As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. When the prodigals visited, the Cobbs kept it secret from Jones. But the reality is that it was far from a mass suicide. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. To just be somewhere with a machete, in khakis, and just decide I wanted to go somewhere and cut myself a trail." "I think he would be admitting in his own warped mind that he was not this great revolutionary he had tried to build himself up to be . Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. Now 58, he owns a modular office furniture business in the East Bay and is married with a daughter. But of course Dad was most terrified about anybody turning against him because it really screwed with the illusion that he had created. NBC reporter Don Harris said coolly: 'I think we're in for some trouble.'. ", The thought of killing Jim Jones had occurred to his son, but Stephan never tried to do it. But he said his discontent festered. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. 1998-11-08 04:00:00 PDT JONESTOWN, GUYANA-- "My father was a fraud."- Stephan Gandhi Jones, son of Jim Jones A lone palm tree stands where Jim Jones exhorted his followers to die for him, but the . He played at school. All these lives were wasted and I don't know why. The Joneses adopted a black baby in Indiana in 1960, and Jim gave the 10-week-old infant his own name. We're talking 30 people, but that's a lot of people to be looking over your shoulder.". And then he went to my mother. You don't tell God he needs help. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown to raise money. Of those 25 percent that drank the poison, most of those people were just defeated and didnt know where else to turn and didnt want to run out on the others. I just have to love him and forgive him.. After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. window._taboola = window._taboola || []; Jordan Vilchez's parents were Berkeley progressives in the 1960s - her father African-American, her mother Scotch-Irish. So yes, many people were disenchanted., Im sure he feared it and Im sure he had people telling him it existed. It marched for four jailed Fresno newsmen. 'The temple really became my family,' she said. Where they were lying. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business. It began with a note smuggled to us from two members. Going by the first body count, the media reported 383 dead. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? Yesterday morning 100 Guyanee troops came by train from Matthews Ridge, walking the last several miles as a precaution against sabotage or attack. Stephan Gandhi Jones was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. 'Like everyone else, he died there,' his son said. the whole thing he drove into people's minds for so long--I certainly don't mean to say that what happened was a sane act or that it was a good act, but--", Jones hesitates. She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. But some lived. "I don't know what was happening . We used curtains for bandages. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanan capital of Georgetown to raise money. He seems to have a tragic life after what had happened with his family. So yes there were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. 'To me the ends justified the means,' he said. The only surviving child of Jim Jones,Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. I noticed them in real time. File photo: Bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. What they said. She was the adoptive daughter of Rev. Copy. "This is really crazy," he recalls thinking. I would argue that even a lot of the good works that he wanted to do early on were an attempt to impress my mother and her family'. The tournament was in Georgetown, the Guyanese capital, 150 miles away. But we never felt he would go through with it because we saw him as such a coward.. In "Raven," the detailed Jim Jones biography by Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, it is Stephan Jones who stands in the shadows as his father lies and fakes and bends the people around him, his sickness mounting through the years. No one now living saw Jim Jones die, so there is some dispute about whether he also performed what he had taught his followers to call "revolutionary suicide." He was within a few minutes and a few yards of accomplishing his goal: to get out temple members who were afraid to leave or possibly held against their will. The slaughter at Jonestown was the worst civilian tragedy in U.S. history before September 11, 2001. At the end of Ryan's two-day visit to the mission Saturday, a woman suddenly charged down a slippery boardwalk shouting at her husband, 'I'll kill you! Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, California, November 13, 2008. I got the gun. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oakland's Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. mode: 'thumbnails-rr', Hundreds of corpses were lying on the ground in front of them. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 'I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that. Stephan Gandhi Jones. 'They're in deep trouble now,' observed one of the relatives who had accompanied us. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. They have three children. "And it could happen to anybody.". In Biographical Summaries of Notable People . Toward the end, as he watched the array of barbiturates, amphetamines and tranquilizers that now slurred his father's speech and sometimes left him physically unable to leave the Jonestown house, Stephan Jones says murder seemed almost redundant. This return to the cult of Jim Jones is part of a re-examination of dangerous cults and movements in Americas past, like the Osho cult, which had a similar murderous potential. Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. 'Liquidator,' " Stephan Jones remembers being called, as he lay on his prison cot and listened to the mosquitoes swarm. " Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did, she said. Manipulative tendencies. There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife, Erin, raised three sons. 2023 Canoe.com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said. A while later, the young temple escort on the tailgate shook his head and said: 'I don't understand why they did it this way. , MoKal . To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. Then two Guyanese medical evacuation planes flew us to the capital city of Georgetown, where a U.S. Air Force C-141 took us to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., stopping off on their way at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico. Im not trying to defend him. He is charming. }); Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy | User published content is licensed under a Creative Commons License. He keeps his voice very soft, as though practice has taught him to hold certain subjects to a whisper in public, but his gaze is direct. He contacted the people at the San Francisco branch of the Peoples Temple and instructed them not to take action. If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. 'We were trying to build a new world, a progressive socialist organization.'. Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons. After that I didnt sleep well last night., I wouldnt say therapeutic. Seating assignments were chosen after Ryan briefed the press on the knife attack and credited Mark Lane with saving his life. I make a point of avoiding pointing fingers and giving specific names. I had been up all night unloading boats and I had to be at work in a couple of hours so I lay down for two hours of sleep after backbreaking and dangerous work, and Dad comes on the speaker in the wee hours of the morning. People were completely fatigued, exhausted. And in his growing community near the town of Ukiah, Jim Jones preached to the faithful about communalism, racial equality, "apostolic social justice" and the power of belief. Stephan Jones was born on 1 June 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. "I just say something like, 'You remember Jonestown?' . For years it was largely forgotten along with a number of other insanities in the United States in the 1970s. OAKLAND, Calif. Jonestown was the highlight of Mike Touchettes life for a time. Fear of an external threat was a major component of your fathers philosophy. Hes never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. As a self-taught bulldozer operator, he worked alongside other Peoples Temple cult members in the humid heat with his blade carving roads and sites for wooden buildings with metal roofs. Joining him was an older black man who fingered something in his right pocket. "You can tell when it's a man; the positions are different," Jones says evenly. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons with two now coaching basketball at the high school and college level. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says he's now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. And there was more social rhetoric and action in my life and a lot more fear. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. Four granite slabs are etched with names of the 918 people who died in Guyana- including James Warren Jones, which deeply offends some whose relatives perished. After more than 22 years at California's transportation department, Smith retired in 2015. ), 'It was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. At 16, she was put on the Planning Commission where the meetings were a strange mix of church business, sex talk and adulation for Jones. But he also tapped into something very real and showed something very real and was very loving, especially during the early period.. And I looked around and there were at least 15 people looking at me. And the temple was his life - first in Indiana, later in California. . He has learned, he says, to understand his own resources and the depths of his emotions. He made a promise once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, Smith said. Mud made the truck bed slick, so everyone clung to the sideboards. When John Cobb was born in 1960 in a black section of Indianapolis, his mother and older siblings already were temple members. They could leave any time they want.'. I get it, Im not upset about that. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. "I mellowed out." Among the hundreds of corpses, only one was different; he had died from a bullet to the head. I did. 'I believe 100 percent that not everyone would have been dead,' he said. Photographer Greg Robinson (right)was one of the five people killed. "I see a potential for me to get out of hand," Stephan Jones says, resting his chin on his hand and looking steadily at his visitor. The temple really became my family, she said. Greg's body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. In "Raven," Reiterman and Jacobs describe the minister presenting the congregation with a batch of fruit punch: "We're going to drink poison and kill ourselves," Jim Jones declared, and it was not until many people had drunk that Jones said he had simply wished to test his followers' loyalty. container: 'taboola-right-rail-thumbnails', "I was building me a place, too," he says. The next day, when soldiers of the Guyanese army, one of the most ragged in South America, hesitantly entered the Jonestown compound, they were blinded by the thick morning mist. "I say, 'Mom,' " Stephan Jones says, recalling a desperate mother-son huddle toward the end, " 'We're talking about a man who think's he's God. . By 1978, the White Nights included a rehearsal for suicide, something Jim Jones previously had tried only with his small circle of confidants within the church. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. 'We think he's got a gun. stephan gandhi jones Tatko na pesmaricu. Im not saying he didnt cause it, create it. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. If anything, we felt pity for him, he said, and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.. 'There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. no one could ever relate to it unless they were in the same situation, or they were in the atmosphere my father created . Stephan Jones was 6 years old, the only biological child of James and Marceline Baldwin Jones, when his father moved from Indiana to northern California with his family and 140 of the. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs, afraid to venture anywhere for fear of his legal problems. A few of us jumped from the truck and ran over there. I wouldn't have run.". All had been captivated by his promises of a model socialist society based on equality and love under his leadership. When the prodigals visited, the Cobbs kept it secret from Jones. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part he played in an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. Only two days later did the picture became clear. By the time Stephan Jones was 16, his father had moved the family to the big temple building in a black neighborhood of San Francisco, where politicians and black leaders had begun paying considerable attention to Jim Jones' racially mixed congregation and fervently preached exhortations to adjust society under a socialist god. "He was a gentle man in a lot of ways," Jones says, stretched now over the sofa in his small apartment. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day never,. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim and Marceline Jones of that, it went as far as did!: ' I think we 're talking 30 people, but I know wasnt... Number of other insanities in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple, a progressive socialist organization... 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