The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  It was common in the mid-1960s for many disillusioned young Americans to leave big cities for rural communities, where, presumably, there was less corruption and racism: “Getting back to the land” was the popular phrase. These seekers wanted to find some means of positive participation to turn America into the right kind of country, one dedicated to racial and economic equality and avoidance of war. Mendocino County, far enough away from San Francisco to provide a sense of geographic distance, attracted more than its share of them. They found work in county factories and hospitals, but most immediately felt the same sense of ideological isolation as Garry Lambrev. Jones and his followers identified and reached out to them, picking the most idealistic. The more frustrated they felt with local closed-mindedness, the better. Once these newcomers were recruited, they in turn helped attract the few like-minded locals to the Temple, in particular co-workers at hospitals and social service agencies.

  Linda Amos from the county welfare office became one of the most enthusiastic new members. So did Larry Layton, a conscientious objector who worked in the county mental hospital in lieu of military service. Layton’s wife, Carolyn, a high school teacher, also joined. No chance meeting was ignored as a recruitment opportunity. The Jones family, out for a weekend drive, had met the Laytons when they passed them walking along a back road and offered a lift.

  Jones also recruited among his students. In addition to his regular teaching job, he began instructing night classes in Ukiah’s adult education program. Many of those enrolled were also in their teens, struggling with family or drug problems and unenthusiastic about education. But unlike other night class instructors who relied on dull textbooks and uninspired lectures, Jones created a lively atmosphere, encouraging discussion and making a point to engage personally with each student. Some, estranged or otherwise separated from their parents, were encouraged to move in temporarily with Temple families. Teenage Christine Lucientes’s life was torn apart when her father was caught selling marijuana to an undercover agent. Afterward, the entire Lucientes family was shunned by almost everyone in Ukiah. Jones was sympathetic. He took time to encourage Christine, but never pushed too hard. At one point, he told her they wouldn’t talk about the situation any longer because he could tell that discussing it caused her too much pain. Christine was moved by his sensitivity. Soon, she joined Peoples Temple—and talked her friend Janice Wilsey into joining with her.

  Once teens became members, Jones monopolized their lives. During the week, their new pastor expected them to be exemplary in school—their behavior now reflected on Peoples Temple. Outside class, they weren’t encouraged to mix with other local youngsters. Instead, they shared church-sponsored fun with their Temple friends. On Friday and Saturday nights there were dances and other social activities. No drugs or alcohol were allowed. Nonmember parents who’d despaired for their children couldn’t help but be impressed, even if they disdained the Temple itself.

  The teens were also given responsibilities, foremost among them an obligation to care for older church members in the event of nuclear catastrophe. Mike Cartmell was placed in charge of a proto-military youth battalion. The church was antiwar but committed to self-defense. Twenty Temple youngsters were selected for special training. They were taught to read compasses and issued crossbows; if bombs fell, the teens would lead Temple seniors into the hills and protect them if necessary on the way to the cave and safety. It was far-fetched, but fun. The teens felt empowered. Issuing crossbows to them ran little risk of causing local outcry. Mendocino County was popular with hunters. Lots of locals owned bows and guns.

  By late spring 1966, Temple membership had risen to about 150. Jones announced that the church would stage a march in Ukiah to protest America’s increasing military involvement in Vietnam. The procession would make its way along the town’s main streets to the county courthouse. The protest would undoubtedly alienate many area residents. Some of Jones’s followers asked if it was worth it. They’d worked hard to become accepted—why risk undoing that effort? Jones shrugged and said, “We’re here, so they’ve got to know who we are.” He appointed recent members Garry Lambrev and Bonnie Hildebrand to organize and lead a Friday demonstration. Then Jones announced he’d be out of town that day with Joe Phillips, on a trip to Guadalajara. His deliberate absence during the march troubled some, Lambrev and Hildebrand especially. Father was the church’s leader, its shield against an antagonistic outside world. They didn’t question his decision to be somewhere else—Jim Jones was never wrong. Still, they were concerned about trying to pull off the march without him.

  Jones and Phillips left on Thursday. Shortly after they departed, Jones called Marceline and asked that she pass along a message: While driving south to Mexico, Jones said, he’d had a vision that someone might try to hurt Lambrev during the protest. Garry should be very careful. After that, Lambrev and Hildebrand were both convinced that the march would be sabotaged, and that they might even die while leading it. But their antiwar beliefs and devotion to Jones were such that they carried on anyway.

  On Friday, Temple members staged their public protest. All along the short route, townspeople stared. Some jeered. When the procession reached the courthouse, Lambrev stood on the steps and nervously began to speak. As he did, he noticed a man coming up the steps toward him. Lambrev decided that this was who Jones had warned him about; sure enough, he was going to be attacked. At the same moment, Lambrev also saw Jim Jones striding purposefully toward the courthouse. “I felt as though there were suddenly glass walls around me, that Jim was completely protecting me from this man,” Lambrev remembers. “And the man took one look at Jim, turned away, headed back down the steps, and I never saw him again.” Afterward, Jones told Lambrev that his vision had been so vivid that he’d insisted to Joe Phillips that they turn around and rush back to Ukiah—this was how Jones had arrived just in time to save Garry’s life. The rescue confirmed Lambrev’s belief in his leader as something more than human: “This was God here, the human embodiment of the Divinity.”

  Lambrev wasn’t the only one impressed. Judge Robert Winslow, justice of the Mendocino County Superior Court, watched the proceedings outside the courthouse, and was struck by this preacher and his followers risking public wrath with their demonstration. Winslow, who’d been elected to county office despite his liberal leanings, met with Jones afterward and appointed him foreman of the county grand jury. Jones valued the title less for the limited scope of authority it granted than for the impression it gave his followers of newly gained political influence. They’d done what Father had asked, and something positive and important resulted.

  In subsequent Sunday sermons, Jones began stressing his visions. He kept them both catastrophic and vague. In August 1966, he announced that Peoples Temple was about to enter “an accident cycle.” This dangerous phase would run through September 16. If everyone was careful, if they believed in Jim Jones, it was possible for Temple membership to emerge from the crisis without a fatality. In particular, everyone was to drive carefully. Jones repeated this warning for several weeks. As mid-September approached, it seemed that his followers would escape unscathed.

  The road leading from Ukiah to the Church of the Golden Rule property twisted up and down steep embankments for several miles. There were potential drop-offs of more than a hundred feet. The drive was particularly difficult in the dark.

  On Sunday, September 11, Marion “Whitey” Freestone had had a tough time at the Temple services. Jones would regularly “call out” members who had in some way offended Temple precepts. Freestone was a frequent target, criticized for lack of commitment to socialism or acting superior to other members. Nobody else noticed these transgressions—Whitey generally seemed like a nice guy—but if Father said he did these things, it had to be so. As usual, Freestone apologized for his mistakes and promised to do better. Well after dark, when the evening meeting was over, he and his wife, Opal, and their two children got in the family car and left for Ukiah. Other Temple members foll
owed, Jones among them in a car driven by Patty Cartmell. Just before reaching the most precipitous turn in the narrow road, they were flagged down by members, who told them Whitey Freestone’s car had careened off the road and down into a near-vertical ravine. Jones walked to the precipice. The night was so dark and the drop-off so abrupt that it was impossible to see what had happened to the Freestones. Still, Jones cried, “My place is down there,” and, grabbing a flashlight, climbed down the side of the ravine. He skidded and tumbled, bruising himself badly. Teenage Mike Cartmell followed right behind. They directed the flashlight beam around the brush, but couldn’t find the Freestones or their automobile.

  Help was summoned, and firetrucks arrived from Ukiah. Firemen were lowered down the ravine by cable. Eventually they found the car, which was partially crushed. Three of the Freestones were trapped inside, too badly hurt to move or even make a sound. The oldest child had managed to crawl free. Jones watched as the parents and their younger daughter were pulled by cable up to the road, and followed the ambulances to the emergency room in town. Jones was in poor condition himself, but insisted on staying by his critically injured followers. Other Temple members waited nearby, catching occasional glimpses of the three crash victims, who appeared to be “just butchered.” Jones came out once and said there was no hope for the little girl, but promised that Whitey and Opal were going to make it. When they survived, most Temple members credited the miraculous healing powers of Jim Jones. Jones accepted the praise—and also, on behalf of the Temple, $1,300 that the Freestones collected from their insurance company for the wrecked car.

  In addition to constant mention of visions—granted to him by mysterious “messengers” that he, though not his yearning followers, could see and hear—Jones also changed the focus of his rambling sermons. In Indianapolis, he spoke not only of, but directly to, victims of social and governmental repression: poor blacks denied basic rights. Jones’s emphasis then was on laws that had to be changed; he frequently cited biblical passages as justification. In Mendocino County, most Temple members were white. They sympathized with victims of racism, but had not experienced it themselves. So Jones began criticizing the government; unfair laws reflected the racist beliefs of arrogant legislators determined to retain wealth and power at the expense of the downtrodden. There were two American governments, Jones insisted. One was public and relatively powerless. The real U.S. government was run in secret by white men dedicated to the eradication of socialism and who used the FBI and CIA to carry out illegal attacks on organizations such as the Temple. A significant portion of Temple membership was now comprised of younger whites who’d grown up in comfortable circumstances and felt guilty about it. Jones played to that, insisting it was their responsibility to compensate now for the unfair advantages that they had enjoyed as children.

  A significant difference between Temple meetings in Indianapolis and Mendocino County was the near-lack of healings in Ukiah. Jones’s mostly well-educated young California recruits, who were not steeped in flamboyant evangelistic tradition, were likely to be skeptical of chicken guts displayed as miraculously excised cancers. Those who’d been won over by Jones on the Indiana evangelist circuit and come west with him already believed in his healing gifts. For now in Mendocino County, prophecy was the most effective way for Jones to maintain a sense of awe in his followers—it required a deft psychological touch, but Jones’s real gift was always an instinctive understanding of what worked best for specific audiences and adapting his approach as necessary.

  For the most part, Jones also stopped predicting nuclear doom. He still mentioned the cave from time to time, but now as an example of how he was always prepared to protect his people. Russia was no longer portrayed as about to use its nuclear arsenal to kill as many Americans as possible. Now Jones described it as a socialist paradise whose leaders were sometimes forced into an understandably threatening posture by unwarranted U.S. economic and military aggression. He began occasionally claiming that he’d been Lenin in a previous life. Perhaps as a reward to young Mike Cartmell for rushing into the ravine with him after the Freestone car crash, Jones informed the teenager that he was the reincarnated spirit of Trotsky.

  Jones frequently cited the Bible when he preached, but now he sometimes pointed out its despicable declarations. The Bible said women were inferior, that slavery was permissible. In fact, Jones said, it was the Bible’s endorsement of the hateful practice that made slavery possible, which in turn led to modern-day racial injustice. Jones still recognized Jesus as more than human. It was just that imperfect men had written an equally flawed book about him.

  By 1967, Jones felt confident that he had once again assembled enough of a loyal core following to establish him as a local force. But he still didn’t consider Mendocino County to be the Temple’s ultimate home. In October, Jones interrupted his own Sunday afternoon sermon to announce that the spiritual messengers only he could see and hear instructed him to call an immediate emergency meeting. Archie Ijames, Jack Beam, Joe Phillips, Mike Cartmell, Garry Lambrev, and a few others followed Jones into a small side room. Jones insisted that the room be searched for hidden microphones—government spies might be listening. After none were found, Jones said that fascism was “closing in.” He claimed to hear the sound of jackboots: “How are we going to get out of this death trap before it’s too late?” They should all think about what he’d said, and meet again “to look at alternatives.”

  In subsequent meetings, Jones said that the Temple should move to Russia and asked for comments. Everyone but Joe Phillips agreed. Phillips wondered why a decision had to be made in a hurry. Shouldn’t they learn more about where they would go in Russia? What would they do when they got there? It seemed unlikely that the Soviet government would allow the Temple to continue operating autonomously. What did Jones have to say about that? And how could they move to Russia when no one in the Temple even spoke the language? Surely there were many things to investigate before an informed decision could be made.

  Jones was furious. Though only Phillips had objected openly—several others acknowledged private doubts—Jones cursed at the entire group, then dismissed them. For the time being, a potential Russian relocation was dropped, though Lynetta Jones decided to get her first passport, just in case. When she was turned down because she couldn’t find her birth certificate, Lynetta contacted the Bureau of Vital Statistics in Washington, D.C., asking for another copy. In her typically grouchy, irreverent way Lynetta wrote, “I have just about had it when it comes to being unborn and non-existent. Dammit!”

  There was nothing humorous about Jones’s retaliation against Joe Phillips for questioning his plan. Soon after the meeting where he incurred Jones’s wrath, Phillips was tempted to begin an extramarital affair with another Temple member. He discussed it with Jones, who granted Phillips permission to be unfaithful to his wife, Clara. Then, in a January 1968 meeting, Jones called Phillips out and accused him of infidelity. Phillips replied that the relationship “had been authorized,” and was astonished when both Clara and his girlfriend, apparently coached in advance, joined Jones in denouncing him. Humiliated, Joe Phillips left Peoples Temple and moved away from Ukiah, effectively purged by Jim Jones for the sin of disagreement.

  * * *

  Another disagreement in 1968 ended the relationship between Peoples Temple and the Church of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule organization did not allow its members to attend the services of any other religious organization. But with the Temple holding its meetings at the Golden Rule settlement in the hills north of Ukiah, it was inevitable some Golden Rule members would go. One was Carol Stahl, a young woman whose talent for administration had already gained her a place on the Golden Rule Board of Elders. Stahl’s father and stepmother were also Golden Rule members; she had no intention of leaving that church’s fold. But Stahl became friendly with some of Jim Jones’s followers, and fell in love with one of them. She and the young man wanted to be married and, at least initially, retain full membersh
ip in their individual churches. There was still some talk of Golden Rule and Peoples Temple merging. Stahl thought that her marriage to a Temple member might “help bring this about.” Jones was in favor of the wedding, but the Golden Rule’s senior elders forbade it. Some Golden Rule leaders already harbored well-founded suspicions that Jones wanted to bring their church under his personal control. This proposed wedding might be part of a plot. So if the young people married, they would have to choose one church or the other. Carol Stahl was told either to accept this edict or leave Golden Rule.

  Jones asked for a formal meeting with Golden Rule’s elders, where he pleaded on the engaged couple’s behalf. Peoples Temple had no reservations about an inter-organizational couple, Jones said. If anything, the marriage would reinforce the friendship between the groups. The Golden Rule elders remained adamant, and Jones lost his temper. He’d brought several Temple members with him to the meeting. Declaring that he wanted nothing more to do with such closed-minded people, Jones dramatically led his followers away. Carol Stahl left Golden Rule that night, joined Peoples Temple, and was married by Jones to her fiancé soon afterward.