The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  There was a subsection titled “A FINAL STAND IF DECIDED ON.” In it, Carolyn mused that, should Jones opt for the ultimate act, then the moment and method of group death was crucial. She wondered, “How will we have the knowledge to know now is the time to go ahead and do it? . . . Do you give everyone pills. . . . It would I presume have to be kind of a last minute thing.” Her fear was that a mass suicide would not be appreciated as a sincere and historic statement: “I know we can’t worry about how [what we do] will be interpreted . . . maybe in some 50 years someone will understand and perhaps be motivated. I don’t have much illusion about all that. I just hate to see it all go for naught.”

  Jones called the Temple offices at Lamaha Gardens and ordered the basketball team to return to Jonestown. They didn’t want to leave—their games so far against the Guyanese national team had resulted in losses, and they wanted at least one more try for a victory. Besides, they were having fun in the city. Jones insisted, and Stephan finally refused on behalf of the players. They were going to stay in Georgetown awhile longer. Jones was angry. He told Stephan that everyone on the team was to avoid Leo Ryan and anyone else who might be with him. Jones didn’t want a potential confrontation between Ryan and the Jonestown basketball players turned into scandalous headlines back in America.

  On November 13, Jones claimed that concern about Ryan had caused him to suffer through eight consecutive sleepless nights. He was more likely wide awake from amphetamine use. No matter what the reason, Jones was ill-tempered, uttering a constant series of threats against the congressman, whom he now considered almost as much an enemy as Tim Stoen: “If Ryan enters this community illegally, he will not leave alive. . . . I’d like to shoot his ass.” Jones was trailed everywhere by his bodyguards, all carrying their guns and becoming increasingly caught up in Jones’s violent mood.

  Richard Tropp thought it would be wise to prepare Jonestown for Ryan’s arrival. Jones might not want him there, but if cooler heads prevailed and the congressman and his entourage were allowed in, they might as well try to make a good impression. Tropp sent a memo to the leaders of the Jonestown committees, ordering all trash to be picked up, children’s art displayed that “reflect[ed] variety and creativity to counteract propaganda about our people being mind-programmed . . . our aim should not merely be to present a Clean and Neat Jonestown, and defend against the lies, but to EDUCATE this Congressman, to open his eyes to what we are doing here . . . no quiet, controlled set-up shit.” As the cleanup began, Marceline’s parents left Jonestown to begin their trip home to Indiana. Charlotte Baldwin signed the Jonestown guest book: “This is more than we could have imagined. So much has been accomplished in such a short time. The people so happy and well adjusted. Indeed, we hate to leave!”

  In California, Leo Ryan had a final meeting with Concerned Relatives and Jonestown defectors. He went over their allegations, deciding which would be best to raise with Guyanese officials, and whom he would try to talk to if he was allowed to enter Jonestown. He still expected to be refused.

  Tim Carter returned to Jonestown from California on Tuesday, November 14. That same day, Leo Ryan flew to Guyana. The congressman brought with him staff members Jackie Speier and James Schollaert. Nine members of the media came along: reporter Tim Reiterman and photographer Greg Robinson of the San Francisco Examiner; Ron Javers of the San Francisco Chronicle; producer Bob Flick, cameraman Bob Brown, sound technician Steve Sung, and reporter Don Harris of NBC; the Washington Post’s Charles Krause, and Gordon Lindsay of the National Enquirer, who hoped being part of Ryan’s media entourage might help him gain access to Jonestown on his second try. Concerned Relatives had its own contingent, all of whom had family members in Jonestown: Tim and Grace Stoen; Howard and Beverly Oliver; Steven Katsaris and his son Anthony; Sherwin Harris, the former husband of Sharon Amos and the father of Liane Harris, the oldest of her children; Nadyne Houston and her daughter Carol Houston Boyd; former Gang of Eight members Jim Cobb, Mickey Touchette, and Wayne Pietila; and Clare Bouquet. Though she had no relatives in Jonestown, Bonnie Burnham was also along; it was believed that her close friendship with Marceline might help ease tensions and convince Jones to cooperate. The relatives hoped that at least some of them might be admitted into Jonestown. But none of them knew what was going to happen next, only that whatever did would be determined by Jim Jones.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  FINAL DAYS

  On Wednesday evening, November 15, Temple staffers at Lamaha Gardens were startled to see a middle-aged man clambering over the cement block wall at the back of their yard. Congressman Leo Ryan arrived uninvited after enduring a long, frustrating day. Guyanese officials had made it clear they would not involve themselves in his visit. At the U.S. embassy in Georgetown, Ambassador John Burke told Ryan that he was on his own—on their trips to Jonestown, Burke and his people hadn’t see any signs of settlers being held against their will. Jones and his church might very well claim unlawful harassment if Ryan tried to bully them into letting him visit. Temple lawyers Charles Garry and Mark Lane were also in Georgetown, and Ryan’s initial meetings with them weren’t productive, either. The attorneys, speaking on behalf of Jim Jones, informed him that he was currently denied permission to enter Jonestown. Even if that changed, media and members of Concerned Relatives certainly wouldn’t be allowed access. Fed up with the hand-wringing and stonewalling, Ryan decided to spontaneously visit Lamaha Gardens and try his luck with the Temple members there.

  He didn’t have much. Sharon Amos told Ryan that he was trespassing on private property and asked him to leave. Ryan summoned his considerable personal charm, telling Amos that he was tired of negotiating through lawyers. He swore that he intended Jones and the Temple no harm. If everyone there was all right, and staying voluntarily, then their worried relatives could be assured of that, and the matter would finally be settled. He managed to speak to a few other Temple members in the house—Laura Johnston Kohl assured him that they, too, were “fine.” Amos relented just enough to say that Jones was ill and couldn’t see Ryan at the moment, leaving open the possibility that he eventually might. Ryan had to be content with that.

  The others who’d arrived in Guyana with Ryan had their own reasons for discontent. When they’d landed around midnight, Ryan and his two staffers were whisked off to stay as guests at the U.S. embassy. A few members of the media were told there were problems with their visas and they might soon be expelled. Ron Javers of the Chronicle was even taken into custody. When everyone else reached the Pegasus Hotel, they were told that there had been a problem with their reservations and no rooms were available. It took hours to find other accommodations; Georgetown had only a few hotels. Then everyone had to wait around all day, hoping Ryan would notify them that arrangements had been made and they would soon be on their way to Jonestown. He didn’t.

  In Jonestown, Jones soon learned who had come to Guyana with Ryan. That he’d brought along media was bad enough. Though members of Concerned Relatives had officially come separately from the congressman, paying their own way, not as guests of or collaborators with the U.S. government, to Jones they were all part of the same force of invaders. He was especially furious that Tim and Grace Stoen had come. He certainly wasn’t letting them into Jonestown. Ryan didn’t know that Garry and Lane were spending as much time arguing with Jones as with him. An uncomfortable visit was better than another controversy in the media, the lawyers told Jones. The press was in Guyana with Ryan. They were going to print and broadcast something—it might as well be that Jim Jones let the congressman come to Jonestown and talk with whomever he wanted. Some settlers might ask to leave—so what? What could they tell the reporters that would be any worse than the details in Debbie Layton’s affidavit?

  Jones was adamant: no visitors. He closed himself off in his cottage, communicating by phone to the Jonestown radio shack, which in turn connected him to the lawyers in Georgetown.

  The next day, as Ryan and the lawyers wrangled again, some of the Conc
erned Relatives contingent made their own visits to Lamaha Gardens. Bonnie Burnham and Clare Bouquet were both rebuffed. Sherwin Harris, whose twenty-one-year-old daughter, Liane, worked at Lamaha Gardens, was told that he might be able to see her sometime soon. Harris’s visit particularly upset Sharon Amos. Any contact with her ex-husband “really made her paranoid,” Tim Carter recalls. “If she’d been on edge before because of Ryan, having [Harris] there only made her worse.”

  That afternoon, Ambassador Burke agreed to meet with the Concerned Relatives, on the condition that the media was not included. It was an unsatisfactory session. Bonnie Burnham wrote later that, although the relatives poured out their hearts to the ambassador, “not a flicker of emotion showed in [Burke’s] eyes.” Before his guests left, Burke gave them copies of a press release stating, “The Embassy has no authority to require contacts between members of the People’s [sic] Temple and persons whom they do not wish to receive. The members of the Peoples Temple are protected by the Privacy Act of 1974, as are all American citizens.”

  Ryan and the Temple lawyers continued their negotiations all through Thursday and into Friday morning. The congressman took a harder line. During his visit to Lamaha Gardens, he said, “There was not a religious picture on the walls, there was no one saying prayers. I [did not hear] anyone mention God.” Perhaps, when he returned to Washington he would look into whether Peoples Temple really deserved tax-exempt status as a church. The threat gave Garry and Lane a new argument to use privately on Jones—there was more than bad publicity and the potential loss of a few settlers at stake. Jones didn’t entirely relent but did discuss possible parameters of a Ryan visit. If the congressman flew from Georgetown to Port Kaituma on Friday, stayed overnight to conduct interviews, and then left Saturday, Jones would be rid of him after perhaps twenty-four hours. Not even Ryan had suggested that the inspection visit last longer than that. Without consulting Lane and Garry, Jones decided that if Ryan did come, his stay must be even shorter. On Friday morning he sent Jim McElvane, Michael Prokes, and Johnny Brown to Port Kaituma with orders to use trees and brush to block the short, primitive runway. With Port Kaituma inaccessible by air, Ryan would have to fly instead to Matthews Ridge and take the train to Port Kaituma, a lengthy enough detour that would leave him only a few hours at best in Jonestown before returning to Georgetown on Saturday afternoon. The three men left to do Jones’s bidding, but returned a few hours later to report that they hadn’t been able to carry out his instructions. A Guyanese military plane had apparently broken down at the Port Kaituma airstrip, and a handful of soldiers were there guarding it. The Temple trio couldn’t deliberately block the runway in front of military witnesses. If Ryan did come, he could fly into Port Kaituma after all.

  Friday morning, Marceline involved herself in the negotiations. Jones was still closed up in his cottage. Marceline argued with him by phone from the Jonestown radio room, not caring that Tim and Mike Carter were also there and could hear everything. “She said that we should be proud of what we’d built, so let’s show [Ryan] what we have,” Tim Carter says. “Marceline really got mad at [Jones]. She said, ‘I’m the one who’s kept this together, not you.’ I’d been around them for years and I’d never heard her argue with him before. Marcie challenging him in front of anyone else was very, very different.” Marceline’s aggressive attitude made the difference, though Jones never agreed outright that Ryan could come. For years, no one had argued so vehemently with him. Now, his wife and his lawyers simply refused to accept his decision to keep Ryan out.

  Lane and Garry gave Ryan the go-ahead. They told him that he could bring along whomever he chose, but there was no guarantee that anyone other than the congressman would be allowed into Jonestown. Ryan took it as an indirect promise. He contacted Ambassador Burke and asked for help in acquiring the use of a plane to fly to Port Kaituma that afternoon, and to be on call to return Ryan and his party to Georgetown on Saturday afternoon. The plane needed to seat quite a few people—Ryan would bring staffer Jackie Speier, there were nine members of the media, and some of the Concerned Relatives wanted to go along on the chance that Jones might also admit them. The twin-engine Otter engaged by the embassy eventually held, along with its pilot, nineteen passengers—Ryan, Speier, the press, Lane and Garry, U.S. deputy chief of mission Richard Dwyer, Guyanese government information officer Neville Annibourne, and four of the Concerned Relatives: Beverly Oliver, Jim Cobb, Carol Boyd, and Anthony Katsaris. The plane took off from Georgetown about 2:30 p.m. Friday afternoon. During the hour-long flight, those who hadn’t flown over the Guyanese jungle before were disconcerted by its dense vastness. When the Otter jounced to a stop on the Port Kaituma airstrip, its deplaning passengers were greeted by several grim-looking Jonestown settlers. After conferring with them, Lane informed the others that only he, Garry, Ryan, Speier, and Dwyer could go by truck to Jonestown. The press and Concerned Relatives would have to wait in Port Kaituma; Lane and Garry promised they would keep trying to gain Jones’s permission for them to come.

  Marceline Jones greeted the first arrivals. Ryan declined an immediate Jonestown tour. He wanted to talk with Jim Jones. After almost ninety minutes Jones appeared, wearing his usual dark glasses. Ryan explained again that the best way to stop controversy about Jonestown as a possible prison camp was to let everyone back at Port Kaituma in. Jones agreed, with one exception, Gordon Lindsay of the National Enquirer. Ryan agreed, and the truck was sent back to the airstrip. Lindsay returned to Georgetown on the Otter, which was scheduled to pick up Ryan and the others in Port Kaituma on Saturday afternoon. Everyone else went to Jonestown.

  The settlers there had spent much of the day in frenzied preparation for the visit. The Jonestown kitchen worked extra shifts so the guests could enjoy fresh-baked bread and pastries. Paths were swept, bushes clipped, cottages cleaned—Jones intended making a positive impression. “Jonestown had never looked so good,” Tim Carter recalls. When everything was ready, Marceline Jones addressed the settlers by loudspeaker, reminding them “to be in peace.”

  While the others were fetched from Port Kaituma, Ryan and Jackie Speier began interviewing Temple members whose families had expressed concern for them. None made any complaint. They acted content, and their responses seemed reasonably spontaneous. The congressman and his aide found no immediate evidence to support allegations that anyone was being held prisoner in Jonestown.

  Jones met the second wave of arrivals at the pavilion. As night fell, dinner was served: pork, greens, potatoes, freshly baked biscuits. There was plenty of everything, which surprised some of the visitors and pleased all the settlers, many of whom remained uncomfortable with their guests but were grateful for full bellies. Afterward there was entertainment, with the Jonestown band performing at its best and some settlers singing solos. During part of the show, Jones sat to one side and allowed the reporters to ask questions. He seemed coherent but a little shaky. Jones mused that he might, someday, return to America, and called over John Victor. He pointed out how much the child resembled him. When Jones asked the little boy if he wanted to go back and live with Grace, John Victor simply said, “No.”

  Earlier in the day, Jack Beam suggested to Jones that Leo Ryan be asked to say a few words to the settlers after dinner. Jones had been noncommittal, but now when Beam asked again Jones agreed. Ryan was in fine fettle. He was in Jonestown, the NBC camera crew was filming everything, and at least so far the experience was reasonably pleasant. Ryan had been a politician for years and a schoolteacher before that. He knew how to gauge the mood of an audience—this one was hospitable but suspicious. He told them that he had come, “as all of you know,” to conduct a congressional inquiry. “But I can tell you right now that from the conversations I’ve had with a few other folks here already this evening, that whatever the [allegations] are, there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing that’s ever happened to them in their whole life.” The crowd rose as one and roared in approval. Ryan joked, “Too bad you all can�
��t vote in San Mateo County,” his congressional district, and everyone laughed when Jack Beam bellowed, “By proxy!”

  Jones had an announcement. That night in Georgetown, the Jonestown basketball team had played another game against the Guyanese national squad. They’d lost this game, too, but by only ten points, and proudly radioed the news to the settlement, where the information was passed along to Jones at the pavilion. Jones couldn’t resist exaggerating. He reported that the Jonestown team had walloped the Guyanese by ten points, and the crowd cheered again.

  There was more music, and the program concluded. The members of the media had assumed they would spend the night in Jonestown, and were unhappy when told that there was no room for them. Jim Cobb and Anthony Katsaris, the two male representatives of the Concerned Relatives, and Neville Annibourne, the Guyanese government official, were told the same thing. They would have to stay in Port Kaituma. A Temple truck drove them back to town, and the driver promised he would fetch them in the morning. Members of the NBC television crew seemed preoccupied with something. Sensing a scoop, Don Harris hadn’t immediately told the other reporters that, during the evening’s festivities, a man had passed him a note that read, “Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby: Please help us get out of Jonestown.” But one of the NBC crew gave the secret away, and the reporters passed much of the remaining night drinking in a Port Kaituma bar, wondering what would happen when Ryan tried acting on the request.

  Ryan already had a plan. Besides passing the note to Harris, Gosney whispered to Deputy Chief of Mission Dwyer that he and Bagby wanted to get out of Jonestown that night; Gosney feared that if anyone reported to Jones that he’d talked to Dwyer, the deputy chief wrote later in his official report, they “would be in extreme danger.” Dwyer told Gosney that he couldn’t take him away immediately—he and Ryan were staying in Jonestown overnight. But Dwyer promised Gosney that he and Bagby could come with the Ryan delegation when they left the next afternoon.