Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

  Partak was terrified by the torrent of verbal abuse. He could barely get an answer out, but when he did, it came from the gut. “I, uh, don’t like the structure.”

  “I don’t give a fuck what you don’t like,” Jones cried, defying Partak to desert them all. “Want to go now? Just say so. We got a path. We’ll send you. YOU WANT TO LEAVE TONIGHT?”

  “No, Father.”

  “You miserable goddamn person. If you don’t have any compassion on me ... I’ve lost my mother. You miserable, goddamn, self-centered son of a bitch.” Jones began striking him and sobbing at the same time. Then his sobs turned again to shrieks. “I’m gonna give you more and more. You’re gonna stay awake twenty-four hours. You’re gonna be crazy. Goddamn you.”

  There were cheers all around.

  “One of my black sons [Chris Lewis] just died, was shot for the likes of you. I’ve dealt with your insanity for the last time. I don’t give a shit what you do. You can commit suicide and come back a goddamn fishworm. Let the fish eat you. See if I give a damn.”

  The session continued, with the crowd joining in the catharsis. People walked to the microphone to accuse Tom Partak of being a capitalist agent because he had been a private security guard, an exploiter of Third World people because he was white. One critic started thumping poor Partak, and Jones joined in.

  “You heap more pain on us,” Jones cried. “Is it not enough I lost my mother, a heroine of the faith, and a black son? How do you think I would have felt if I’d gone out there and found you wounded or dead?” Jones neatly turned the guilt around.

  “Sorry, Jim,” Partak said. “It was just completely selfish of me. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll work as hard as I can.”

  “It’s a rage of love that causes all this,” said Jones, excusing his own loss of temper. “Otherwise, every indulgent act would be endorsed. You understand that?”

  “Yeah,” Partak said, gratefully.

  “Son,” said Father. “Life is not going to appeal to you. But there are several hundred of us, and we can make one hell of a noise for socialism. It’s not gonna last forever.... We gotta teach that this kind of behavior can’t be tolerated. We don’t hate you. We love you. Dismissed.”

  Jones’s criticism of suicidal church members was but one example of the double standards of Jonestown. Another was the leader’s lifestyle itself. It had become relatively lavish since the old p.c. days when Jones would curl up on pillows and eat from a plate of meats, nuts and fresh fruits. Now, aides in San Francisco sent him crates with Courvoisier cognac, chocolate bars and assorted treats that went directly into the small refrigerator in his house.

  Jones lived in West House, the best and roomiest structure in Jonestown. The two-bedroom house with a screened porch was shared with his two closest aides and mistresses, Carolyn Layton and Maria Katsaris, the stand-in mother of John Stoen. Jones slept in the largest bedroom, alone when he wished, while Katsaris, John Stoen, Layton and sometimes her sister Annie Moore slept in the other. The bedrooms were separated by a tiny room with an army-type field telephone to reach the radio room and public address system. Jones could literally spend days in his house, reading the news by phone into the loudspeaker or holding the nightly meetings by hook-up to the pavilion.

  His bedroom was dominated by a large four-poster wooden bed, with clothes drawers underneath. Wooden trunks held his personal items: hypodermic needles, alcohol swabs, liquid Valium, morphine, many other kinds of drugs, sugar substitute, laxatives, Maalox, cocoa, Allercreme, hair spray, and Miss Clairol hair coloring, used to keep his graying hair jet black. Next to the bed an oxygen machine and several large canisters were ready to revive him from his attacks. Across the room, next to the small refrigerator, his file cabinets held farm reports, memos from his Georgetown staff, reports on discipline problems and digests of the day’s news, taken from radio broadcasts.

  Carolyn Layton still ranked as Jones’s top assistant, yet Maria Katsaris had come far in her few years in the church. In Jonestown, she acted as a kind of palace guard, shielding Jones from people he did not want to see. Sometimes, she hardly ventured from West House for days. Though some resented her, Stephan Jones liked Maria and joked around with her. He appreciated her often biting wit, and her protectiveness of John.

  Once when Jones asked his son to stage a kidnapping of John, Stephan found an ally in Maria. Jones had ordered Stephan to scoop up John, throw him in a bag, fake a fight with himself, disguising his voice, then save John from the would-be kidnapper. Stephan thought it was crazy and would do psychological harm to John. On the way to Jones’s house, he encountered Katsaris and confided in her. She said, “You’ve got to talk him out of it.” Stephan did so, impressed that Katsaris would take his side.

  By the end of 1977, Jones’s madness filled the air almost incessantly. He harangued over the loudspeaker for hours on end. The news with his paranoid, doomsaying interpretations became sickening to his own son. One day, at the sound of his father’s voice, Stephan snapped, “Oh, fuck. That lying son of a bitch. Who wants to hear that shit?” Mike Touchette was startled to hear such irreverence, and to hear Stephan refer to Carolyn Layton as “that bitch.” Such pronouncements and private conversations with Stephan reinforced Touchette’s doubts about Jim Jones, but not enough to prevent him from reporting his friend.

  Jones already had taken steps to neutralize Stephan and Marceline —in case they tried to stop his final march. Earlier, he had told Touchette that Stephan was unstable and had tried to kill himself. “Be a friend, a brother, to Stephan,” Jones said. “And if he says anything strange, let me know so I can put a stop to anything serious that might happen.” After overhearing a conversation between Stephan and Marceline, Touchette reported that they commiserated, about Jones.

  The great majority of Jonestown residents were not privy to enough information to be skeptical of Jones or of the White Nights. And while some labored under discontent and a few, like Dale Parks, bided their time and fantasized about killing Jones, they still took Jim Jones at his word. Unlike Stephan, they did not have a front-row view of Jones’s games and manipulations and were kept submissive. Those who showed their unhappiness were humiliated in front of their entire world—one thousand people. Those intellectually and verbally capable of taking on Jones publicly were smart enough to stay in line. And most probably did not want to leave anyway. In their faith, they believed Father when he said conditions would improve. And if Jones acted irrationally, they could forgive him: Father was always under such pressure. People directed their resentments not at him, but at themselves, at each other or at the enemy.

  Meanwhile, Jones’s paranoia had brought about the very IRS investigation he had dreaded for so long. On February 21, 1978, the IRS notified the Temple of its examination of the church’s political activity. For years, the church had escaped such scrutiny, even after the damaging New West article seven months earlier. But an ongoing series of letters in 1976 and 1977 to the IRS—asking what level of church political activity was acceptable and including a list of political supporters—probably had aroused the agency’s curiosity. Further, the Temple had filed one Freedom of Information Act request after another to see whether the IRS was investigating, despite continued IRS assurances that it was not.

  Although the 1978 IRS probe soon tapered into nothing, it further legitimized Jones’s image as a persecuted rebel. He was more convinced than ever that the government was after him. When Jones felt pressed, his people suffered....

  By early 1978, Jonestown’s inhabitants accepted White Nights as part of their routine. They dutifully trooped to the pavilion as often as twice a month, not knowing what to expect. During the White Night of April 12 and 13, 1978, for instance,61 Jones dwelt as much on sex as on death. One man was raked over the coals for having sex with an off-limits woman. After ridiculing some people for sexual inadequacies, Jones bragged of his own powers: “You people who believe in love are stupid,” he announced. “You can’t fuck for seven hours, like I did
. I only saw one [woman] who could do it and she’s a stupid masochist.... I’m not fucking her now. She’s in Georgetown, and I never seen nobody fuck through a jungle. My dick’s supposed to be fair-sized, but it don’t reach that far.... ”

  “Shift, please!” That instruction, issued at various times during the meetings, was an order for people to stand and stretch, so they would not fall asleep.

  “Don’t wave, honey,” he continued, as the kitchen crew brought food to the assembly. “They’ll get the food to you. You’ll eat before you die. If it’s the last meal, we’ll kill the chickens and have fried chicken.”

  An old black woman stepped to the microphone: “I been in this movement since 1971,” she said. “And when they hurt you, they hurt me. You [are] the only father I have. I love you, Father. I have no family but you.”

  As the White Night wore on, someone brought Jones a drink. After a while, he began to slur his words.

  “Whew, that’s strong brandy. You should’a told me it was brandy before I drank one-fourth of the glass. Shit.” Jones laughed. “I’m drunk. You fuckers did that on purpose. But don’t start no shit. I may stagger, but I can still get you. Laugh, Jeff, or your ass’ll still be on the learning crew. You all right, my son? Stone-face Steve, they call him. You want some brandy? ...” Jones laughed again. “What is it, dear, wanna fuck? I just feel relaxed enough to fuck.” He then whispered to an aide. “... I know how serious a White Night is, drunk or sober. But things are getting calmer. Smile, bitch, or I’ll pour it up your vagina.” More laughs. “It don’t make me happy, but it makes me not feel my headache.”

  Though she was one of the few restraining influences on Jones, Marceline was often traveling or in San Francisco. When she was in Jonestown, it was a more harmonious place. When she took part in the catharsis sessions, her criticisms had more impact than her husband’s almost indiscriminate attacks. Though she cut with a sharp tongue, she had the respect of her audience because she tried to be constructive. She was the mother figure.

  Near the center of the compound, Marceline lived in her own simply furnished green cottage with a small sitting porch enclosed by mosquito netting. All her children dropped by to see her. Marceline took special delight in Chioke, her new grandson and Lew’s firstborn. As often as he could get away, Stephan would visit, and they would talk for hours. He shared her meals, delivered by a kitchen aide. Often, he would catch a few hours sleep there.

  Marceline, while going through a difficult menopause and marital problems, continued to confide in her only natural son. Her husband’s philandering still bothered her, Stephan knew, but what really set her boiling were Jones’s insinuations in public meetings that they were still sleeping together or that she still desired him. She would smile agreeably and hold her tongue, but when she got back to her cottage, she would let loose. “I can’t believe what the son of a bitch said.”

  Sometimes Jones would make loving gestures toward her. But they were gratuitous and insulting and angered Marceline even more. She told Stephan she still loved his father, though more as a sick child than as a husband. She knew he was addicted to drugs, and once she told Stephan: “We’ve got to isolate him. We’ve got to get him off these drugs.” And Stephan replied, “Mom, you keep forgetting. There’s no way he’s ... even gonna admit he has a drug problem.”

  In late 1977, on one of her periodic trips to the States, Marceline felt exhaustion overtake her. She had been pushing herself at an almost superhuman pace since the exodus. Now she had developed a chronic cough. On the way back to Jonestown, she decided to stop in Indiana to see her parents. When she got off the plane, her mother immediately recognized the toll of strain: Marceline appeared drawn, sickly and older.

  The family doctor hospitalized her for a checkup and to diagnose her cough. After a week, cancer cells were detected in her sputum. Her week-long stay stretched into a month of tests. As she lay there, her husband heaped pressure on her by always calling from Jonestown with urgent orders. In a quandary, Marceline was almost ready to check herself out of the hospital. But her sister Sharon called Jones and talked him into giving Marceline’s health precedence.

  Later tests showed no cancer cells in the sputum, and Marceline was discharged. She wanted to go home to Guyana, but Jones instead sent her to San Francisco to field problems with the Stoen custody case. Then he dispatched her to Washington to persuade congressmen to ignore Tim Stoen’s appeals for help.

  When Marceline finally did make it to Jonestown, she wanted to convey her happiness to her parents. She wrote them several letters over the next few months extolling the joys of working in the medical facilities and the nursery, of being with her children and grandchildren.

  “We have such darling children here,” she said in one letter. “I can sit on my porch and watch the toddlers walk the path to their school. You know I would enjoy that more than the greatest stage production in the world.” And in another she said of Stephan: “[He] is a great comfort to me. At times I feel I depend upon him too much. He is so very wise.”

  Stephan Jones was spending many of his days alone in the bush, far from his father’s madness and the sycophantic palace guard. The bush was a special place, dangerous to a newcomer but comforting and serene to those learning its mysteries. It became Stephan’s private world, his refuge. Instead of enduring the drone of Jones’s amplified voice, he could listen to black ants buzzing from their nests or the jungle birds announcing his arrival.

  The day finally came when Stephan Jones shared his world with his mother. They took a long-promised walk to the hilltop where they could overlook the entire settlement. Marceline’s back still bothered her, so they moved slowly. At the summit, she broke into a wide smile.

  “When you were first sent down here, I really just fell apart,” she said. “I thought, ‘He’s going to destroy you. You’ll never have a chance to create.’ But now, when I see all that you’ve built, I’m so grateful you were able to be here. I’m so glad all these people could come here and see something other than the United States. But none of them are as lucky as you, who were able to build it and see it when it was nothing.”

  Stephan took her in the opposite direction, about a mile, a long walk for her. He had cut a special place in the jungle. It was his alone and very beautiful. A small waterfall plunged into a gentle pool. He was showing his mother his university. Seeing it, Marceline too marveled at the beauty. She sat down to rest and breathe in the tranquil surroundings. It was a day she always would treasure.

  By her very role as a peacemaker and mother figure in Jonestown, Marceline Jones, despite her private reservations, helped legitimize her husband’s power and dulled people into living amid impossible circumstances, rather than revolting against Jones. Because she loved Jones and also believed so strongly in the positive aspects of Jonestown and the settlement’s founding principles, she tried hard to dismiss the negatives. She knew her husband was dangerously out of control at times, but she was terrified of him. She also knew that she was watched closely.

  Marceline’s only real ally was her son. Stephan told his mother to pick her fights carefully. He also felt that a rebellion was not likely to succeed. Since these two—the key to any revolution in Jonestown—had resolved to wait until Jones was out of the way, there was no prospect for an overthrow.

  In the first half of 1978, the U.S. Embassy made two visits to Jonestown to check on relatives and perform the normal consular activities. On February 2, Frank Tumminia, Guyana desk officer visiting from the State Department in Washington, flew out with John Blacken, the deputy chief of mission or number two man to the ambassador.

  Tumminia spent three hours in conversation with Jones. The minister appeared completely rational, but dominated the conversation and talked of persecution by right-wing forces in America. Though impressed by the physical site, the desk officer felt some people responded to him like robots. He did not know, however, that Jim Jones prepared his people for outside visitors.

  On May 10,
1978, Blacken’s replacement, Richard Dwyer, made his first visit to Jonestown, accompanied by Consul McCoy. Dwyer, an Indiana native and graduate of Dartmouth College, was a robust gray-haired man in his forties. Dwyer already had logged twenty years in the Foreign Service, including time in Chad, where he survived a grenade attack.

  An associate had told him Jonestown looked like a summer camp, but Dwyer found it to be an impressive development—run by calculating people. During lunch, Jones suddenly was called away from the table, leaving Dwyer alone with Marceline Jones. The diplomat was surprised to hear Mrs. Jones bring up the Stoen custody case. “That was probably the worst mistake Jim Jones ever made, to father that child,” Marceline said. “But I want you to know it was done with my complete support and concurrence, and as far as I’m concerned, Jim Jones is among the greatest men alive.”

  McCoy, meanwhile, spent his time attending to consular duties, interviewing church members on behalf of relatives in the States. He told everyone he ran across that the consulate would provide a new passport if they needed one for any reason.

  Somehow, the same message reached Deborah Layton Blakey in Georgetown.

  FORTY-THREE

  Secessions and Skirmishes

  As assistant financial secretary, Debbie Blakey knew the overseas banking system when she traveled from San Francisco to Guyana in December 1977. She was trusted and seemed to be tightly bound to the church. She had family in Jonestown—her mother Lisa Layton and her husband Phil Blakey, who worked on the boat and the bulldozers. Her brother, Larry Layton, was still in the States.

  Even though Debbie Blakey ordinarily worked in Georgetown, she saw enough of Jonestown to know it was not paradise, not with such long hours, poor food, armed guards, White Nights. By May, she was having trouble keeping her hostile feelings private. On May 12, her sister-in-law, Karen Layton, wrote Jones from Georgetown: