The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Neither Jones nor any of his followers received immediate appointments, beyond Michael Prokes being named to a forty-eight-member committee to screen applicants for jobs in Moscone’s administration. The lack of Temple picks soon became a source of behind-the-scenes friction between the Temple and city hall. But Moscone made it clear that Jim Jones of Peoples Temple was now a man of considerable influence and a confidant. When Moscone attended public Temple meetings now it was treated as a state occasion, and Freitas and reelected liberal sheriff Richard Hongisto came to services, too, standing and singing along with the rest of the congregation, even when the tunes were overt socialist anthems. They didn’t realize, as they swayed and sang, that Jones was secretly filming their enthusiastic participation—the day might come when one or all of these officials forgot their obligations to the Temple, and then discreet reminders would be in order.

  Other local leaders also began attending the services. Harvey Milk was most prominent among them. Milk had lost an earlier attempt for a place on the board of supervisors, but a priority of the Moscone administration was to institute district rather than at-large elections, so the makeup of the board would more equitably reflect all city constituencies. That would apparently be the case in the next election, and Milk was positioning himself for another run. Jones was sufficiently enthusiastic about Milk’s chances to assign Tim Carter and a few others as Milk’s special contacts at the Temple, so that any request by him—the printing of campaign flyers, door-to-door volunteers—could be acted on. Carter, like almost everyone else in the Temple who got to know Milk, grew to like him immensely: “Before him, all I knew about gays were that some of them were bears and others were queens. But Harvey became a friend of mine, and I went to his house and spent time with him and his partner and realized that a gay couple was just that, a couple. See, that was something good about the Temple—if you were part of it, you always had the opportunity to grow as a person, to be around and learn to accept, to appreciate, all different kinds of people.”

  Jones’s influence extended to the state capitol in Sacramento. Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally, a transplanted native of Trinidad and one of the first men of color elected to California statewide office since Reconstruction, was so impressed by Jones and the Temple that he even accompanied Jones on a trip to Guyana, where Dymally emphasized to national leaders that Jim Jones was a very important man. Governor Jerry Brown acknowledged Jones, too. Once, when Brown missed speaking at a Temple service due to a schedule mix-up, he called while the service was in progress to apologize. Jones took the call offstage, taping it so Brown’s apology could immediately be replayed to the congregation, who heard the governor of California asking their forgiveness.

  It was always exciting for San Francisco Temple members to see Lieutenant Governor Dymally, Willie Brown, Mayor Moscone, elected officials who were in positions to bring about the kinds of political and social change Jones and his followers sought. Even better for members with radical sympathies were the visits and guest sermons by Angela Davis, linked with the Communist Party and Black Panthers, Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement, and Laura Allende, whose Marxist brother, Chilean president Salvador Allende, had been deposed and killed in a military coup rumored to have been underwritten by the United States It created a sense that the Temple members stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the most prominent activists. Jones encouraged that belief. Temple members weren’t just reading in the newspapers about these inspirational people they admired so much, or watching them on television—now, they actually knew them. Jones had promised that the Temple would make history. Troubling aspects of his ministry aside—the rantings, the beatings, the histrionics—what Jones had pledged was really happening. The members of Peoples Temple were helping to bring about a new, better world. For those Jones followers who needed it, here was confirmation.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  MORE MONEY

  Tim Stoen wasn’t in San Francisco on the day of the mayoral runoff election.

  Although Peoples Temple struggled financially in its early days, by 1975 the church had some significant money. Much of it, though not all, was dutifully recorded in Temple ledgers. The church had been granted tax-exempt status, but Jones always wanted financial records ready for audits by state or federal authorities. Jones also had a few private accounts. Though he proudly proclaimed that he never took a salary as Temple pastor, with his family living on Marceline’s state pay, Jones needed additional funds available for personal expenses, like the Jones family vacations that most Temple members knew nothing about. Jones also hid money in savings accounts under the names of various family members. Marceline had personal accounts of as much as $200,000 (almost $800,000 in today’s dollars). At one point, his mother, Lynetta, had accounts totaling $89,584 ($380,000 in current value) in eight different California banks. Whether in terms of its public records or Jones’s private accounts, the Temple was flush.

  Yet this brought Jones no comfort—if anything, the Temple’s wealth added to his ever-burgeoning sense of paranoia. His schemes to ensure that no one other than he knew how much money there was, and where, owed as much to uncontrollable compulsion as to deliberate design.

  Throughout his life, Jones was never able to accept any form of shared possession—it was always his children, his Temple, his followers, and his money, everything to be controlled by him as he pleased without regard for others. Even back in Indianapolis, Jones blatantly fudged annual reports to the Disciples of Christ regional office, vastly underestimating congregational size and yearly income and even then sending along a much smaller contribution than other churches. In California, Jones no longer concealed the Temple’s ever-growing membership, but still sent very little money for denominational support. Decades later Rev. Scott Seay, studying dusty records at a Disciples seminary in Indianapolis, commented, “It was like [Jones] was saying, ‘This is all I’m going to give you,’ and almost daring them to challenge him about it, and they didn’t.”

  Jones was equally resentful of having to apply for state tax-exempt status. As Peoples Temple began to thrive in California, Jones worried about audits, and as his paranoia grew he feared that the government might freeze Temple bank accounts, claiming that Peoples Temple was using the money for subversive purposes. For some time, Jones had relied on Terri Buford to maximize Temple income. “He always wanted me to set up CDs, with maybe a million to turn over in six months, another million in a year, another million the year after that,” she recalls. “At that time, interest rates were in the teens, and [Jones] wanted a rolling cascade of income.” But that income, recorded and reported by the financial institutions involved, could always be scrutinized by the American government. Jim Jones wanted his money out of reach, so in 1975 he assigned Tim Stoen to research means of transferring Temple money somewhere beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. authorities. Stoen did as Jones asked and ultimately recommended opening accounts in Panama. The Temple would organize Panamanian corporations and funnel money through them into Panama banks, as well as establishing safe-deposit-box accounts in a few other countries, “with different trusted Temple members having the respective keys.”

  Jones approved. In early December, he sent Stoen to Panama to do the initial legal legwork. After that, on Jones’s orders other Temple members began an intricate series of trips there to deposit money in the new accounts. With the possible exception of Carolyn Layton, no one but Jones knew about every transaction. Terri Buford says, “Carolyn would come in with these financial documents and cover most of the pages up, just showing me where to sign at the bottom. So it was my name on a lot of them; if there was any trouble, I’d be the one legally responsible. At the time I thought I knew about all the money [going out of the United States], but it turned out that I didn’t.”

  Led variously by Carolyn and Maria Katsaris, small squads of Temple members began bringing large amounts of cash from the United States to banks in Panama. The use of cashier’s checks or bank transfers would have left
a paper trail; though he allowed some traditional transactions, Jones limited that. More often, his followers taped packs of bills to their legs and wore money belts under their clothes. They arrived in Panama by plane, bringing with them on the same flights cases of goods they swore to customs officials were supplies for missionaries, which some were. But there were always cases that ostensibly contained boxes of Kotex. Customs inspectors in Panama were almost exclusively male, and they squeamishly peeked into the boxes if they looked at all, always ignoring those containers emptied of female sanitary products and crammed instead with cash.

  Soon, Jones began depositing money in Swiss banks, too, dressing his female couriers in I. Magnin suits to throw off the U.S. government agents he felt certain would attempt to trail them. Marceline also went on overseas banking trips, and the money she deposited went into accounts in her name, her husband’s, or even her children’s. Carolyn apparently knew about these accounts—at least one authorized her, along with Stephan and Marceline, to make withdrawals.

  Money also had to be deposited in Guyanese banks, but this was done openly, so that the country’s officials would be constantly reminded of just how much Peoples Temple was investing in their nation. One to two hundred thousand dollars would be transferred from U.S. to Georgetown banks, and the money would be spent almost as soon as it arrived. Toil as hard as they might, the few dozen Temple Pioneers couldn’t clear sufficient jungle on their own. Amerindians were hired on as crew, fifty or sixty at a time. Their pay was relatively low, about $35 monthly for each worker, and represented only a small portion of construction costs, which in some months reached six figures. Jones intended these alarming expenses to be temporary. It was always understood that, soon after enough jungle was cleared and some five hundred or so Temple members moved there, Jonestown would become self-sufficient. Until then, Jones accepted the financial outflow, although it grated.

  With so many transactions taking place each month in multiple countries, keeping two sets of records—one official, one private—became staggeringly difficult. Over time, a code was developed to track the complicated finances. Though he publicly scorned the Bible in Temple services, a Bible became Jones’s secret ledger, with coded account information scribbled along an inner seam on specific pages. This Bible was always kept in Jones’s private quarters, limiting access to Carolyn, Maria, and Jones. Temple bookkeeper Terri Buford estimated that the Temple’s foreign accounts totaled about $8 million. In fact, the total was around $30 million.

  Yet in several San Francisco services, Jones asked that everyone donate their wristwatches to the cause—these were in high demand for resale in Guyana, where, if an immediate amount of additional money wasn’t received, the Jonestown project might very well fail. Every cent counts, Jones thundered at his followers, upbraiding them and sending collection plates around for an extra turn or two if the half dozen offerings regularly taken at each Temple meeting failed to produce satisfactory sums. They had no idea of the vast fortune their church had already amassed, or why, no matter how much they gave at Temple services, it was never enough to please their pastor.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  DEFECTORS

  From the moment he agreed to help George Moscone in the December 1975 runoff election, Jones expected the mayor to repay the favor by nominating him to a prestigious city board. But in March 1976, when Moscone came through, Jones was bitterly disappointed by his offer of a seat on San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission. Years earlier in Indianapolis, Jones had eagerly accepted appointment to that city’s toothless Human Rights Commission and, almost entirely on his own, made great strides in integrating the city. But on San Francisco’s commission Jones would only be one of many working for greater progress in a progressive city. There would be no opportunity to stand out. So Jones refused the appointment, making it clear that he expected very soon to receive a more suitable nomination. Jones recommended Johnny Brown to serve in his place, but Brown wasn’t appointed.

  Two months later, Michael Prokes, identifying himself as a Temple “Associate Minister,” wrote to Moscone informing the mayor that there was great disappointment among members that no one among them had yet been appointed to city commissions or given city jobs, despite the lengthy list of potential Temple candidates previously furnished to Moscone. The Temple members felt it was an “unfortunate fact” that others appointed or hired so far hadn’t supported Moscone nearly as much as Jones and his followers had when the mayor was in danger of losing the December 1975 runoff. Accordingly, there was considerable “loss of morale” among the Temple congregation, along with “a general feeling that [Jim] is a little too idealistic about politics.” On behalf of the Temple elders, Prokes suggested that the mayor “expedite the appointment [or assure the appointments at specific times] of those people on the [Temple] list that we have submitted to you . . . any immediate response . . . would be appreciated, sir, to either Jim or Timothy Stoen, one of his associate ministers who is now a principal attorney in the local D.A.’s office, a position which Jim certainly didn’t ask for but which, nevertheless, boosted our people’s esteem for the D.A.”

  Though Moscone continued attending occasional Temple services, he didn’t respond to the letter. Jones was displeased, but chose to avoid making further demands for the time being. A recall election involving Moscone and the entire Board of Supervisors seemed probable, and even if Moscone was tempted to renege on his previous debt to Jones, a canny vote counter like Willie Brown would surely remind the mayor how much the support of Jones and Peoples Temple would be needed. Meanwhile, Jones was preoccupied with a sudden series of key defections, beginning in July with Grace Stoen.

  By the summer of 1976, Grace Stoen had grown disenchanted with Peoples Temple and its leader. Jones now sometimes bragged that he would always be above everyone else: “You will never have my power. I was born with this power. Some people can sing. I was born to put the whammy on people. It is a great responsibility.” Especially after forming a close relationship with Temple member Walter Jones (no relation to Jim), Grace could no longer stomach the Temple or its leader. She and Walter defected on July 4, sneaking away while Jones was preoccupied with the Temple’s holiday celebration. Grace did not bring four-year-old John with her. The child was with his communal guardians; trying to take him away unexpectedly would have drawn too much attention. And there was no question that the child was well cared for. The day after leaving, Grace called Jones to explain why she’d left, and to arrange some plan of joint custody for their little boy. Jones said that the Temple upbringing was best for the child; Grace should come back. Her attempted defection would be forgiven.

  Though she wouldn’t tell Jones where she was, they talked more on the telephone and came to an initial agreement. Grace would tape a message for Temple members, explaining she was away on a church mission and hadn’t defected. In return, she would be allowed to come to a September service in Los Angeles, see her son, and leave unmolested, though without the boy. That all happened as planned. Afterward, Grace met with Jones and Tim Stoen. What they said to each other is uncertain—in his memoir, Stoen writes only that “[Jones] tried to get her to come back to the Temple or at least tell him where she was living. She refused.” But later in Jonestown, investigators found several undated documents, signed in flowing hand by Grace Stoen, granting permission for her son to be taken to Guyana, and releasing Jones and the Temple “of any and all liability, claims, causes and causes of action.” The evident understanding was that if at some point the boy was sent to Guyana, the Temple would pay for his mother to periodically fly overseas to see him. Grace apparently accepted this as a possibility, and, to keep Jones open to more negotiation, signed the papers.

  Tim Stoen’s role was curious. He had earlier decided to separate from the Temple. But whether he believed it possible that he might be John’s biological father or not, Stoen considered the boy to be his son, too, and loved the child. In the wake of Grace’s defection, which Stoen writes that h
e did not know about in advance and did not expect, the best way to ensure his continued contact with John was to stay with Jones and the Temple, doing his best to act as a go-between for his estranged wife and his pastor.

  Jones was less concerned about Temple secrets Grace might reveal in depositions and testimony than in the possibility that he would lose control of his son. Jones took great personal delight in the child, who resembled him physically with black hair and dark, expressive eyes. By September, when the first few dozen settlers left the United States for Jonestown, Jones approached Tim Stoen and asked him to agree to send John, in the care of some of the same Temple women already raising him communally. Once the little boy was in Guyana, it would be difficult for Grace to get him back if American courts ever ruled in her favor.

  Stoen wrote in his memoir that he agreed to let John go, “figuring it was Jones’s way to get Grace to come back to the Temple, and that [John’s stay in Jonestown] would be temporary because Jones, like me, would want access to John, and because he . . . was now riding high and would not soon, if ever, be leaving for Guyana.” John Victor Stoen was whisked away to Guyana. His mother learned that the boy was gone only in November.

  * * *

  There were more defections that summer, significant enough that, in other times, they might have rocked the Temple as much as the loss of the Gang of Eight. Neva Sly fled, leaving behind her husband, Don, and their son. She had been disciplined for smoking and then, after a severe beating for continuing to smoke left her with injuries, she accepted the help of her co-workers and fled from Peoples Temple. Temple members tracked her down, and for months followed her everywhere, even confronting her at a restaurant and reminding her that Father knew where she was, she’d better not say or do anything against him and the Temple. She didn’t—she just wanted to get away, even though it meant permanent estrangement from her husband and son, who remained loyal to the Temple.