The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Michael Prokes was a television newscaster in Modesto, California. In the fall of 1972, he read Lester Kinsolving’s stories about Jones and Peoples Temple, and decided to do his own investigation, either for a television segment or as the basis for a book. But when Prokes met Jones and other Temple members, he was struck to such an extent by their commitment to social equality that he joined the Temple himself. Perhaps Prokes, among all of Jones’s followers, identified most with the church’s political aspects. One day in San Francisco, Tim Carter mentioned something to him about faith, and Prokes replied, “Cut out that Jesus shit. We’re socialists.” Prokes became a Temple spokesman, issuing statements and dealing with the media whenever Jones didn’t want to appear or go on the record himself. Edith Roller earned a graduate degree in creative writing and, prior to joining the Temple, served both the United Nations and U.S. Office of Strategic Services overseas. She was assigned by Jones to keep a daily history of life as a Temple member. He intended Roller’s journal to be used as part of an eventual Temple history to be published through the church printing operations.

  All these individuals played significant roles in Temple history, but two more became especially prominent.

  Johnny Moss Brown, a native of the Fillmore District, was a tough, street-smart black man in his twenties who was exactly the person Jim Jones needed to reach out to disaffected young members of the Western Addition. Brown had credibility with the gangs and a personal passion for justice that made him a natural leader in any setting. Pragmatic and articulate, he was loyal to the Temple and to Jones without descending to a level of unquestioning devotion. Some members were afraid of Brown, but they all respected him. Even Jones was reasonably straightforward with Brown; to be anything else would have risked losing him for the Temple cause.

  Maria Katsaris loved children and animals. Her father, Steven, was a former Greek Orthodox priest who became headmaster at Trinity School in Ukiah. He was divorced; Maria and her brother, Anthony, lived with their father and his second wife. Maria took a job as a teacher’s aide at her father’s school, where she became friends with Liz Foreman, another staffer. Foreman was also a member of Peoples Temple, and, like all of Jones’s followers, actively proselytized for him and the church. Steven and Anthony Katsaris weren’t impressed with Jones and the Temple, but Maria joined. Her first church assignment was in the letters office, where fellow worker Tim Carter remembers her as “maybe nineteen or twenty, [and] the shyest person I’d ever met. Maria was very sweet, but she had trouble looking people in the eye, she was so bashful.” Still, Maria’s devotion to the Temple and its leader was complete. Steven Katsaris soon noticed that his daughter no longer had much time for him, her brother, and her stepmother. She was always occupied with Temple chores.

  * * *

  Late 1972 and early 1973 were fine times for Jim Jones. Amphetamines put a spring in his step and other drugs helped him sleep at night, but for the moment there were few outward signs of physical or mental deterioration. He had all of the sex that he wanted with multiple partners. Marceline remained his supportive public partner. Recruitment was at an all-time high, and the Temple was getting just the right mix of new members—seniors with their monthly Social Security checks, young whites with money and professional skills to put at the Temple’s disposal, and, always, the genuinely needy, abused or shunned by the rest of the world but warmly welcomed into Temple fellowship. Money poured in, too; Jones used some of it to demonstrate that, despite the Temple’s recent wrangle with the Examiner, he and his church not only believed in, but actively supported freedom of the press. The Temple made regular, substantial contributions to various journalism-related causes, and backed up the donations with action. When four reporters from the Fresno Bee were briefly incarcerated for refusing to reveal names of story sources, Jones packed Temple buses and went with five hundred followers to join a protest march on the jailed journalists’ behalf.

  At times, a sense of playfulness lightened Jones’s usual grim sermons during members-only Temple services. Preaching exclusively to his followers, Jones habitually peppered his pronouncements with obscenities. Temple members loved it—Father was talking like a real person, not acting prissy like so many pastors. At one Geary Boulevard service, Jones launched into a tangent about how cursing allowed people to blow off steam, and helped cope with painful situations and emotions. He knew it, he believed everyone in the congregation knew it, and he wanted the rest of the world to realize it, too. Jones ordered the auditorium windows opened, and then commanded everyone to shout “Fuck!” in unison. They did, and Jones insisted that they do it again and they did, finally bellowing the same culturally forbidden epithet over and over for a full minute, with passersby on the sidewalks outside certainly puzzled and probably alarmed by what they heard. Inside the temple, everyone shook with laughter. Sometimes, apostolic socialism was fun.

  Perhaps Jones felt too cocky. It had been a pattern in his life that when things were going best, Jones acted as his own worst enemy. In January 1973 he did it again, making a misstep that, at the time, didn’t seem especially consequential.

  Jones taught his followers that they should behave a certain way if confronted by police: “Stand there calm, and make eye contact. Don’t act guilty or afraid, or threatening, either. Look them in the eye, and be the one in charge.” Followers braced by cops were to keep their arms crossed—that reassured the officers, who had to be alert for potential attack. Jones followed his own advice. Many followers remembered a particular incident during a road trip through Chicago, where bullying city police tried hassling Temple members and Father cooled things down, looking the cops in the eye, talking quietly but firmly, keeping his arms crossed—the cops backed off.

  But outside the Los Angeles temple on January 7, 1973, things were different. During Jones’s Saturday evening sermon, an elderly female member fainted. It wasn’t a planned, fake collapse so that Jones could apparently revive her. Marceline Jones, a trained nurse, examined the old woman and had someone call an ambulance.

  Whatever concern Jones felt for his fallen follower was mitigated by this affront to his healing powers. Father didn’t need medics to cure whatever was wrong with the lady. But within minutes a city ambulance, sirens wailing, roared up outside the temple. Medical personnel rushed inside, gathered up the old woman, who was still woozy, and helped her out. A crowd of Temple members followed, many concerned for their friend, some infuriated that one of their own was being taken away by outsiders.

  Johnny Brown was serving that Saturday as one of the temple security guards. He was armed, and had a license to carry his weapon. When Brown snapped at the attendants not to put the befuddled lady in the ambulance, one of them used a radio to summon police. Squad cars raced to the scene. Police tried to move Brown and Clay Jackson, another armed Temple guard, away, and they resisted. Many Temple members at the scene lived in the nearby ghetto, where residents considered themselves in a virtual state of war with white city police. They shouted support for Brown and Jackson, and for a few moments a full-scale riot seemed possible. Then Jones appeared, calling out for everyone to stand back. Police arrested Brown and Jackson, who were cuffed, placed in patrol cars, and taken to jail. Jones told his followers to go back into the temple and continue the service without him. Then he left with the police, too. It wasn’t clear whether he’d also been arrested, or was just going along to help sort out the mess.

  Soon Jones was back, with Brown and Jackson following later. The Temple guards were charged with disturbing the peace and later convicted. Jones was never cited. There is apparently no record of what became of the stricken woman. Though Jones was never formally cited for any offense that night, he bragged in subsequent sermons that he’d been tossed in a cell with men who the cops believed were the worst, most dangerous thugs in city custody, and not only won over his fellow inmates, but refused to leave the jail until all of the others were released, too.

  But Los Angeles police had long memories. Thoug
h all the armed Temple guards had permits for their weapons, the sight that night of well-armed black men circling in front of a menacing mob alarmed the cops, and their superiors felt the same concern when they read reports about the incident. That the black troublemakers were led—incited?—by a white preacher made it worse. And so Jim Jones became known to the L.A. cops as an antagonist and someone to watch carefully. City government might think Jones was all right, but the police were an entirely separate entity. Before, Jones and Peoples Temple hadn’t been blips on the LAPD radar. But now, all Jones had to do was to take one additional wrong step. They’d be waiting.

  For the time being, Jones had no idea. But he’d learn.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THE GANG OF EIGHT

  Black people were integral to Jim Jones’s ambitions. Without black followers, and black causes to encourage and support, Jones might have ended up pastoring a tiny Methodist congregation in backwater Indiana, largely frustrated and entirely unknown. Racial injustice was a common theme in his sermons. Most whites might think themselves superior, he preached, but in fact it was better, more righteous, to be black: “Black is a disposition, to act against evil, to do good.” Yet despite this incessantly professed love and admiration for blacks, few held positions of actual authority in the Temple. As years passed, Archie Ijames’s position became more ceremonial. When he presided over services in Jones’s absence, Jones usually arranged for a tape of one of his previous sermons to be played rather than allow Ijames to preach extensively himself. Johnny Brown gradually assumed a secondary leadership role, but when he joined the Temple in San Francisco he was initially relegated to security duty. For years, no followers challenged the racial disparity among Temple leaders. But when it finally happened, the consequences were potentially dire.

  Peoples Temple provided an array of worthwhile social services, all intended to improve lives. Arguably the most unusual, and one frequently pointed to with pride, was providing free college education to deserving young followers. The opportunity wasn’t automatic. At any time, only three or four dozen students might be involved, most of them from families with multigenerational Temple membership. Their parents and perhaps grandparents, sisters and brothers and cousins, all followed Jones. The institution they attended on the Temple’s dime was Santa Rosa Community College. Mike Cartmell, Patty Cartmell’s son and now Jones’s son-in-law, had graduated and was going on to law school. Several of the Temple’s young women took courses at Santa Rosa CC in preparation to serve their church as nurses.

  The Temple purchased three apartments in Santa Rosa and converted them into dormitories. Though students received free room and board as well as tuition, they were expected to live communally with the other Temple students. No one was allowed to live alone in his or her own apartment. This saved money, which allowed more students to be subsidized, and also let Jones, more in theory than in practice, keep a closer eye on everyone. He appointed a “college committee” of adult Temple members who were charged with visiting the students every Tuesday night to offer advice concerning any problems, and, not coincidentally, to check on their grades. Those not maintaining decent class averages could give the outside world a bad impression of Peoples Temple, and might, at Jones’s discretion, be removed from school anytime.

  Besides faithfully attending classes and studying late into the night, the students were also expected to attend Temple services and constantly be on call. The only thing that trumped school obligations was serving the Temple in whatever way Jones wanted. When Jones ordered followers to picket the San Francisco Examiner, a bus stopped in Santa Rosa for the college kids. On weekends, the students were also expected to participate in weapons training—it remained the younger followers’ obligation to defend senior members in the event of world war or any other life-threatening scenario. Jones expected a lot of the college students, including their gratitude. In his view, no one owed the church more.

  Occasionally, one of the Temple’s Santa Rosa students rebelled and left both the school and the Temple. One young woman fled after Jones took her to task for practicing vegetarianism. All the other students ate meat; by being different, she was effectively raising herself above them, acting elite. When Jones forced her to eat a few bites of chicken, she ran away. There was no attempt to persuade her to return. She’d proven herself unworthy.

  Jim Cobb was a different matter. The young black man was unhappy with the makeup of Jones’s inner circle, all of them white. For months, he stayed in school but boycotted services in Redwood Valley to protest the racism he perceived. The Cobb family was Temple bedrock—they’d been followers since Indianapolis. Cobb’s mother eventually wore him down; he came back to services and made a public apology. But the leadership inequity continued to trouble him, and he learned that a few other students felt the same way. They reinforced one another’s misgivings, and in the fall of 1973 eight Santa Rosa students—Cobb, Mickey Touchette, John Biddulph, Vera Biddulph, Lena Flowers, Tom Podgorski, Wayne Pietila, and Terri Cobb Pietila, four white, four black—packed and abruptly left the area, certain that Jones would send followers to track them down.

  They left behind a letter for him, explaining what they’d done: “To put it in one word—staff. The fact is, the eight of us have seen a grotesque amount of sickness displayed by staff. The ridiculous double standard and dishonesty that’s practiced does not agree with us.”

  They stressed that their quarrel wasn’t with Jones himself (“To us, you are the finest socialist and leader this earth has ever seen”), but with those he allowed to influence him: “You said that the revolutionary focal point at present is in the black people. There is no potential in the white population, according to you. Yet, where is the black leadership, where is the black staff and black attitude? . . . Black people are being tapped [in the Temple] for money and nothing else.”

  The letter also reminded Jones that, although he preached that sexual activity should be limited, he constantly engaged in it himself—they blamed the other selfish Temple leaders for that: “STAFF . . . has to be fucked in order to be loyal. . . . The thought of demanding your sensitivity and dedication in such a manner is grossly sick.”

  The students promised that at some point “we will contact you and wish to talk to you and if you see fit work with you,” but their missive’s conclusion emphasized that socialism was the only aspect of Jones’s preaching that they accepted.

  * * *

  Their abrupt desertions, and the contents of the letter they left behind for him, presented Jones with any number of problems. Because members of prominent Temple families—the Cobbs, the Touchettes, and the Biddulphs especially—were involved, the student defections could hardly be kept secret or treated as a minor matter. Everyone in the Temple was going to know that they were gone, and want to know why. Jones’s normal response—that the eight had revealed themselves as intrinsically evil and were to be considered enemies—might not work this time. What if their family members remaining in the fellowship were offended and left themselves? Jones believed them to be loyal, but he’d thought that of the Santa Rosa students, too. Ranting, condemning the young defectors, only increased the risk of losing additional followers.

  There were also things in the letter that threatened Jones personally. What the students had put in writing, they might also have discussed with other students who still remained in Santa Rosa, or with members of their families. Jones had felt certain that his extramarital sexual activity was a closely held secret among members of the Planning Commission and his partners themselves. But these students knew, and they’d named names, including Carolyn Layton, Karen Tow Layton, and Grace Stoen. Clearly, some of his trusted confidants had talked out of turn.

  Jones was left with the challenge of acknowledging the defections, deciding how to respond to the accusations in the letter, and making it clear how he expected his followers to react, without alienating the families of the students and, most of all, not acknowledging error in the makeup o
f Temple leadership. That would be admitting he had allowed himself to be misled, and a critical aspect of Jones’s hold over his people was that so many of them considered him to be infallible.

  A few days after the students—identified later by writers as the “Gang of Eight” or “the Eight Revolutionaries”—departed, Jones walked purposefully onto the stage at a closed Temple meeting and, for the better part of two hours, demonstrated his unmatched oratorical and psychological skills. Much of what he said was extemporized. All of it proved that Jones understood his followers far better than they did him.

  Jones began by wishing peace on all of his “precious hearts.” Just as Jesus once taught, he reminded them, it was important to always do what was right without expectation of thanks. That’s what Jim Jones personally did: “I don’t expect anything from people. And,” Jones said with heavy emphasis, “don’t you.”