Media Darling
Jackie Speier Wounded in Jonestown
Jackie Speier, an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, being taken from a plane at Georgetown on November 19, 1978, after its arrival from Jonestown where Speier was shot five times and Ryan and four others were ambushed and killed by members of the People's Temple. Congressman Leo Ryan was leading a group that went to Guyana to investigate reports of abuse and human rights violations by the People's Temple and its leader, Jim Jones. Fearing the results of the murders and further investigations into Jonestown, despite Leo Ryan's assertion that he was going to give a largely positive review of the People's Temple, Jim Jones led his followers in a "revolutionary suicide" On November 18, 1978, 909 Temple members died, all but two of which from cyanide poisoning, forming the largest mass suicide in modern history.
Stock Photo ID: 42-20693971
Date Photographed: November 20, 1978
Location: Georgetown, Guyana
Working the Gina Lollobrigida Angle
Speier at hearing following Jonestown Massacre
Members of Congress held an "informal" hearing on cult worship, as the star witness Jackie Speier, legal counsel to Representative of California Leo Ryan, who was murdered at Jonestown, looks over notes prior to testifying. Speier's right arm is still in a cast from wounds suffered in Jonestown.
Stock Photo ID: 42-20693970
Date Photographed: February 5, 1979
Location: Washington, DC, USA
Credit: © Bettmann/Corbis
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January 14th, 2011, Veterans Today, Rep. Leo Ryan’s Daughter Recalls His 1978 Murder
Three of them tucked into two first-class seats. Cozy.
AP/Duricka At top, Rep. Leo Ryan (far right) flies to Guyana on Nov. 18, 1978, along with consultant James Schollart and aide Jackie Speier. In 1979, Erin Ryan (at right in lower image) attended a congressional hearing on the Jonestown killings.______________________________________________________________________
Congresswoman Jackie Speier poses for a portrait on Nov. 14, 2008 in San Francisco, Calif. Thirty years ago Speier was shot five times while leaving Guyana as part of Congressman Leo J. Ryan's delegation to investigate Jonestown. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
Jackie Speier, center, who is running in an April 8 special election to replace the late Rep. Tom Lantos in his congressional seat, speaks with Espinola and Earl Sanders at a campaign event at an insurance office in the Sunset district in San Francisco, Calif. on March 27,2008. Photo by Mark Costantini / San Francisco Chronicle. Photo: Mark Costantini, The Chronicle
Leo Ryan's 28-year-old aide, Jackie Speier, was shot and wounded. "I was lying on the ground by one of the plane's wheels, pretending to be dead," she recalled in a 1988 interview with the Chronicle. Photo: Greg Robinson, SF Examiner / Bancroft Library
Thirty years after surviving 5 shots she received at Jonestown in Guyana, Congresswoman Jackie Speier poses for a portrait on Nov 14, 2008 in San Francisco, Calif. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
JONESTOWN-18NOV1978-REITERMAN - Guyana Ambush Scene - the bodies of five persons, including Congressman Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., lie on airstrip at Port Kaituma, Guyana, in November 18, 1978, after an ambush by members of the Peoples Temple Cult. The reporter Tim Reiterman, who made it with the camera of photographer Greg Robinson, who was among the slain. San Francisco Examiner Photo: Tim Reiterman, SF Examiner / Bancroft Library
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Bodies on Airstrip in Jonestown, Guyana
Bodies lie on the Port Kaituma airstrip by the plane which was to carry them back to Georgetown. Congressman Leo Ryan and four other Americans were massacred (11/18) by members of the People's Temple after they had inspected the Temple to investigate charges by Ryan's constituents that their relatives were being held against their will and subjected to sexual and mental intimidation.
Stock Photo ID: 42-16112844
Date Photographed: November 18, 1978
Location: Jonestown, Guyana
Credit: © Bettmann/Corbis
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November 28, 1978 - This aerial view of the Jonestown agricultural commune shows the layout of the tin-roofed buildings that made up the settlement whose members died in a mass suicide-murder on November 19, 1978. At lower left is flat-pitched roof of the death pavilion and beside it are two long canvas-roofed school buildings. In lower right foreground are vehicle and equipment sheds. In the upper left corner are the wooden buildings of the older members of the commune and extensive agricultural plantings are beyond them to the edge of the jungle clearing. This photo was made on November 27, 1978, after the bodies had been removed.UPI/ San Francisco Chronicle File 1978 Photo: UPI, The Chronicle, File 1978
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November 17, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle, Congresswoman remembers day of horror, by Rep. Jackie Speier, Special to The Chronicle,
"I'm 28 years old, and I am about to die."
I was curled up behind the wheel of an airplane on a jungle airstrip in Guyana, South America. This isn't what I expected when I signed on to work for a United States congressman. Our fact-finding trip to investigate the Peoples Temple in Jonestown had gone horribly wrong. I lay as still as I could, pretending to be dead, as an unknown gunman pumped five bullets into me at close range. Pop-pop. Pop. Pop-pop.
When the shooting stopped, I looked around and saw bodies, including that of my boss and mentor, Congressman Leo Ryan. Was he, too, pretending to be dead? I called his name, but he didn't respond. Looking down, I saw what appeared to be a bone. It was my own, and it was sticking out of my shattered right arm.
The thought raced through my mind: "I'm 28 years old, and I am about to die. This isn't how it's supposed to happen. I will never turn 80, never marry, never have children."
I said the Act of Contrition, the prayer Roman Catholics recite during confession, and waited for the lights to go out. I saw my grandmother's face and cried at the thought that she would have to go to my funeral.
A start in politics
My family wasn't particularly political. Mom and Dad voted, but that was the extent of their involvement. In fact, I ended up going to UC Davis because, to them, Berkeley was too radical.The sisters at Burlingame's Mercy High School encouraged all of us to take an active role in our communities. I volunteered for the campaign of my state assemblyman, Leo Ryan, who seemed unlike other politicians. He was provocative; he didn't mince words or beat around the bush; he told you what was on his mind whether you wanted to hear it or not; and he took pride in not being able to be pigeonholed into any one ideology. For instance, he was a public school teacher, but supported education vouchers, opposed by teachers unions as a threat to public schools.
As a student at Davis, I interned in his Sacramento office. Leo (as he insisted we call him) said I could learn far more with first-hand experience than in my political science courses, which was exactly how he approached his job. He went to Watts after the 1965 riots to work as a substitute high school teacher and five years later, had himself booked into Folsom Prison to study conditions there.
By the time I graduated, Leo Ryan had moved on to Congress. He gave me an entry-level job in his Capitol office. The next year, he supported my decision to return home for law school. After I passed the bar in 1976, he offered me a position as his legislative counsel.
In March 1978, he and another congressman joined a Greenpeace mission to Newfoundland to document the slaughter of baby harp seals. I accompanied the delegation and, while witnessing hunters brutally club shrieking days-old seals, thought I would surely never see anything that violent again.
Eight months later, we were under fire in Jonestown.
Coerced by a demagogue
Constituents from our San Mateo County district had written the congressman about their daughters and sons who had joined Jim Jones' Peoples Temple and been coerced to accompany the charismatic demagogue to Guyana.The State Department assured Congressman Ryan that the politically well-connected Jones was a decent man and his Peoples Temple compound was safe and open. But Leo wanted more information, so he asked a member of our staff to interview defectors. After listening to the tapes of those interviews, I had an ominous feeling. One ex-adherent spoke about rehearsing mass suicides in an exercise Jones called "The White Night." I informed Congressman Ryan, and he decided to go see for himself.
I had just placed a down payment on a condominium in Arlington, Va. Even though we had been reassured that our trip was perfectly safe, I asked the Realtor to add a condition making the transaction contingent on my return.
We left Washington with no protection other than the perceived shield of invincibility that came with Leo Ryan being a member of Congress. Every congressional delegation since is forbidden to travel without a military escort.
'We're all very happy'
Upon arriving in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, we were told that Jones would not allow us to visit. For three days, our delegation, including relatives of Temple followers and a press contingent, waited while Congressman Ryan, myself, U.S. Embassy official Richard Dwyer and Jim Schollart from the House Foreign Affairs Committee negotiated with Jones' representatives. Eventually, we were given permission to land at Port Kaituma, with no guarantee that we would be permitted to go any further.On Nov. 17, we landed at Port Kaituma's airstrip. After a brief negotiation in which Congressman Ryan made it clear that he wasn't going to be deterred, our party was loaded onto a dump truck for the 7-mile trip through the jungle to Jonestown.
That evening, we were entertained by members of the compound and spoke to the Temple members whose families had contacted our office. To a person, they swore they were happy and had no desire to leave. Larry Layton, one of Jones' closest assistants, stepped in and said, "We're all very happy here. You see the beauty of this special place."
Don Harris, an NBC news correspondent, walked off to smoke a cigarette. He was approached by two people who slipped him notes saying that we were not seeing the real Peoples Temple. They were being held against their will and wanted to leave. Word spread, and more and more members came to us seeking protection and a way out of their tropical nightmare.
The next afternoon, after a torrential downpour turned the compound to a sticky, muddy swamp, the number of defectors had swelled to more than 40. We called for a third airplane and Congressman Ryan said he'd stay behind while I climbed back into the dump truck with the first group. I was surprised to see Larry Layton among the defectors and insisted that he be searched. Not having any professional security, a journalist patted Layton down, but missed the handgun hidden under his poncho.
Before the truck left, Leo Ryan returned, his shirt torn and bloodied. He had been attacked by a man with a knife while waiting with the other defectors. The situation had grown increasingly tense, and it was decided that we would all go to the airstrip together.
At Port Kaituma, we hurriedly loaded passengers onto two waiting planes. I heard screams and the unfamiliar sound of gunshots as, inside one of the aircraft, Layton opened fire. Within seconds, gunmen leaped from a nearby tractor and leveled their weapons at us. I dived to the ground behind an airplane wheel and pretended to be dead. The next thing I knew, I felt a crushing blow, as if someone had backed over me with a truck. It wasn't a truck, but the first of five bullets, tearing through my flesh.
I was afraid to move for quite some time after the silence resumed. Slowly, I looked around. Bodies lay crumpled on the tarmac. The wounded moved slowly, assessing their injuries. Congressman Ryan, three members of the media, and one of the defectors were dead. I dragged myself to an open airplane door and tried to crawl inside, but the plane's engine had been disabled, so it wasn't going to aid my escape. Some men gingerly laid me on the ground, not noticing that they had placed me on an anthill. I borrowed a reporter's tape recorder and began taping a final message to my family.
For 22 hours I lay, wounded on the muddy tarmac, altering between varying levels of consciousness. Some of the survivors found a nearby bar and brought me Guyanese rum to help dull the pain. At some point, word got to us that Jim Jones had ordered the "White Night," although we had no way of knowing how many of his followers had obeyed his madness.
A Guyanese military plane touched down the next day. I felt my prayers were answered, and I would finally receive medical attention. But the medic had only two aspirin. I remember telling him to just give me one, in case I needed the other later. Real aid wasn't administered until we landed at Georgetown, and I was transferred to a waiting U.S. military medevac plane.
Loss and recovery
I was flown to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. For the next two months, I underwent more than 10 procedures as surgeons tried to save my right leg and arm. At one point, I was told the leg would likely be amputated and I would never use the arm again. Fortunately, the excellent doctors and nurses who cared for me made sure that neither scenario came to pass.When I returned to the Bay Area, I was not allowed to stay in my home because of death threats. As painful as my injuries were, as much as I cringed looking at my scarred and tattered body, nothing was as debilitating as living in fear. I refused to spend the rest of my life as a victim and was desperate for an opportunity to stand on my own two feet again. I decided to file for the special election to fill Congressman Ryan's now-vacant seat. It was my way of saying that I was done being a victim.
I lost that race, but was elected the next year to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. Six years later, I won a seat in the state Assembly - the same seat Leo Ryan held when I first met him. I felt that life was beginning to return to normal and was able to lock away my Jonestown experience by convincing myself that tragedies happen to everybody. Because my tragedy was especially bad, I would probably be spared another one.
I fell in love with an emergency room surgeon. We married, had a son and tried for another child. After repeated miscarriages and fertility treatments, we were told it was unlikely to happen. But I'd learned that in life, you never take anything for granted. I got pregnant, naturally, at the age of 43. Then, three months into what was deemed a "high-risk" pregnancy, my husband was killed in a car accident on his way to work.
The loss of my husband was more traumatic than anything that had ever happened to me. I didn't want to get out of bed. But I had no choice. I was now the single mother of two children, one yet unborn. Because my late husband had no life insurance, I was financially devastated, too. I had to sell everything, including my home.
I only tell this story because I don't know how I would have coped with this had it not been for my experience, 16 years earlier, on that dreadful airstrip in Guyana.
In April 2008, I was elected to Congressman Ryan's old seat in the House of Representatives. Jonestown is no longer the first thing on my mind, but I would be lying if I said I don't think of it often. A car backfiring or the sound of fireworks or a violent scene in a movie hits me much like the truck I thought ran over me while lying on that tarmac. The past few months, while news organizations have prepared their coverage for the 30th anniversary of Jonestown, I have been asked numerous times to recall the ordeal. It's never easy, but talking about it has helped me put it in perspective. And as bad as some of the memories are, they are always eclipsed by one fond one: that of Congressman Leo J. Ryan.
Recently, the term "maverick" has been overused, but to me, Leo Ryan was the real deal. He carried around with him a righteous indignation and passion for the powerless of society and didn't shy away from questioning the status quo.
Leo Ryan is often the forgotten element of the Jonestown story. Not only is he the only member of Congress ever to be assassinated in the line of duty, more important, he was the only congressperson that thousands of Americans, from his district or not, knew they could trust when no one else would listen. He didn't win all his battles, but to Leo, the fight was as important as the outcome. There is a quote from Winston Churchill that reminds me of Leo Ryan: "Success is never final, failure is never fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts."
If there's anything I want others to take from my ordeal it is this: When life leaves us alone on that tarmac - whether it be the devastating loss of a loved one, shattering of a lifelong dream, loss of a job, or painful personal injury - we can always learn to walk again.
In my life, anyway, losing is just the first step toward future success.
Inside: Jim Jones Jr. says he finally had to forgive his father after years of hating him for what he did. A16
Tuesday: Ex-Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings describes the chaotic scene after the City Hall slayings.
June 12, 2012, Los Angeles Times, War hero gives Purple Heart to civilian injured at Jonestown, by Lee Romney,
SAN FRANCISCO — This is a story of two politicians who share private horrors, a special bond and, now, a rare honor.
Paul N. “Pete” McCloskey, the former eight-term Bay Area congressman, led six bayonet charges as the head of his platoon while in Korea. The holder of two Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and the Navy Cross, he returned home to dedicate his public life to fighting for peace and the environment.
Now 84, with a square face and shock of white hair, McCloskey prefers not to recount the battles that twice left him wounded, telling a documentarian not long ago that recounting his experience would be “unseemly” braggadocio. Instead, the longtime Republican-turned-Democrat recounted a dream he can’t seem to shake: Teenage faces of enemy soldiers in a trench gaze up at him before he fires.
Jackie Speier was a 28-year-old staffer who accompanied then-Rep. Leo Ryan to Guyana in 1978 to investigate Jim Jones and his People’s Temple for alleged human rights abuses. Their entourage was ambushed as they shuttled defectors onto an airplane, and Speier was shot five times as she lay on the jungle tarmac in a polka-dot dress.
She waited 22 hours for help. Ryan was killed.
Now 62 and a Democratic congresswoman from California, Rep. Speier rarely speaks of her experience. The terror she endured that day, she noted recently, is one that the military men and women fighting America’s wars face constantly.
For years, McCloskey bridled over the fact that Speier — who still has two bullets lodged in her body, one near her heart — was never publicly recognized for her sacrifice. So he did something about it.
One of his Purple Hearts now is displayed in Speier's Washington, D.C., office. An inscription notes "the perils of civil life often require more courage" than those of the battlefield.
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"She earned it," McCloskey said recently from his farm in Northern California, where he tends citrus and olive trees. “She got hurt worse than I did.”
McCloskey, a Stanford Law School graduate and former Marine Corps colonel, was elected to Congress in 1967. But his politics were far from party-line. He was the first Republican to oppose the Vietnam War and the first congressman to call for President Richard Nixon's impeachment. Known as a “Teddy Roosevelt progressive,” he helped write the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
After losing a 1982 Senate bid, McCloskey and his wife, Helen, moved to the remote farm in Yolo County; he continued to practice law part time with a firm in Redwood City.
Outraged by what he saw as corruption within the GOP, McCloskey came out of political retirement in 2006 to launch the “Revolt of the Elders.”
He took on Rep. Richard Pombo of Tracy, losing the primary race but contributing to Pombo’s defeat in the general election. In 2007, McCloskey switched his party affiliation.
Speier was a teenager when she met McCloskey, whom she called a “rock star” politician, at his first election-night celebration.
In a gesture to honor him two years ago, she read a statement into the Congressional Record, calling him “a true American maverick” who “pursues the truth no matter where it leads him.”
The daughter of working-class San Francisco parents, Speier had volunteered for Ryan while in high school. She went on to become an intern and ultimately his legal aide. Two years after the Jonestown massacre, she won a seat on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors. A career in state government followed — six terms in the Assembly and two in the state Senate. Elected to Congress in 2008, Speier is known as an advocate for veterans, the environment and abortion rights.
“She is pure,” McCloskey said of Speier. “She’s a true public servant inside and out.”
The decorated war hero long had pondered the sacrifice Speier and her boss had made in the line of public duty.
Then last fall, when he and law partner Joe Cotchett were chatting about his medals, “Jackie’s name came up,” Cotchett said. “And out of Pete’s mouth came the words: ‘You know, she should get a medal.’ ”
McCloskey formulated a plan to give Speier one of his — a Purple Heart that he modestly described having received for being “nicked by a bayonet” in hand-to-hand combat on a North Korean hillside.
The two men crafted an inscription to Speier from their firm, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy, describing the Revolutionary War roots of the order of the Purple Heart. While it “has yet to be authorized for wounds received in the nation’s service in civil life,” they wrote, “we believe that our Congresswoman, Jackie Speier, has demonstrated incredible valor.”
Speier was in the dark when she took the duo up on their insistent invitation to attend the law firm’s Christmas party. When McCloskey presented her with the medal, Cotchett said, “she was so transfixed. She had tears in her eyes.”
“I was totally blown away,” Speier said in a recent interview, “as close to speechless as I’ve ever been.”
The story had not received public attention until late last month, after fellow Democratic Rep. Mike Thompson of California, a Vietnam veteran, saw the Purple Heart in Speier’s office and learned the details of McCloskey’s gesture. Without her knowledge, he called a reporter with Capitol Hill’s Roll Call.
Robert Caughlan, a longtime environmentalist and political operative who had worked for Ryan, made the 2008 documentary about McCloskey’s life. Passing along the Purple Heart, he said, was “something Pete would do.”
“If you go through life-threatening experiences, it gives you a humility,” Caughlan said. “That’s what happened with both of them.”
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June 11, 2012 , UPI, Ex-congressman gives away Purple Heart,
Jackie Speier, pictured in Washington May 26, 2011. UPI/Roger L. Wollenberg
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2012/06/11/Ex-congressman-gives-away-Purple-Heart/UPI-60831339436494/#ixzz2O85Znlko
SAN FRANCISCO, June 11 (UPI) --Former U.S. Rep. Paul "Pete" McCloskey said he gave one of his Purple Hearts to Rep. Jackie Speier for her sacrifice in the Jonestown massacre of 1978.
McCloskey, who was wounded twice during the Korean War, gave Speier the Purple Heart at his law firm's Christmas party after he heard she had been shot five times as an aide to Rep. Leo Ryan, who was killed during a fact-gathering mission at Jonestown, Guyana, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Most of the more than 900 people who died at Jim Jones' People's Temple at Jonestown committed suicide.
Speier survived an attack by gunmen on the congressional team.
McCloskey, a Republican, was in the U.S. House from 1967 to 1983. Speier, a Democrat, has been in Congress since 2008. Both are from California.
McCloskey said Speier deserved to be recognized.
"She is pure. She's a true public servant inside and out," McCloskey said.
Speier said she was surprised to be presented with the honor.
"I was totally blown away … as close to speechless as I've ever been," Speier said in a recent interview.
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Former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings, who covered the shooting of Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk in 1978, poses for a portrait in his office, on Thursday Nov, 13, 2008, in San Jose, Calif. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
Former San Francisco Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings, who covered the shooting of Mayor George Moscone and Sup. Harvey Milk in 1978, shows off his press pass and historic clippings, on Thursday Nov, 13, 2008, in San Jose, Calif. Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle
Dianne Feinstein bows her head for a moment of silence in memory of slain Mayor Goerge Moscone and Supervisor Havey Milk, before the supervisor meeting on the day of the murders. Photo: Jerry Telfer, The Chronicle
Monday, Nov. 27, 1978. 10:35 a.m.
I'm sitting at my desk in the city room on the third floor of The Chronicle at Fifth and Mission streets, reading the newspaper and waiting for a story to do.A moment later, assignment editor Richard Hemp beckons me urgently as he hangs up a call from Bob Popp, our police beat reporter stationed at the Hall of Justice.
"Some kind of police activity going on at City Hall," Hemp says. "Lots of units responding."
"On the way, Dick," I answer, already out of my chair, grabbing my coat and notebook. "What do we know?"
"Report of a shooting is all. Call me from the car."
In front of him on the desk stands a small microphone wired directly to head photographer Gordon Peters own the hall. Hemp leans in to the mike, presses down the button. The radio crackles to life.
"Shots fired at City Hall, Gordo. I'm sending Duffy."
"Roger, Dick," Peters responds. "Clem's up."
I meet photographer Clem Albers hustling out of the photo lab. We rush down to his blue Chevy Corvair staff photographer's car parked behind the building and take off up Mission for the short ride to City Hall. Rounding the corner at Seventh, I lift the two-way radio microphone from its holder on the dashboard, pull it to my chin and push my thumb down on the talk switch.
"Jennings to desk. Any more details, Gunny?" I ask Hemp, an ex-Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who at 59 still walks with a drill instructor's upright swagger and wears his dress shirts heavily starched and creased in the back. An ex-Marine myself, I use the Corps' informal term for his rank.
"Popp says the mayor may have been shot," Hemp replies. "And now we have shots fired in the supervisors' offices, too. I'm sending two more teams.
"Sandy's on the beat today," he continues, referring to reporter Maitland "Sandy" Zane. "Meet him up there, and call me as soon as you know more."
"Aye, aye, Gunny. Over and out."
Clem guns the accelerator.
10:45 a.m.
10:50 a.m.
We bolt up the front steps to the gilded entry doors, flash our press credentials at officers guarding the entry and vault the inside stairs two at a time up to Room 200. A chaotic scene unfolds. Plainclothes detectives, officers in uniform and city officials scurry in and out of the mayor's main office door and through two side doors to the inner offices.
Off to my right, the elevator door opens, and out rushes KGO-TV reporter Peter Cleaveland. He almost collides with two fast-moving cops, one with his service revolver drawn, another holding a shotgun aloft. "GET DOWN!" one of them barks. Instantly, I drop into a crouch against the wall, glancing around for a shooter. Cleaveland tries to enter the mayor's outer office.
"Not this time!" snaps the officer barring the door.
Two plainclothes officers emerge from a side door of the mayor's offices. "El alcalde esta muerto," one of them says in a hushed tone, Spanish for "the mayor is dead."
"Is Moscone dead?" I ask another officer. "Who shot him? Is Mel Wax here?" I am hoping that Wax, Moscone's press secretary, will confirm something, anything.
"Wait'll the chief gets here," comes the terse reply.
This is so unreal, so confusing, I think. Why won't they tell us anything? I wonder if this is connected to the mass suicides of the Peoples Temple cult at Jonestown, Guyana, only nine days before. Last of Three Parts
Monday, Nov. 27, 1978. 10:35 a.m.
I'm sitting at my desk in the city room on the third floor of The Chronicle at Fifth and Mission streets, reading the newspaper and waiting for a story to do.A moment later, assignment editor Richard Hemp beckons me urgently as he hangs up a call from Bob Popp, our police beat reporter stationed at the Hall of Justice.
"Some kind of police activity going on at City Hall," Hemp says. "Lots of units responding."
"On the way, Dick," I answer, already out of my chair, grabbing my coat and notebook. "What do we know?"
"Report of a shooting is all. Call me from the car."
In front of him on the desk stands a small microphone wired directly to head photographer Gordon Peters down the hall. Hemp leans in to the mike, presses down the button. The radio crackles to life.
"Shots fired at City Hall, Gordo. I'm sending Duffy."
"Roger, Dick," Peters responds. "Clem's up."
I meet photographer Clem Albers hustling out of the photo lab. We rush down to his blue Chevy Corvair staff photographer's car parked behind the building and take off up Mission for the short ride to City Hall. Rounding the corner at Seventh, I lift the two-way radio microphone from its holder on the dashboard, pull it to my chin and push my thumb down on the talk switch.
"Jennings to desk. Any more details, Gunny?" I ask Hemp, an ex-Marine Corps gunnery sergeant who at 59 still walks with a drill instructor's upright swagger and wears his dress shirts heavily starched and creased in the back. An ex-Marine myself, I use the Corps' informal term for his rank.
"Popp says the mayor may have been shot," Hemp replies. "And now we have shots fired in the supervisors' offices, too. I'm sending two more teams.
"Sandy's on the beat today," he continues, referring to reporter Maitland "Sandy" Zane. "Meet him up there, and call me as soon as you know more."
"Aye, aye, Gunny. Over and out."
Clem guns the accelerator.
10:45 a.m.
10:50 a.m.
We bolt up the front steps to the gilded entry doors, flash our press credentials at officers guarding the entry and vault the inside stairs two at a time up to Room 200. A chaotic scene unfolds. Plainclothes detectives, officers in uniform and city officials scurry in and out of the mayor's main office door and through two side doors to the inner offices.
Off to my right, the elevator door opens, and out rushes KGO-TV reporter Peter Cleaveland. He almost collides with two fast-moving cops, one with his service revolver drawn, another holding a shotgun aloft. "GET DOWN!" one of them barks. Instantly, I drop into a crouch against the wall, glancing around for a shooter. Cleaveland tries to enter the mayor's outer office.
"Not this time!" snaps the officer barring the door.
Two plainclothes officers emerge from a side door of the mayor's offices. "El alcalde esta muerto," one of them says in a hushed tone, Spanish for "the mayor is dead."
"Is Moscone dead?" I ask another officer. "Who shot him? Is Mel Wax here?" I am hoping that Wax, Moscone's press secretary, will confirm something, anything.
"Wait'll the chief gets here," comes the terse reply.
This is so unreal, so confusing, I think. Why won't they tell us anything? I wonder if this is connected to the mass suicides of the Peoples Temple cult at Jonestown, Guyana, only nine days before.I call Hemp with the confirmation. "All right," he says. "Draper's writing the lead. Sandy will do White. You do City Hall, the reaction, the mood, what it's like there. Call back when you're ready."
The city was in shock. So was The Chronicle.
Carl Nolte, the assistant city editor that day and still on The Chronicle staff, put it this way when we talked recently: "We didn't know what the hell was going on. We just had one of our own guys shot down in a South American jungle, now this. No one really knew much about Dan White. We knew our politicos could be weird, but they didn't just shoot each other. It knocked a hole in what we thought San Francisco was about. It shook the city to its roots. It was a crazy-ass day."
White surrendered soon after the killings. Six months later, I covered his murder trial, sitting with the late Jim Wood of the Examiner inside the bullet-proof glass separating the trial participants from the courtroom gallery.
On May 21, 1979, when the astonishing verdict of voluntary manslaughter came in, I rushed back to the office, pounded out the story, then went back out to join the other Chronicle staffers covering the ensuing "White Night" riot at the Civic Center.
I was more distraught than I admitted publicly, even to myself, over Moscone's death and White's lenient verdict. As The Chronicle's City Hall reporter during Moscone's first two years in office, I knew the mayor well from our frequent briefings in the same back parlor where White gunned him down.
From time to time, his Kennedyesque charisma and my close relationships with some of his top staff tested my journalistic objectivity, and that was one reason I returned to general assignment reporting.
I didn't realize it immediately, but a decade of one terrible event after another was taking its toll. I was barely out of my 20s, and I had already covered what many young reporters would consider a career's worth of big stories.
The Zodiac case, the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, the Zebra killings, the Golden Dragon restaurant massacre - I had shared in the newspaper's reporting on these sensational crimes and other major stories.
In between, I worked graveyard shifts on the police beat, went on call 24/7 with homicide detectives, fought fires with Engine Co. 21 and wrote about more death, disaster and destruction than I care to remember.
By 1980, I was burned out. I left the paper to be the Giants' publicity director and later went into a public relations career.
Now the 30th anniversary of that historic November is upon us. What stays with me today, more than my eye-to-eye exchange with now-Sen. Feinstein that burnished the moment into memory for both of us, is an understanding of how Moscone changed the city forever. Sadly, his legacy has been overshadowed by the memory not of how he lived, but of the way he died.
Moscone had his critics, some with good reason, but he loved San Francisco, a passion I share as a fellow native. An entire generation of San Franciscans today knows little about him other than the convention center bears his name.
He fought against racism and for civil rights, against downtown power brokers and for neighborhoods. He opened the doors of City Hall and the seats of power to people from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. As deservedly iconic and significant as Harvey Milk has become to the gay community, it was Moscone who broke down the barriers.
His was a remarkable story in its own right. Perhaps on one of these anniversaries, Hollywood will give us a movie titled "Moscone."
Dates in Dan White's life
Sept. 2, 1946: Dan White is born in Long Beach. The son of a firefighter, White grows up in San Francisco.November 1977: A conservative former police officer, White is elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors after a campaign in which he pledges to defend traditional values. In the same election, Harvey Milk - openly gay and liberal - is also elected to the board.
Nov. 10, 1978: White impulsively resigns from the board, citing financial difficulties. Pressed by his supporters, he later asks Mayor George Moscone to reappoint him. Moscone initially agrees. But he is dissuaded by Milk and others who see White as a political foe.
Nov. 27, 1978: Moscone is ready to appoint Don Horanzy, a federal housing official, to fill White's seat. White takes his gun to City Hall, avoiding the metal detector by climbing though a basement window. He goes to Moscone's office, argues with him and kills him. Then he confronts and kills Milk. Hours later, he surrenders to police.
May 21, 1979: After White is convicted of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, angry protesters burn police cars in what becomes known as the "White Night Riots."
January 1984: White is paroled after serving more than five years in prison.
Oct. 21, 1985: White kills himself, using a hose to funnel carbon monoxide into a car in the garage of his family's house in San Francisco's Excelsior district.
___________________________________________________________________________
November 17, 2008, San Francisco Chronicle, Jim Jones' son remembers the tragedy, by Susan Sward, Chronicle Staff Writer,
Jim W. Jones Jr., shown here after coaching basketball practice at City College of San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, November 16, 2008. On Nov. 18, 1978, the day of the mass suicide at Jonestown, Jim Jones Jr. was about 150 miles away -- in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana. The night before, he and other youths from Jonestown had been narrowly defeated in a basketball game against the national team of Guyana. Among those who died in the mass suicide was Jones Jr.'s 18-year-old wife, who was pregnant with their child. Today Jones is a Bay Area businessman. He is married with three sons -- one of whom plays for the University of San Diego. Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle
On Nov. 18, 1978, Jim Jones Jr. was 18 years old and living in a Peoples Temple compound in Georgetown, Guyana, 150 miles from the Jonestown settlement. The previous night, he and his teammates on the Peoples Temple basketball team had played in a tournament, narrowly losing to the Guyanese national team. That afternoon, via shortwave, the Rev. Jim Jones, the boy's adoptive father, contacted him with a chilling order: All 60 Temple members living in Georgetown should immediately "get knives, wire and scissors and take our own lives."
The son tried to argue.
"Dad, this doesn't make sense. Isn't there another way?" he remembers saying. "Dad said the avenging angels would come and get our enemies, but we needed to lay down our lives 'as a revolutionary suicide.' "
After taking his father's call, Jones Jr. said he rounded up his teammates, who included two other sons of Jones, Stephan and Tim. They went to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown to try to get personnel there to stop anything from happening. But no one at the embassy would open the doors, he said.
The next day, Guyanese troops were sent to Jonestown and found 909 bodies, victims of the mass suicide. Jones Jr. didn't go. Though he wished at the time he had been permitted to travel there, today he is glad he did not see the dead. Among them was his 18-year-old pregnant wife.
Thirty years later, Jones lives in the Bay Area and is a medical equipment salesman with a territory that includes San Francisco, Hawaii and Guam. He has converted to Catholicism, and is happily married with three sons - one of whom plays basketball at the University of San Diego.
Looking at his past, Jones says that he finally had to forgive his father after years of hating him for what he did. That was the only way, Jones said, he could forgive himself - riddled as he was with survivor's guilt.
Up until the mass suicides, he said, he had been pretty much of a "true believer" in his father.
"In 1960, I was the first Negro child ever adopted by a white family in Indianapolis," Jones said. If he hadn't been adopted by Jones Sr. and his wife, Marceline, he probably would have ended up in foster homes or prison, he said. But as the Rev. Jones' son, "I felt I owned the company store," he said.
After the tragedy, he said, many people never wanted to hear anything about Jonestown except "that everyone was crazy. That's all they wanted to hear so they could put it in a box and could say, 'This can't happen to me.' "
These days, if people really want to hear about Jonestown, Jones says he tells them that he remains proud of what the Peoples Temple followers tried to do - "to build a new world. They tried, and they failed dramatically, horrifically."
Recently Jones was diagnosed with kidney failure. He will need dialysis and a transplant. He says the way he looks on it, 30 years ago he "had the opportunity to miss death" and now he attempts to live each day fully, volunteering at school and church activities and working on "how I can impact my world. I have been blessed by the grace of God."
______________________________________________________________________________
January 14, 2011, NPR, Rep. Leo Ryan's Daughter Recalls His 1978 Murder, by NPR Staff
The effects of the recent attack on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords are being felt far beyond Arizona. For Erin Ryan, the attack brought a flood of memories from another national tragedy. Her father, Rep. Leo Ryan, was killed in Guyana in 1978.
The California congressman had traveled to the Jonestown compound of the Peoples Temple cult to investigate Jim Jones' religious settlement. But his group was attacked as they attempted to leave. Ryan and several others were killed.
When it came to his work, Rep. Ryan was no stranger to risk, as Erin tells StoryCorps. For instance, his work on prison reform inspired him to spend a week on death row in the maximum-security Folsom State Prison.
"My dad had a fair amount of self-confidence and bravado," she says.
As Erin recalls, her father came away from Folsom with an unusual souvenir: a reminder of the prisoners' affection for chess.
Isolated from one another, they would call out moves. As Erin recalls, the prisoners used "a chess board they had made out of toothpaste and toilet paper, with a cardboard board. When he left, they presented the chess set to him. It became his prized possession."
Attack On A Congressman
At top, Rep. Leo Ryan (far right) flies to Guyana on Nov. 18, 1978, along with consultant James Schollart and aide Jackie Speier. In 1979, Erin Ryan (at right in lower image) attended a congressional hearing on the Jonestown killings.AP/Duricka
"We didn't talk a lot about the trip," she says. "It was just a chance to hang out with my dad. Dad had done a lot of adventurous things in his life, and everything had always turned out well."
It was around 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening that Erin got the first report that her father was in trouble.
"There was a flash news report on the television," she says, "that said that a congressman has been shot, and possibly killed. It was gut-wrenching, to not know what was happening. I mean, I can still feel it to this day when I think about it. It was brutal."
But soon after her father's death, Erin and her family found a message from him, something he'd written for them long beforehand.
"The night before he married my mom, he wrote a letter to his children. And it's the most beautiful letter you can imagine, about his hopes and dreams for his children in the future. And that was a tremendous gift to us."
Erin says she has a message of her own for the families of the victims of Saturday's shooting.
"Feeling that gaping hole in your life — I mean, for me it's been 32 years, and it can still bring me to tears — but, you can't make that a defining moment of your life, or of the person who died.
"I've always said to myself that I was lucky that he was my dad, and I was lucky to have had him for the years that I had him. And that's what you have to hold onto."
Now 53, Erin Ryan works as legal counsel to Rep. Jackie Speier, who represents Leo Ryan's old district. Speier, who was on Rep. Ryan's staff, was with him in Guyana when he was killed. She was shot five times, but survived.
Audio produced for Morning Edition by Michael Garofalo.
______________________________________________
Dead Dog & Gas Mask Shot
#suicide
#the peoples temple
#kool aid
#jim jones
#dead
#mass suicide
#cult
Timeline of People's Temple
September 1954: Jones speaks at Laurel Street Tabernacle, an Assemblies of God Pentecostal church in Indianapolis.
April 4, 1955: Several members of the Laurel Street Tabernacle join with Jones to form the Wings of Deliverance church, later renamed the Peoples Temple. The church was formed in part to further Jones’ beliefs in racial diversity.
1960: The Peoples Temple officially becomes a member of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and Jones is ordained as a minister, despite lacking any formal training. The church changes its name again to the Peoples Temple Christian Church. Twenty percent of church members are African-Americans.
1965: The Temple moves with 70 families, half of whom are African-Americans, to Ukiah, California. The church and Jones tried to escape personal threats and conflicts over radical theology. Jones also believed California to be a “safe zone” in the event of nuclear war, where racial equality could grow.
1972: The church opens a second congregation, in San Francisco.
1974: The Peoples Temple is granted a lease from the government of Guyana for a tract of land for colonization.
1977: Jonestown, Guyana, grows to 50 people. They come under suspicion of the Internal Revenue Service for revenue generated from elderly care homes they maintained. At this point, Jones begins urging his followers to move to Jonestown.
November 14, 1978: Congressman Leo Ryan travels to Jonestown on a fact-finding mission over concerns of family members and in part to investigate a child custody dispute between Jones and a former church member.
November 17: Ryan tours Jonestown and interviews members. Sixteen members leave with him.
November 18: Ryan continues his tour of Jonestown, but cuts it short when a member tries to cut his throat. While preparing to leave from an airstrip, a truck carrying armed Temple guards opens fire.
Ryan, three journalists and a Temple member are killed. Following the attack, Jones calls his congregation together, telling them they are being forced to commit "revolutionary suicide" by the outside world. One woman dissented but she was suppressed.
The Temple members line up to drink a fruit drink mixed with potassium cyanide and sedatives. Mothers fed the poison to their children. Jones is later found shot to death. In the end, 913 people died, 276 of them children.
#jonestown
#cult
#dead bodies
#mass suicide
“Death is not a fearful thing, it's living that's treacherous”—
#cults
#go outside
#suicide
#acid
#horror
Members of a US military team prepare aluminum coffins for shipment to the United States, following the more than 900 deaths in the mass suicide staged in Jonestown by members of the People’s Temple and their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones,Georgetown, Guyana, November 24, 1978.
#vintage #photography #mass suicide #peoples temple
http://prettylittlewonder.tumblr.com/post/21426521971/jim-jones-at-the-pulpit-in-jonestown-guyana
Family After Math
Jim Jones' wife, Marceline (left), was found poisoned at the pavilion.
Found near Marceline Jones' body was a signed and witnessed will leaving all bank accounts “in my name” to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and writing that Suzanne Jones Cartmell should receive no assets.
On the final morning of Ryan’s visit, Marceline had taken Stephan, Jim Jr. and Tim Jonesreporters on a tour of Jonestown.
Stephan, Jim Jr., and Tim Jones did not take part in the mass suicide because they were playing with the Peoples Temple basketball team against the Guyanese national team in Georgetown. At the time of events in Jonestown, Stephan and Tim were both nineteen and Jim Jones Jr. was eighteen. Tim’s biological family, the Tuppers, which consisted of his three biological sisters, biological brother, and biological mother, all died at Jonestown. Three days before the tragedy, Stephan Jones refused, over the radio, to comply with an order by his father to return the team to Jonestown for Ryan’s visit.
During the events at Jonestown, Stephan, Tim, and Jim Jones Jr. drove to the American Embassy in Guyana in an attempt to receive help. The Guyanese soldiers guarding the embassy refused to let them in after hearing about the shootings at the Port Kaituma airstrip.
Later, the three returned to the Temple’s headquarters in Georgetown to find the bodies of Sharon Amos and her three children. Guyanese soldiers kept the Jones brothers under house arrest for five days, interrogating them about the deaths in Georgetown. Stephan Jones was accused of being involved in the Georgetown deaths, and was placed in a Guyanese prison for three months. Tim Jones and Johnny Cobb, another member of the Peoples Temple basketball team, were asked to go to Jonestown and help identify the bodies of people who had died.
After returning to the United States, Jim Jones Jr. was placed under police surveillance for several months while he lived with his older sister, Suzanne, who had previously turned against the Temple. When Jonestown was first being established, Stephan Jones (right) had originally avoided two attempts by his father to relocate to the settlement. He eventually moved to Jonestown after a third and final attempt. He has since said that he gave into his father's wishes to move to Jonestown because of his mother.
Stephan Jones is now a businessman, and married with three daughters. He appeared in the documentary Jonestow
One year later, he appeared in the documentary Witness to Jonestown where he responds to rare footage shot inside the People’s Temple. Jim Jones Jr., who lost his wife and unborn child at Jonestown, returned to San Francisco.
He remarried and has three sons from this marriage, including Rob Jones, a high-school basketball star who went on to play for the University of San Diego before transferring to Saint Mary’s College of California. n: Paradise Lost which aired on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. He stated he will not watch the documentary and has never grieved for his father.
Lew and Agnes Jones both died at Jonestown.
Agnes Jones (left) was thirty-five years old at the time of her death. Her husband and four children all died at Jonestown. Lew Jones, who was twenty-one years old at the time of his death, died alongside his wife Terry and son Chaeoke. Stephanie Jones had died at age five in a car accident.
Suzanne Jones married Mike Cartmell; both turned against the Temple and were not in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. After this decision to abandon the Temple, Jones referred to Suzanne openly as “my goddamned, no good for nothing daughter” and stated that she was not to be trusted.
In a signed note found at the time of her death, Marceline Jones directed that the Jones’ funds were to be given to theCommunist Party of the Soviet Union and specified: “I especially request that none of these are allowed to get into the hands of my adopted daughter, Suzanne Jones Cartmell.” Cartmell had two children and died of colon cancer in November 2006.
Specific references to Tim Stoen, the father of John Stoen, including the logistics of possibly murdering him, are made on the Temple’s final “death tape,” as well as a discussion over whether the Temple should include John Stoen among those committing “revolutionary suicide.”At Jonestown, John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones’ cabin.
Both Jim Jon (Kimo - right) and his mother, Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, died during the events at Jonestown.
#jim jones
Watching a documentary on Jim Jones If your #Guyanese your parents have probably talked about this story watch channel 33 #cnn
#guyana
#people temple
#cnn
#jims jones
Meanwhile, the Jones Town Massacre is on CNN. I swear that’s the only thing most Americans know about my country. I didn’t even really know about the Jones Town Massacre until I was living in this Country. It’s not that deep back home. Most people in the country didn’t know anything until after everything happened. My mother just told me she didn’t even know where Jones Town was and she was born and raised there. She just knows it’s up in the jungle somewhere.
#guyana
#history
#jim jones
#massacre
#thoughts
Jim W. Jones Jr., shown here after coaching basketball practice at City College of San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, November 16, 2008. On Nov. 18, 1978, the day of the mass suicide at Jonestown, Jim Jones Jr. was about 150 miles away — in Georgetown, the capital of Guyana.
The night before, he and other youths from Jonestown had been narrowly defeated in a basketball game against the national team of Guyana. Among those who died in the mass suicide was Jones Jr.’s 18-year-old wife, who was pregnant with their child.
The radio call came before the suicides began.
On Nov. 18, 1978, Jim Jones Jr. was 18 years old and living in a Peoples Temple compound in Georgetown, Guyana, 150 miles from the Jonestown settlement. The previous night, he and his teammates on the Peoples Temple basketball team had played in a tournament, narrowly losing to the Guyanese national team. That afternoon, via shortwave, the Rev. Jim Jones, the boy’s adoptive father, contacted him with a chilling order: All 60 Temple members living in Georgetown should immediately “get knives, wire and scissors and take our own lives.”
The son tried to argue.
“Dad, this doesn’t make sense. Isn’t there another way?” he remembers saying. “Dad said the avenging angels would come and get our enemies, but we needed to lay down our lives ‘as a revolutionary suicide.’ “
After taking his father’s call, Jones Jr. said he rounded up his teammates, who included two other sons of Jones, Stephan and Tim. They went to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown to try to get personnel there to stop anything from happening. But no one at the embassy would open the doors, he said.
The next day, Guyanese troops were sent to Jonestown and found 909 bodies, victims of the mass suicide. Jones Jr. didn’t go. Though he wished at the time he had been permitted to travel there, today he is glad he did not see the dead. Among them was his 18-year-old pregnant wife.
Thirty years later, Jones lives in the Bay Area and is a medical equipment salesman with a territory that includes San Francisco, Hawaii and Guam. He has converted to Catholicism, and is happily married with three sons - one of whom plays basketball at the University of San Diego.
Looking at his past, Jones . says that he finally had to forgive his father after years of hating him for what he did. That was the only way, Jones said, he could forgive himself - riddled as he was with survivor’s guilt.
Up until the mass suicides, he said, he had been pretty much of a “true believer” in his father.
“In 1960, I was the first Negro child ever adopted by a white family in Indianapolis,” Jones said. If he hadn’t been adopted by Jones Sr. and his wife, Marceline, he probably would have ended up in foster homes or prison, he said. But as the Rev. Jones’ son, “I felt I owned the company store,” he said.
After the tragedy, he said, many people never wanted to hear anything about Jonestown except "that everyone was crazy. That's all they wanted to hear so they could put it in a box and could say, 'This can’t happen to me.'"
These days, if people really want to hear about Jonestown, Jones says he tells them that he remains proud of what the Peoples Temple followers tried to do - "to build a new world. They tried, and they failed dramatically, horrifically."
Recently Jones was diagnosed with kidney failure. He will need dialysis and a transplant. He says the way he looks on it, 30 years ago he “had the opportunity to miss death” and now he attempts to live each day fully, volunteering at school and church activities and working on “how I can impact my world. I have been blessed by the grace of God.”
#jonestown
#cult
_______________________________________________________________________
December 24, 2007, Sports Illustrated / CNN.com, Escaping Jonestown, by Gary Smith,
Marceline
Marceline (Marcy) Jones
Jim Jones' wife, Marceline, was found poisoned at the pavilion.[104] On the final morning of Ryan's visit, Marceline had taken reporters on a tour of Jonestown.[105] Stephan, Jim Jr. and Tim Jones
Stephan, Jim Jr., and Tim Jones did not take part in the mass suicide because they were playing with the Peoples Temple basketball team against the Guyanese national team in Georgetown.[15][103] At the time of events in Jonestown, Stephan and Tim were both nineteen and Jim Jones Jr. was eighteen.[106] Tim's biological family, the Tuppers, which consisted of his three biological sisters,[107][108][109] biological brother,[110] and biological mother,[111] all died at Jonestown. Three days before the tragedy, Stephan Jones refused, over the radio, to comply with an order by his father to return the team to Jonestown for Ryan's visit.[112]
During the events at Jonestown, Stephan, Tim, and Jim Jones Jr. drove to the American Embassy in Guyana in an attempt to receive help. The Guyanese soldiers guarding the embassy refused to let them in after hearing about the shootings at the Port Kaituma airstrip.[113] Later, the three returned to the Temple's headquarters in Georgetown to find the bodies of Sharon Amos and her three children.[113] Guyanese soldiers kept the Jones brothers under house arrest for five days, interrogating them about the deaths in Georgetown.[113] Stephan Jones was accused of being involved in the Georgetown deaths, and was placed in a Guyanese prison for three months.[113] Tim Jones and Johnny Cobb, another member of the Peoples Temple basketball team, were asked to go to Jonestown and help identify the bodies of people who had died.[113] After returning to the United States, Jim Jones Jr. was placed under police surveillance for several months while he lived with his older sister, Suzanne, who had previously turned against the Temple.[113]
Lew Jones, Terry and Chaeoke
Agnes Jones
Kimo
When Jonestown was first being established, Stephan Jones had originally avoided two attempts by his father to relocate to the settlement. He eventually moved to Jonestown after a third and final attempt. He has since said that he gave into his father's wishes to move to Jonestown because of his mother.[114] Stephan Jones is now a businessman, and married with three daughters. He appeared in the documentary, Jonestown: Paradise Lost which aired on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. He stated he will not watch the documentary and has never grieved for his father.[115] One year later, he appeared in the documentary, Witness to Jonestown where he responds to rare footage shot inside the People's Temple.[116] Jim Jones Jr., who lost his wife and unborn child at Jonestown, returned to San Francisco. He remarried and has three sons from this marriage,[103] including Rob Jones, a high-school basketball star who went on to play for the University of San Diego before transferring to Saint Mary's College of California.[117]
Lew, Agnes and Suzanne Jones
Lew and Agnes Jones both died at Jonestown. Agnes Jones was thirty-five years old at the time of her death.[118] Her husband [119] and four children [120][121][122][123] all died at Jonestown. Lew Jones, who was twenty-one years old at the time of his death, died alongside his wife Terry and son Chaeoke.[124][125][126]Stephanie Jones had died at age five in a car accident.[15]
Suzanne Jones married Mike Cartmell; both turned against the Temple and were not in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. After this decision to abandon the Temple, Jones referred to Suzanne openly as "my goddamned, no good for nothing daughter" and stated that she was not to be trusted.[127] In a signed note found at the time of her death, Marceline Jones directed that the Jones' funds were to be given to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and specified: "I especially request that none of these are allowed to get into the hands of my adopted daughter, Suzanne Jones Cartmell."[128] [129] Cartmell had two children and died of colon cancer in November 2006.[130] [131] John Stoen and Kimo
Specific references to Tim Stoen, the father of John Stoen, including the logistics of possibly murdering him, are made on the Temple's final "death tape," as well as a discussion over whether the Temple should include John Stoen among those committing "revolutionary suicide."[93] At Jonestown, John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin. [67]
Both Jim Jon (Kimo) and his mother, Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, died during the events at Jonestown. [132]
^ "22 - Rob Jones." University of San Diego Official Athletic Site. Accessed: 2009-10-03. Archived by WebCite
^ Agnes Paulette Jones Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple]. San Diego State University.
^ "Forrest Ray Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Billy Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Jimbo Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Michael Ray Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Stephanie Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ Lew Eric Jones Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Terry Carter Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
^ "Chaeoke Warren Jones" Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. San Diego State University.
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