The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Stoen and Steven Katsaris served as primary drafters of a forty-eight-page document titled “Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones Against Our Children and Relatives at the Peoples Temple Jungle Encampment in Guyana, South America.” Signed by twenty-five self-described “grief-stricken parents and relatives of thirty-seven persons in Jonestown,” the document was a clever hybrid of testimony by members of Concerned Relatives and detailed descriptions of specific horrors supposedly taking place in Jonestown. The horrors were also conveniently listed in a series of bullet points for those who wanted the gist without too many details. A “decision to die” excerpt from Pam Moton’s March 14 letter to Congress was the most damning material.

  On April 11, with friends and media invited along, the Concerned Relatives marched to Peoples Temple in San Francisco, stopped outside the chain-link fence surrounding the property, and demanded to see whoever was in charge. Hue Fortson emerged, followed by a few other staffers. Fortson wouldn’t let these visitors inside, but he did accept a copy of their accusation. Afterward, Concerned Relatives circulated flyers that summarized their accusations to the public and media and explained that those wanting to help could write to Guyanese prime minister Forbes Burnham and U.S. secretary of state Cyrus Vance, whose mailing addresses were included.

  Besides attempting to attract attention and rally support, the manifesto and the flyers were intended as provocation, a means of goading Jones, increasing the pressure on him. It worked. Fortson immediately radioed Guyana, and within hours Jones proclaimed another White Night. Invective rather than faux poison was featured this time. Jones first railed against Fortson for accepting the Concerned Relatives’ document, then turned his wrath on Tim and Grace Stoen who, he promised, would have “their brains blown out” if they ever dared come to Jonestown.

  Within days, Prime Minister Burnham’s office received a copy of the “Accusation” from Concerned Relatives. Jones learned of this from his sources in the government, most likely Ambassador Bonny Mann. It was always Jones’s way to immediately strike back. A week after Concerned Relatives made their visit to the San Francisco temple, Harriet Tropp in Jonestown read an official response to the media listening on a ham radio patch in Charles Garry’s San Francisco office. Tropp had become an important figure in Jonestown, not only for her exceptional intellect and organizational skills but because she was one of the few who dared directly criticize Jones. At one point in early March 1978, wearied of Jones’s constant complaints about disorganization in every aspect of settlement administration, Tropp fired off a blunt memo to her leader: “I think the essence of [our] problem, or at least one aspect of it, is that no one is willing to oppose your opinion in certain matters, and I frankly think that sometimes you are wrong, and no one is willing to say so.” She was equally forthright at one evening gathering when Jones asked Jonestown women to explain—in writing—why they found him attractive. Tropp wrote that she didn’t: “You are 47 and fat.” But even then, she reiterated her devotion to the cause and willingness to lose her life for it, adding, “I don’t have romantic illusions. They say the greatest orgasm is death, so I hope we have the great pleasure of dying together.”

  Now Jones wanted Tropp to explain Moton’s March 14 letter in such a way that the press would not understand it as a vow of imminent mass suicide. In her radio transmission, she first impugned the motives of the Concerned Relatives, then described the Temple’s successful efforts to provide “a constructive presence” overseas. Only then did she address Moton’s letter:

  If people cannot appreciate [our] willingness to die, if necessary, rather than to compromise the right to exist free from harassment and the kind of indignities that we have been subjected to, then they can never understand the integrity, honesty, and bravery of Peoples Temple, nor the type of commitment of Jim Jones and the principles he has struggled for all his life. It is not our purpose to die. We believe deeply in the celebration of life. It is the intention of Jim Jones, and has always been, to light candles rather than curse the darkness, to find and implement constructive solutions rather than merely complain about problems. But under these outrageous attacks, we have decided to defend the integrity of our community and our pledge to do this. We are confident that people of conscience and principle understand our position. We make no apologies for it.

  The next day, the temple in San Francisco released a printed transcript of Tropp’s broadcast. Though it had little real effect—negative stories about Jones and the Temple continued appearing in Bay Area newspapers with the exception of black community papers published by Carlton Goodlett—Jones felt that he and the Temple had at least responded. Back in Jonestown, he described a new potential action if Jonestown was invaded: surviving settlers could collaborate with Amerindians to escape to Peru. Meanwhile, from that moment forward no one was to leave “the bounds of the [settlement]” and go even a few steps into the jungle without Jones’s permission.

  Jones hoped to raise settlement spirits with progress reports about relocation to Russia, but there was no progress. At the Soviet embassy in Georgetown, Feodor Timofeyev responded to Sharon Amos’s impatient inquiries by telling her that after passing along the Temple letter to Moscow there was nothing more he could do until he received a reply. Prospects looked brighter on April 16, when a reporter from the Soviet news agency TASS visited Jonestown and was given an elaborate guided tour. At the end of his day there, the reporter wrote, “It’s very very impressive” in the settlement guest book, but afterward no story was published. Edith Roller noted in her journal that the only question the TASS reporter asked was, “Where are the TV sets?” Amos pressed Timofeyev to visit Jonestown, too, and, though he promised that he would, his duties in Georgetown always seemed to postpone the trip.

  On May 10, U.S. consul Richard McCoy came from Georgetown on a Jonestown inspection trip. As usual, he was escorted around and allowed to meet with whomever he requested. Afterward McCoy noted in his official report that “in general, people appear healthy, adequately fed and housed, and satisfied with their lives on what is a large farm.” But such government departmental memos were no effective counter to the active publicity efforts of Concerned Relatives. Jones decided that positive reports from relatives of Jonestown settlers were needed. Carolyn Layton wrote to her parents, urging them to come to Jonestown for a visit. Rev. John V. Moore remembers, “Barbara [Moore] and I were uncomfortable with some of the things [Jones] did, but we wanted to be affirming of the people of the Temple and our daughters. Also, we wanted to see our grandson [Kimo].” The Moores were met at the Georgetown airport by Debbie Layton, an especially poor choice to greet them. As a rebellious teen, Debbie had spent a portion of her high school years living with the Moores, who at the time were her brother Larry’s in-laws through his marriage to their daughter Carolyn. While she was their guest, Reverend Moore recalls, Debbie caused so much trouble that they eventually sent her back to her parents. When she welcomed the Moores to Guyana, they felt uncomfortable. The Moores were taken to Jonestown, enjoyed time with Carolyn, Annie, and Kimo, and suffered through occasional short visits with Jones, who, Moore says, “seemed distressed, even to an extent disoriented.”

  Jones had good reason. Usually, he invented crises to create apprehension among settlers and test their loyalty to him, but this time the problem was real. Shortly after turning over the Moores to others for transport to Jonestown, Debbie Layton went to the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, where she requested protection and help returning to America. She signed a short statement claiming Jones planned a mass suicide in Jonestown and, after some false starts that included a brief return to the Temple house in Lamaha Gardens and phone conversations with Temple members who’d learned that she planned to defect, she eventually flew out to New York accompanied by Consul McCoy.

  Besides Jones, only a few others—Carolyn Layton, Maria Katsaris, Terri Buford—knew as much about Temple finances as Debbie Layton. That alone made her defection dangerous, but th
ere was also the strong suspicion that she would eagerly cooperate with Concerned Relatives and add to the damaging public charges they continued making against Jones and the Temple. Once again, Jones convened an emergency pavilion meeting, where he announced that someone he wouldn’t name had defected, a person who might prove even more dangerous than Tim Stoen. Settlement security would be tightened. Because there were guests—the Moores, who were not at the pavilion—no other immediate action would be taken. Almost everyone guessed the defector was Debbie Layton. She had been unpopular with many settlers; Jones loyalists were not surprised by this betrayal of Dad. After dismissing his followers, Jones did make an additional order: Larry Layton, who had remained in California, must immediately be brought to Jonestown, hopefully before he learned what his sister had done: “If he knows, he might leave with her. Get him here by any means, including drugging.” When Layton arrived in Jonestown, he learned for the first time that not only had his sister defected, his mother, Lisa, was dying of cancer.

  The Moores stayed in Jonestown for a few days. At a meal they shared with Jones, Carolyn, Annie, and a few other Jonestown leaders, Jones ranted about conspiracies. Moore was struck by how quickly the others picked up on Jones’s complaints and added their own: “They fed each other’s fears. There seemed to be no objective voice questioning the reality of those fears. Jim went on and on, and they agreed with everything and encouraged him to say more.” After returning to America, Reverend Moore wrote to his daughters, suggesting that “[you] keep in communication with people of different views than yours.”

  By this time, Marceline Jones rarely spoke in person to her husband. She had deliberately kept out of sight during the Jonestown visit by the Moores, fearing her presence would make Carolyn’s parents uncomfortable. On May 15, after Debbie Layton’s defection and the Moores’ departure, she left a note for Jones, urging him to leave Guyana (apparently for Russia) while he could, with the settlement children “if some asylum could be arranged” and also “adults of your choosing.” She, along with Larry Schacht, would remain with followers who were too old and weak to relocate: “I’ve lived long enough. . . . I promise—I [would] do all I can to relieve all here of their suffering.” Confident that at least Stephan, Lew, Tim, and Jimmy were secure as part of their father’s inner council, Marceline added, “I do not ask for the lives of my children if you think them unworthy.” She was undoubtedly thinking of Agnes, who lived in Jonestown but was not part of Jones’s immediate family circle. Marceline concluded, “I do implore you to allow me to do this. It would be my pleasure.”

  That same day, Tim Stoen and Steven Katsaris launched a new courtroom attack on Jones and the Temple in Mendocino County Superior Court, a $15 million libel suit against Jones “and his agents” for Maria Katsaris’s allegations that her father had sexually molested her. Stoen didn’t stop there. Over the next five weeks he filed two additional lawsuits; one for $18.5 million on behalf of elderly Wade and Mabel Medlock, who claimed the Temple had bilked them of all their property, and one for $22.9 million on behalf of Gang of Eight member Jim Cobb for libelous comments and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.” Defending himself against the lawsuits would obligate Jones to return to America and appear in court, which in turn would make him liable to arrest for ignoring previous court orders to turn over John Victor Stoen—now called “John Jones” in Jonestown—to his mother. If Jones didn’t contest the suits, the resulting adverse court decisions would trigger a new round of bad publicity. At the same time, Stoen sent a private message to Jones, telling Temple member Walter Duncan, who was about to go to Jonestown, that “if Jim Jones was smart, then he would return John Stoen to me and then I would get off his back.”

  Jones had no intention of doing that. Besides the possibility that surrendering custody of John Victor would trigger the loss of many other Jonestown children, he remained adamant that the child was his. So long as the Guyanese courts failed to act, Jones felt that he and John Victor were safe in Jonestown. Charles Garry was ordered to initiate delaying actions on the three new lawsuits—these included a $150 million Temple lawsuit against Stoen. With luck, Jones, the child, and everyone else in Jonestown would relocate to Russia soon, and then Stoen, if he dared, could try his luck with the notoriously intransigent Soviet courts.

  But for much of June, concerns about Tim Stoen were secondary to panic over Debbie Layton, who hadn’t been heard from or of since her defection a month earlier. Now it became apparent that she’d been busy in the interim, meeting with State Department officials, the media, and Concerned Relatives. Supported by lawyer Jeffrey Haas—the same attorney who represented Grace Stoen in her fight to gain custody of John Victor—Debbie Layton supplied authorities and reporters with an eleven-page affidavit that revealed all she knew about unsavory aspects of Peoples Temple and Jones. She not only supplied specific numbers (over $65,000 in monthly Social Security checks received by Jonestown elderly) but also revealing details about work hours, poor nutrition, and the potential for “mass suicide,” including the White Night of February 16, when Jones tricked everyone into thinking they were committing suicide by drinking poison.

  The affidavit was provided to reporters, who pounced. The June 15 San Francisco Chronicle headline read “Grim Report from Jungle,” and the lengthy article was accompanied by an equally large photograph of Debbie Layton. Many readers might not have paid much attention to the claims of a defector like Leon Broussard, who was overweight and black, but Debbie Layton was young, white, and extremely attractive. Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff, who’d cowritten the Temple exposé in New West that drove Jones from San Francisco to Guyana, was careful to provide a few balancing comments from Lisa and Larry Layton, who spoke to him by ham radio from Jonestown. Lisa Layton said her daughter’s lies were “too ridiculous to refute.” Larry Layton simply stated, “We are treated beautifully.” Jones was not available for comment. Kilduff concluded the article with Debbie Layton’s claims that Temple bank accounts in Europe, California, and Guyana totaled “at least $10 million.”

  Jones was determined that there would be no more defections by his most trusted confidants or anyone else. He told the other settlers that Debbie Layton left Jonestown only after stealing at least $15,000, and that she was “actively helping the conspiracy” against them. He used cancer-riddled Lisa Layton to try to lure her daughter back, with letters intended to elicit guilt (“I have been in intensive care . . . after I heard you left and how you left. Actually what you have done is worrying me into the grave”) and offering forgiveness (“People have left before and been returned and were lovingly received by Jim and all the rest of us”). But along with Tim Stoen, Debbie Layton called other former Temple members, trying to rally them to the anti-Jones cause. John and Barbara Moore were contacted by both and urged to join the Concerned Relatives in an effort to rescue their daughters and grandson. Reverend Moore firmly declined: “Our previous encounters with Tim Stoen and Debbie Layton had not been in any way positive. We did not trust them.”

  Jones no longer trusted anyone with the exceptions of Carolyn, Maria, and, to a limited extent, his grown sons. Jimmy was about to marry his girlfriend, Yvette. The young couple planned to attend medical school together. But Jones had other ideas. Jimmy would move to Georgetown and serve as his primary ambassador there. Jimmy, who never liked life in the jungle, was glad to go until he learned that Yvette had to stay in Jonestown. “That began turning me against my dad. Then what really got me was, once after I went to Georgetown I had to come back with somebody [from the Guyanese government] who wanted to do an inspection, and also talk to Jim. We get there, and no Jim. I go to his [cottage], and he’s lying there passed out from drugs. So here I am, dragging my father into the shower and standing in there with him, trying to get him in shape to go out and talk to the guest.” As Jones’s already heavy drug use increased, leaving him frequently incapacitated, Carolyn Layton and Maria Katsaris gradually assumed de facto leadership of Jonestown. While
the two women issued orders in Jones’s name, Annie Moore spent much of her time at Jones’s side, administering drugs and monitoring his vital signs. While her older sister had long since related to Jones only as a human, and a flawed, if gifted, one at that, Annie still worshipped him and resented any demands on her time and nursing skills that took her away from his side. One afternoon when Annie was called away, she left a note by Jones’s bedside: “I would rather be around you than anyone else in the world. . . . You have given everything to me so anything I can do for you is only right.” Annie became extremely protective of Jones and suspected several others in camp of conspiring against him. “Before [mid-1978] Annie had been sweet, but then she turned into a bitch,” Jim Jones Jr. remembers. “She became one of the ones who would do anything [Jones] wanted just as soon as he said it.”

  Others did not. For the first time, some of Jones’s followers began ignoring his more unreasonable commands. “One night I guess he’d been up imagining something bad, and he radioed me in Georgetown well past midnight,” Tim Carter says. “He told me to call a [Guyanese] minister right away with some message. I said the man would still be asleep and [Jones] said he didn’t care, just call him. I didn’t. I thought the next day Jones would have forgotten all about it, and that’s what happened. I wasn’t the only one who did that.”

  Jones began relying on drugs not only for personal relief from stress, but to control certain followers. A hut was designated “the Extended Care Unit,” where settlers demonstrating any worrisome behavior—complaining too much, acting especially tense—were confined and heavily sedated. Gene Chaikin left Jonestown without permission, hiding out temporarily in Trinidad with the intention of defecting permanently. But he left his wife, Phyllis, and their two children behind, and made the mistake of writing Jones a long letter explaining why he had left—general disenchantment, he said—and asking that his family be allowed to join him. Phyllis remained fiercely loyal to Jones. At her request, Gene came back to Jonestown to speak with her. He was held by members of Jones’s security team, drugged, and placed for a time in the Extended Care Unit. Afterward, he resumed his previous place as a legal advisor, but was drugged and confined again any time there were visitors in the settlement, for fear he might approach them for help in a second escape attempt. Often, Chaikin had no idea that he was being drugged. Maria Katsaris would sometimes serve him cheese sandwiches laced with barbiturates. They were such a rare treat that Chaikin apparently never associated them with his stints in confinement.