted that the government did not even recognize the name Jonestown, just an agricultural experiment near Port Kaituma. He recounted his own ministry’s conflicts over the Jonestown school system. And, without even being asked, he noted that he had observed no evidence of flogging during his visit. The government wanted it both ways, to come out unscathed regardless of the findings.
As Ryan and relatives worked at opening channels to Jonestown, none mistook the ponderous motion for progress. The Embassy introduced Ryan to Guyanese Foreign Minister Rashleigh Jackson, but their cordial discussion yielded nothing. The Embassy showed Ryan slides of Jonestown, revealing its physical conditions—but not psychological conditions. Embassy officials did not tell the congressman about Jones’s bizarre behavior just a few days earlier—they remained silent even when the Temple invited Ryan to visit Jonestown without the press or relatives.
Ryan learned more about the condition of Jim Jones from the Temple itself than from the U.S. Embassy. That night, he made a spontaneous trip to Lamaha Gardens, taking Post reporter Charles Krause to wait outside as a precaution.
During the meeting—as Ryan later would tell us—only big Jim McElvane and Sharon Amos ventured to speak. When the congressman asked to negotiate the visit by radio with Jones, Amos refused. She said Jones was very ill but refused to elaborate.
The next day, Thursday, Embassy officials met privately with the relatives for an hour in the modern white embassy, but only at Ryan’s insistence. None of the relatives was comforted by the Jonestown slides shown by Ambassador Burke. As the relatives told their stories in moving fashion, some broke down in tears of frustration. There was hardly a dry eye in the room. But Embassy officials refused to take sides.
When it was over, Burke was driven away quickly in a diplomatic car with little flags on the front fenders. As reporters hurled questions, he said only, “It was a useful meeting.” When asked whether the relatives would see their loved ones at the mission, Burke replied, “It’s too soon to say.”
While Grace Stoen daubed at tears, and Beverly Oliver swore in frustration, Steve Katsaris, who had taken the leadership role, said, “The ambassador was polite and told us there was no way he legally could do anything. We told him we would go on our way without his help.” Katsaris sounded grimly determined.
Strangely, in the midst of that dejection, Ryan seemed extremely confident. To reporters, he whispered “off the record” that an airplane was available to transport himself, the press and a few relatives. He was miffed about the State Department’s hands-off attitude. In private, he swore, “I’m going to have something to say about this when I get back.”
Ryan’s tactics—keep moving forward and ignore resistance—paid off only modestly. Mark Lane, whose presence was supposed to be a condition for any Jonestown visit, was reported en route to Georgetown that night along with Charles Garry.
But the Temple, meanwhile, released a November 9 petition signed by about six hundred Jonestown residents and a November 13 statement essentially disinviting Ryan’s group and accusing them of trying to generate adverse publicity, “hopefully by provoking some sort of incident.”
Late Thursday, sensing the Temple’s hardening resistance and some disenchantment within his own entourage, Ryan’s language took a tougher turn. Thinking the Temple might plan to use the attorneys to stall him, he held out a threat, implying that he might stir up investigations of the Temple’s tax-exempt status, as well as its handling of social security checks.
We reporters felt restless, too, and skeptical of Ryan’s ability to break through the Temple’s stone wall. His assurances had begun to ring hollow; the fact that he had chosen one reporter—Krause of the Post—to make an impromptu visit to Lamaha Gardens gave the lie to his promises that we all would stick together. In a frank confrontation, Don Harris told Ryan: “Leo, we don’t know if we can trust you.” Ryan flinched. He defended himself, trying to reassure everyone we were going in together. Moments later in the hallway, some of us discussed NBC’s contingency plan for reaching Jonestown by chartered plane from Trinidad.
The truth session came at an awkward time; that night Ryan hosted a dinner for the entire party in the main Pegasus dining room. Just as we ordered rounds of drinks, some relatives burst in. Clare Bouquet told me that she, Grace Stoen and Steve Katsaris had encountered some Temple basketball team members, including Stephan Jones, on the sea-wall near the hotel. It seemed more than coincidence, but she insisted it was amicable. She was comforted because the team members seemed to want the relatives to see their families in Jonestown. Of course she had no way of knowing that the team’s attitude was a distinctly minority view.
On Friday morning, Garry and Lane marched into the Pegasus with Sharon Amos, ready to parley with the weary-looking congressman. After some discussions in private, the two attorneys spoke with us reporters in the lobby. They accused Ryan of switching positions, of first saying he would go alone then pressing for the media and relatives.
Knowing he had a twenty-passenger plane reserved through the Embassy, Ryan stood firm. Within a couple of hours, the obstacles were plowed aside, surprisingly enough with the assistance of the two Temple attorneys. Garry, although furious with Lane, had teamed up with him to encourage Jones to allow a visit. Using the radio at Lamaha Gardens, the lawyers told him that Ryan probably would come with or without permission. If he were turned away, the media would record the insult, which would look bad for the church.
After Jones responded with a tirade and Lane tried to talk to him, Garry issued an ultimatum: “Jim ... You can tell Congress to go fuck themselves, and if you do that, I can’t live with it.... I am imploring you to open it to the world and let them come in.”
Finally Jones agreed, “All right. Come on down.”
In the poolside patio dining area, the relatives huddled around a table, all tense. Ryan had reluctantly made an announcement: with all nine newsmen and the two attorneys aboard the plane, there would be space for only four of the relatives who had come so far for reunions with loved ones. Clearly, Ryan’s first priority was focusing the world’s attention on Jonestown.
In making their selection, the relatives figured Grace and Tim Stoen almost certainly would be stopped at the gates. Jim Cobb was selected because he was resourceful, well informed, black and eager to see his large family. Out of a feeling that the contingent should be racially balanced—as the Temple had demanded of the congressional delegation —the relatives also selected Beverly Oliver. The third member was mustachioed Anthony Katsaris, who was tall and sharp-featured like his sister. If anyone could bring back Maria, her brother could. And if Maria could be persuaded to leave, her defection—and her inside information—might well break the Temple. Finally, relatives selected Carol Houston Boyd, as a Ryan constituent and as the daughter of Ryan’s friend Sam Houston.
Those left out were disappointed but resigned. In Steve Katsaris’s case, the flight limitations caused some last-minute adjustments in a highly tuned plan. He had hoped that both he and Anthony could make the trip. Katsaris, believing his daughter was disillusioned, was 90 percent certain that she would leave without resisting. But he also was prepared to abduct her, possibly using drugs to subdue her. He planned to commandeer a vehicle to rush Maria to Port Kaituma, where he had arranged to steal an airplane to fly to Trinidad and freedom. Now Leo Ryan’s decision had ruined those fragile arrangements.
Upstairs in their hotel room, Anthony was stuffing things in his knapsack—cookies from Maria’s mother and personal items Maria had requested. “What do I do now?” asked the young student teacher. Anthony had only an inkling of the original plan.
“Don’t talk to Maria about leaving,” Steve said. “Spend as much time as you can talking about memories and old ties.” The psychologist had to hurry his instructions; he handed his son a wad of bills. “Look, Anthony. Here’s some Guyanese money. You may need money. Spend as much time as possible with her. When you leave, I’m sure she’ll want to spend as much time as possible with you. If she doesn’t want to leave, take her by the arm and say, ‘Pop loves you.... None of the things you said [about him] matter. He’ll protect you if you want to leave.’ ”
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