The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  One major source of contention remains, and they debate it among themselves, or with interviewers who they hope might offer some fresh perspective: Was Jim Jones always bad, or was he gradually corrupted by a combination of ambition, drugs, and hubris? There is no definitive answer: Jones was a complicated man who rarely revealed all of his often contradictory dimensions to anyone.

  It seems certain that, at some level, Jones truly hated racial and economic inequality. As a teenager he preached against such evils in rough Richmond neighborhoods where he stood to gain nothing by it other than insults and beatings. In Indianapolis, Jones fought, often single-handedly, to bring about integration in a highly segregated city, and to a great extent succeeded. Under Jones’s leadership, Peoples Temple acted on the biblical precepts of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked. Temple addiction programs saved lives. Temple scholarship programs educated young men and women whose schooling would otherwise have been limited to the corrupting influence of the streets. In one of the deepest, most dangerous jungles in the world, one thousand Americans, many of them recent big-city ghetto dwellers who had never so much as mowed a lawn, for almost four years built and maintained a farm settlement that came very close to being self-sustaining. Had the events of November 18, 1978, not occurred, Jonestown might have lasted indefinitely. In all the years since, the Guyanese government has made frequent attempts to establish similar farm communities in its forbidding North West District. None have succeeded. Jim Jones was undeniably a man of great gifts, and one who, for much of his life and ministry, achieved admirable results on behalf of the downtrodden.

  Yet he was also a demagogue who ultimately betrayed his followers whether he always intended to or not. In every society there are inequities, and in America the most obvious of these affect people of color and the poor. Demagogues recruit by uniting a disenchanted element against an enemy, then promising to use religion or politics or a combination of the two to bring about rightful change. Those as gifted as Jones use actual rather than imagined injustices as their initial lure—the racism and economic disparity in America that Jones cited were, and still are, real—then exaggerate the threat until followers lose any sense of perspective. In Indiana, Jones and Peoples Temple opposed poverty, prejudice, and segregation. In San Francisco, he began warning of American concentration camps for blacks and a coming police state. By the time he and some nine hundred Temple members were in isolated Jonestown, where there were no opposing views to be heard, his warnings escalated to imminent slaughter by U.S. government agents, Guyanese soldiers, and mercenaries—and because they’d been led along in gradual progression, many of his followers believed enough to voluntarily lay down their lives at his command.

  Typical, too, was the gradual shifting of Jones’s attitude toward his followers. In Indiana, and in the early years in Mendocino County, he retained a protective sense about them: perhaps most were gullible sheep, but he was their shepherd, responsible for their well-being. As the reputation of Peoples Temple and Jones’s own influence and ambition grew, that perspective changed. In Jones’s mind, the members of Peoples Temple became soldiers, and he was their general. All generals accept that, in war, at least some troops are expendable. Jones believed himself locked in a life-and-death struggle with the U.S. government, the American and Guyanese courts, and the Concerned Relatives members. Rather than submit in any way—by giving up custody of John Victor Stoen, by allowing even a couple dozen out of more than nine hundred settlers to leave Jonestown and his personal control—Jones was willing to die in a final defiant gesture that would have significant impact only if everyone else died with him: soldiers sacrificed for Jim Jones’s final victory. On that afternoon in Jonestown, when he told his followers that there was no other way, he believed it. As far as Jones was concerned, if he had come to some place that hope ran out, then so had they.

  But there was something unique about Jones and those who chose to follow him. Traditionally, demagogues succeed by appealing to the worst traits in others: Follow me and you’ll have more, or, follow me and I’ll protect what you already have against those who want to take it away from you.

  Jim Jones attracted followers by appealing to the best in their nature, a desire for everyone to share equally. Beyond the very poorest members of society, who were clothed and fed and treated with respect, no one materially benefited from joining and belonging to Peoples Temple. Most members sacrificed personal possessions, from clothing and checking accounts to cars and houses for the privilege of helping others. They gave rather than got. It was never the Temple’s agenda to overthrow a government or in any sense force others to live as its members believed they should. Juanell Smart writes, “I do not want people to think we thought we were better than anyone else. Far from it, for all of us had our shortcomings. We just wanted to set an example of how people could live together in real equality and harmony.” Then, they hoped, everyone else would be moved to emulate them.

  Jack Beam, one of Jones’s oldest and most devoted followers, who died with his leader in Jonestown, effectively described Peoples Temple in a poorly spelled but heartfelt affidavit written sometime in 1978: “[Members] believe that service to the Diety can best be expressed by service to ones fellow man, that they must—on a religious-philosophical imperitave—demonstrate goodness rather than just talking about it, and that this demonstration must be an ongoing part of their everyday lives.”

  These intentions weren’t enough. Peoples Temple is considered an example, but not in any positive sense. Kool-Aid rather than equality is what the rest of the world remembers. The survivors are left to console themselves, and even find some pride in the sincerity of their effort. Jim Jones Jr. sighs, smiles, and concludes, “What I’d say about Peoples Temple is, we failed, but damn, we tried.”

  * * *

  It’s hard to recognize the old Jonestown site now. Once again, it bristles with thick, barbed brush. Within months of the tragedy, Amerindians had carried off almost every useful scrap of material for their own dwellings. In the decades since, the jungle has reasserted itself. All that’s left are some bits of the cassava mill; a mounted, rudimentary map of what the settlement looked like; a small white monument honoring the Jonestown dead; and several metal skeletons of trucks and tractors, all of them impaled by the trunks of towering trees that have split apart the vehicles’ rusted metal ribs. The road into Jonestown has become overgrown, too, and vehicles can’t complete the six-mile trip from Port Kaituma. Those determined to reach the site have to cut the last part of their way in with machetes.

  Just as demagogues lead their well-intentioned followers into tragedy, so the jungle inevitably reclaims its own.

  1) Myrtle Kennedy (center, standing) participates in a Nazarene Church baptism in a river near Lynn, Indiana. Jim Jones often referred to her as his “second mother.”

  2) Marceline Baldwin, shortly before she became a student nurse and met Jim Jones.

  3) The “Rainbow Family,” posing at an Indiana airport. Clockwise they are Jim Jones, Marceline Jones, Suzanne, Jim Jr., Stephan, and Lew. Oldest child Agnes—as usual—is not included.

  4) Jim Jones leading a Peoples Temple service, with Marceline standing behind him. Jones kept a vessel on a shelf behind his podium so he could discreetly relieve himself during the hours-long Temple services.

  5) All Temple services featured lively musical performances by an orchestra and several choirs. Exceptional music was part of the Temple’s appeal to potential members.

  6) Father Divine, whose Peace Mission inspired Jim Jones’s plans for Peoples Temple. After Divine’s death, Jones tried unsuccessfully to assume leadership of his ministry.

  7) Peoples Temple in Redwood Valley, California. Because of the hostile attitudes of many locals toward the mixed-race congregation, Temple members nicknamed the area “Redneck Valley.”

  8) Jim Jones, in a rare photograph without his sunglasses. This photo was taken during his Peoples Temple pastorship in Redwood Valley, California.<
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  9) San Francisco mayor George Moscone shakes Jones’s hand at the ceremony naming him to the city housing commission.

  10) Temple members traveled the country in their church’s fleet of used Greyhound buses, sometimes sleeping outside along the way and, more often, sleeping in cramped seats, luggage racks, and even cargo compartments.

  11) Marceline and Jim Jones pictured on a family holiday greeting card. Their pleasant expressions disguise the fact that Jones was living with another woman four days a week.

  12) The sign at the front gate to Jonestown. The wording on the sign changed according to Jones’s attitude toward individual visitors.

  13) The massive jungle between Jonestown and the Guyanese capital city of Georgetown on the coast is virtually impenetrable. Yet a few dozen Temple “pioneers” successfully carved out a nearly self-sustaining agricultural mission in this jungle.

  14) To raise the money necessary to subsidize the Jonestown settlement, residents there crafted wooden toys and cloth dolls to be sold in the stores and open-air markets of Georgetown.

  15) Jones’s lover and confidante Maria Katsaris’s expression demonstrates her disdain for her brother Stephen during his fatal visit to Jonestown in November 1978.

  16) On the night of November 17, 1978, Jim Jones introduced John Victor Stoen to the American newsmen who had been allowed into Jonestown. The next day, the child would die by Jones’s order.

  17) Congressman Leo Ryan in Jonestown. He survived an initial assassination attempt in the settlement, but died in a hail of gunfire at the airstrip in Port Kaituma.

  18) The scene at the Port Kaituma airstrip following the November 18 attack. Guyanese soldiers who were present at the time refused to intervene because “it was whites killing whites.”

  19) Jonestown infants and children had poison squirted into their mouths with syringes. Most of the other settlers drank cups of poison from a vat. Those who resisted were held down by guards and forcibly injected.

  20) Bodies lay scattered around Jim Jones’s personal chair that was always in place on the pavilion stage. His followers would sit crammed on long wooden benches as he preached or ranted well into most nights.

  21) The body of Jim Jones, found on the stage of the Jonestown pavilion. Instead of ingesting poison, he died from a gunshot wound to the head.

  22) Jonestown seen from the air following the tragedy. The dots around the settlement’s pavilion in the center of the photo are the bodies of the victims.

  23) Jonestown after the suicides/murder. Some corpses were so decomposed that U.S. military crews had to use snow shovels to scrape them into body bags.

  24) When the first Guyanese military responders reached Port Kaituma on November 19, they were shocked by the carnage at the airstrip.

  25) Larry Layton was taken into custody in Port Kaituma on November 18, but a Guyanese court eventually ruled him not guilty of murder. Layton was extradited to the United States, where he was convicted of participating in the murder of a congressman, and served a long sentence before eventual parole.

  26) In the wake of the November 18 suicides and murders, it took several days to learn the total number of Jonestown dead. Guyanese officials were especially anxious to charge someone still living with at least some of the murders, and loyal Jones disciple Chuck Beikman was an obvious candidate.

  27) Along with the other bodies, the body of Jim Jones is prepared for shipment to the United States. Despite the best efforts of medical personnel, hundreds of bodies went unidentified.

  28) Gerald Gouveia, who flew the first plane into Port Kaituma on November 19, 1978, points out where most bodies were found in Jonestown by the Guyanese military on the same morning.

  29) Former Guyanese official Kit Nascimento was assigned by Prime Minister Burnham to be Guyana’s public spokesman in the wake of the Jonestown tragedy.

  30) Except for a few square yards, the jungle has completely overgrown the old Jonestown site. The rusted skeletons of a few trucks and part of the cassava mill are all that remain of the original settlement.

  31) Stephan Jones and Jim Jones Jr. today. Their adult lives have sometimes been difficult, but they remain close to each other and their brother Tim.

  32) The monument to Peoples Temple dead at the Jonestown site.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I sincerely thank Jim Donovan, my agent, for his patience and support. At Simon & Schuster, I’m grateful to Jon Karp, Leah Johanson, Cary Goldstein, Julia Prosser, Dana Trocker, and Stephen Bedford (and I’ll miss Maureen Cole). My researchers were all invaluable; in alphabetical order they are Diana Andro, Anne E. Collier, Jim Fuquay, Andrea Ahles Koos, Marcia Melton, and Sara Tirrito. Carlton Stowers, James Ward Lee, and Doug Swanson read the book in progress; their suggestions made it better. I received tremendous support from Rebecca Moore and Fielding McGehee, founders and operators of the Jonestown Institute website, and from Marie Silva at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. I’m indebted to everyone who was in some way associated with Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, and/or Jonestown and agreed to be interviewed for this book, as well as to those who declined interviews but were helpful in other ways.

  Everything I write is always for Nora, Adam, Grant, and Harrison.

  Special thanks to Cash.

  LIST OF INTERVIEWS

  Baldwin, Ronnie

  Beach, Janice L.

  Black, Linda

  Bowman, Joyce Overman

  Carter, Tim

  Chilcoate, Avelyn

  Cox, Bill

  Domanick, Joe

  Fortson, Hue

  Gouveia, Gerald

  Grubbs, Richard

  Haldeman, Ron

  Hargrave, Neva Sly

  Hayes, Bob

  Hinshaw, Gregory

  Horne, Roberta

  Jackson, Janet L.

  Jackson, Bill

  Jones Jr., Jim

  Knight, Max

  Kohl, Laura Johnston

  Lambrev, Garrett

  Luther, Jeanne Jones

  Madison, James H.

  Manning, Bill

  McGehee, Fielding

  McKee, Dan

  McKissick, Larry

  Mills, Ernie

  Moore, Rebecca

  Moore, Rev. John V.

  Mutchner, John

  Nascimento, Kit

  O’Shea, Terri Buford

  Rickabaugh, Colleen

  Roberts, Desmond

  Seay, Scott

  Sheeley, Rachel

  Smart, Juanell

  Stadelmann, Richard

  Straley, Kay

  Swanson, Alan

  Townshend, Bill

  Townshend, Ruth

  Willmore Zimmerman, Phyllis

  Willmore, Chuck

  Wise, Lester

  Wisener, Monesa

  Wright, Jim

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © RALPH LAUER

  JEFF GUINN is the author of the bestselling Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson; The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—And How It Changed the American West; and Edgar Award finalist Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie & Clyde. He was a longtime journalist who has won national, regional, and state awards for investigative reporting, feature writing, and literary criticis
m. He has written nineteen books, including New York Times bestsellers. A member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, he lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

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