Nov, 21, 1978, Associated Press, Death toll in Guyana hits 383, by Martin Merzer,

November 21, 1978, The Frederick Post - AP, Death toll in Guyana hits 383, by Martin Merzer,

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) -- Troops swept through a steaming jungle Monday in search of American religious zealots who fled their remote compound and left behind a scene of horror and death -- the bodies of at least 383 fellow cultists, some shot, most apparently poisoned by their own hands in a mass suicide.

Among the bodies found at the camp were those of the sect's fanatical founder, the Rev. Jim Jones, his wife and one of their children, said Police Chief C. Augustus.

Soldiers counted 163 women, 138 men and 82 children among the dead. They all were believed to be Americans. Many reportedly had lined up to take doses of poison from a tub.

The mass deaths apparently occurred about an hour or more after members of the California sect, People's Temple, ambushed a visiting investigative group led by Congressman Leo J. Ryan, killing Ryan and four others.

Augustus said there was no evidence of gunshot wounds on the bodies of Jones, his wife or child. :It appears that they drank some poison," he said.

Still unaccounted for were between 500 and 900 of Jones' followers, who fled into the jungle around the agricultural commune, 150 miles northwest of this South American capital.

The killings and mass suicide, triggered by Ryan's inspection visit, apparently were the final cry of a violence-hardened and paranoid group that saw the world closing in.

American lawyer Mark Lane, who escaped from the mass deaths, told reporters of terrifying hours he and another attorney, Charles Garry, spent in the camp and the rainy jungle nearby late Saturday and Sunday.

Lane, a prominent champion of controversial cases and a legal counsel to the sect, said he and Garry
were barred from a mass meeting at the camp, Jonestown, but that they heard residents discussing communal suicide over a loudspeaker. Lane said one spoke of "the beauty of death as part of our struggle."

The cultists reportedly had long considered mass suicide if they felt their sect threatened. Jones and the sect had been under investigation in California before he founded the Guyana camp last year.

Lane said the meeting began at about 5 p.m. Only 40 minutes earlier, a half-dozen sect members ambushed Ryan's group at a nearby airstrip, where they were trying to fly out some disenchanted sect members.

My Hero: Martin Merzer (With an Honorable Mention to Joseph B. Treaster)

Writing nearly a year after the massive Jonestown death ritual, New York Times reporter, Joseph B. Treaster, in an article, Guyanese Shun Jonestown Horror, has this description of the savage event in the Peoples Temple residence in Georgetown that mirrored the violence in the settlement:

As the men, women and children were dying in Jonestown, a final radio message was reportedly sent to Sharon Amos, one of Jones's principal representatives in Georgetown. With 46 others present in the People's Temple House, she is said to have put down the receiver, taken a butcher knife from the kitchen, walked through a living room filled with friends playing cards and listening to music, beckoned her three children into a bathroom and slit their throats.

The prosecution contends that Mrs. Amos asked Beikman to help her hold the children and then to cut her throat. He is also accused of having attempted to kill Stephanie Jones, a 9-year-old adopted daughter of Jim Jones, who was also in the bathroom and suffered a minor cut on her neck.

Treaster ends his article by quoting some un-ambivalent legal opinion:

Jai Narine Singh, a 70-year-old lawyer who helped frame Guyana's first government in the transition toward independence and who is a member of the defense team representing Layton and Beikman, says he is convinced that neither man will be convicted of murder in Guyana.

"There is no case against either of them," Singh said. "Layton was inside the small plane when the five people were killed outside the larger plane. If they want to prove a conspiracy, they must have evidence of plans or language between the parties, but there is no such thing at all. The only possibility is attempted murder of the three in the little plane."

As for Beikman, Singh said, "there are no witnesses who will testify."

"All of them in the house except the little girl say they didn't see anything," he said. "And her testimony has been destroyed. She's given three different versions of the same story."

The first round of Layton's prosecution has ended inconclusively. After weeks of preliminary hearings, a magistrate ruled that a prima facie case had been established.

Who is paying for this collective legal defense, using the highest-level "team" the country had to offer (Sir Lionel Luckhoo, Guinness Book of World Records holder for his hundreds of consecutive murder acquittals won, who was Jim Jones overt legal representative in the Stoen custody fight, was surely providing his pricy influence in the background.) when supposedly all the Peoples Temple accounts had been frozen, is an interesting question. Since the commune was under a delusion of collective responsibility in the death of Rep. Leo Ryan, perhaps a corresponding responsibility holds that men from rich families like the Layton's share equally with their white-cracker fellow-indictors.

Shooting and wounding people inside the confines of any plane, large or small, is definitely grounds for attempted murder charges, but I can understand Singh's point of view as to there being no obvious motive to any conspiracy here, such as when a victor co-opts the role of the vanquished by destroying himself. However, research turns up plenty of "evidence of plans or language between the parties."

An Associated Press article published on Tuesday, November 21, 1978, by Martin Merzer, seems like a trustworthy early reference--unlike the entirety of Charles A. Krause's work, which when viewed in context with his colleagues' work leaves his contributions looking like the far-out fantasies of Lewis Carroll

In "Cult leader's body found; Soldiers find 12 fleeing sect survivors, Merzer reports information that is clearly being offered voluntarily by his source:

Odell Rhodes, a 36-year-old teacher and one of the camp survivors, told the pool reporters elaborate preparations were made for the mass suicides and killings triggered by Ryan's visit.

Rhodes said the original plan was for all the people in Ryan's main aircraft to be killed by a gunman who would pose as a defector and get on the plane, then kill the pilot, causing the plane to crash.

He said the man got on the secondary aircraft by mistake at the tiny airstrip in the village of Port Kaituma, eight miles south of Jonestown, then started shooting and other armed men on a truck-trailer also opened fire.

Calling Rhodes a "teacher" is a kind description for someone who self-identifies as a two-time loser heroin addict from the streets of Detroit. He seemed to do well supervising arts-and-crafts projects for young people in the commune, but unless we are misled, he wouldn't appear to be connected to any high-level planning initiatives. This is evidence that a conspiracy of planning wasn't afoot, but rather, a conspiracy of storytelling was underway. The lack of guile Rhodes has on display speaks to the totality of the system in which he is taking part, a world order in which the Guyanese legal framework is only window dressing to the behests of centuries-old Imperial masters.

The system I'm talking about is so universal in its conception that the individual players can get very sloppy in their work, since there is never any real consequences in the public realm (which is not to say that there aren't some heavy-duty private contracts enforced) This dynamic can leave observers mystified sometimes, as it was in the case, as bizarre as the so-called suicides themselves  were, which was the sudden, inexplicable doubling in the number when counting the corpses.

Looking at the first four day's worth of news articles it's clear that the Guyanese supervisory authorities hadn't made any rough estimates of what they were facing. In fact, the disparity between the known dead and the several hundreds of "disappeared" cultists was cause for international media speculation.  Merzer is utterly straightforward in his reporting, even when it hints at what was to become the implausible explanation  for the discrepancy:

Several hundred bodies were sprawled around a communal meeting hall, packed so closely together that many had fallen across others who died minutes earlier. Some had embraced as they died.

One wonders if the frenzy of dying cultists convulsing in their cyanide-rictus could leave a scene as he is describing, or if the agency of living hands arranged the scene after-the-fact:

Scores of bodies were virtually in piles outside the hall and in small groups farther away.

Mercer gives a perfect sense of what the job of inventorying the corpses must have been like in real time:

By midafternoon, soldiers reported counting the bodies of 163 women, 138 men and 82 children. A police spokesman said later the toll was 409 as the terrible task continued at the settlement in this small South American country tucked beside Venezuela. He said bodies still were being found.

By mid-afternoon would have been as of Monday afternoon, as the difference between the 383 corpses he listed by age and gender then rose to the 409 dead mentioned in his lead paragraph which was the figure updated that evening. That's when the ongoing task reached its finite end---at least for the next several days--then, without warning or rational explanation, the numbers shot up

Another interesting figure is 12:

By dark, police and soldiers had found only 12 survivors from among the estimated 500-900 who had fled into the bush.

If you count the four who survived at the camp itself, and the three who were absconding with the commune's cash-treasury when they were taken into police custody---and even if you throw in Mark Lane and Charles Garry, who said they tied their underwear to trees so that like a reverse Hansel and Gretel tale they might find their way back to the place of horror, the numbers still don't add up to 12. The several young people who went missing at the Port Kaituma air strip after the attack were said to have been lost for three or four days, so they can't figure into this sum. Is this then a bit of unreconciled data?

The devil is in these sorts of details. Apparently, very little of what we're told is the truth has any bearing on their private experience--and that works in both directions, I dare say. For instance, this is what my bete noir has to say:

Charles Krause, a reporter for the Washington Post who was with the Ryan party Saturday but escaped death, was in a pool of journalists permitted to return to Jonestown with government forces Monday.

He said Jones had been shot in the head and was one of the few to die from a bullet wound. Jones body clothed in black pants and a [...] casual shirt was on a stage of the meeting hall, Krause said.

The part of this transcript I have no difficulty in copying is the "black pants" bit, and in the two color images said to be of Jim Jones below (albeit, after he's been moved from the meeting place stage to the meeting place entryway, Jones is clearly wearing white, tan or khaki slacks. Now, his skin might be described as blackening, but his pants will always be a shade of not-black:



A Spook Who Likes Me slipped the image above into my Google returns. It is too fucking narratively rich! We see white people! We see faces! We see dead little baby boys!

Jones' been pre-Photoshopped with a grimace above, as distinct from his serene closed-mouth shown below, but my, look how good and dark those thick sideburns are! Not bad for a man with no underarm hair!

Look at what a bad job was done with the Tetany of his hands, also known as the "Chvostek sign." The usual effect after death, and I should think it only exacerbated by cyanide, is a pronounced incurving of the hand as the muscles are deprived of calcium, and the extremities draw in, like this:



However, Jones looks like he's throwing gang signs with his left hand, while his right hand looks completely relaxed, I suppose so that it stays in agreement with what we see in the image below.

Images for tetany of the hands




This is a silly, stupid, pathological sort of mistake for a reporter to make. This isn't the women's style section circa 1957, when a description of an outfit leads. It is a gratuitous detail thrown in for verisimilitude, but it is a falsehood, an invention, and an untruth and it is not worthy of the CIA-military propaganda media school that graduated Charles A. Krause just in time for this, his first foreign service gig at the Washington Post.

Lastly, at least for now, is this numerical discrepancy:

Reporter Tim Reiterman of the San Francisco Examiner, a member of the Ryan group and a survivor, said in a copyright story Monday in the Examiner that Layton was one of several supposed defectors Ryan was trying to escort away from the 27,000-acre commune.

And no, I'm not talking about the 3,500-acre leasehold which strangely had an inflated size repeated like the game of Telephone, but that Layton was one of several fake defectors. I'll have to relocate a very early FBI report wherein (supposedly legitimate?) defectors say three of the designated bad guys were on the original trip in the dump-truck out to the air strip, and that included Joe Wilson, the showoff shooter. The narrative apparently got streamlined along the way but this is what got left in the wake.


Whoa, nellie...things have just gotten a LOT more interesting! Look at this article penned by my hero-scribe, published on the same date as his above. Quoting Police Chief C. Augustus, Mercer wrote

"Augustus said there was no evidence of gunshot wounds on the bodies of Jones, his wife or child. 'It appears that they drank some poison,' he said"

November 21, 1978, The Fredericks Post, Death toll in Guyana hits 383, by Martin Merzer,

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) -- Troops swept through a steaming jungle Monday in search of American religious zealots who fled their remote compound and left behind a scene of horror and death -- the bodies of at least 383 fellow cultists, some shot, most apparently poisoned by their own hands in a mass suicide.

Among the bodies found at the camp were those of the sect's fanatical founder, the Rev. Jim Jones, his wife and one of their children, said Police Chief C. Augustus.

Soldiers counted 163 women, 138 men and 82 children among the dead. They all were believed to be Americans. Many reportedly had lined up to take doses of poison from a tub.

The mass deaths apparently occurred about an hour or more after members of the California sect, People's Temple, ambushed a visiting investigative group led by Congressman Leo J Ryan, killing Ryan and four others.

Augustus said there was no evidence of gunshot wounds on the bodies of Jones, his wife or child. :It appears that they drank some poison," he said.

Still unaccounted for were between 500 and 900 of Jones' followers, who fled into the jungle around the agricultural commune, 150 miles northwest of this South American capital.

The killings and mass suicide, triggered by Ryan's inspection visit, apparently were the final cry of a violence-hardened and paranoid group that saw the world closing in.

American lawyer Mark Lane, who escaped from the mass deaths, told reporters of terrifying hours he and another attorney, Charles Garry, spent in the camp and the rainy jungle nearby late Saturday and Sunday.

Lane, a prominent champion of controversial cases and a legal counsel to the sect, said he and Garry
were barred from a mass meeting at the camp, Jonestown, but that they heard residents discussing communal suicide over a loudspeaker. Lane said one spoke of "the beauty of death as part of our struggle."

The cultists reportedly had long considered mass suicide if they felt their sect threatened. Jones and the sect had been under investigation in California before he founded the Guyana camp last year.

Lane said the meeting began at about 5 p.m. Only 40 minutes earlier, a half-dozen sect members ambushed Ryan's group at a nearby airstrip, where they were trying to fly out some disenchanted sect members




November 21, 1978, The Spokesman-Review - Associated Press, Soldiers find 12 fleeing sect survivors, by Martin Merzer,
Tuesday,

GEORGETOWN, Guyana (AP) -- Guyanese soldiers searched through a steaming jungle Monday for hundreds of American religious zealots who fled their remote compound after the suicide-murder deaths of at least 409 fellow cultists.

Some were shot, but most apparently lined up and took doses of cyanide poison mixed in a tub with flavored water. A witness said poison was spoon fed to babies.

Several hundred bodies were sprawled around a communal meeting hall, packed so closely together that many had fallen across others who died minutes earlier. Some had embraced as they died.

By dark, police and soldiers had found only 12 survivors from among the estimated 500-900 who had fled into the bush.

All of the settlers were believed to be Americans, most from California.

Those who were killed or took their own lives perished at about the same time Saturday that enraged members of the sect attacked an investigative group led by Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif. at a dirt airstrip. They killed Ryan, three U.S. newsmen and a woman from the settlement.

By midafternoon, soldiers reported counting the bodies of 163 women, 138 men and 82 children. A police spokesman said later the toll was 409 as the terrible task continued at the settlement in this small South American country tucked beside Venezuela. He said bodies still were being found.

Also found in the fields, huts and dormitories were 17 shotguns, 14 rifles, seven pistols, a flare gun and large amounts of ammunition, government officials said.

Among the dead were the Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple settlement called Jonestown, his wife and one of their sons.

Jones, the offspring of an inter-racial marriage, and his followers, both blacks and whites, established the inland settlement last year. It was carved from the jungle in an isolated

(Continued on page 6)

region 150 miles northwest of Georgetown and 50 miles east of the Venezuelan border.

White House press secretary Jody Powell said President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn expressed their "shock and grief" and Carter certainly is taking a personal interest in the tragedy.

Charles Krause, a reporter for the Washington Post who was with the Ryan party Saturday but escaped death, was in a pool of journalists permitted to return to Jonestown with government forces Monday.

He said Jones had been shot in the head and was one of the few to die from a bullet wound. Jones body clothed in black pants and a [ ] casual shirt was on a stage of the meeting hall, Krause said.

Scores of bodies were virtually in piles outside the hall and in small groups farther away.

Government investigators told reporters Jones apparently had shot himself. They said most of the dead drank the fruit-flavored water spiked with cyanide, but it appeared some had poison injected in their veins while infants were fed the deadly doses.

Jones' wife and son, one of the couple's seven children, died of poison, the investigators said.

In Washington, it was announced that 150 U.S. servicemen are being assembled at various bases to be flown to Guyana and evacuate the bodies.

John A. Bushnell, head of the special State Department task force on the Jonestown tragedy, said the servicemen will fly to Georgetown and then go to Jonestown by helicopters and transfer the bodies back to Georgetown. He reported a group of 29 U.S. military specialists also would be flown in to help identify the dead.

Odell Rhodes, a 36-year-old teacher and one of the camp survivors, told the pool reporters elaborate preparations were made for the mass suicides and killings triggered by Ryan's visit.

Rhodes said the original plan was for all the people in Ryan's main aircraft to be killed by a gunman who would pose as a defector and get on the plane, then kill the pilot, causing the plane to crash.

He said the man got on the secondary aircraft by mistake at the tiny airstrip in the village of Port Kaituma, eight miles south of Jonestown, then started shooting and other armed men on a truck-trailer also opened fire.

In Washington, the White House said American poison experts were dispatched to Guyana to help in the investigation. A U.S. Air Force C-141 transport arrived at Georgetown's airport, and reportedly a C-5A was scheduled to come in to help carry the bodies back to America.

Denying reports that as many as nine suspects had been arrested in connection with the Ryan ambush, Miss Field-Ridley said only one man had been taken into custody -- American Larry Layton, about 32 years old. His hometown was not known, and she did not reveal the charges against him.

Reporter Tim Reiterman of the San Francisco Examiner, a member of the Ryan group and a survivor, said in a copyright story Monday in the Examiner that Layton was one of several supposed defectors Ryan was trying to escort away from the 27,000-acre commune. The land was leased to the organization by the government of this nation on South America's northeastern shoulder.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Boy, they really redid the art direction between these two takes. Why would they crowd out the walkway steps with those three prone corpses under a sheet? And the treats table has disappeared too, he notes with a cluck of his tongue.






October 17, 1979, New York Times News Service, Guyanese Shun Jonestown Horror, by Joseph B. Treaster,

______________________________________________________________________________________

Basketball, Leverage, and Shiksa Chicago Brides

A few of the basketball players who conveniently [for them]  took on the "Guyanese National Team."

It's such a small world:

Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party between 1953 and 1957 received a majority of votes in the national elections.

Jagan's politics can best be illustrated by pointing out that he was the husband of Janet Rosenberg, daughter of the atomic spies.

Mark Lane, Charles Garry, and Bill Kunstler were all visitors at the settlement when more than 900 members died. page 156

Police Files: The Spokane Experience 1853-1995:

 Personal & Historical Accounts by a Career Staffer, 

by M. Kienholz (Jan 1999)

November 19, 1978, Dallas Times Herald, Congressman, newsmen feared slain during mission to Guyana, by Steven Hurst, 

November 26, 1978, New York Times - UPI, F.B.I. Is Concerned About Crime Files; Reports by Bureau Say Organized Crime Figures Have Obtained Data From Police Unit,

December 5, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal - AP, page 1, FBI Director to Fire 2, for Illegal Acts, December 5, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, Page 14, Letters, Why Should the Rest of Us Have to Pay? 

December 6, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, FBI Has Learned Its Lesson,
December 6, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, page 1, Peoples Temple to Dissolve Itself, [Continued page 18]
December 7, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, page 1, Local FBI Chief Censured, [continued page 2]
January 6, 1979, Washington Post, Sensitive FBI Papers Found in Jonestown, by Charles R. Babcock,
___________________________________________________________________________________

November 19, 1978, Dallas Times Herald, Congressman, newsmen feared slain during mission to Guyana, by Steven Hurst, 

The State Department said late Saturday it has been told Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., and a number of reporters were shot and apparently killed in an attack on the congressman's fact-finding mission at the airport in Port Kaituma, Guyana.

How could a fleeing pilot know the disposition of the various dead and wounded?

Below...in a word...Leverage...

November 26, 1978, New York Times - UPI, F.B.I. Is Concerned About Crime Files; Reports by Bureau Say Organized Crime Figures Have Obtained Data From Police Unit,



__________________________________________________________________________________

January 6, 1979, Washington Post, Sensitive FBI Papers Found in Jonestown, by Charles R. Babcock,


___________________________________________________________________________________

January 6, 1979, Washington Post, Sensitive FBI Papers Found in Jonestown, by Charles R. Babcock,

Sensitive FBI documents and the makings of a book about allegedly illegal FBI activities have been found among the ruins of the Peoples Temple cult in Guyana.

The discovery has triggered an investigation of a former FBI agent turned author who has been cooperating with the Church of Scientology in exposing purported FBI wrongdoing. It also has led to an exchange of accusations between Charles Garry and Mark Lane, attorneys for the Peoples Temple cult led by the Rev. Jim Jonas, who died Nov. 18 with more than 900 cult members in a mass suicide-murder.

Justice Department and FBI spokesmen declined to comment on the matter yesterday. But in telephone interviews, the former agent and Garry. his attorney, said that FBI agents searched their offices a few weeks ago in an effort to recover other copies of the FBI materials found in Jonestown, Guyana.

The documents were said to be unrelated to the Peoples Temple.

Sources familiar with the investigation said the matter is considered serious because informants can be identified from some of the documents. One informant involved has received a
death threat as a result, they said.

Possible charges against the former agent for stealing government documents may be barred. That is because of an understanding given by Justice Department investigators that he would be immune from prosecution for the alleged misdeeds he has described, sources said.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility has interviewed the former agent about his accusations that the FBI routinely created phony informants—and used illegal

See FBI, AS, Col. 4

FBI Documents Found in Jonestown

FBI, From A1

surveillance techniques, such as break-ins and wiretaps.

The former agent has given press interviews arranged by the Scientologists over the last several weeks. Church officials have been under investigation for spying on federal authorities and have waged a public counteroffensive to discredit those investigators.

The former agent, who asked not to be identified, said in a phone interview yesterday that he first learned materials for his book were found in Jonestown about three weeks ago when six FBI agents from Los Angeles, armed with a search warrant, arrived at the boat where he lives.

They found no other documents and took only his typewriter, but told him he was under investigation for stealing government documents, he said.

He said he had sent the material to Garry's office more than a year ago to safeguard it until he could turn it over to Justice Department investigators.

He said he didn't know how the material got to Jonestown in South America.

Garry and Lane have wildly divergent versions of how the former agent's book material made its way from Garry's office in San Francisco to Jonestown.

Garry said he recently learned that Terri Buford, a key member of the Peoples Temple, had gone through his files about a year ago and copied the documents with the aid of another Temple member.

Garry was the Peoples Temple attorney at that time, he said, and had given Buford a key to his office. He said he gave the FBI the name of the person who would corroborate the story.

Lane, Buford's attorney, said yesterday that a Garry associate gave his client the documents, with Garry's approval, to copy and give to both Jones and Dennis Banks, a leader in the American Indian Movement.

The two attorneys were present as Peoples Temple lawyers when Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.) made the fateful trip to Jonestown in November. Ryan and four members of his party were murdered and then Jones led a mass murder-suicide in which he and more than 900 of his followers died.

Lane and Garry escaped the massacre and have since become bitter enemies.

Both Garry and Patricia Richartz, Garry's associate, denied Lane's accusation. "I had no idea the documents' were in Jonestown until the FBI came to search my office," Garry said.

The FBI agents took his copies of the documents found in Guyana, Garry said. He said he didn't know whether they included raw files.

Richartz said Buford knew about the former agent's proposed book because she had been introduced to him at Garry's office about a year ago.

The former agent said he retired in 1977 after 25 years in the FBI and decided to write a book because he wanted "to get a change in the system."

He said the documents included 212 pages of "working information" for a book about his knowledge of illegal FBI activities, as well as a few dozen copies of internal FBI documents he planned to turn over to investigators

He said he didn't believe informants' names could be learned from the material, but noted that some of documents named FBI agents who took part in break-ins.

The former agent said he talked with Michael E. Shaheen Jr., head of the office of Professional Responsibility, and his assistant, Richard M. Rogers, last spring and last October.

Both declined comment yesterday.

The farmer agent and Garry both said he had been told by Shaheen's office that he would not be prosecuted as a result of his testimony." Other sources agreed.
__________________________________________________________________________________

_______________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal - AP, page 1, FBI Director to Fire 2, for Illegal Acts,

___________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, Page 14, Letters, Why Should the Rest of Us Have to Pay?

___________________________________________________________________________________

December 6, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, FBI Has Learned Its Lesson,

__________________________________________________________________________________

December 6, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, page 1, Peoples Temple to Dissolve Itself, [Continued page 18]

__________________________________________________________________________________

December 7, 1978, The Milwaukee Journal, page 1, Local FBI Chief Censured, [continued page 2]




_________________________________________________________________________________

10-Year-Old Stefany Jones, 12-Year-Old Stephanie Jones, or 9-Year-Old Saraphine Jones *

* I didn't make that last one up. See: Last Jonestown survivor freed from Guyana jail

A fascinating focus amid the whole bevy of unnatural personalities--maybe 20 percent of these articles say the young girl is "no relation to the cult leader," although the consensus was Stephanie Jones was the "adopted granddaughter" of Jim Jones--niece of Stephan Jones, and in a few accounts also a niece of Susan Amos. But among ten million words written about the Jones family, I can't find any describing her actual relationship as in a diagram. Wikipedia tells us that

Lew and Agnes Jones both died at Jonestown. Agnes Jones was thirty-five years old at the time of her death.[119] Her husband [120] and four children [121] [122] [123][124] all died at Jonestown.

And the other boys were too young and basketball-calloused to parent a houseplant. The New York Times, says she's "9-year-old Stephanie Jones, the adopted daughter of an adopted son of the Rev. Jim Jones," and there we are.




November 20, 1978, San Francisco Chronicle, Mystery Death of People's Temple Aide,
November 20, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, Price of her faith: 4 lives; Mother kills 3 kids, self, by Paul Shinoff,November 23, 1978, The Oakland Tribune, by Steve Lopez, A reunion before Guyana massacre,
November 24, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, One of the first Guyana victims, by Annie Nakao,
November 25, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, Death count rises to 900; Final toll in Guyana; Jones follower charged with four murders,
December 1, 1978, New York Times / Reuters, Writs Granted in Guyana, [Charles E. Beikman]
December 4, 1978, The Day - AP, page 7, Cultist accused of aiding mother slay her children, by Lew Wheaton,
December 5, 1978, New York Times, page B-11, A Cult Mother Led Children To Death; Witnesses, Initially Unaware of Plans for Suicides, Tell of the Guyana Deaths, by Joseph Treaster,
December 5, 1978, The Evening Independent - UPI, page 3A, Peoples Temple: Prosecutor Says Fellow Cultist Helped Woman Kill Her 3 Children, Then Herself,
December 5, 1978, New York Daily News / UPI, page 32, Arraign ex-marine in 4 slayings, [Charles E. Beikman]
December 5, 1978, Washington Post / UPI, page A-14, Guyana Suspect Mute in Court [Charles E. Beikman]
December 5, 1978, The Free Lance-Star - AP, page 1, Papers tell of tricks by cultists, by Peter Arnett, AP Special Correspondent,
December 5, 1978,The Daily Item, [Sumter, S.C.] - AP, Prosecutor Says Cult Member Held Kids For Mother To Kill, by Lew Wheaton,
December 5, 1978,The Free Lance-Star- AP, page 15, Cultist denies role in killing family, by Lew Wheaton,
December 7, 1978, Adirondack Daily Enterprise - AP, Beikman accused,
December 12, 1978, Observer-Reporter - AP, Son of Cult Leader Testifies at Hearing,
December 18, 1978, Ellensburg Daily Record – UPI, Son of cult leader confesses to murders,
December 20, 1978, The Palm Beach Post – UPI, Jones Charged With Murder, Temple Head’s Son Calls Confession 'Sarcasm’,
December 20, 1978, Washington Post, Jones' Son Is Charged With 4 Murder Counts In Cult Throat-Slashing, By Charles A. Krause,
December 20, 1978, New York Times, 'Confession' Prompts Four Charges of Murder Against Jim Jones's Son, by David Vidal,
December 20, 1978, The Spokesman-Review – AP, page A-6, Jones charged, bank funds frozen,
December 20, 1978, Lodi News-Sentinel – UPI, Rev. Jones’ son retracts story he killed follower, 3 children,
January 29, 1979, Washington Post, FBI Has Copy of Jonestown Radio Messages by Charles A Krause,
January 31, 1979, Schenectady Gazette - UPI, Jones’ Daughter’s Testimony Out As She Does Not Believe in God,
February 2, 1979, The Oregon Bulletin - UPI, Trial reveals bloody details,
February 3, 1979, The Virgin Islands Daily News - AP, Youngster Describes Guyana Murder Scene,
February 3, 1979, Spokane Daily Chronicle – UPI, Court Ruling Due in Temple Deaths,
February 7, 1979, Lakeland Ledger,  Cult Leader Son Freed,
October 17, 1979, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - New York Times News Service, Guyanese Shun Jonestown Horror, [Continued page 4]
April 1, 1980, Spokane Daily Chronicle – AP, Jonestown Death Count Admitted,
April 2, 1980, The Observer-Reporter - AP, page A-9, Cult member Pleads Guilty to Murder Charge,
April 9, 1980, Eugene Register-Guard - UPI, page 15-B, Jones follower sentenced,
April 9, 1980, Plattsburg Press-Republican, Cultist sentenced for Jonestown killing,
April 9, 1980, The Day - AP, page 9, Jonestown defendant given 5 years in attempted murder,
September 29, 1980, The Virgin Islands Daily News - CANA, Jonestown Survivor Will Not Face Murder Charges, by Sharief Khan,
July 8, 1982, Florence Times Daily – UPI, page 23, Last Jonestown survivor freed from Guyana jail,

_________________________________________________________________________________

November 20, 1978, San Francisco Chronicle, Mystery Death of People's Temple Aide,



_________________________________________________________________________________

November 20, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, Price of her faith: 4 lives; Mother kills 3 kids, self, by Paul Shinoff,





_________________________________________________________________________________

November 23, 1978, The Oakland Tribune, by Steve Lopez, A reunion before Guyana massacre,





__________________________________________________________________________________

November 24, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, One of the first Guyana victims, by Annie Nakao,




__________________________________________________________________________________

November 25, 1978, San Francisco Examiner, Death count rises to 900; Final toll in Guyana; Jones follower charged with four murders,






______________________________________________________________________________

December 1, 1978, New York Times - Reuters, Writs Granted in Guyana, [Charles E. Beikman]


__________________________________________________________________________________

December 4, 1978, The Day - AP, page 7, Cultist accused of aiding mother slay her children, by Lew Wheaton,


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, New York Times, page B-11, A Cult Mother Led Children To Death; Witnesses, Initially Unaware of Plans for Suicides, Tell of the Guyana Deaths, by Joseph Treaster,


________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, The Evening Independent, page 3A, Peoples Temple: Prosecutor Says Fellow Cultist Helped Woman Kill Her 3 Children, Then Herself,

Prosecutor Carlton Weithers says Charles Beikman killed Sharon Amos and her three children.

three more survivors flew out of Guyana

Robert Paul, 33 of New Iberia, La.,

Johnny Franklin, 33, of San Francisco

Richard Clark, 42, of Los Angeles

Of 86 known survivors, 31 have returned



"Stefany Jones, 9, a niece of Mrs. Amos, entered the bathroom while the murders were being carried out and Beikman tried to cut her throat. He managed to inflict a cut but failed to sever her jugular vein, and the girl escaped screaming.

________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, New York Daily News - UPI, page 32, Arraign ex-marine in 4 slayings, [Charles E. Beikman]


_________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, Washington Post / UPI, page A-14, Guyana Suspect Mute in Court [Charles E. Beikman]


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978, The Free Lance-Star, page 1, Papers tell of tricks by cultists, by Peter Arnett, AP Special Correspondent,



__________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978,The Daily Item, [Sumter, S.C.] - AP, Prosecutor Says Cult Member Held Kids For Mother To Kill, by Lew Wheaton,


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 5, 1978,The Free Lance-Star- AP, page 15, Cultist denies role in killing family, by Lew Wheaton,


_________________________________________________________________________________

December 7, 1978, Adirondack Daily Enterprise - AP, Beikman accused,


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 18, 1978, Ellensburg Daily Record – UPI, Son of cult leader confesses to murders,

___________________________________________________________________________________


December 12, 1978, Observer-Reporter - AP, Son of Cult Leader Testifies at Hearing,



_________________________________________________________________________________

December 20, 1978, Lodi News-Sentinel – UPI, Rev. Jones’ son retracts story he killed follower, 3 children,


__________________________________________________________________________________

December 20, 1978, The Palm Beach Post – UPI, Jones Charged With Murder, Temple Head’s Son Calls Confession ‘Sarcasm’,


__________________________________________________________________________________

December 20, 1978, New York Times, 'Confession' Prompts Four Charges of Murder Against Jim Jones's Son, by David Vidal,


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 20, 1978, The Spokesman-Review – AP, page A-6, Jones charged, bank funds frozen,


___________________________________________________________________________________

December 20, 1978, Washington Post, Jones' Son Is Charged With 4 Murder Counts In Cult Throat-Slashing, By Charles A. Krause,



GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Dec. 19—Looking haggard and contrite after a night in police custody, the late Rev. Jim Jones' 19-year-old son Stephan was charged with murder today in the throat-slashings of four Peoples Temple members hours after the mass suicide-murder at Jonestown.

In one more unexpected episode of the Nov. 18 Jonestown tragedy, Jones confessed yesterday to the murders during a tense courtroom confrontation [with] Carlton Weithers, government prosecutor. Jones was testifying during an inquest to determine whether Charles E. Beigman, a member of the Peoples Temple, will stand trial on charges of actually carrying out the four killings.

Guyanese police have determined Jones was not at the scene of the murder and therefore do not believe he wielded the knife himself. But under Guyanese law, they say, ordering the killings makes him liable to the murder charges.

During, Weithers' reexamination yesterday, [an] obviously angered Jones blurted out: "I killed those people and am trying to put it off on Chuck Beikman.

Magistrate Desmond Christian then asked Jones twice whether he meant what he had said, and both times Jones said he did, according to Weithers and a diplomatic observer in the courtroom yesterday when the statement was made.

Christian recessed the hearing and ordered a police investigation. It was understood here today that the police, who already had cleared Jones of involvement in the actual slayings, did not find any additional evidence to support his admission.

Nonetheless, Weithers said before the charges were formally lodged against Jones this morning that the fact that Jones recanted his admission and was obviously agitated when he blurted out his statement does not negate the legal validity of the confession.

Despite Jones' statement, the prosecutor did not dismiss the four counts of murder and one count of attempted murder against Beikman. They simply added Jones as a defendant, charged both with attempting to slash the throat of 8-year-old Stephanie Jones, Jones' niece; and with slashing the throats of Lianne Harris, 22; Martin Amos, 9; Christine Amos 10, and Linda Sharon Amos, about 42.

Stephanie Jones escaped but the other four, Linda Sharon Amos and her three children, died in the lavatory of a Georgetown house belonging to the Peoples Temple. Linda Sharon Amos was a top aide to the elder Jones before the Jonestown tragedy in which more than 900 persons died.

"I told them (the police) I was mad. It was absurd: I wasn't even there," Jones told reporters today before being taken off to jail.

Christian scheduled the next hearing in the case for Jan. 10.

Lee Ingram, a Peoples Temple leader outside the courtroom, characterized lengthy questioning of Temple survivors by Guyanese police as harassment. At the same time, Ingram said discussions are under way between temple lawyer Rex McKay, a confidant of Guyana's Prime Minister L. F. Burnham, to allow several Peoples Temple members to remain in Guyana rather than return to the United' States, where they will undoubtedly be called before a federal grand jury in San Francisco investigating the temple's operations.
__________________________________________________________________________________

January 29, 1979, Washington Post, FBI Has Copy of Jonestown Radio Messages by Charles A Krause,




___________________________________________________________________________________

January 31, 1979, Schenectady Gazette - UPI, Jones’ Daughter’s Testimony Out As She Does Not Believe in God,


___________________________________________________________________________________

February 2, 1979, The Oregon Bulletin - UPI, Trial reveals bloody details,


_________________________________________________________________________________

February 3, 1979, Spokane Daily Chronicle – UPI, Court Ruling Due in Temple Deaths,


___________________________________________________________________________________

February 3, 1979, The Virgin Islands Daily News - AP, Youngster Describes Guyana Murder Scene,

___________________________________________________________________________________

February 7, 1979, Lakeland Ledger,  Cult Leader Son Freed,


__________________________________________________________________________________

October 17, 1979, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - New York Times News Service, Guyanese Shun Jonestown Horror, [Continued page 4]





Jai Narine Singh, a 70-year-old lawyer who helped frame Guyana's first government in the transition toward independence and who is a member of the defense team representing Layton and Beikman, says he is convinced that neither man will be convicted of murder in Guyana.

"There is no case against either of them," Singh said. "Layton was inside the small plane when the five people were killed outside the larger plane. If they want to prove a conspiracy, they must have evidence of plans or language between the parties, but there is no such thing at all. The only possibility is attempted murder of the three in the little plane."

As for Beikman, Singh said, "there are no witnesses who will testify."

"All of them in the house except the little girl say they didn't see anything," he said. "And her testimony has been destroyed. She's given three different versions of the same story."
_________________________________________________________________________________

April 1, 1980, Spokane Daily Chronicle – AP,  Jonestown Death Count Admitted,

________________________________________________________________________________

April 2, 1980, The Observer-Reporter - AP, page A-9, Cult member Pleads Guilty to Murder Charge,




__________________________________________________________________________________

April 9, 1980, Eugene Register-Guard - UPI, page 15-B, Jones follower sentenced,



_________________________________________________________________________________

April 9, 1980, The Day - AP, page 9, Jonestown defendant given 5 years in attempted murder,

_________________________________________________________________________________

April 9, 1980, Plattsburg Press-Republican, Cultist sentenced for Jonestown killing,

_________________________________________________________________________________

_________________________________________________________________________________

September 29, 1980, The Virgin Islands Daily News - CANA, Jonestown Survivor Will Not Face Murder Charges, by Sharief Khan,

_________________________________________________________________________________

July 8, 1982, Florence Times Daily – UPI, page 23, Last Jonestown survivor freed from Guyana jail,

_______________________________________________________________________________

Dec 18, 1978 – ... if enough evidence was available to charge cultist Charles Beikmanwith the ... other cult members at the time Sharon Amos and her children were slain at... Beikman also is accused of attempting to kill Stephanie Jones the ...

Apr 3, 1980 – ... said Charles Beikman 44 a cook and shoemaker for the Jonestown ...or Wednesday for the attempted murder of Stephanie Jones a girl and no... also was charged with murder in the death of Sharon Amos a top temple...

Wikipedia

Family aftermath

Marceline

Jim Jones' wife, Marceline, was found poisoned at the pavilion.[105] On the final morning of Ryan's visit, Marceline had taken reporters on a tour of Jonestown.[106] 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.[16][104] At the time of events in Jonestown, Stephan and Tim were both nineteen and Jim Jones Jr. was eighteen.[107] Tim's biological family, the Tuppers, which consisted of his three biological sisters,[108][109][110] biological brother, [111] and biological mother, [112] 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. [113]

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.[114] Later, the three returned to the Temple's headquarters in Georgetown to find the bodies of Sharon Amos and her three children.[114] Guyanese soldiers kept the Jones brothers under house arrest for five days, interrogating them about the deaths in Georgetown.[114] Stephan Jones was accused of being involved in the Georgetown deaths, and was placed in a Guyanese prison for three months.[114] 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.[114] 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 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.[115] 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.[116] One year later, he appeared in the documentary Witness to Jonestown where he responds to rare footage shot inside the People's Temple.[117] 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,[104] 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.[118] 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.[119] Her husband[120] and four children[121][122][123][124] 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.[125][126][127]Stephanie Jones had died at age five in a car accident.[16]

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.[128] 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."[129][130] Cartmell had two children and died of colon cancer in November 2006.[131][132]

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."[94] At Jonestown, John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin.[68]

Both Jim Jon (Kimo) and his mother, Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, died during the events at Jonestown.[133]
____________________________________________________________________