Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

  One Sunday at 11:00 A.M. in January of 1977, Marshall Kilduff walked into the labyrinth. By prearrangement, he passed through the iron-grille front gate and heavy wooden door to meet Dick Tropp—the Temple’s resident professor—and a black woman from the Housing Authority who took him and about ten other visitors on a standard Temple tour. After a while, Kilduff became aware that the other visitors, who kept asking benignly leading questions about the church’s good works, were Temple shills. Also, he noticed that, while the tour dragged on, about two thousand people were sitting in silence in the main auditorium, evidently waiting. Surely, he thought, they could not be holding up services for his sake. But they were.

  On being escorted to a seat near the front of the auditorium, Kilduff discovered his own boss, Chronicle city editor Steve Gavin, and Chronicle reporter Katy Butler among the congregation. As they exchanged greetings awkwardly, he felt intimidated. He was unaware that his own co-workers would be attending the Temple services. Actually, it was Gavin’s first visit, Butler’s second. Kilduff, now decidedly uncomfortable, witnessed a service complete with testimonies, entertainment and a question-and-answer period in which Jones spoke against investments in South Africa.

  The next day at the Chronicle Kilduff remarked to Gavin, “Quite a show. Don’t you think we should do a story about this guy? I hear he’s powerful politically.”

  “We’ve already done it,” the city editor said, mentioning the Julie Smith article.

  “That’s right,” Kilduff agreed, concluding that the Chronicle would not accept another story unless he could find something entirely new. But rather than dropping it, he decided to consider doing the piece free-lance, for a magazine. In digging deeper, he found strong opinions —opposition from some black ministers, approval from some community organizations that received Temple donations. One Communist party member said she and Angela Davis had misgivings about Jones’s total discipline approach. Some applauded the Temple’s radical Christianity; others voiced suspicions or talked of the humiliation of being pat-searched upon entering the Temple. Oddly enough, most did not want to be quoted.

  In the meantime, Kilduff continued to gather personal impressions at the twice-monthly Housing Authority meetings. Jones stationed his aides near Kilduff and other newspaper reporters. The spies were so obvious about eavesdropping and peeking at their notes that the reporters were amused.

  The Temple, worried about Kilduff’s story, checked with friends and contacts at the Chronicle for an assessment of the reporter and his work. Eventually, they went through his garbage at home, looking for clues, and followed him around town, even to bars. They concluded that Kilduff, a San Francisco native and a Stanford University graduate, intended to vilify them because he was politically more conservative than the Temple and had never warmed to Jones.

  The January issue of Peoples Forum alluded to Kilduff’s research as an upcoming “attempt to ‘smear’ our human service work.” And in March 1977 the Temple spread an editorial across the second page explaining their rationale for barring reporters from the Temple, refusing to grant interviews with Jones and opposing any article on the church. “The number of interested reporters is becoming overwhelming and ... is disrupting our work,” the editorial claimed.

  What reporters might see at the Temple was of less consequence than what they might hear from defectors. And the worst potential defector from Jones’s standpoint was Grace Stoen. Though drifting toward open opposition, she did not yet know that Kilduff was looking for people like her to interview.

  In a sense, Grace Stoen already had declared war. On February 1, 1977, in a phone conversation with her estranged husband, she cast off past caution, graphically detailing her reasons for leaving and vowing her determination to wrest her son John away from the Temple. She wanted John Victor to live in San Francisco so she could at least have visitation rights. Instead Tim Stoen suggested she visit her son in South America. She commented sarcastically, “We don’t have millions of dollars like some people.” Then she complained, “He’s not with his mother or father.... Why won’t you let me see my little boy?”

  In defending himself, Stoen parroted Jones’s excuses. He said John was destined for a leadership role not just in the church but in the world. It was as though the five-year-old were heir to a throne.

  Grace insisted that John be brought to San Francisco, where he could make a free choice between the Temple or her. Stoen in turn reminded her that she had once—while still in the Temple—granted permission for John to go to Guyana.

  In a subsequent conversation with Jones, she asked whether John would be coming back to the States. Jones postured helplessness and answered as though the decision rested in the child’s hands: “You never know what a little guy will want to do.” He then made it sound as though Grace had endorsed the move to Guyana: “I think it was wise on everybody’s part—yours, too—to allow it to take place.”

  Given his other documentation, Jones hoped to build a case that both legal parents had granted permission to have the child transported to Jonestown, thus insulating himself against charges of child stealing. In one undated document, Grace had written: “I gave my full permission to have my son, John Victor Stoen, go to the Promised Land for any reason.” There were similar 1976 documents bearing her and/or Tim’s signatures. In the most recent, dated September 30, 1976, during Grace’s efforts to get John, Tim had named Jim Jones, Joyce Touchette and five other Temple members as his attorneys: “I specifically authorize ... them to apply for passports or other travel documents on said minor’s behalf; arrange for said minor to travel ... out of the country....”

  At first, Grace Stoen had hesitated to seek a court order for John’s return because she feared the Temple would hide the boy in Guyana, then claim no knowledge of his whereabouts. But now it looked as if all hope of reaching an out-of-court settlement had been destroyed. In February 1977, she threatened to file for divorce, and then did it.

  The battle had escalated. Jones realized that Grace, as mother, would likely win any custody dispute in court, and that Stoen would be held in contempt if he failed to surrender the child. A contempt citation in the San Francisco district attorney’s office would expose the paternity dispute to the public and fire up press interest. So Jones ordered Stoen to take a leave of absence from his job and hide out in Guyana.

  After the voter fraud prosecutions, Stoen had moved over to the district attorney’s special prosecutions unit. Now, in the middle of his first case, he called in two investigators: “Hate to do this to you,” he apologized, then explained that his international law practice demanded that he take a leave of absence for business in London and South America. The investigators, who were not particularly happy to see their prosecutor leaving, were then asked a final favor: could they please take some of Stoen’s packed belongings to his friend Billy Hunter’s office for safekeeping? Stoen entrusted a trunk and a couple of boxes of personal things and papers to William Hunter, a black prosecutor who was about to be appointed U.S. Attorney in San Francisco. Stoen planned to send for the belongings when he needed them.

  In mid-February 1977, just a few months after escorting Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally to Jonestown, Stoen boarded a plane for his new home. Unlike other settlers, however, he kept himself means of escape. Before leaving San Francisco, he obtained a new passport and had his father begin to set up private bank accounts for him in Colorado.

  Did he want the passport as a backup in case the Temple confiscated his old one? Was he simply trying to preserve his personal options, his freedom of movement? Was he guilt-ridden over his complicity in the exile of John and actually trying to rescue the boy, as he later would claim? Or was he simply preparing a quick escape route for himself in case the Kilduff investigation proved particularly damaging?

  These very questions quickly came to preoccupy Jones. Just after Stoen left San Francisco, Jones intercepted a letter from Tim’s father along with checks from his new Colorado bank account. “Dear Tim,
We followed your instructions.... Your savings book came today. You did not say when you were leaving so hope this reaches you in time. Were photos all right? ... Love, Dad.” The letter was dated February 16—the very day Stoen had left for Guyana. To Jones, these unauthorized bank accounts spelled disloyalty at the least and possibly desertion. In a frenzy, he immediately arranged to fly to Guyana with several aides.

  Stoen, working in the sawmill at the time, had caught sight of Jones’s chartered plane as it passed over the settlement. A short time later, he found himself being taken to a cabin for interrogation. Jones did not seem at all worried about Stoen skipping out with millions of dollars from the Temple accounts he had set up. He accused Stoen of plotting to kidnap John Victor. Stoen denied it. The personal bank accounts were aberrations, remnants of his irrepressible materialism, the lawyer said. Eventually Jones appeared to accept this story, though in private he told Mike Touchette to make sure that Stoen did not take the boy out of the camp. He then left.

  Touchette would not have allowed Stoen to snatch John Victor anyway. As John’s “big brother” in Jonestown, he felt the last thing the boy needed was another emotional wrenching. From Touchette’s perspective, the boy had been kicked around all his life, from Grace to Maria and now to Mike’s own mother, Joyce. Like Jim Jones as a child, John Victor craved attention and affection. His dark eyes glimmered every time someone showed him love. He had been confused and used, turned gradually against his traitor mother, told that she was a “capitalistic whore bitch.” Tim, on the other hand, despite the paternity question, was held high in the boy’s esteem—as his “second dad,” behind Father Jim. Perhaps it was less a biological than an organizational distinction.

  Thinking he had outsmarted Jones, Stoen worked nearly fourteen hours a day in the Jonestown sawmill so that no one could accuse him of being an elitist. He knew his fellow settlers were scrutinizing his own conduct and were guarding John. They found Stoen’s nice-guy demeanor suspect, and did not appreciate his complaints about back pains or his tortured faces. Some were relieved when his output tapered off and he was assigned to do paperwork.

  Despite Jones’s concerns that Stoen might nab John, some settlers felt Stoen neglected the boy, and that John’s feelings were hurt. In his delicate position, Stoen really could not win. He did set aside time each day to be with John, to help him with studies. He sat with him during meetings or entertainment, though he was circumspect about showing his feelings in public. In the bunkhouse one day, however, he told John that he was so proud of him that he had written someone a letter praising him. John leaned back in his bunk, hands behind his head, and said like a true egalitarian, “Ya know, you shouldn’t brag about your kid.”

  After almost a month in the jungle, Stoen had written a postcard to attorney Gene Chaikin, who was then in the States: “I am really enjoying Guyana. People are so considerate and helpful.... My son, John Victor, is with me and doing great. He can read, has developed motor coordination and ... is happy as a lark.”

  When Stoen mailed the postcard about March 18, he had already moved to Georgetown to do legal work. He set up meetings with the deputy prime minister and the ministry of home affairs, did legal research at Georgetown libraries and wrote the University of West Indies in Trinidad, asking how to obtain a law license for the Caribbean. But, at the same time, he drew up another agenda. He felt a growing need to get away. He needed to think about the future, and perhaps return to California to see his latest love, a nonmember.

  On March 13, he drafted a tentative travel schedule and the message he apparently wanted to be left behind him: “I have gone to States [with my] own money. Am planning to return to teach at Univ. [of Guyana] end of Sept. Am in love with a black woman—must see her and handle on own. Will call before entering Calif.”

  Stoen’s escape took a different form than originally planned. On Sunday, March 20, the Temple issued him $147 Guyanese for travel to explore admission to the Caribbean bar and to tend to other legal business. According to entries in his trip log, he stopped in Barbados Monday, Trinidad Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday, still in Port of Spain, he took a taxi to the law school to see about being admitted to practice. The last entry: a milkshake at the Port of Spain Holiday Inn. Tim Stoen then vanished.

  Two days later, a telegram arrived at the Peoples Temple house in Georgetown: “Must stay nine more days. Due Timehri [Georgetown airport] 2 April 1905 British Airways ... Timothy.”

  The telegram panicked the Georgetown Temple staff. Immediately they began calling hotels and guest houses in Port of Spain. Finding no trace of Stoen, they transmitted the news to San Francisco. Word reached Jones. At the conclusion of a Housing Authority meeting that day, with his guards huddled around him and in full view of reporters, Jones suddenly crumpled to the floor.46 As aides helped him to his feet and a commission member checked his pulse, an Examiner reporter asked guard Chris Lewis: “What happened?”

  “He works day and night,” Lewis said. “He attends conferences and counsels drug addicts.”

  As an aside Marshall Kilduff commented: “He pulls it all the time.” In fact, this collapse might well have been planned, even though loss of Stoen—even temporarily—would traumatize Jones. Real or not, the public fainting spell created an excuse for Jones’s own absence from upcoming Housing Authority meetings. It allowed Jones to slip out of town unnoticed the next day.

  While their pastor flew to Guyana, Temple members were assigned to find Stoen. Two of them went to the district attorney’s office and learned that Stoen, without letting on that he was secretly fleeing the church, had recently sent word to prosecutor Billy Hunter, asking that his baggage be sent on to London. Thinking fast, they volunteered to take care of shipping the belongings themselves. Hunter accepted the offer.

  Sandy Bradshaw and Mike Prokes loaded the baggage aboard an eastbound jet and boarded the same flight. At the end, they deduced, they would find Stoen. In London, however, they waited hours and hours in the baggage claim area. No sign of Stoen. After a long flight and a sleepless night, they were exhausted. Had their quarry avoided the trap?

  Several days earlier, Stoen had checked into the London Musical Club, a sedate place where he could listen to classical music, relax and sort out his life. Like other vacillators, he felt he needed pampering and peace from the years of crisis. He bought tickets to plays, planned to set up jazz piano lessons, took long therapeutic walks and neatly jotted it all in his diary. He felt free at last on the streets of London.

  Then, on Monday, March 29, after doing his laundry, he called the airport and found that his baggage had arrived. The next day, he went to pick it up.

  In the airport cargo area, he was startled by Prokes and Bradshaw; he had not expected to be tracked down in London. His decidedly unfriendly pursuers made it clear that Jones believed Stoen was defecting; their orders were to bring him back. When Stoen balked, Bradshaw and Prokes told him, falsely, that Chris Lewis was waiting outside. Stoen finally agreed to call Jones, who was in Guyana.

  On the phone, Jones’s approach was to bribe Stoen into staying. “What do you want to convince you to stay with us?”

  “I want women and jazz,” Stoen replied.

  “We’ll buy the Holiday Inn in Grenada, and you can run it as a socialist convention center,” said Jones. He always had said that everyone had his price.

  Hotel or no hotel, Stoen finally agreed to return to Guyana to assist Jones in legal matters. But first he wanted to stay in London for a few days to see a Shakespeare play.

  “Do you realize Shakespeare was a homosexual?” Jones retorted.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Stoen snapped.

  While Prokes returned to the United States, Sandy Bradshaw stayed behind to make sure Stoen boarded a plane for Guyana soon. Though Bradshaw despised Stoen, they made the best of their time together. They dined out and saw Julius Caesar, which Stoen followed in a book. On April 3, they went to Heathrow Airport together. But Bradshaw stopped outside
the British Airways passenger gate as Stoen boarded the plane for Guyana. He looked back, surprise on his face. She had led him to believe that she would be going to Georgetown with him. Instead, she took a flight back to the United States, her mission nicely accomplished.

  When Stoen landed, Jones and his aides exerted unrelenting pressure on him. They desperately wanted him to stay, though they would never completely trust him again; he knew too much to be let go. To reinforce his pleas, Jones suffered a “heart attack” or collapse almost every evening. Teri Buford and Carolyn Layton kept pleading with Stoen: “Jim will die unless you commit your life to the cause.” But it was Jones himself who finally brought his majordomo into line one day as they strolled nearby along Third Street, airing their feelings. Stoen said he believed in Temple teachings but found the authoritarianism hard on him. The warm, loving environment with talent shows and camping trips had dissolved, he said, and now a life-or-death seriousness tinged everything about the church. As they walked, Jones stopped to gesture at some fruit trees in a yard. “Tim,” he said with utter sincerity, “I don’t think anyone in the world has a right to enjoy that fruit until everyone has.” That appeal to his socialistic instincts touched a chord in Stoen’s heart. He agreed to rededicate himself to the cause.

  Stoen bore close watching, but he was too valuable now to be put on a Jonestown sawmill crew. The focal point of Temple activity was finally shifting to Guyana after two years of preparation. As Jones and his chief lieutenants converged on the country, the Jonestown administrators were called into the Guyanese capital for meetings at 41 Lamaha Gardens, a spacious house recently purchased in an attractive section of town.

  In recent weeks, Jones had decided to move the church yet again. The pressure in the United States was too much for him—or rather the prospect of what might be revealed was. One day about this time, he paced the house, obsessed with the Kilduff article, certain that it would be negative and destructive. Suddenly, he stopped his railing and turned to Mike Touchette: “What do you think about moving a lot of people down here quickly?”