Raven

by Reiterman, Tim

  “I trust Jim Jones as the most sensitive of all leaders and would follow him to the end of the world, but would hope that we need not live that long. I as a person don’t like people very much and thus could be termed an elitist if not a reformed hermit. I am grateful for the kindness you have shown to all of us although you are in great pain constantly. I was especially touched by the care you gave to [my mother] Lisa and myself. I will rededicate myself to bring about success of our revolution.”

  Another letter was scrawled anonymously in a childish hand on a wrinkled piece of yellow paper, then turned over and copied more neatly on the other side. The tone was naive and trusting, the import clear: Jim Jones would never let down his people. Even unto death he would guide them peacefully, painlessly:

  “If the potion we drank had been the real thing, then it would have been the end of Dad’s pain. He would not have to suffer for us anymore. Just like last night, the more he talked the more pain in his tongue. The rest of the people would be in peace with our loving leader....”

  “Everyone wouldn’t have to go to the pavilion. There would be no more toots of the horn or talking about strategy. If it was real, of course, we would have been free. We would have died the best way. Any other way we wouldn’t be sure if it would work or not and we would have suffered. I know that Dad wouldn’t let us suffer like that.... Thank you Dad.”

  These letters also revealed inequities in the camp, and some people “confessed” to having privileges. For example, anyone with friends on the kitchen or bakery crews could get treats. Joyce Touchette slipped her son Mike and his friends iced tea, pies, bread, chicken, hamburger, even popcorn, and they had little parties in their living quarters.

  But such practices rankled other people. Dale Parks was furious one day when he saw Mike Prokes get an extra bit of food from the kitchen. Moments before, Parks had seen his own mother, who had lost thirty pounds in Jonestown, refused food at the same window.

  Those who scored an “excellent” on the latest weekly news quiz made their request for special treats in their letters. One man said he would like a cup of coffee and another a piece of pie on Sunday. And one poor woman whose grandson likely was working in isolation on the Public Service Unit wrote: “What I want for my excellent plus is for Wayne, my grandson, to hurry and learn principle so I can talk to him again.”

  In his letter, Tom Grubbs, creator of the sensory deprivation cage, confessed that a “schizophrenic” split between his emotions and his intellect made him a potential deserter.

  “I am isolated, insulated, alienated and at times show elitism though usually I feel too insecure and inadequate [around adults] to feel elite ...” he wrote.

  “I am [also] having a difficult time with all the news. I cannot quit work to listen... but I cannot shut it out either, so it just plain interferes with my work and frustrates me. Sometimes I get a panic feeling, then frustration, then fearless hostility, then rebellion....”

  Despite his complaint, nothing was done. The “news” problem obsessed Grubbs almost to the point of violence. As hard as the thirty-seven-year-old teacher worked, he could not spare the time to study for mandatory news quizzes or to retake the test if he failed. The test insulted his intelligence and made him so negative about Jonestown that his wife reported him.

  Jones ordered Grubbs to the radio room for a lecture, but Grubbs ended up raging at Jones. When Stephan Jones happened by, the big, athletic-looking teacher seemed to be scaring Jones. A lot of people crowded around, as Jones was telling Grubbs, “I can’t believe you’re saying this. I heard what you’ve been saying through my electronic equipment.”

  “I’m no fool,” spat Grubbs. “I know there’s no electronic equipment. My wife keeps turning me in. She’s the only person who could have. I know that.”

  Jones denied it again, and they argued some more. Finally, Grubbs said, “Look, let me go. I’ll take my chances in the bush. I don’t want to go back to the States. I hate what it’s all about, but I see the same thing happening here.”

  Jones looked around for someone big enough to take care of Grubbs. His gaze landed on his son. “Stephan, come here. Arrest this man.”

  “What?” Stephan said, incredulously.

  “Take him away.”

  “Where am I supposed to take him? I don’t know where to take people.”

  At that point, Grubbs interjected. “You better arrest me,” he told Jones, “because I don’t know what I’m going to do in the next couple of hours. Right now, I’m very hostile to you. I have the potential to kill you right now....”

  This was a rare burst of outrage, and to Stephan’s great surprise, Jones backed down and excused Grubbs from the tests. He wanted Grubbs, a community asset and hard worker, to stay relatively happy.

  The agonizingly long meetings and catharsis sessions continued, as did the Russian language drills. News reports were broken by Jones’s petty announcements from his house, such as “Attention, attention, attention. My fever is down, slightly, to 104.” The food worsened. On many nights, the rank and file saw little other than rice and gravy. Whereas bananas had once been plentiful and freely available, people now were disciplined for swiping them from the banana shed.

  In August, anticipating a series of visitors from the United States, Jones added a new routine to the meetings. Playing interrogator or reporter, he would fire hostile questions at his people, then give critiques of their taped replies. He wanted to make sure that no one, wittingly or unwittingly, would ever confirm any of the accusations against Jonestown.

  One night he ordered Carl Hall, a seventy-four-year-old black man from Los Angeles, to approach the microphone:

  “Tell me, sir, what do you like about Jonestown?” inquired Jones, adopting a broadcaster’s tone.

  “We’re all treated the same, on an equal basis,” stammered Hall. “And the great work you’re doing.”

  “Don’t talk to me, ” Jones corrected. “Talk to me like you’re talking to a reporter.... How’s the food here?”

  “The food is excellent,” Hall said quickly.

  “What kind of food do you eat?” Jones pressed.

  “We eat three meals a day and they’re all good.”

  “What kind of food,” Jones insisted. “Tell me about your diet!”

  “Well, in the morning, I have one to two eggs and toast.” At that, people broke up with laughter. Eggs for breakfast were as rare as a U.S. Embassy visit.

  “You’re sharp, brother,” Jones said, approvingly.

  “And at lunch we have bread and soup, and the soup is very delicious,” Hall added, warming to the exercise.

  “Bread and soup, hmmm,” said Jones, thinking out loud. “Mention fruit and salad. What’s that soup the Russians eat, and they’re the healthiest people in the world? Borscht. But you know Americans. They gotta have a bunch of shit that gives them cancer.... How many people live with you?”

  “Fourteen.” At that, everyone groaned and laughed.

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” Jones said sharply. “Don’t ever say that. Say four or five. Say ‘two couples. My wife and I are retired.’ Don’t talk about fourteen ‘cause the average American wouldn’t understand it.”

  This exchange, like those in other nightly sessions with other participants, continued for more than an hour. Jones patiently coached Hall on how to answer such questions as why he decided to come to Jonestown and why he did not want to return to the United States. When Jones ran out of questions, he asked for help from the audience. A little kid named Jim came up with some winners, such as “Do you have any weapons here?”

  “No, we don’t,” Hall said.

  That was not good enough for Jones. “ ‘We are peaceful people,’ ” he coached, “ ‘nonviolent.’ I’d look shocked. ‘Weapons? What are you talking about?’ That’s a very good question. ‘Do you beat people here?’ ”

  “No, they don’t,” said Hall.

  “ ‘Do you sock people, hit people, any kind of brutality?�
� ” pressed Jones. “ ‘No, of course not,’ ” he said, answering his own question. “Look shocked. Even though some people in the past have grown up because of strong measures. But reporters don’t give a good goddamn. They just want copy.”

  The little boy asked Hall, “Do you put people in boxes?”

  “Yeah,” echoed Jones. “Do we ever put people in boxes?”

  “No, they don’t,” was all Hall could manage to reply.

  “I’d say, ‘That’s ridiculous. That’s a stupid question, sir. I don’t mean to be offensive, but that’s ridiculous. We don’t use any form of brutality. We reason things out.’ ”

  The little boy piped up again. “What’s the tower back there?”

  “That was a bright question,” Jones said. “Give him a treat. Call it the pagoda. ‘You mean the pagoda?’ Act like it’s a pagoda. ‘They’re making slides for children to play from there, and if we have dry spells, they can spot fires.’ That makes sense, you hear? Don’t initiate anything with people if they’re trying to harm you.”

  Jones’s “pagoda” was indeed the security tower, manned twenty-four hours a day by guards, scanning the camp for malingerers and potential deserters.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  Con Games and Hijinks

  Had Karl Marx lived in the late twentieth century, he might have been tempted to reverse the order of his famous observation about all events in history happening twice, first as a tragedy, then as farce. In the case of Peoples Temple, the farce came first, in the St. Francis Hotel in downtown San Francisco one day in fall of 1978.

  All Jones had intended initially was a sympathetic book telling the Temple story from a left-wing perspective. The Temple had been approaching reporters and other authors with leftist credentials for some time. Finally, at the suggestion of Charles Garry, they turned to Don Freed, a writer perhaps best known for his joint efforts with conspiracy gadfly Mark Lane. Freed had coauthored with Lane a 1973 novelization of the John Kennedy assassination called Executive Action.

  Most recently, Lane and Freed had reopened their “Citizens Commission of Inquiry” into the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hoping to prove that King had been assassinated not by James Earl Ray but through a government conspiracy. It was the King assassination, and not Peoples Temple, that claimed the major attention of Don Freed and Mark Lane in the fall of 1978; but the pursuit of that case required money. That was where Jones came in.

  Freed had first met Jones during a two-day Jonestown visit in mid-August. His trip coincided with a long-requested jungle “house call” by Dr. Carlton Goodlett, who tentatively diagnosed a lung fungus and wanted Jones hospitalized.68

  However reluctant a patient, Jones did not hesitate to use medicine on others, especially his other visitor, Don Freed. Freed had come to confer about the book or other favorable publicity for Jonestown. As a “courtesy,” the Temple offered him a physical examination which supposedly pointed up venereal disease of the sort contracted only through homosexual activity, something Freed had not engaged in. Nevertheless the unsuspecting author accepted both the diagnosis and the treatment —all of it tape recorded. And during optical tests, he accepted extra-strength doses of eye medicine, which blurred his vision for nearly ten hours. Whatever the cause, Freed slept through much of his visit and suffered from diarrhea during the rest.

  Jones had struck Freed as a minister in the Elmer Gantry tradition —neither evil nor pure, lucid, with an earthy sense of humor. The minister had confessed that the machinations of Tim Stoen had stretched him to his wit’s end. After dismissing a book project as too time-consuming and articles for sociological journals as too academic, Freed and Jones had finally agreed that a film—or at least the lure of a potentially big film deal —would best serve their purposes of cracking “the conspiracy.” To Freed, it had seemed that the weakest link among these “conspirators” was the man in it for the money—private investigator Joe Mazor. For $1,000 or so, he could rent a hotel room in San Francisco and offer Mazor consultant’s fees for the film about the Temple.

  Jones himself had provided the first prop for the pitch to Mazor. In an August 22, 1978, letter authorizing noted filmmaker Paul Jarrico to make the Temple film, Jones wrote: “Based on your magnificent film, ‘Salt of the Earth,’ Peoples Temple has decided to cooperate with you in making a feature length theatrical film [about] ... the Jonestown community. ... We understand that you will author and co-produce the film ... and ... are currently negotiating with a major star to play the role of myself.”

  In truth, Jarrico, who had weathered the McCarthy era red-baiting in Hollywood, had never even heard of the church. According to Jarrico, Freed had first proposed such a film to him in late August or early September, but the filmmaker had dismissed Jones as a phony religious huckster. As an alternative, Freed then had asked Jarrico to meet with Joe Mazor in San Francisco, and to pretend to be producing the film. The aim of the charade, Freed told him, was to induce Mazor to switch allegiances. Jarrico would say later that he had refused categorically to take part.

  But Freed, undeterred, went ahead without Jarrico. On Monday, September 4, 1978, he and Mark Lane checked into single rooms at the St. Francis Hotel on Union Square in San Francisco. The next day, Freed moved to a $150 day-room suite, a more impressive place for what he called “the presentation.” The Temple had agreed to pick up the tab.

  Freed acted as moderator, with backup from Lane. When “both sides” had arrived—Charles Garry’s office representing the Temple, Mazor representing Temple detractors—lunch was ordered from room service. With the consent of all present, a tape recorder rolled. Freed handed Mazor and Garry aide Pat Richartz two sheets of paper—the Jones letter to Jarrico and a letter of intent:

  “The film group... intends to make a theatrical motion picture, tentatively entitled JONESTOWN.”

  “In exchange for their cooperation and information, the producers intend to employ Mr. Joseph A. Mazor and his offices and Mr. Charles R. Garry and his offices.... The producers offer to pay a good faith advance ... as soon as the funding for the film has been secured. The amount to be paid to both Mr. Garry’s and Mr. Mazor’s firm is $25,000 each....”

  Even Richartz, who was aware that Freed hoped to lure Mazor over to the Temple’s side, was convinced that a movie was in the offing. But Lane and Freed were really after information from Mazor.

  With the inducement of a $25,000 movie consultancy, Mazor was more than willing to entertain them with the same rambling, sometimes inaccurate grab bag of fact, half-baked information, rumor and fantasies he had opened to reporters. He even apparently convinced the two late-comers that they had cracked open the “conspiracy” against Peoples Temple.

  When Mazor quickly made clear his availability for hiring, Freed, seeming surprised, said with chumminess, “Joseph, let me say this. ... It seems to me that this gives us maneuverability I did not know we had....”

  The movie plot discussed by Freed implied that an intelligence agency manipulated defectors and other Temple opponents. “This sort of war breaks out between this very large group on one hand, Jonestown, and a very small group on the other hand. But the small group is getting help. Now somewhere along the line comes a sort of independent investigator, like yourself, and who may be an ambiguous figure and either becomes a hero or what have you.”

  Freed kept coming back to Tim Stoen as a central figure in the movie. “We are interested in Stoen,” he said, his voice damning with innuendo. “Here is a man who travels to countries all over the world. A man who is spending a lot of money flying around to meetings and organizing people.”

  Without blinking, Mazor growled, “Well, I’ll tell you this. He got a lot of dough out of Venezuela.... from a very nice right-wing group....”

  Lane took over the questioning. “Let me ask you, Joseph. Do you think that is possibly an organization which fronts for an American intelligence operation?”

  “Like the CIA?” Richartz added.

  Then
Mazor dropped two bombshells.

  One came after Freed shifted discussion to the John Stoen case. “The child belongs to Jim Jones,” Mazor said flatly.

  “Absolutely,” Freed agreed but was clearly taken aback.

  “It was conceived in the back of a bus....” There were wows around the room. “That came from Grace. Okay?”

  “She told you that?” Lane asked.

  “Yes. I had her in my office one day and she laid it out....”

  Had Mazor, the onetime investigator on behalf of the defectors, betrayed the intimate confidences of a former client, or had he lied? Grace Stoen and Walt Jones would say later that they had never even discussed the paternity of John Stoen during their one session with Mazor.

  Mazor had just awarded Lane and company a major coup, but was not finished.

  In the course of their conversation, Lane and Freed introduced a spurious connection between Tim Stoen and the minerals exploration firm that employed his brother. “We know he is working with them, and we know they do high-resolution photography and they do overflight,” Freed revealed. “We know there have been overflights down there [in Guyana].”

  “Overflights is nothing,” said Mazor. “I did an overflight.”

  “You did an overnight over Jonestown?” asked Lane.

  “Yeah, sure. Back last year with a Cessna.”

  “But you didn’t send the mercenaries in, I take it,” Freed suggested, taking the bait.

  “No comment,” Mazor said, tantalizing them.

  “Or did Stoen?” Freed laughed, cleverly.

  Lane asked, “... If you have got this guy going behind the Berlin wall in the fifties, and then the idea’s later on to destroy the Temple, is it possible he is in deep cover, setting up a whole series [of problems] which even the Temple didn’t know about at the time?”

  “Very possible,” said Mazor.

  “You say it’s possible that he was doing this as an ...?” Lane wanted him to repeat, to elaborate.