The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  After they were alone in the cottage that served as their overnight Jonestown quarters, Ryan and Dwyer decided that in the morning the congressman would add Gosney and Bagby to the list of settlers he wanted to interview. Ryan said he was saving his “best-documented cases” until then, and some of them might want to leave, too. It would be best to conceal the identities of those asking to leave Jonestown until the last possible minute, in case the Temple leader was tempted to break his promise that anyone who wanted to go with Ryan could do so.

  But Jones almost certainly knew about Gosney and Bagby. Decades later, Gosney told playwright/author Leigh Fondakowski that he’d been seen passing his note to Don Harris. Caught by surprise, Harris dropped the scrap of paper; Gosney picked it up and handed it back to the NBC reporter. As he did, Gosney recalled, “a little kid sees me.” From the moment they could walk and talk, Temple youngsters were trained to report any rule breaking. Gosney remembered that the child began chanting, “He passed him a note, he passed him a note.” A few Jonestown adults came over to Gosney “asking me questions,” and the would-be defector felt unnerved enough to take the additional risk of speaking with Dwyer, asking that the diplomat get him out of Jonestown immediately.

  It is virtually impossible that none of the settlers who asked Gosney questions failed to pass along suspicions to Jones or one of his advisors like Carolyn Layton or Maria Katsaris, particularly in the atmosphere of heightened suspicion caused by Ryan’s visit. Once Jones was informed, it was equally uncharacteristic for him not to react immediately. That he didn’t meant one of two things: either Jones began drugging himself into insensibility immediately upon retiring to his cottage after the evening program; or else he, Carolyn, and Maria were preoccupied with something that Jones considered even more important than a would-be defector.

  Everyone at Lamaha Gardens had been anxiously awaiting word from Jonestown about how things had gone that night with Ryan. Around midnight, the radio crackled with a terse, three-word report: “Everything went okay.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  “SOME PLACE THAT HOPE RUNS OUT”

  Just before dawn on Saturday, November 18, nine settlers slipped out of Jonestown and into the jungle. The group included three children given fruit punch mixed with a little Valium to keep them quiet. The adults correctly guessed that with everyone else in Jonestown so preoccupied with Ryan’s visit, it would take hours for their absence to be noticed. Their plan was to make their way through the jungle to the rail line, then follow the tracks into Matthews Ridge. From there, they would contact U.S. officials and ask for help. It was hard going through the thick brush, and they were surprised to encounter two other settlers who’d left the settlement that morning with the same plan. The eleven defectors walked until dark, when the engineer of a train heading in the same direction halted and offered them a ride the rest of the way.

  Back in camp, everyone lined up for breakfast. Herbert Newell and Clifford Gieg never had a chance to eat. They were pulled out of line and told to sail the Cudjoe downriver to pick up some supplies. The driver who took them to Port Kaituma in one of the settlement trucks predicted that there would be trouble in Jonestown that day. Newell laughed and replied, “Nothing like that is going to happen.”

  Jones didn’t appear for his scheduled breakfast with Leo Ryan. Tim Carter and a few others joined the congressman instead. Ryan ate fast and showed no interest in small talk. He wanted to begin his next round of interviews with settlers he guessed would be most likely to ask to leave. As Ryan and Speier began their meetings, settlers were instructed over the loudspeaker to return to their cottages unless they’d been assigned to specific functions. This was a gesture for Ryan, assuring him that anyone he asked to speak with would be available. Only the kitchen staff and security forces remained on the job. It was a hot day, typical of mid-November in Guyana. The rainy season usually began around the end of the month, though storms occasionally blew in early. The mugginess affected the visitors much more than the settlers, who were used to it. Everyone slapped at bugs.

  In Port Kaituma, the media, Annibourne, and the male members of Concerned Relatives were up by 7 a.m. They’d been told the night before that a Temple truck would pick them up at eight thirty for the trip of forty-five minutes or so to Jonestown, but no transportation arrived. The truck finally appeared a bit before 10 a.m. The reporters were annoyed. They were supposed to be back in Port Kaituma around 2 p.m. to meet the plane that would return them to Georgetown. Factoring in drive time to and from Jonestown, now they would only have about three hours in the settlement.

  When the media arrived back at Jonestown, Marceline Jones greeted them and announced that she would take them on a tour, right after a breakfast of coffee and pancakes. Nobody wanted to eat. They could see Ryan and Speier off in a corner of the pavilion, talking earnestly to some settlers. Tim Reiterman of the Examiner saw Concerned Relative Carol Boyd, who’d spent the night in Jonestown. She told him that she’d been allowed to see Judy and Patricia Houston, her nieces, but some Temple adults had been right there with them, and everything the girls said seemed to be memorized praise of Jim Jones and Jonestown. There was no sign of Jones himself. The reporters were impatient, so Don Harris of NBC diplomatically suggested that they just have coffee. Cups were poured, and everyone took a few polite sips. At about 11 a.m., Marceline agreed to begin the tour. She took them first to the nursery, which was her special pride and joy. The Washington Post’s Charles Krause wrote later that all the reporters were impressed by “an incubator, a respirator, a bright playroom, a nurse’s office, cribs, and other modern equipment.” Perhaps Jonestown wasn’t such a primitive camp after all.

  Marceline took them to the school area next. She explained that one building was set aside as a classroom for special needs children. A settler who worked as the special needs teacher was there to answer the reporters’ questions. Before they could ask any, the settler began telling them how different the Jonestown teaching system was, how much better for the children than the school she used to teach at back in California, where none of the children got the individual attention that they needed to overcome their disabilities and learn. The reporters and TV crew grew restless. Everything seemed almost too perfect, and certainly rehearsed. They asked to walk around by themselves, looking at whatever and speaking to whomever they wished. Marceline said that everyone must stay with her. The reporters saw that many of the Jonestown children were now gathered at the pavilion, watching Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Ryan and Speier were still conducting interviews. Most of the media wanted to stay reasonably close to the pavilion—if more defectors asked Ryan to help them leave, the reporters wanted to interview them on the spot. But Marceline kept the press moving away from the pavilion, and other minders had joined the group—Jack Beam, Johnny Brown, and Garry and Lane. Some adult settlers had left their cottages and milled near the pavilion. The reporters sensed tension—only later would they learn that news of the predawn defections was beginning to spread through Jonestown. Jim Jones had still not appeared. Someone came up and whispered in Marceline’s ear. Reiterman wrote later, “Her expression tightened.”

  Marceline grimly led the group along. Krause and a few other reporters paused by a building that a sign identified as Jane Pittman Gardens. Its window shutters were closed tight, but they could hear people talking and coughing inside. The journalists’ suspicions were aroused—perhaps would-be defectors were being held there. They asked to go inside, and were told that Jane Pittman was a dormitory for older female settlers who didn’t want to be disturbed. When the reporters insisted, Johnny Brown knocked on the door. The elderly lady who stuck her head outside snapped, “We don’t have our clothes on. Nobody wants to be interviewed.” Garry briefly went inside, and returned to say that the women’s refusal was “unequivocal.” The journalists argued that if they weren’t allowed inside, they would believe that Jonestown had something to hide. The argument grew sharp. Finally, the press was allowed in. The
y were shocked by the overcrowding—the women mostly lay on bunk beds stacked from floor to ceiling. But the building was clean. None of the ladies seemed in any way sick or neglected. Lane confided that the reporters had initially been refused admittance because of embarrassment about overcrowding, which was inevitable since Jonestown’s population had grown faster than additional housing could be constructed. But now there was open antagonism between the reporters and some of Jones’s more fervent followers.

  With that, Marceline concluded her attempt at a guided tour, and the media returned to the pavilion area. Ryan was posing for a photograph there with Carol Boyd; Judy and Patricia Houston; and the girls’ mother, Phyllis. Anthony Katsaris looked tense as he sat nearby with his sister Maria. Beverly Oliver seemed to be having better luck with her two sons. They appeared relaxed as they chatted. For the first time, the reporters mingled with settlers. But they hardly had time to ask more than a few questions—every answer they received consisted of rote praise for Jones and Jonestown, as well as denials that anyone was kept from leaving, or from communicating openly with outside family and friends. Then everything stopped. It was almost noon, and Jim Jones had finally appeared.

  The Jonestown leader wore a red shirt outside khaki pants, and his favorite black shoes. Jones’s dark glasses were in place; his hair was neatly combed. But his face was pale, and he worked his clenched jaw in a way that he often did when especially agitated. Aides whispered to Jones—this was probably the moment he learned about the eleven early-morning defectors—and then Ryan and Richard Dwyer came up to him and said that other settlers wanted to leave as well. Jones almost certainly knew about Gosney and Bagby, but the additional names were new to him and particularly upsetting. Edith Parks had joined Peoples Temple back in Indiana, but now she’d told Leo Ryan that she was being held prisoner in Jonestown and asked Ryan to help her get away. Her son Jerry wanted to leave, too, though his wife, Patricia, said she would stay. Jackie Speier asked Jerry’s children, Dale, Brenda, and Tracy, if they wanted to go with their father or stay with their mother. They said they wanted to leave Jonestown with their father and grandmother. Then Patricia Parks said, “If my family’s leaving, I’ve got to go with them.” After that, twenty-year-old Chris O’Neal, nineteen-year-old Brenda Parks’s boyfriend, said he would go, too.

  Cheese sandwiches were set out for those who felt hungry. While most people ate, Jones spoke with the would-be defectors, after first asking the newsmen to stay back and allow them some privacy. Jones summoned all the warmth he could, putting his arms around the shoulders of the Parks family members, reminding them that everyone else in Jonestown was part of their family, too. Marceline Jones promised Vern Gosney that if he stayed, things would be better because “we’re going to have a lot of reforms.” But no minds were changed. Ryan and Speier volunteered to go with the defectors while they returned to their cottages and gathered their few belongings. Gosney urged Ryan to hurry. The congressman assured him, “You have nothing to worry about. Nothing will happen.”

  The reporters and the NBC film crew cornered Jones, who turned and faced them like a great beast brought to bay by yowling hounds. He claimed that those who were leaving “were never really in it completely. . . . It’s their choice. If they had expressed a desire to leave earlier, they could have.”

  It was then that the storm struck. Showers were common in the jungle, even before the official rainy season, but this was a maelstrom. Dark clouds boiled over the settlement, and a biting wind ripped through the camp. Raindrops hammered down. It was the worst storm anyone remembered since the first trees were cleared for the settlement. Tim Carter recalls, “It felt like evil blowing into Jonestown.” The red dirt, already damp from recent rain, turned to deep, sticky mud. Everyone caught out in the fury, defectors, settlers, and visitors alike, had no option other than to huddle miserably in the pavilion, packed in damp proximity that exacerbated already strained nerves. At some point, Carter says, “Some of the Bogues told [Ryan] that they wanted to leave. It was Edith, Jim, Teena, Juanita, and Tommy. Harold Cordell wanted to go, too. He and Edith had been a couple for a long time. But Harold had a twelve-year-old son who was living in Jonestown, that boy was named Tommy, too. The kid said he wouldn’t go, so you’ve got this father and son, and the boy is screaming and crying for Harold not to go, and Harold is crying. Merilee Bogue starts screaming at her sisters, ‘You’re traitors!’ All this is happening in a constricted area, and Jones and the congressman are right there. Jones’s jaw got even tighter. The whole mood in Jonestown was bad before, but now it was even worse.”

  Ryan asked for and received all the defectors’ passports. Garry produced money to pay their travel expenses. Ryan’s mission of visiting Jonestown and bringing out any who wished to leave appeared to be almost accomplished. All that remained was taking them back to Georgetown, and then helping to facilitate their transportation back to the United States. But there were fifteen of them now, plus Ryan and Speier, Dwyer, Annibourne, the nine newsmen, and the four members of Concerned Relatives. The plane that had flown Ryan and the other visitors into Port Kaituma the day before and was expected to return for them that afternoon had seating for only nineteen. A second plane would be needed. Ryan asked that someone radio the request in to Georgetown. They were going to be late getting to the airstrip in Port Kaituma, but surely the weather would delay the planes, too. For now, there was nothing for Ryan and the others to do but wait in the shelter of the pavilion until the storm passed and they could begin the six-mile trip from Jonestown to Port Kaituma. Though Jones and some of the settlers were obviously upset that anyone was leaving, Ryan and Jones’s own lawyers agreed that since so few wanted to leave, Jonestown didn’t look bad at all. Ryan thought the total was fifteen. The lawyers knew about the other eleven who were gone before the congressman got up that morning, but the total of twenty-six was still far fewer than they had anticipated—on the Friday afternoon flight from Georgetown to Port Kaituma, Lane told Krause of the Washington Post that he expected 90 percent of the settlers to remain, meaning at least ninety would ask to leave. If nothing else happened, it seemed entirely possible that Ryan would return to the United States and declare that he’d given everyone in Jonestown the opportunity to leave, and fewer than 2 percent—the fifteen that the congressman knew about—had asked to go. After that, it would be hard for Concerned Relatives to continue alleging that the settlement was a virtual prison camp.

  But where the attorneys saw redemption, Jones saw the opposite. The Temple leader who considered one defection to be a staggering betrayal was deeply offended by twenty-six, and though that was an insignificant percentage of Jonestown’s population, they would still serve as examples, and inspirations, to remaining settlers who might grow equally tired of jungle life or Jones’s erratic rule. There inevitably would be more of them, and, after this, what was to prevent them from waiting until the next visit by embassy consuls to announce that they wanted to go, too?

  And that was only part of the danger. The custody of John Victor remained an issue. Having humiliated Jones by taking more than two dozen of his followers away from him, Tim Stoen and his henchmen might turn their full attention to taking John Victor away next, and, after him, more and more Jonestown children. Jones had studied history, and knew that empires might crumble slowly at first, but once begun, disintegration escalated rapidly and total destruction was inevitable. To him, the twenty-six defectors represented the beginning of the end. Jones had frequently preached to his followers about Masada and how, after a lengthy siege, its outnumbered defenders made a final, grand gesture in defiance of their foes. Jonestown wasn’t yet surrounded by an overwhelming number of enemies, but Jones expected that it eventually would be, and, as the afternoon storm subsided, he chose not to wait. Jones had been busy overnight and again in the morning, issuing instructions to his most trusted followers, not certain if he would give additional orders on Saturday afternoon, knowing only that he wanted everything ready if events forced his
hand.

  Now, as the afternoon storm finally passed and the sun came out again, Jones believed that they had.

  A commotion triggered what would become hours of unfolding tragedy. The visitors and defectors were ready to leave. A Temple truck was driven over; they were to climb up into its bed and then embark on the bumpy ride to Port Kaituma. But as they began boarding, settler Al Simon hustled toward the truck, carrying a small child in each arm. He told Ryan that he wanted to leave and take his two children with him. But Simon’s wife, Bonnie, ran up, tugging at the kids, screaming that they were hers, too, and her husband couldn’t take them away. Ryan and the Temple lawyers tried to intercede, but the Simons clearly were not going to agree. Ryan said that he would stay behind in Jonestown while the other visitors and defectors went on to Port Kaituma and the flight back to Georgetown. A plane could return for him in the morning. Meanwhile, he’d try to work something out between Al and Bonnie Simon. Perhaps a few additional settlers might also decide to leave. If so, they could fly out with Ryan on Sunday.

  Jones stood watching. He was flanked by several of his most trusted followers—Patty Cartmell, Jack Beam, Jim McElvane, Maria Katsaris. They whispered back and forth. Some of the remaining settlers shouted insults at the defectors boarding the truck. The bed was high off the ground and some had trouble getting up. Just as everyone was loaded and the driver prepared to pull out, a short, slight man wearing a poncho hauled himself aboard. Larry Layton told the others that he’d decided to defect, too. The departing settlers were immediately suspicious, and whispered to the newsmen that something was wrong; Larry Layton was devoted to Jones and would never leave him. But it was almost three o’clock, and if the pilots of the getaway planes were already at the Port Kaituma airstrip, how long would they wait for passengers before flying back to Georgetown without them? Layton was allowed to stay. The driver started his engine and the heavy vehicle lurched forward, though not for long. A few hundred yards down the narrow road leading out of Jonestown, its wheels stuck fast in the thick mud. After a few minutes, a tractor rumbled up to push the truck free. As it did, more shouting erupted back in the settlement.