The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  In a few instances, they still tried. Less than a week after Jones arrived, Yolanda Crawford persuaded him to let her, her mother, and husband leave the settlement and return to the United States. They had to pay their own way, and Jones had requirements beyond that. In a deposition made a year later, Crawford described what was required of her before Jones granted permission:

  I was forced to promise [Jones] that I would never speak against the church, and that if I did I would lose his “protection” and be “stabbed in the back.” Furthermore, Jim Jones ordered me to sign a number of self-incriminating papers, including that I was against the government of Guyana. . . . [Even] before leaving [the United States] for Guyana, I was ordered to fabricate a story and sign it stating that I killed someone and threw the body in the ocean. I was told that if I ever caused Jim Jones trouble, he would give that statement to the police.

  Chris Lewis and his wife left. Jones let him go—Lewis was a tough man who’d served him well as an enforcer and harasser of defectors back in California. Now he’d had enough of Jonestown, and Jones knew better than to threaten him. At least if Lewis retained some loyalty to Jones and the Temple, he might continue acting as an enforcer in San Francisco should the need arise.

  A few months later, Leon Broussard sneaked away into the jungle, stumbling until a native encountered him and helped him to Port Kaituma. By coincidence, recently appointed U.S. consul Richard McCoy was there, preparing to make his first Jonestown visit. He spoke with Broussard, who described Jonestown as a virtual “slave colony” where anyone Jones wanted to punish was badly beaten or even buried alive. All he wanted, Broussard pleaded, was to return to America, but he had no money and Jones wouldn’t even allow him to leave Jonestown, let alone go all the way home. McCoy promised to intercede. Jones called Broussard a liar, but agreed to give the man his passport and pay his airfare back to America. To McCoy, a precedent had been established. Whenever someone wanted to leave Jonestown, they would be allowed to do so, and, if they wanted to return to the United States, the Temple would pay for the trip. The new consul expected that there would be others wanting to go, perhaps asking his assistance in making such arrangements. But no one did. McCoy made occasional visits to Jonestown, where he interviewed individuals whose families or friends back in the United States had expressed concern about them. He explained that, if they wished to leave, he was there to help. But those he spoke to assured McCoy that they were happy where they were. No one appeared under pressure to say so. The diplomat was convinced that they meant what they said—and most of them did. For reasons as varied as the people themselves, leaving was not an option. Lack of access to passports and travel funds was the least of it.

  Fully a third of Jonestown’s population was pensioners, almost all of them black, who were attracted to the Temple by Jones’s promises to care for them well in their old age. Their earlier lives had been a struggle. When Jones warned in the pavilion of sudden Klan expansion, or the U.S. government building concentration camps, they remembered well burning crosses and white sheriffs with fire hoses and snarling dogs. What Jones described was only a step or two beyond what they’d personally experienced, and so they believed what he told them. In Jonestown they had beds, albeit stacked bunks in cramped quarters, and regular meals, and immediate medical care when they needed it instead of endless hours in waiting rooms at public hospitals and impersonal, cursory treatment. They were asked to work, but not much, putting finishing touches on toys and dolls, tending small gardens. Sure, Jones wanted their Social Security checks and disability checks and any other money they had coming in, but look at all they got for it. The elderly people didn’t want to leave.

  There were almost three hundred children in Jonestown, most of them too young to do much work. They were there because they’d been brought by parents or guardians. As harsh as conditions were for adults, kids got the best of what was available. Newborns were tenderly cared for in a snug nursery, and toddlers warmly supervised and nurtured. Beginning at kindergarten age and continuing through high school, children participated in structured, competently taught classes that emphasized individual instruction, unlike the cattle pen public schools many of the youngsters had attended back home. They were expected to study hard and mind their teachers. Besides reading and writing and math, they had to study socialism. But there was plenty of time for skits and singing. None of the younger children were even yelled at. Discipline was tougher for the teens. When they messed up they were put on the Learning Crew, and a couple of constant screwups even got put down in that hole, though only after their parents said it was okay. The kids adjusted to their new surroundings, and were constantly reminded that Jonestown was for them. They were treasured, and knew it.

  That left the middle third, the adults expected to do all the work without complaint and to respect and obey Jim Jones in all things. There were those among them who’d joined the Temple and stayed because of the healings, the miracles that this man could do. Jones didn’t attempt many healings now—unlike the American temples with their private bathrooms and vast auditoriums, Jonestown’s cramped quarters didn’t lend themselves to smoke-and-mirror theatrics. But many settlers still believed in Jones as someone more than an ordinary man, maybe even a god, and, if he called them to live in the Guyanese jungle, then they would, and willingly.

  There were others, and their number grew all the time, who were increasingly aware of his flaws and contradictions, who didn’t automatically accept all he said and did and resented the sometimes bizarre demands that Jones made on them. But they’d come to Guyana with a purpose, to set the ultimate socialist example for a world that badly needed it. Just as older settlers bought into Jones’s pavilion diatribes because they’d lived through atrocities in the past, Jonestown’s other adults had seen plenty of terrible things themselves—Vietnam, riots in the streets of countless American cities, assassinations, the resignation of a president, confirmed acts by government agencies against principled citizens standing in opposition. It was easy to believe that the CIA and FBI were plotting against Peoples Temple and all that it stood for. All the hard work, all the sacrifices, was investment in a better world for the next generation. Beyond the dripping sweat and aching muscles, the skimpy meals and smelly outhouses, an even greater sacrifice might be ultimately required—death while fighting to defend the children, or else the end of one’s life as the ultimate act of defiance. But there was little opportunity to dwell on that aspect of it. These people, ranging in age from late teens to mid- or even late sixties, worked so hard and long, then got so little sleep thanks to Jones and his nightly diatribes, that they were often too exhausted to think much, if at all. It was hard enough to get through a single day, let alone contemplate what might someday be asked of them. Their focus was necessarily on the very basics: work hard, rest whenever possible, be prepared to fight the Temple’s enemies. On his bad days, Jones’s excesses were like the blistering sun or the biting insects, something to endure for the sake of the cause.

  If there were still some among them—and Jones realized that there had to be—who at least occasionally thought about leaving with Jones’s permission or escaping without it, there were other deterrents beyond passports and money. Relationships were involved. Many in Jonestown were part of extended family units, joined in the settlement by spouses, children, cousins, parents, or assorted in-laws. So, more than ever, Jones encouraged followers to spy on each other and report any hint of disloyalty. Someone unhappy in Jonestown and ready to run away ran a grave risk by discussing it in apparent confidence with family members or friends. No one completely trusted anyone else, and if Jones found out, punishment would result. Few wanted to be considered a traitor by loved ones or were ready to flee Jonestown while leaving those loved ones behind.

  Then there was the ultimate barrier to escape, the jungle itself. A rough-cut road ran some two miles from the main Jonestown settlement to its guarded entrance, and from there another mile or so to a slightly wider road th
at led the rest of the way to Port Kaituma. On both sides along the way were great walls of towering trees, and snake-infested barbed brush. Any defector reaching Port Kaituma would have trouble going farther. There were no boats between there and Georgetown on a regular basis, and few planes took off or landed from the narrow, potholed airstrip. Pursuers sent by Jones would have an easy time catching up.

  Alternatively, escapees could make for Matthews Ridge, but that required struggling through the jungle itself for a dozen miles, then following a train track for twenty more. The strongest adults, let alone families with children or old people, would find it difficult to reach Matthews Ridge, if they didn’t get lost forever in the jungle.

  So they stayed, and at night listened to Jones recite his litany of outside forces conspiring against Jonestown—the media, the CIA, the FBI, even the Guyanese government. But a much different, lethal foe was emerging, comprised of previously individual enemies who understood Jim Jones and Peoples Temple very well, and who came together with the mutual goal of bringing him down for good.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CONCERNED RELATIVES AND THE FIRST WHITE NIGHT

  It was inevitable that there would be former members who held grudges against Peoples Temple and Jim Jones, individuals and families who left out of disgust with Jones’s paranoid preaching, staged healings, increasingly violent discipline, or resentment of surrendering property and possessions to the church. Many kept silent out of fear that the Temple would retaliate, others because they felt no one would believe the stories they had to tell. Sheer numbers were also intimidating—what good would a lone voice do when Jones had hundreds of followers ready to back him up against any accusation?

  But the New West article in August 1977 had changed that. A number of former members came forward and defiantly testified. They not only survived unscathed, but, to at least some extent, won—though the Temple denied everything in a series of press releases, Jones fled the country. San Francisco’s two daily newspapers began playing catch-up to New West, publishing their own stories about shady Temple real estate deals, seeking out more estranged followers to describe mistreatment by Jones and his minions. And, when doing so, many of the disaffected former members connected with others. They began meeting, often with Elmer and Deanna Mertle acting as hosts. Fellowship was comforting, and consensus was immediate: Jim Jones could not be allowed to bide his time in Guyana until the controversy in California passed. Pressure had to be maintained. The goal was obvious, but not the means. A shotgun approach—individually approaching reporters or elected officials—wouldn’t work. The current anti-Temple story cycle could last only so long before the media and its audience grew tired of repetitive stories. Jim Jones and Peoples Temple stole members’ property. Followers were sometimes brutally beaten. The Temple had lots of money, some of it undoubtedly gained illicitly. Something different was required, an angle for media coverage that would engage the public long-term and arouse such vigorous outrage that authorities would have to act, and Jones would finally be done for. There were plenty of highly vocal former members, but it was perhaps the quietest among them who became the necessary catalyst.

  Grace Stoen was determined to regain custody of her son through the courts. In the New West story, she never mentioned John Victor. But he was what she talked about when she met with the other former Temple members, and this mother’s desperation to regain her child moved them all. In August 1977 the Mertles initiated a $1 million lawsuit against the Temple for houses they claimed were fraudulently taken from them, but that was property. From a public relations perspective, a five-year-old boy obviously had much wider appeal. Grace’s struggle to wrest her little son from Jones’s overseas clutches would clearly be a lengthy one—anyone even remotely familiar with Jones knew he’d never give up the boy easily—and perfect for ongoing media coverage. And Grace wasn’t the only former follower desperate to regain a child from Guyana. Some had teenage children, or even younger ones, living apart from them in Jonestown, there because their parents, while still members of the Temple, signed over guardianship as part of the church’s communal child rearing. A few of them had engaged seedy private eye Joe Mazor to try to get their youngsters back. At one point, uncertain of prevailing against Jones in court, even Grace met with Mazor. Still more disaffected, onetime Jones followers didn’t have children in Guyana, but did have other family there—parents, siblings, cousins. The letters they sent back to the United States were suspiciously mechanical, full of praise for Jones and the jungle settlement, rarely answering directly any questions asked by their stateside loved ones about living conditions or a desire to come back or at least visit. The letters from Jonestown almost always asked for money, and in talking among themselves the former followers with grown daughters in Jonestown found that several of the young women reported the same thing: they were engaged to Larry Schacht, the settlement physician. This was clearly a ploy to reassure worried parents—who wouldn’t want their daughter to marry a doctor?

  Now the former members had a rallying theme—rescuing family members from Jonestown. Some, maybe all, might be held there against their will. Who could be certain? The group assumed a publicity-savvy name: Concerned Relatives. But it was one thing to have a name and message, quite another to wield it to maximum effect against Jones. A focused, step-by-step plan was required. Fortunately for the former members, someone with the necessary organizational skills and the knack for bold, calculating action was about to come among them. Grace and Tim Stoen were no longer estranged.

  In July 1977, even before the New West article was published, Tim Stoen met with Grace in Denver. His hopes for reconciliation were dashed when she told him she was now with Walter Jones, but Stoen agreed with Grace that she should have at least joint custody of John Victor with Jim Jones. If it proved necessary, Stoen promised, he’d return to Guyana himself and initiate legal proceedings against Jones there. Stoen did not immediately align himself with the other former Temple members. But he knew about the others, and understood the potential of eventually joining forces. For the moment, Stoen’s concern was helping Grace regain John Victor. Everything else was secondary.

  On August 18, Grace Stoen went to court in San Francisco and formally requested custody of her son. Her petition noted that John Victor was in Jonestown, cited the various claims made against Jones in the New West article, and stated she feared for the little boy’s safety in Guyana. The judge ordered Jones to appear in court on September 9 “to show cause” why Grace should not be awarded custody of the child.

  Jones had prepared for such an action by Grace. In early August dozens of his followers testified for affidavits alleging mistreatment of John Victor by his mother. They also claimed that Grace had attempted to seduce underage boys in Temple foster care. Grace was even alleged to have behaved inappropriately with her son: “She would hug all over him in a sexual manner.”

  Jones’s affidavit stated that in 1971 Tim Stoen personally requested him to do “anything of a sexual nature” that would keep a reluctant Grace in the Temple. Out of loyalty to Stoen, Jones agreed. Grace was supposed to utilize birth control, and to understand that the sex “wasn’t a romantic thing.” When Grace later told Jones that she was pregnant, he asked her to have an abortion, but she refused. She told Jones that “she had had no relationship with her husband Tim Stoen and the child was [his].” After John Victor’s birth, Grace deteriorated emotionally and threatened suicide. She was clearly an unfit mother. Grace ran off with Walter Jones and deserted her son. Jones declared, “I am keeping John, not because I want to deprive her of him, but because I believe she is deeply injurious to him, because of her long history of mental imbalance. . . . I must say the whole situation with Grace was one of the gravest mistakes of my life.”

  The affidavits were prepared for future use in court if necessity arose, but Jones never intended for matters to go that far. He believed that so long as he stayed in Guyana, he was impervious to any orders from a U.S. court. The S
an Francisco order for him to appear on September 9 was just one more irritation, much like Marceline’s apparent emotional deterioration as she stayed behind to defend him. About the same time the San Francisco judge issued the order, Terri Buford wrote Jones that “Marcie is okay except between 8–10 in the morning and then it is tears and all the old tunes that you have heard before how she has to take a backseat in your life—only a wife in name for 12 years now—and how she had to sacrifice all for the cause. . . . She took estrogen the other day so hopefully her moods will improve.”

  Jones’s American legal problems grew worse. Grace Stoen was divorcing Tim at the same time she was attempting to regain custody of John Victor from Jones. Donald King, the judge presiding over the divorce case, awarded custody of John Victor to Grace, and ordered Jones to produce the boy in his court on October 6. The order added, “Claimant Rev. Jim Jones is advised that a failure to appear at the time and place designated above may result in a decision adverse to himself. . . . Any previous declaration of statement signed by either Petitioner [Grace Stoen] or Respondent [Tim Stoen] authorizing Claimant Jones to act as guardian of said minor child is hereby declared null and void.”