The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  That crucial addendum changed everything. The Temple had considered its guardianship of Jonestown children legally protected by the permission forms signed by parents, sometimes as many as a half dozen forms for individual children. These were properly notarized (Temple membership included several notary publics), and copies were kept filed in both San Francisco and Jonestown. If Judge King’s nullification of the papers Grace had signed granting custody of John Victor to Jones and the Temple held up, and Grace did get John Victor back, then legal precedent would be established for any future challenge of Temple guardianship. The new threat to Jones was twofold. He could lose John Victor, whom he loved, and also many or even most of the other Jonestown children. But these youngsters were a crucial element of Jones’s hold over his adult followers in Guyana. He stressed repeatedly that, besides setting a socialist example for the rest of the world, the main reason they were there was to keep these children safe from a rapacious, capitalist society that would destroy them. If the children were gone, legally taken away, then many Jonestown adults would feel they had less reason to stay themselves. Grace Stoen’s claim to her son had the potential to tear Jonestown apart, and with it Peoples Temple and Jim Jones. Then Grace, now with the support of Tim Stoen, ratcheted up the pressure, and Jones’s ever-present paranoia turned to panic.

  At the same time that Judge King made his ruling, Jeffrey Haas, the attorney representing Grace, wrote to Charles Garry, the Temple’s lawyer in the United States: “In accordance with Judge King’s directive, please find enclosed a copy of the order arising out of the hearing on August 19, 1977. . . . Demand is hereby made on you in your capacity as the legal representative of both the People’s [sic] Temple and Mr. Jim Jones for return of the minor child, John Victor, to his mother in accordance with the court order. I trust that we can expect your cooperation and compliance.”

  That letter initially seemed no cause for additional concern. Jones’s strategy remained the same. All U.S. court edicts would be ignored as he and five-year-old John Victor Stoen remained in Guyana, beyond American legal jurisdiction without the consent and cooperation of the Guyanese government. But then Haas and Grace Stoen carried the fight overseas. During the first week of September, Haas flew to Georgetown and appeared in a Guyanese court to request that the U.S. order for Jones to produce the boy be honored there. Justice Aubrey Bishop was sympathetic, and issued an order for Jones and John Victor to appear in his courtroom on September 8, when Jones would have to show cause why Justice Bishop should not award the child to his mother. Haas then flew to Port Kaituma with a copy of the order, and from there made his way to Jonestown with a Guyanese court officer to present the order to Jones.

  Jones knew Haas was in Guyana almost from the moment that he arrived in Georgetown—the Temple had informers everywhere. To shore up the support of his followers in Jonestown, and to reinforce his claims that enemies always lurked nearby, Jones staged an attack on himself on the night before Haas made his appearance in Justice Bishop’s court. Jim Jones Jr. remembers, “Jim was telling me that people needed to believe we were going to be invaded, that there needed to be an act people could rally around. He told me to help him with it.” Jimmy got his rifle and set up in a spot near Jones’s cabin, and, when his father emerged, fired some shots that, as intended, missed by a wide margin: “My dad had told me, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that anybody with me won’t shoot back,’ but that night he was being guarded by Tim [Tupper Jones] and Johnny [Cobb], and when Jim came out and I shot, the next thing I know Tim and Johnny are shooting their shotguns right in my direction and I had to run.” In the uproar that followed, Jones announced that Temple enemies had come to assassinate him. Everyone must be on extra alert.

  The atmosphere remained tense when Haas and the Guyanese court official arrived with Judge Bishop’s order. They were met at the gate by Maria Katsaris, who demanded to know why they were there. The official told her they had come on Guyanese Supreme Court business and asked to see Jones. Katsaris said the Jonestown leader was away; she didn’t know when he’d be back. Haas and the court officer retreated to Port Kaituma, waiting to see how Justice Bishop would direct them to see that his order was delivered and obeyed.

  Jones wondered, too. It was bad enough that Haas had come to Guyana, worse that Justice Bishop seemed sympathetic to him and Grace Stoen, worse still that Haas had been flown from Georgetown to Port Kaituma in a Guyanese military plane. Were Prime Minister Burnham and his government about to betray Jones and the Temple? Jones radioed his people at Lamaha Gardens in Georgetown, instructing them immediately to find Deputy Prime Minister Reid and demand to know what was going on. Jones soon received a report back that Reid was out of the country, in fact in America on official business.

  An integral characteristic of paranoia is lack of perspective. To Jones, Reid’s presence in America at exactly the same time as Justice Bishop made his ruling and Haas appeared at the Jonestown gate could mean only one thing—the U.S. and Guyanese governments, neither having any more pressing concerns than the destruction of Peoples Temple, were now in active collusion against him. Perhaps Burnham’s government had even been overthrown in a military coup and replaced by more pro-American, anti-Temple leadership. These possibilities elicited Jones’s most extreme reaction yet, and one that was, in retrospect, the beginning of the end.

  * * *

  About four thirty in the afternoon on September 7, one day before Justice Bishop had ordered Jones to produce John Victor in his Georgetown court, workers in the fields and brush around Jonestown were informed that they were to return to the settlement. It had been a long, exhausting day of labor, so everyone shouldered their hoes and shovels and began walking. But then they heard screams of “Get back as soon as you can,” so they broke into weary jogs. As the field workers arrived in the main settlement, they saw old people and children stationed in a wobbly line brandishing pitchforks, shovels, and a few machetes. Jones got on the loudspeaker and announced that they were under attack. Everyone had to prepare for an immediate fight. Jones assumed the role of combat commander. He ordered Stephan and Tim Carter, who was temporarily in Jonestown rather than Georgetown, to gather all of Jonestown’s security guards—there were perhaps two dozen, armed with rifles, handguns, and crossbows—in the mission kitchen so they would have clear shots down the road that led from the Jonestown gate. Carter, the former U.S. Marine who’d survived jungle fighting in Vietnam, told Jones, “You don’t want to put all the weapons in one place, because then [the enemy] can just concentrate their fire there.” Jones rearranged perimeter defenses, and, once those were in place, turned to a different logistic. Some of Jonestown’s treasury was comprised of small gold bars. Jones had his son Jimmy and Johnny Cobb, another mission teen, load the gold into a bag and take it into the jungle. If Jonestown fell, the boys were to find some way to take the gold to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown—this would be a final, defiant demonstration of the Temple’s socialist beliefs. Jimmy and Johnny lugged their heavy cargo off into the wild and, after going a short way from the mission, huddled with it. Jones had given them rifles, and they were ready to fight to defend the bullion. The teens learned only later that their weapons weren’t loaded.

  Back in Jonestown, Jones informed his makeshift troops that well-armed adversaries, a mix of mercenaries and Guyanese troops, were coming to take away not only John Victor Stoen, but all of Jonestown’s children. Jones said that he knew who was behind it all—Tim Stoen, the Temple’s foremost adversary. Everyone had to fight. Dig in. Get ready. The attack was coming.

  Hours passed, and exhausted children and old people and some of the fighting-age adults who’d toiled in the fields since daybreak began to totter. Jones refused to let any of them leave their posts. Food and water were passed around. Jones alternated between urging unblinking vigilance over the camp loudspeaker and communicating by radio to Lamaha Gardens in Georgetown and with the Temple office back in San Francisco. Marceline and the staff there were instructe
d to find Ptolemy Reid wherever he might be in the United States, and gain his promise that Jones did not have to comply with Justice Bishop’s order.

  All the next day, and the next, the alert remained in place—by now, Jones was calling it a siege and regularly describing vast forces arrayed just out of sight, poised for imminent attack. Reid had not been located. The date Justice Bishop demanded that Jones appear in court came and passed. Jones predicted that meant the attack surely was coming soon. On the second night of the siege, Jones changed tactics. He announced that everyone would be trucked to Port Kaituma in shifts under cover of dark; the Cudjoe was anchored there at the dock. Somehow, everyone in Jonestown would cram aboard, and they’d sail to Cuba, where they would ask for asylum. Surely they’d be taken in. Jones didn’t explain why the enemies surrounding Jonestown would let the trucks pass, and everyone else was too exhausted to ask. At least, one way or another, it was going to be over. Seniors made up the first truckloads, and when they reached Port Kaituma, never sighting even a single adversary on the way or once they arrived, the old folks began stumbling up the gangplank. It was very dark. One elderly woman fell and broke her hip. Notified of this by radio back in Jonestown, Jones ordered the entire group back to the settlement. Nothing more was said about a sea exodus to Cuba.

  Stephan Jones was sent out to keep watch by the Jonestown gate, and on the morning of September 9, Jeffrey Haas returned. Justice Bishop had ruled that if copies of his appearance edict were prominently posted near the settlement, Jones would be considered to have received the court order. Jones and John Victor retreated into the jungle, and Harriet Tropp and Joyce Touchette met with Haas. They told him that assassins had tried to shoot Jones, and refused to accept the order on Jones’s behalf. The court official with Haas tacked up copies of the order on several settlement buildings. Settlers tore them down. Haas retreated to Georgetown, and the next day Justice Bishop issued a bench warrant for Jones’s arrest. Temple members from Lamaha Gardens were in Bishop’s courtroom; they rushed to radio the news to their leader in Jonestown. Previously, Jones had made up his warning about soldiers coming to take him and John Victor away. Now, it was a real possibility. The siege he’d instigated had extended for several days. His followers were on the verge of collapse. If Guyanese forces did come, Jonestown could no longer even briefly resist.

  Jones got back on the radio to Marceline and told her that he and everyone else at Jonestown “are prepared to die.” Marceline took it to mean that Jones was about to call for mass suicide, and her interpretation was reinforced when Jones let Jimmy, who’d been called back from guarding gold in the jungle, and then Stephan, tell her that they agreed with their father. Marceline begged for more time to locate Ptolemy Reid. Along with Debbie Layton and Terri Buford, who were with her at the San Francisco temple, she began a new series of frantic phone calls. As a tactic to delay any fatal orders by Jones, Marceline arranged for Angela Davis and Eldridge Cleaver to send radio messages of support for the Temple cause. Carlton Goodlett, speaking from San Francisco, advised Jones to calm down—the Guyanese government had invited him and the Temple into its country, and surely wouldn’t abandon them so abruptly. Marceline finally reached Reid’s traveling party—in Indiana, of all places—and received assurance that no Guyanese forces would attack Jonestown or come there to arrest Jones. After she told her husband, he promptly called everyone in Jonestown together and declared victory. Jeffrey Haas returned to the United States; Justice Bishop set a new hearing date for November. For the time being, Jones allowed his Jonestown followers to stand down and resume their normal schedules. He worried that Reid might have been sufficiently offended at being tracked down in the United States to withdraw his personal support, and in early October he wrote to the deputy minister that he had understood that the Guyanese government would handle “situations like that of my son, John Stoen, with a firm hand, by simply stating that there is no [American] jurisdiction. . . . We need to know where we stand. Personally, I am so weary of constant political harassment that I would gladly sacrifice myself if it would mean any assurance of peace for my people. But members of my organization will not accept that. They do not want to work and build without my presence.” Reid promised Jones that no one would arrest him, in Jonestown, Georgetown, or anywhere else in Guyana. Jones didn’t believe it; there was a new court date in Georgetown, so the matter of John Victor clearly wasn’t resolved, and the custody of his little son and many more Jonestown children remained at risk. The September 1977 “White Night”—a settlement term for those occasions when Jones summoned everyone to deal with a sudden, life-threatening crisis—would prove to be only the first. In Jones’s mind, his adversaries were wilier and more numerous than ever. The conspiracies against him had grown international in scope. He reacted accordingly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  DEATH WILL BE PAINLESS

  Following what the settlers referred to as “the Six-Day Siege,” Jones tightened Jonestown security. His personal guards were quick to react to even the slightest perceived danger. So many followers complained of feeling threatened by their own supposed protectors that Jones had to issue an order: guards must refrain from prowling settlement paths and fields with their weapons on full cock. “Sunday Open House” had been a Jonestown tradition—on those afternoons, Amerindians were welcome in the settlement, where they availed themselves of various medical treatments at the Jonestown clinic and enjoyed movies and snacks with Temple members. Now Jones discontinued the practice; enemies might plant spies among the natives. Amerindian admiration for what they considered Jonestown’s modern wonders continued. Every now and then, native newborns would be deposited under cover of night by the Jonestown gate. Their mothers wanted the infants to grow up enjoying the same advantages as the American settlers, who always took the babies to raise. They joined a growing legion of Jonestown newborns, including Malcolm, the son of Tim Carter and Gloria Rodriguez; and Chaeoke, Jones’s grandson, born to Lew Jones and Terry Carter, Tim Carter’s sister.

  Jones’s own youngest offspring were thriving. Teachers who supervised John Victor Stoen and Kimo Prokes in Jonestown’s preschool program remarked on both boys’ precociousness. After the White Night in September, Jones openly acknowledged them as his children. John Victor’s last name remained Stoen for a few months more—Jones had no desire to attract further legal fire. But “Kimo Prokes” was changed to “Kimo Jones” on the Jonestown school roster. The two half brothers lived with Jones, Carolyn Layton, and Maria Katsaris, who assumed the role of John Victor’s mother and told him that his birth mother was dead. Everyone in camp loved Kimo, who was a jolly youngster. But some adults who still considered Jones to be at least in some way superhuman also detected divinity in John Victor. The boy had two Jonestown nicknames—“John-John” and “the Child God.”

  Jones accepted and even welcomed visits by Guyanese officials, seeing these as opportunities to demonstrate how everyone in Jonestown was fine, and how much progress the settlers were making in establishing their self-sustaining agricultural mission in the jungle. Each of these visits was painstakingly stage-managed. The Guyanese were led to specific buildings and fields, where, apparently by coincidence, they would encounter settlers placed there in advance who would parrot memorized praise of their lives there and their leader. Then the government visitors would be invited to join the colonists in what they were told was a typically abundant Jonestown meal that included lots of meat and tasty desserts. All the settlers looked forward to these occasional feasts, which were their only opportunities to eat hearty portions of something other than rice and thin gravy. Usually, there would be entertainment, too—Jonestown boasted a snappy children’s dance troupe, and, as had been the Temple tradition back in the United States, a professional-quality band and choir. The Guyanese inspectors always had a grand time, with Jones playing the role of genial host. For some, the only problem was overattentiveness by the settlers. Gerald Gouveia, a Guyanese military pilot who occasionally accomp
anied government officials to Jonestown, remembers, “Everywhere you went, one of them came right along with you. Why, if you went into the toilet, one of them would come and stand there beside you and talk to you while you did your business. But at least they were always friendly.”

  It was different for officials from the U.S. embassy. Jones considered them enemy agents and instructed his followers to treat them as such. Temple staffers living in Lamaha Gardens had to maintain cordial relations with American officials, if only for the opportunity to complain when Jones felt particularly harassed. But when members of the embassy staff traveled to Jonestown, it was assumed by the settlers that they were there for some nefarious purpose, most likely to try to take away some or all of the children—Jones hammered this belief home in his nightly diatribes. It made the settlers nervous enough when such visits were only occasional, perhaps once every three or four months, but beginning in the late fall of 1977 they became more frequent. Back in America, the Concerned Relatives had begun implementing their newly focused plan. Dozens of parents, grandparents, and siblings of Jonestown residents called on or wrote to members of the U.S. House and Senate, claiming that family members were either being held against their will in the Guyanese jungle or else were being brainwashed. The elected officials dutifully passed on the complaints to the State Department, which in turn instructed U.S. embassy staff in Georgetown to investigate. That required staffers to either fly or sail to Port Kaituma and then travel deep into the forbidding jungle to Jonestown, where the children or adults supposedly held against their will always said that they were fine and very happy. Jonestown had no fences surrounding it, and Jones was careful to keep his armed guards out of sight. When the embassy staffers returned to Georgetown, they invariably sent back reports that the settlers in question said they were fine, and indeed seemed to be. Afterward, top embassy officials could always expect visits from the Temple’s Lamaha Gardens staff, who complained about harassment and emphasized that Peoples Temple was a church, with members exercising their constitutional right to worship—and live—as they pleased. There were veiled threats of lawsuits.