The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Jones also had to maintain a delicate balance in keeping his followers opposed to the political and cultural status quo while maintaining positive relations with San Francisco’s mainstream leadership and press. When Patty Hearst was kidnapped in early 1974 by the revolutionary Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), the heiress’s captors demanded that her father, Randolph Hearst, fund a multimillion-dollar food giveaway to the poor in exchange for his daughter’s safe return.

  In sermons during private Temple meetings, Jones expressed sympathy toward SLA members who’d been driven to extreme actions by racist oppressors. In public, he first offered to exchange himself for Patty Hearst as the SLA’s hostage, and then on the Temple’s behalf donated $2,000 to help defray the cost of the food giveaway. It was a pragmatic gesture—Hearst owned and operated the San Francisco Examiner; Jones simultaneously indicated that he bore no ill will regarding the Kinsolving series. He hoped that he had earned future editorial goodwill. (The food giveaway was a fiasco, and Patty Hearst famously went on to participate as an SLA member before the firefight destruction of most of the group and her own subsequent capture and prison term.)

  The mission in Guyana was constantly on Jones’s mind. He kept extolling its wonders to his followers, and often during services would ask for a show of hands—who wanted to go and live in the Promised Land? There were lots of aspirants, enough to assure Jones that he’d have no trouble populating Jonestown with its anticipated five hundred to six hundred residents. But spring 1974 stretched into summer and then fall, and Jonestown still wasn’t ready for the first contingent. Construction was expensive and slow. Jones sent some additional workers to join the original Pioneers. They lived in huts on the site and fought back the jungle yard by yard. There were disappointments—there was only about an inch of natural topsoil, and even that wasn’t compatible for some plants; Jonestown residents would have to learn to live without tomatoes, for example. Crops would have to be rotated. The Amerindians taught the Temple Pioneers how to get nutrients into the topsoil by burning trees to create potash. These efforts took time that Jones hadn’t factored in.

  Part of the lease agreement required periodic inspections of the Jonestown site by Guyanese officials. These, at least, went as well as Jones might have hoped. One inspector enthusiastically reported, “The Settlement is, by its very existence, profound evidence of the application and triumph of human will, ingenuity and determination over the forces of nature.” The Guyanese government was every bit as eager as Jones for settlers to begin moving in.

  Jones had to see for himself. In December 1974, he and an entourage flew to Georgetown, planning both a tour of the settlement and meetings and public events in the Guyanese capital city that would firmly establish the presence of Peoples Temple. A few Temple members had opened a small church headquarters in Georgetown. Prominent among them was Paula Adams, a vivacious young woman whom Jones intended to be the Temple’s chief representative to the Guyanese government. He soon discovered that she had succeeded far too well, beginning an affair with Laurence “Bonny” Mann, Guyana’s ambassador to the United States. Besides violating Jones’s edict of avoiding relationships with outsiders, the affair was doubly dangerous because Mann was married. What if a scandal ensued? Adams and the first few Temple women in Georgetown were expected to act flirtatiously—they hosted dance parties and paid special attention to older Guyanese ministers and officials—but actual sex was forbidden. Laura Johnston Kohl and Terri Buford believe that Jones’s ego wouldn’t allow him to share Temple women with anyone. Tim Carter recalls Jones ordering him not to have complete intercourse with a woman who’d previously been Jones’s lover: “When we were in bed, I had to stop short of actual penetration. That was supposed to be Jim’s privilege.”

  But Jones had sufficient self-control to look beyond his immediate instinct to order Adams out of Georgetown, or to at least terminate her affair with the ambassador. It was well known in the Guyanese capital that Mann had an especially warm relationship with Prime Minister Forbes Burnham—“a sort of favorite son,” recalls Kit Nascimento. “Burnham had no actual son, and so Bonny could get away with anything. Bonny was completely self-centered and often took advantage of [Burnham’s] affection.” Angering Mann by arbitrarily ending his affair with Adams might also annoy Burnham. Besides, the closer Adams drew to Mann, the more access she would have through him to Burnham and his inner circle. Jones was already dismayed by his lack of direct, extended access to the Guyanese prime minister. Most often, Jones was directed to Deputy Prime Minister Ptolemy Reid, who also served as Guyana’s minister of agriculture and economic development as well as overseer of the military. So Adams was allowed to continue the affair, with the understanding that her real—only—allegiance was to Jones and the Temple. She was to report anything Mann said that touched on or even indirectly involved the Temple, and, whenever opportunity occurred, go through his briefcase and private papers. That made it Adams’s turn to attempt a private balancing act. She believed in Jones and the Temple, but was genuinely in love with the ambassador. Jones eventually hedged his bet, bringing in Sharon Amos to serve as his primary contact with Guyanese officials in case Adams’s loyalty wavered.

  Beginning with this visit, Jones identified himself in Guyana as a bishop; the title was self-bestowed rather than awarded by the Disciples of Christ. Jones made a major misstep when he attempted to insinuate himself among Georgetown’s established religious entities. The country was roughly 40 percent Christian and 50 percent Muslim; in Georgetown there was a church council with representatives of several Christian denominations. Jones quickly identified Father Andrew Morrison of Georgetown’s Sacred Heart Catholic Church as perhaps the dominant cleric. He asked and received permission to conduct a guest service at Sacred Heart on December 30.

  The service was packed. Jones began by praising brotherhood among all faiths. He joked about wearing a suit, and asked for a robe to cover it: “I never wear [the suit], and I feel most ridiculous in it. . . . I only own one pair of shoes and I find that’s most convenient for me [because] I only have two feet.” He said he based his personal and ministerial modesty on a philosophy of “apostolic cooperative living.” In a prayer, he asked God to provide “a movement of the Holy Spirit in our midst today that will cause people to believe that there’s hope. . . . We ask it in the name of Christ.” Then Jones began calling out individuals, describing their various ailments and promising to cure them. One person complaining of arthritic knees was commanded to “jump up and down, just like a little child,” did as instructed, and claimed to be healed. Jones cautioned that “we believe in doctors, we believe in medicine, but we also believe that when man cannot reach you, God can reach you.” He told another person describing chest discomfort, “You lift up your hands now. The pain will go away.” He went on for some time, finally giving the Temple’s mailing address in Redwood Valley and assuring his audience that “healing is available to anyone, no matter what their religion, no matter what their creed.”

  Father Morrison had expected a traditional prayer-based service. Afterward, he learned that everyone healed in the Sacred Heart service was a member of Peoples Temple. He made an official complaint about Jones’s sham healing to Kit Nascimento, who functioned as Prime Minister Burnham’s chief of staff. “I told [Father Morrison] the truth,” Nascimento says. “The Prime Minister wanted this man and his mission in our country to succeed, so there was no use complaining.” But Jones’s reputation among other Christian leaders in Georgetown was permanently damaged. There would be no further collaborations or guest services.

  Jones’s visit to the North West District mission was also disappointing. Significant progress had been made—within a few months, Guyanese officials would note that over one hundred acres of jungle had been cleared and planted—but Jones had described vast fields of vegetables and fruit to his followers back home. Elmer Mertle, serving as trip photographer, was given the unenviable task of taking pictures that would back up Jones’s descr
iptions. Finally, Jones and Mertle purchased fruit in Port Kaituma, transported it to Jonestown, and Jones posed in a field, proudly gesturing at the gorgeous produce. No one back in California knew the difference, and those along with Jones on the trip weren’t telling.

  Jones’s December 1974 trip to Guyana was significant in another way. Besides his usual array of intimates and Planning Commission members, he brought along Maria Katsaris. There was some question among the others about why Maria was included. She was a dutiful follower, and worked hard in the letters office, but remained painfully shy. She was also extremely self-conscious about her appearance. Her father, Steven, had been a Greek Orthodox priest, and there was some sense that he and Jones disliked each other.

  But on this trip Jones and Maria became lovers, and not for the usual few weeks that defined Jones’s other affairs except for his ongoing relationship with Carolyn Moore. The change in Maria was startling. Almost overnight, her shyness morphed into self-confidence. She demonstrated not only considerable intelligence, but abilities as a leader. “Jim always claimed that he had sex with women to lift them up, to help them become stronger and better,” Tim Carter says. “With Maria, that really happened. Jones started having sex with her, and she blossomed.” Back in America, the relationship continued. Maria became very protective of Jones. She assumed a leadership position in the Temple, and Planning Commission members who’d previously known a meek, somewhat immature girl now found themselves dealing with a self-assured woman who made it clear that she knew what Father wanted, and who intended to see things done exactly that way. It was soon accepted by the rest of Temple leadership that now Maria Katsaris often spoke for Jones, just as Carolyn Moore frequently did.

  There was also a great change regarding Carolyn. By mid-1974, she had been intimate with Jones for five years. She still considered him to be a great leader, but knew Jones too well to believe he was in any way godlike. Her attachment was to the man, and, through him, to the Temple and its mission. It was impossible for her to separate one from the other. In public, she served as Jones’s unofficial chief of staff. That would have been burden enough for anyone, but Carolyn also had to deal with Jones in private, seeing him sometimes comatose from drugs, nursing him through frequent episodes of hypochondria, mothering his unruly children, and standing by while he indulged in sex with multiple partners. Perhaps most painful of all, when Jones had another biological child, it was with Grace Stoen rather than Carolyn.

  For a while, Carolyn may have hoped that her sacrifices would someday be rewarded with marriage. If nothing else, becoming Jones’s wife would have been recognition of her value to him, and to the Temple. But she eventually realized that would never happen. After her thwarted attempt to break away from Jones in the early 1970s, Marceline evidently resigned herself to her own frustrating lot and made no further attempt to leave. Jones made it obvious, even putting it in writing, that in the event of his death he wanted Marceline rather than Carolyn to lead the Temple. (Jones specified that Marceline would immediately succeed him, and that Stephan would be next in line “if he is willing.” He added that Carolyn could serve as chairman of the Planning Commission.) And Marceline made it equally clear that she was now willing to serve Jones in whatever capacity he wished. In February 1974, she sent her husband a handwritten note:

  Dearest Jim:

  I wanted to send you a Valentine but searched in vain for one I could relate to. I thought of writing my deep sentimental feelings I have for you but decided that was selfish since you might feel it required some response from you. So, I decided that the things I most wanted you to know was:

  1. How much I appreciate what I’ve learned about life by knowing you.

  2. Even though I have a strong personal attachment to you, if some fate should separate us forever, I will lend what strength I have to defend the defenseless and oppressed.

  3. You have been my only lover and there shall never be another. I enjoyed our intimate times together and face the rest of my life, happily, just remembering those moments I loved you before you were “God” and will always be sentimental about those years when I thought us lovers.

  4. My love for you, today, wishes for you peace, rest and the fulfillment of your dream of a better world.

  Happy Valentine’s Day,

  Marceline

  Jones did not entirely take Carolyn for granted. She had to have something, a special gesture that proved how much he valued her. And so, in the summer of 1974, Carolyn Moore Layton disappeared from Peoples Temple. Jones made it known that he’d sent her away on a crucial, secret mission—she’d be gone for some time. He didn’t elaborate. A few months later, Jones revealed dreadful news. Carolyn’s mission had taken her to Mexico, where she’d been arrested and jailed. Now she was being tortured by her captors, and bravely refusing to reveal Temple secrets. “The impression given was that if Carolyn could make that kind of sacrifice, then if the rest of us thought we were working hard and felt exhausted, we should remember what she was willing to do,” Tim Carter says. Jones embellished the story, telling Planning Commission members that Carolyn had gone to Mexico to purchase the components of an atomic bomb for the Temple—once the church had the bomb, then the government would have no choice but to respect them. Before her arrest, Jones said, Carolyn had acquired all the necessary components but a detonator, which Temple secret agents assigned by Jones would continue trying to locate and purchase. The P.C. members believed him—anything was possible with Father.

  Then, in the spring of 1975, Carolyn returned—and she had a baby with her.

  Rev. John V. Moore remembers, “In, I believe, August of 1974, Carolyn contacted her mother and me and said she was pregnant. She asked to come live with us in Berkeley until the baby was born. We knew, of course, that Jim Jones was the father. Whatever our feelings were about the matter, Carolyn was our daughter, and so we invited her to come.”

  During the next six months, Jones would occasionally stay overnight with Carolyn and the Moores. He conducted himself like a son-in-law, except when Barbara Moore asked, “When are you going to divorce Marceline and marry our daughter?” Reverend Moore remembers, “[Jones mumbled] something about Marceline not being well, and that she couldn’t deal with a divorce. And Carolyn had always told us that [Marceline] was emotionally unstable, and that [Jones] remained married to her out of pity. So although Barbara and I distrusted Jim Jones, we kind of had a truce with him. He was going to be the father of our grandchild.”

  On January 31, 1975, Carolyn gave birth to a son named Jim Jon. Immediately afterward, she stunned her father with a new request: he must perform a marriage ceremony between her and Michael Prokes, the former newsman who’d joined the Temple and become one of its principal spokesmen. “When I asked why, she said it was what she and Jim wanted,” Moore says. “I thought it was what he wanted rather than her, but she continued to insist, so I reluctantly performed the ceremony.” The child’s birth record recorded his full name as Jim Jon Prokes.

  But when Carolyn returned to Peoples Temple with her infant son, she didn’t identify Prokes as the father. Instead, conflicting reports emerged that Jim Jon, soon nicknamed Kimo, was the unwanted child of one of Carolyn’s cousins, or that the baby was the result of Carolyn’s having been raped in the Mexican prison. Carolyn was as reserved as ever. The circumstances of the child’s conception remained unconfirmed. The Temple welcomed Kimo into its fold, and a significant exception was made for the child—once beyond infancy, all Temple offspring were raised communally, but Kimo remained with his mother. This was Jones’s private recognition of Carolyn’s special place in his heart.

  But Carolyn returned to find that Maria Katsaris had assumed a nearly equal place, sharing not only Jones’s bed but a considerable amount of Temple responsibility. In certain physical and personal respects, Maria resembled both Marceline and Carolyn. All three women were slender, intelligent, and exceptionally good at attending to details and seeing that things got done, the latter skill c
ompensating for Jones’s own administrative weaknesses. The difference between them was that Marceline had status as Jones’s wife, Carolyn now had his child, and Maria had neither, only what she considered the honor of being Jones’s lover and trusted confidante. For her, then and later, that was enough.

  Kimo’s birth did ease some of the tension between Carolyn and Jones’s other children. Suzanne remained aloof, but Stephan warmed to her a little more. Jimmy found a practical reason to like Carolyn: “She and my dad would go out, and I was old enough to watch the little ones, John-John [Stoen] and Kimo. They’d get back and my dad would give me $20, but Carolyn would sneak me forty.”

  Money was also on the minds of Jones and Marceline. In July, they signed last will and testaments. These listed Johnny Brown among their children—they stressed that they now considered him their son, though he was never formally adopted. Agnes, still a disappointment—Marceline had recently become legal guardian of Agnes’s daughter, Stephanie (the child was then communally raised)—was to receive a single lump sum of $5,000, with everything else divided equally among the others. Carolyn Layton was named executor, with Michael Prokes and Carolyn’s sister Annie as alternates.