The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Lynetta Jones died in Jonestown on December 9. Larry Schacht concluded that the cause of death was cardiac arrest. Lynetta was buried near the settlement. Her son mourned, but not so much that he lost track of Jonestown’s constant money concerns. Lynetta had an annuity that was arranged to make monthly payments over the course of her life, and Jones sent the U.S. bank involved a request for his mother’s final check: $81.68.

  The next day, former Temple enforcer Chris Lewis was shot to death in San Francisco. His demise, along with Lynetta’s, meant Jones had death much on his mind. In an evening pavilion meeting on December 21, he asked how many of his followers had planned their deaths; anyone who wasn’t prepared to die “may sell out.” A bombshell announcement followed—because the U.S. government was so obviously determined to take John Victor, Jones planned “to ask Russia to take us.” At that moment, Jones collapsed, sliding out of his chair onstage. Larry Schacht leaped to his side, crouching over the fallen Jonestown leader as many in the crowd wept. Then, dramatically, Jones got up and resumed talking. He said he’d just suffered “bleeding on the brain,” a particularly painful affliction caused by low blood sugar, which in turn was caused by all the tremendous burdens he had to assume on behalf of his people. But he was recovered and had more to say about Russia. The weather would be harsh there. Some of the seniors might not survive. If the government came for the Jonestown children before everyone in the mission was ready to go, perhaps the adults would stand and fight while the kids escaped to Russia: “We built this land, and we won’t give it up easy.”

  The immediate impact for all the settlers was one more daily assignment—in addition to all their daylong duties and nightly attendance in the pavilion, Jones now expected them to study Russian and attain at least conversational skills in preparation for the eventual move there. There was no debate, no vote of who was and wasn’t in favor of leaving the jungle Promised Land, or, for that matter, a projected date of departure. It became a given that, at some point, they would go. Jones would tell them when. Meanwhile, it was one more secret to be kept from everyone in the outside world.

  There was another new secret, this one between Jones and a very few trusted followers—Schacht, Carolyn Layton, Maria, and Gene Chaikin and his wife, Phyllis. With all that had been happening, Jones felt it was time to explore the most expedient means of committing the defiant act he’d alluded to for so long.

  Jones had a question for Schacht. The young doctor, whom Jones had saved from drug addiction and sent to medical school, replied in a note, “There is a good chance I can develop germicidal means. . . . I am quite capable of organizing the suicidal aspect + will follow through + try to convey concern + warmth throughout the ordeal.” In a separate note, Phyllis Chaikin suggested that everyone should be shot instead. Jones preferred poison.

  In the months since the first White Night in September 1977, Jones occasionally proclaimed other such events, waking everyone up or calling them in from fields and classrooms to gather in the pavilion and hear more about the latest emergency—mercenaries arriving in Guyana to attack Jonestown, another attempt on his life—so around dawn on February 16, 1978, when orders blared that all must rush to the pavilion, everyone expected more of the same.

  At first, it was. Jones announced that there was apparently a restructuring of Guyana’s government. The new leaders might be in CIA thrall. Guyanese soldiers had been spotted in Port Kaituma. An attack was imminent—what should be done? Someone suggested fleeing to Russia. Jones demurred. They weren’t prepared for that yet. Old people or children might be lost in the confusion, and Jones refused to leave anyone behind. No, everyone would stay in Jonestown.

  There was no work assigned that day. The settlers remained in the pavilion, growing progressively fearful. Jones periodically left to take radio reports, finally announcing that armed forces were on their way. They would attack in a matter of hours. Their intention was to kill all who lived in Jonestown, including the children. Rather than that, everyone present must take their own lives. That would rob their enemies of any triumph. There were some murmurs of disagreement, but no one openly argued. There was a sense that the time had finally come. Some of Jones’s followers were pleased—this would be a true revolutionary gesture. Others, worn out from the months of tension, simply wanted to get it over with. Vats of dark liquid were produced. Everyone was told to line up, fill a cup, and drink. The poison in the drink would kill them in about forty-five minutes. Now some did protest. Guards pushed them forward and made them drink first. Jones promised that their deaths would be peaceful. As Edith Roller stood in line, she thought how ironic it was that she would not be able to record the event in her journal. Some, who’d been on the Planning Commission in San Francisco when their leader claimed to have poisoned their wine, suspected that Jones was conducting another test, and they were right. When everyone had swallowed their drinks, Jones declared, “You didn’t take anything.” It had been a test to see if they truly were willing to lay down their lives for the cause, and they had passed. As a reward, assignments were canceled for the rest of the day.

  No one stood up and shouted at Jones for putting them through such a terrifying experience. True believers accepted that whatever Father did was right. Those increasingly disaffected with Jones but still loyal to the Temple’s professed socialist cause shrugged the experience off as one more example of Jones’s increasingly bizarre behavior. Many, sleep-deprived and emotionally exhausted, were just glad to get back to their beds.

  Jones had wondered whether his followers would collectively obey an order for suicide, and now he knew. With that knowledge came certainty. In Jonestown or in Russia or wherever the uncertain future took him and his followers and hope was lost, there could be a grand gesture, one assuring Jim Jones’s deserved place in human memory and history books. It had always been a possibility, but after this White Night it was no longer a matter of if, but when.

  On Jones’s instruction, Larry Schacht ordered one pound of sodium cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It cost $8.85.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  BETRAYALS

  The next day, Jones reconvened everyone in the pavilion and instructed them to write essays on the topic “What I Would Do if This Were the Last White Night.” The responses were chilling. Some suggested it would be better to die fighting, taking as many of the enemy with them as possible. One woman wrote that she was willing to take poison, but “only after putting the children to sleep. This would be hard for me because I don’t like to face the fact of killing my own child.” Another admitted, “I am scared of dying a long painful death. . . . I can’t believe that after all this struggle and pain we all will die.” Everyone wrote something, and though no one directly challenged the apparent certainty of future mass suicide, some now wondered if Jones actually intended to order such a precipitous act. It might be another of his ploys to gauge loyalty. Enough settlers thought so for Dick Tropp to send Jones a private memo: “People with a fair degree of savvy and intelligence [are beginning to believe that] White Nights are really a kind of elaborate ritual testing.” Jones, satisfied that February 16 had served his purpose, did not respond.

  He had other concerns. In January, Tim and Grace Stoen had come to Georgetown and met with Justice Bishop. They received no satisfaction. Bishop delayed consideration of John Victor’s custody, and complained bitterly about badgering phone calls he’d received from “Americans” claiming to support the Stoens. They, in turn, believed the callers were actually Temple members—one more example of Jones’s scheming. Other Guyanese officials were similarly uncooperative. The Stoens had three-week visas, but only a few days after their arrival were informed, without explanation, that they must immediately leave the country. They complained through the U.S. consulate and, at the last minute, were informed that they could stay after all. But the Stoens’ money ran out; they returned to the United States, where Tim spent several days in Washington meeting with elected and State Department officials, plea
ding his case and asking for help. Though he received more assurances of concern and potential support than active assistance, Stoen’s efforts were sufficiently worrisome to Jones that he dispatched Marceline to meet with the same officials and tell the Temple’s side of the story. The result was, in effect, a draw.

  Jones was also worried that his supporters in the Guyanese government might be wavering. Sharon Amos sent word to Prime Minister Burnham that Jones was ill; further stress from the Stoen custody case might kill him. Jones himself wrote a long letter to Deputy Prime Minister Reid, apologizing for Temple members in Georgetown contacting him so frequently: “[But] we need to know where we stand.” So far as the Guyanese officials were concerned, Jones and Jonestown had become a constant irritant, but that aggravation was still outweighed by the settlement’s useful presence near the Venezuela border. “We put up with them,” Kit Nascimento says. “That is the best way to describe our feelings.” Burnham and his ministers did not know Jones was exploring the possibility of leaving Guyana for Russia. Had they realized, Nascimento says, “Burnham would have thrown them right out of the country that very minute. We were keeping our bargain with Jones. He always wanted so much from us. All we asked was that he and his people stay where they were.”

  But in March, Sharon Amos and a few other Temple members based in Georgetown visited the embassies of socialist countries with diplomatic presence in the Guyanese capital—Russia, Cuba, and North Korea. After removing all references to church or religion on Temple stationery, Jones also sent letters to the leaders of other socialist nations, enclosing pamphlets about Jonestown and inviting “any type of inquiry or communication.” The letters elicited only polite, formal responses. Cuban and North Korean diplomats seemed interested in Jonestown, but not to the extent that they were willing to explore allowing the mission to move to their country. Russian ambassador Feodor Timofeyev was more forthcoming. He agreed to send along a letter from the Temple about potential relocation to his superiors in Moscow, and said he would personally visit Jonestown to see the settlement for himself. Jones took these gestures as a commitment rather than a first step, and informed everyone that they would definitely be moving to Russia. When a few settlers argued against it—they’d worked so hard to build a habitable home in the jungle—Jones snarled that if they didn’t want to go to Russia, they could go back to America and the clutches of all the Temple’s enemies there. And, if that’s what they chose, “You can swim. We won’t pay your fucking way.”

  Still, in case Russia didn’t come through as he believed he’d been promised, Jones slightly hedged his bet. Around the same time she met with Timofeyev, Sharon Amos sent another letter to Prime Minister Burnham, this one asking for suggestions about “how we [at Jonestown] can do better. . . . We may make mistakes as people who are learning a new way of living, but we certainly want to improve.” Amos also suggested to Ptolemy Reid that Jonestown might offer an additional benefit to the Guyanese national economy by becoming a tourist attraction: the settlers would create a man-made lake, stock it with fish, and also lead tourists on hunting expeditions.

  Even while Amos was proposing substantial settlement improvements, Jones considered adopting more primitive means of reducing the constant costs for equipment repair. He radioed office workers in the San Francisco temple to ask that they find books on “manufacturing [methods] of the 18th and 19th century.” In particular, he wondered whether horse-drawn plows might replace tractors.

  Some days it seemed that Jones was everywhere in the settlement, wandering the fields and exhorting everyone to work harder, yammering for hours over the Jonestown sound system during the day and then lecturing in the pavilion far into the night, and presiding over endless meetings of the various settlement committees that convened after everyone else was finally allowed to go to bed. He bragged about his stamina, and, sometimes in the same breath, complained about how his health suffered because he had to do everything himself. He was as much a constant presence for the settlers as the jungle itself, and, like their surroundings, alternately inspiring and disconcerting.

  There were times when Jones, at least in physical presence, disappeared for days, closed up in his cabin and attended only by Annie Moore, who became his personal nurse. Carolyn Layton, Maria Katsaris, and Jones’s grown sons knew that he was incapacitated by drugs, tranquilizing himself into a stupor and eventually chemically coaxing himself back to pseudo-coherence with amphetamines. At least for the present, Jones managed to keep himself relatively drug-free and lucid during visits to Jonestown by Guyanese officials and American diplomats. In between, he indulged himself with drugs, treats like soft drinks and sugary snacks, and also, sporadically, sex. By this point, Jim Jones Jr. recalls, Carolyn Layton was his father’s companion rather than bedmate. But Jones also expected other female followers to gratify him on demand. Like Marceline and Carolyn before her, Maria had to accept it.

  In California, Jones was able to indulge himself without the knowledge of most followers. In Jonestown it wasn’t possible. Jones had more privacy than anyone else, but the confines of the camp made it impossible for the settlers not to observe at least some of his carryings-on. The man who’d led them to believe he was a powerful god dripped with sweat, swelled from gluttony (Temple staff in San Francisco had to send new, larger shirts for Jones to disguise his bloated belly), and whined constantly about aches and pains—now the great healer apparently couldn’t heal himself or anyone else. Soon after Debbie Layton and her mother, Lisa, arrived in Guyana, a Georgetown doctor diagnosed Lisa with inoperable cancer. For decades, Jones had showily removed tumors from the apparently afflicted. In Jonestown, Lisa was simply made as comfortable as possible while she awaited death.

  Though most still believed in Jones as a leader, and as their spokesman against the racism, capitalism, and elitism that they all deplored, there was no longer, for most, any element of worship. “In Jonestown, after a while, Jim Jones lost his divinity,” Laura Johnston Kohl says. “Everyone saw too much.” Often, they heard too much. Jones’s cabin was connected by phone to the camp radio and loudspeaker system. When lying on his bed, not completely blacked out in a drug stupor, he would harangue the settlement and workers in the fields with incoherent barks and mumbling. One day, overwhelmed by hours of gibberish, radio operators in the communications shack switched off Jones’s phone, and everyone basked in the blessed silence.

  Many sympathized with him: if Dad was breaking down from stress, it was undoubtedly caused, at least to some degree, by followers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t follow rules and live as perfect socialists. With Jones so often incapacitated, they began disciplining themselves and telling Jones about it so that he would know they were trying very hard to live right, and perhaps he would feel a little better. One teenage girl, just returned to Jonestown after working for a while in Georgetown, admitted that while in the city she’d succumbed to temptation and had a drink. She confessed to Jones in a note, “I let you down. I feel that [as punishment] I should fast and I am gonna fast for 1 week. Not eating will sure discipline me.”

  And there were moments when Jones fleetingly reminded others of what had attracted them to him in the first place—his unabashed playfulness in starting spontaneous water fights out in the fields, or those increasingly rare evenings when, instead of railing against enemies or whining about how much he sacrificed for others, Jones spoke movingly about the need for compassion and equality, and why Jonestown must set an example for the rest of the world. Some Jonestown settlers had followed him for so long that they had long since given up thinking for themselves; dozens of younger followers had never known anything other than life in Peoples Temple and obedience to Jim Jones. Even those who otherwise had grave misgivings about their leader were in full agreement with his message that the outside world teemed with enemies.

  In particular, they mistrusted the American government and all of its agencies. On March 14, 1978, Jonestown settler Pam Moton, certainly with the blessing of Jones, wh
o had to personally approve any Temple missive, sent a blunt letter to all senators and members of Congress. It began, “We at Peoples Temple have been the subject of harassment by several agencies of the U.S. Government, and are rapidly reaching the point at which patience is exhausted.” According to Moton, the false claims of Temple defectors had instigated unfair actions by the Social Security administration, the IRS, the Treasury Department, and the FCC. The persecution had to stop: “People cannot forever be continually harassed and beleaguered . . . without seeking alternatives that have been presented. I can say without hesitation that we are devoted to a decision that it is better even to die than to be constantly harassed from one continent to the next. I hope you can look into this matter and protect the right of over 1,000 people from the U.S. to live in peace.”

  Thanks to Concerned Relatives, many senators and members of Congress were already aware of Peoples Temple, and not in any positive way. Moton’s chastising letter didn’t change any official opinions in Washington, but it did provide new impetus to Concerned Relatives’ effort to turn public opinion against the Temple and its leader. Innocent children lived in Jonestown, and helpless old people, undoubtedly individuals of all ages who wanted to get away, and here, in writing, was the promise that they would die if Peoples Temple wasn’t allowed to do whatever it wanted. Taken in that context, Moton’s letter threatened not mass suicide but murder, and in California, Tim Stoen and Concerned Relatives took full advantage.