Orignal page 195 Jonetown VI THE "H" FILE HOMICIDES Jim Jones once boasted to his son-in-law and heir apparent, Michael Cartmell, that the Peoples Temple was shielded from any serious investigation or prosecution simply by the nature of the Temple's activities; activities that were so outrageously bizarre that no one outside the organization would ever believe them. In the six years between 1970 and 1976, Jones ordered the execution of six Temple members in a brutal series of murders that eventually led to the involvement and subsequent death of Leo Ryan; the only U.S. Congressman ever to be assassinated. Nowhere was Jones' security system more apparent or successful than in the "H" file homicides. This story begins in the Temple's top secret file room where detailed dossiers were maintained on everyone who came in contact with the organization. Patty Cartmell, Michael's mother and long-time aide to Jones was the organizational genius in charge of the sophisticated intelligence gathering and intricate filing system that rivaled the latest techniques of the Central Intelligence Agency. Orignal page 196 Jonetown Within the files, there was an information envelope on each of the members of the Temple. The contents of the envelopes disappeared when Jones moved his headquarters to San Francisco. All that remains are a few envelope labels, printed forms containing the member's photo, name, address, membership number and other such data, as well as a list of those documents the member had signed. There were five documents in all. The "information sheet" was basically the subject's autobiography. The "financial release" was a living will bequeathing all worldly possessions to the Peoples Temple. The "resignation" was just that, a resignation from the Temple so, if the member was ever implicated in any wrong-doing, Jones could date the document and disassociate himself from the accused. The two remaining documents, the "blank statement" and the "sheet of paper" are the subject of this chapter. Before a member could be promoted to a position of trust within the Temple, Jones required that he or she sign a self-confession statement as a test of loyalty. The three basic confessions, dictated by Jones and signed by the member, attested to child molestation, homosexual acts or conspiracy to assassinate public officials. It wasn't long before the signer realized his confession might be used to blackmail him into Jones' service. This fear helped to blind the subject to the true danger, the "sheet of paper." Jones required his top aides to sign the lower right-hand corner of a blank sheet of paper. It appeared harmless enough in comparison with the self-confession letter, but it was deadly. Once the signed sheet of paper was on file, Jones would manipulate the aide into a situation where he at least appeared to be responsible for a capital crime. Jones would then Orignal page 197 Jonetown retrieve that blank statement, type in a confession to that crime and provide the aide with a photocopy. Mere suspicion was never sufficient to warrant an indictment but suspicion along with a signed confession would certainly result in an indictment and conviction. In this manner, Jones was able to blackmail or "whitemail," as he called it, his other wise wavering followers into a life of slavish devotion; for if they ever fell from his good graces, he would provide the authorities with their signed confession to a crime they were already suspected of, and the result would certainly be a prison sentence. This was the Temple's baptism by blackmail. The blackmailed aides would become the Temple hierarchy, the ruling elite and, for the most part, the only survivors of the massacre in Jonestown. Jones called them his "Angels;" an appropriate name as those outside the group assumed it was in reference to Jones' divinity, while those unfortunates inside the group knew it was an allusion to the angel of death. Though 80% of the Temple membership was Black, nearly 100% of the Angels were Caucasian. Their numbers are not known, but by 1978, Jones referred to them as "The One Hundred." Inside each information envelope was the complete life story of the subject, including medical and career history, psychological profile, lists of relatives, associates and friends as well as personal preferences and habits. No agency of the federal government, not even all of them combined, had a more copious intelligence bank than did the Peoples Temple. The data was divided into two basic classifications: "direct" and "indirect." Direct data was any intelligence received firsthand from the subject either Orignal page 198 Jonetown voluntarily provided in his signed information sheet, or inadvertently provided in idle conversations with Cartmell's intelligence agents. Indirect data was any intelligence gathered without the subject's knowledge. Patty Cartmell and her assistants were skilled in burglary techniques and much information was gained through illegally entering a subject's home. More predominant, though less spectacular than breaking and entering, was the disabled car routine. Typically, two of Cartmell's female spies would knock on the subject's door, claim their car had broken down and ask to use the telephone. While in the house, they would make mental notes of the surroundings. One would ask to use the bathroom and, while locked inside, photograph the contents of the medicine cabinet. Later, the photo would be used to identify any prescription drugs and the doctor who prescribed them, so that a more detailed medical history could be acquired from the subject's physician. Other indirect data was gathered through surveillance, conversations with neighbors and distant relatives, as well as periodic studies in the contents of a subject's garbage can. In the early morning hours, Cartmell and her team would take garbage that had been set out near the street for removal back to the Temple or a motel room where it was spread out on a long table, closely examined, analyzed and inventoried. Reports were so detailed that it was not sufficient to note, say, an empty box of cookies. Cartmell's spies were expected to indicate the brand name of the cookies, the manufacturer's name and address, the list of ingredients, the price and the retail outlet where the product had been purchased. A typed garbage inventory, titled "indirect-garb " along with any personal correspondence and bills were then filed in Orignal page 199 Jonetown the subject's information envelope. Old telephone bills were of particular interest as they provided an accurate accounting of every long-distance phone call the subject had placed in the previous month. On one occasion, Patty Cartmell was arrested for her clandestine intelligence gathering. Cartmell, an obese White woman, was disguised in plain dress and black stage make-up when the police caught her snooping around a house in a Black Los Angeles neighborhood. She later gave this account: Jack (Beam) and I were doing a stop/by on a house in Los Angeles. Jack was in the car and I was in the yard. The cops came, and Jack, the yellow-bellied coward, took off, leaving me holding the bag. I was arrested and taken in.... I didn't know what to do so I called Tim [Temple attorney, Tim Stoen] and told him I'd been arrested.[68] According to Temple aide, Terry Buford: Stoen said that Jim came up with this brilliant idea that Patty should be told to say she was having an affair with a man and had put on this disguise; she was meeting him in a black neighbor-hood, and she didn't want her husband to find out. Stoen said ____________________ [68]68 Lane, P. 249. Orignal page 200 Jonetown the story was so incredible that the police believed it and released patty.[69] In addition to the information envelopes on Temple members, Patty Cartmell had amassed a very impressive file on California's politicians and public figures. The subject of one such study was Leo Ryan, whose Temple file was larger than most, as Jones' superiors had expressed particular interest in the career of this aspiring young Assemblyman. In 1968, Cartmell presented her completed file on Ryan to Jones for his review. Leo J. Ryan was born on May 5, 1925 in Lincoln, Nebraska; the son of a newspaperman from whom he inherited a compelling interest in investigative journalism. After serving in the Navy during World War journalism. Ryan graduated from Creighton University in 1951 with a masters degree in Elizabethan Drama. Like many other navy veterans who first experienced California during the war, Ryan returned to the San Francisco Bay Area where he settled in the small community of South San Francisco and accepted a position teaching English at the local high school. Eventually, he would be appointed principal and superintendent of the South San Francisco High School. His first involvement in politics came in the mid-50's when he campaigned against the McCarthy Era communist witch-hunt and was elected to the city council where he served from 1956 until 1962. His career in municipal government was uneventful. Perhaps city politics was too small an arena for his abilities, but, in any event, Ryan longed for a more important and challenging role in ____________________ [69]Ibid. P. 249. Orignal page 201 Jonetown government. He found his opportunity in late 1960 when John Kennedy was elected president. Ryan arranged for the South San Francisco Marching Band to perform at Kennedy's inauguration ceremony in Washington in early 1961, as token reprentatives of the new president's West Coast supporters. Ryan planned every aspect of the trip with his old friend and drinking buddy, Robert "Sammy" Houston. Sammy Houston, a descendant of the famous Texas general, was an Associated Press photographer whose son, Bob was a student of Ryan's and spokesperson for the high school's marching band. Bob had grown up in the adjacent community of San Bruno where he counted Ryan's children among his playmates who affectionately referred to this intelligent young man as "the professor." Leo Ryan, together with Sammy and Bob Houston and the school band, set out for the scheduled performance in Washington. Hotel rooms were at a premium during the inauguration so Ryan and Sammy Houston shared a room which gave them time together to put the finishing touches on their plan. On inauguration day, Sammy shot some great photographs. One was of his son shaking hands with President Kennedy -- a memento Bob would cherish until his death in 1976. But the most important photo and, in retrospect, the sole purpose for the trip to Washington, was of Leo Ryan conducting the band as they marched past the reviewing stand and President Kennedy. The following day, through Houston's connections with the Associated Press, the photograph with Ryan in the foreground and Kennedy in the background appeared on the front page of nearly every newspaper in Northern California. Sammy Houston's photo had made Leo Ryan famous overnight. Immediately upon his return to Orignal page 202 Jonetown California, Ryan began to campaign for the office of mayor of South San Francisco, a position he was elected to in 1962. Also in 1962, Ryan was elected to the California Assembly. His political career had advanced from city councilman to state assemblyman in a few short months and he owed it all to Sammy Houston. It is important to note, as did Jim Jones in his evaluation of Ryan's file, that the Washington episode was staged from the start. Ryan was the school's principal and the faculty chaperone on the trip, but he had no musical training and no business conducting the band; especially in its brief moment in the limelight. Ryan's expertise lay, not in music, but in theatrics and his theatrics in Washington earned him a seat in the California Assembly. Ryan's political career depended largely on staged publicity events intended to generate public awareness, support and votes. His colleagues viewed the theatrics as little more than cheap grand-standing but their criticism stemmed, not from distaste of his tactics, but from envy of his success. Ryan was a loner, a self-made man, an individual who rose to political importance without the aid of, or the debt to, an existing power structure. His singular attitude was best described in the inscription on a picture of a sailboat hung in his Sacramento office; ; "I know which way the wind is blowing but I must set my own course." Ryan was a member of the California Assembly and eventually the U.S. Congress, but in a larger sense he never really joined these legislative bodies. He remained an individual who marched to his own tune; something that would further alienate him from his fellow legislators. Orignal page 203 Jonetown Ryan quickly gained a reputation in the California Assembly as a formidable investigator who personally looked into every major issue of the day. Joe Holsinger, Ryan's chief aide, would later recall: Leo believed that more legislators should go check things out, rather than take someone's word for them. He felt it was his duty to check out the problems of the people he represented.[70] In 1965, following the race riots in the Watts section of Los Angeles, Ryan moved into the home of a local Black family and worked, under an assumed name, as a substitute teacher at the predominantly Black Jefferson High School where he studied, firsthand, the cause of the social unrest. In 1970, when prison reform was a major issue in California, Ryan, again under an assumed name, was transported in handcuffs to the maximum security section of Folsom Prison, where he was interned for a week to study the issue of prison reform from the inside. He later wrote a play about his Folsom Prison experience, entitled "A Small Piece of Sky," but it was never produced. Also in 1970, Ryan was proclaimed "Man of the Year" by the International Wildlife Foundation for his trip to Newfoundland where he chained himself to baby seals to protest their slaughter. Following each of his adventures, Ryan would receive excellent press coverage that helped keep him in the public eye and in office. Jones, who was also an expert in media manipulation, recognized Ryan's ____________________ [70]Kilduff and Javers, p. 126 Orignal page 204 Jonetown tactics for what they were and found within those tactics his one weakness. Ryan clearly owed his political career to the Houstons and Jones knew that to control the rebel assemblyman he needed only to control Bob Houston, and this he set out to do in 1968. Patty Cartmell provided Jones with an updated file on Bob Houston. Bob had continued his education at the University of California at Berkeley where he was student director of the school's marching band. He had married and he and his wife Phyllis had two daughters, Patricia and Judy Lynn. Jones surmised that recruiting Bob Houston was an easy matter of simply giving him what he wanted. Since his graduation from Berkeley there was a void in Bob's life, there were no more bands for him to conduct and he had lost his one love, music. Temple recruiters first contacted Phyllis and, when they had generated sufficient interest for her to approach her husband about joining the Peoples Temple, Jim Jones was well prepared. He offered Bob the position of music director of the Temple's very professional band and chorus. Bob accepted. Knowing that he shared his father's interest in photography, Jones also him staff photographer and appointed assistant pastor, just to add to the honor he bestowed upon him. In time, Jones' hold on Bob Houston would increase to a death grip, but it suffices to say that by 1969 Houston was a lifetime member of the Peoples Temple. His dossier was placed in an information envelope and filed under "H." Thus began a masterplan that would require eight years to conclude. A few months later, Jones ordered the first of the "H" file homicides. Orignal page 205 Jonetown ***************************************************** VICTIM NUMBER ONE Maxine Bernice Harpe Died: March 28, 1970 Hung by the neck Maxine Harpe grew up in the small Northern California town of Willits where she married her high school sweetheart, had three children and settled down to a quiet life in Talmadge, that is until 1969, when Jim Jones targetted her for assassination. In a little more than a year, Jones and his aides would destroy Maxine's marriage, family, career, and love affair. They would steal her children and her life savings and drive her to the brink of suicide. Temple strongarm man and Mendocino County Welfare worker, Jim Randolph, initiated a love affair with Maxine intended to break up her marriage and bring her into the congregation. Every relationship pursued by Jim Randolph, or any other Temple member, required the prior approval of the Temple's Relationship Committee and Jim Jones, who not only issued binding judgments on proposed relationships, but also proposed many himself. Maxine quickly fell in love with Randolph; attesting to Jones' ability to pair villain with victim. Spurred by Randolph's encouragement, Maxine left her husband and moved into a Temple communal house with her three children and Temple member Mary Candoo. During this difficult transition period, Maxine was counseled and encouraged by her welfare caseworker, Linda Sharon Amos, a high ranking Temple aide who claimed to have once been a member of Orignal page 206 Jonetown Charles Manson 's gang. Amos helped Maxine secure a job as a dental assistant at the Mendocino State Mental Hospital in Talmadge. Linda Amos and Jim Randolph were only two of the estimated fifty Temple members who had infiltrated government agencies in Mendocino County, but their function in the Welfare Department was one of particular importance to Jim Jones. Together with their colleagues, Amos and Randolph were able to license several Temple operated foster care homes and protect several additional homes that were unlicensed and illegal. Jones convinced his congregation that their children would have a richer life experience living apart from their parents. Families were disbanded and a the children, who were now eligible for welfare assistance, were placed in Temple foster homes. The children's welfare support checks were signed over to the Temple and provided a substantial portion of Jones' government subsidy. The Temple welfare activities were not restricted to simple fraud; many Black children were taken from the ghettos of San Francisco and Oakland using tactics that bordered on kidnapping. The illegal use of the Mendocino County Welfare Department appeared to escape the attention of the Department director Dennis Denny. Though it was impossible to ignore the Temple foster care homes and to ignore the the Temple welfare case workers, Denny never seemed to make the connection. Carrie Minkler was one of the few case workers in the Welfare Department who was not a member of the Peoples Temple. Ms. Minkler, now retired, recalls working with Amos, Randolph and other Temple members; Orignal page 207 Jonetown You didn't open your mouth. You didn't mention the Peoples Temple in our department. Even the walls had ears. There wasn't anything that went on in our office that Jim Jones didn't know the next day...Peoples Temple workers went through other workers' case files. The CIA could have used them. The atmosphere was really tense.[71] It didn't take long to surround Maxine. She had a Temple lover, a Temple house with a Temple roommate, a Temple social worker, a Temple job with Temple co-workers, even the attorney representing her in the divorce case was Temple attorney Tim Stoen. The Temple was also Maxine's religion and recreation. By March of 1970, every aspect of her life depended upon the Peoples Temple as Jim Jones pulled the plug on her life support system. Three weeks before her death, Maxine received a check for $2,493.81; her share of the divorce settlement. She signed the check over to Randolph, whe deposited $2,000.00 in his personal checking account and $493.81 in his savings account, as per Jones' instructions. Once her life savings were safely in Temple hands, everything bad happened to Maxine at once. Jones ordered Randolph to end his relationship with Maxine and she was heartbroken. She was fired from her job. She had no means of support; Randolph had all her money and wouldn't give it back. She went to Linda Amos for financial assistance from the Welfare ____________________ [71]Klineman, Butler and Conn, pp. 111-112. Orignal page 208 Jonetown Department, but Amos not only denied her request but, in addition, judged her a "mental depressant" and threatened to place her children in a Temple foster care home as she was unfit to be a parent. Her roommate, Mary Candoo, would certainly parrot Amos' accusations. Maxine realized she was under siege by a well organized attacker and sought help from her attorney, Tim Stoen, but, of course, her protest fell on deaf ears. She then turned to the one man who seemed to be at the center of her problem. She confronted Jones the day before her death. Jones was furious and thoroughly humiliated Maxine in front of Randolph and other Temple members who remember him saying, "Why don't you just kill yourself? Get it over with!.... At least Judas had the guts to kill himself.[72] Others recall Jones predicting, "That bitch (Maxine) is going to die,"[73] just one day before she did. Everywhere she turned, Maxine felt an ever increasing hostility. After the March 27th confrontation with Jones, she was so afraid the Temple would take a more physical approach to their harassment that she made a special request to bring home a houseful of Temple children, whose presence, she hoped, would discourage a physical assault. She was wrong. On March 28th at 1:30 AM, one of the children spending the night at Maxine's house wandered into the garage to find Maxine dead; hung by an electrical extension cord from the roof rafters. A hastily scribbled suicide note on a torn grocery bag instructed the children to phone the Temple in Redwood Valley and wait in the house until they arrived. Jim Jones, Jim Randolph, Patty Cartmell and Jack Beam arrived at Maxine's house sometime before ____________________ [72]72 Phil Kerns with Doug Wead, _P_e_o_p_l_e_'_s _T_e_m_p_l_e _-_-_P_e_o_p_l_e_'_s _T_o_m_b (Plainfield, New Jersey: Logos Inter-national, 1979), p. 138. [73]73 Klineman, Butler and Conn, p. 212. Orignal page 209 Jonetown dawn. Jones waited outside in the car while the others put on surgical gloves and entered the house to remove any evidence of Maxine's involvement with the People's Temple. They untied the body, lowered it to the garage floor and disrobed it to remove a red prayer cloth that belted the waist. Temple members often wore these blessed prayer cloths in concealed places on their person. The body was then redressed and rehung, carefully re-staging the scene for the police investigator. The aides then ransacked the house to locate and remove anything that might associate Maxine with the Temple. They completed their work at approximately 8:30 AM, instructed the children to phone the police, and left. Jones was safe in his Redwood Valley parsonage at 8:57 AM when Deputy Sheriff-Coroner, Bruce Cochran, arrived at the death scene in Talmadge. Twenty minutes later, Randolph, Cartmell and Beam returned to the house and informed Deputy Cochran that the children had phoned them but that they really didn't know why as they had never met the dead woman. Cartmell convinced Deputy Cochran that she should remove the children from such a gruesome scene, and consequently, he never got the opportunity to question the only eyewitnesses. One of the children, nine year old Tommy Ijames, would later recall the event: The children called the church before they called the police, and they came very early in the morning. They came in there and took all the pictures of Jim Jones out. .. (prayer) cloths they took from her, pulled her down Orignal page 210 Jonetown off the (rafter) and took them off her waist, anything that had to do with the church... Jim (Jones), he stayed in the car and didn't come out... They pulled her down and they took the clothes off her... They were taking all the... little pamphlets of Jim Jones, and then (after the coroner arrived) they acted like they didn't know her...[74] The Temple death squad had left Maxine's house twenty minutes before the coroner arrived and returned just twenty minutes after he arrived. They allowed him enough time to assume that he was the first adult on the scene, but not enough time to question the children, who were quickly transported away. Such impeccable timing was typical of Temple operations. Like the other agencies in Mendocino County, Jones had spies in the Sheriff's office who informed him of their every move. Deputy Cochran's subsequent investigation proceeded exactly as Jones had planned. It was Cochran's job to be suspicious and he was. There was the unusual placement of a trunk under Maxine's feet and the unexplained presence of children and adults, all of whom were members of the Peoples Temple. But eventually his investigation was to center on Maxine's financial transactions just prior to her death. Cochran contacted Jim Randolph's boss, Welfare Director, Dennis Denny, questioning the legality of a welfare worker depositing a welfare recipient' check ____________________ [74]Ibid., pp. 214-215. Orignal page 211 Jonetown in his personal account; especially when that same welfare worker was present at the scene of the recipient's apparent suicide just three weeks later. Denny defended Randolph's actions and assured Cochran that there was no reason to suspect foul play or improper conduct, but Cochran was not satisfied. He pressured Randolph for a deposition regarding his role in Maxine's finances and reluctantly he complied. In a sworn statement, Randolph told the police that a few weeks after receiving the money, he transferred $2,000.00 from his savings account to Temple treasurer, Eva Pugh, to set up a trust fund for Maxine's children. He held the remaining $493.81 until three days after Maxine's death when he added that to the fund as well. If Randolph's statement is to be believed it would seem that he helped establish a fund for Maxine's children _b_e_f_o_r_e her death. Randolph completed the deposition but refused to sign it until Assistant District Attorney and Peoples Temple attorney) Tim Stoen had the opportunity to review the statement. Randolph stalled, Stoen stalled, and the statement was never signed. It was Tim Stoen who finally convinced Cochran to drop the investigation when he informed him that he (Stoen) was co- trustee of the children's fund, along with, of all people, Cochran's boss, Sheriff Reno Bartolmei. Also, to disguise their true involvement, the Peoples Temple had contributed an additional $470.00 to the fund, that together with the initial money and the accumulated bank interest, totaled $3,000.00 for the three children. Linda Amos, Maxine's welfare case worker, buttressed Stoen's statements with her volunteered testimony as to Maxine's depressed state of mind just prior to what certainly must have Orignal page 212 Jonetown been her suicide. Cochran's investigation quickly lost momentum. Maxine's death was declared a suicide. The case was closed and, despite future pleas from ex-Temple members and the press, it was never reopened. Richard Taylor, a local Baptist minister who knew Maxine Harpe, was not satisfied with the superficial investigation into what he believed as murder. Aware that the Temple controlled most of Mendocino County, Taylor presented his arguments in a long letter he sent to the state attorney general's office in which he asked the state to investigate Jim Jones' role in Maxine Harpe's death. Taylor was invited to present his evidence to a deputy in the attorney general's office but when he appeared to testify in Sacramento, his notes on Jones were confiscated and he was told that there would be no investigation due to "insufficient evidence." Immediately upon his return to Ukiah, Taylor and his wife were deluged with threatening phone calls that they believed "originated from the People's Temple." Intimidated and frightened, the minister dropped all attempts to prove that Jim Jones had ordered Maxine Harpe's death. Randolph may have avoided signing a statement for the police but he did not avoid signing a blank statement for Jim Jones. It wasn't long before he realized his mistake when Jones presented him with a copy of his previously signed blank statement which was now a typed confession to the murder of Maxine Harpe. Only then did he understand why Jones had instructed him to deposit Maxine's money in his personal bank account and why he insisted Randolph be present at the scene of the crime. The police already suspected him, and their suspicion, along with the signed confession, Orignal page 213 Jonetown would certainly convict him of murder; especially since the foreman of the Mendocino Grand Jury, who would bring down the indictment, was none other than Jim Jones. Randolph was promoted to the Angels and his only way out was a lifetime sentence in prison. To further implicate him in Maxine's death, Jones called him in front of a closed meeting of the Temple's Planning Commission and, with a dozen witnesses present, he accused Randolph of killing Maxine. He shouted, "You know you did it (killed Maxine)[75] But for all of Jones' badgering, Randolph said nothing in his own defense. Rumors of the Temple's involvement in the death of Maxine Harpe continued to circulate in the press. Two and a half years later, Lester Kinsolving penned a series of articles in the_ _ _S_a_n_ _ _F_r_a_n_c_i_s_c_o_ _E_x_a_m_i_n_e_r_, in which he accused Temple attorney Tim Stoen of wrongdoing in his counseling of Maxine just prior to her alleged suicide. Stoen refuted the charges in a statement that appeared in the Ukiah Daily Journal, dated September 21, 1972, in which he said: The woman referred to (who was not, incidentally, a member of my church) was somebody I did not know, had never talked with, and certainly had never counseled.[76] Stoen could not have forgotten that he represented Maxine in her divorce or that he was a custodian of the fund for her children or was instrumental in suppressing the coroner's investigation into her death. He must have felt extremely threatened to publicly report such a blatant, bold-faced lie. ____________________ [75]Kerns and Wead, p. 139. [76]Klinemam Butler and Conn, p. 217. (parentheses appear in the original. Orignal page 214 Jonetown Jones profited from Maxine's death in several ways. He gained a new Angel; a competent, intelligent slave, Jim Randolph. He received the $3,000.00 trust fund and the three children who, following their mother's funeral, were placed in Temple foster homes and enrolled in the welfare system. Their welfare support checks were signed over to the Temple that profited at least $10,000.00 from overcharging the welfare system and under-caring for the children. In 1977, a special prosecution unit of the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, looking into allegations of illegal activities in the Peoples Temple, cited what their subsequent report termed "Welfare Diversion," but rather than pursue the investigation, the DA's office referred the matter to the city's Department of Social Services and the City Comptroller's Office with the recommendation that any evidence that surfaced should be submitted to the DA's welfare fraud expert, Don Didler. Didler, following the lead of Mendocino County's Welfare Director, Dennis Denny, did absolutely nothing. Together, Didler and Denny were very effective in protecting the Temple's federal welfare subsidy. In retrospect, Maxine Harpe's story was a study in microcosm of the events that would occur some eight years later in Jonestown, Guyana. In both cases, the victims were systematically stripped of all self-esteem and lured into a total dependence on Jim Jones, who, at the proper time, denied them everything. Suicide appeared to be the best, if not the only, alternative. It will never be known whether Maxine's death was a suicide or a murder. She may or may not have actually wrapped the wire around her neck, just as the residents of Jonestown may or may not have voluntarily taken Orignal page 215 Jonetown poison; regardless, there is no doubt that Jim Jones killed them all. In the final analysis, the most important aspect of Maxine's death was the reason Jones had singled her out for assassination in the first place. The episode played an important part in his master plan, as Maxine Harpe's identification envelope was the first in the Peoples Temple "H" file. ****************************************************** VICTIM NUMBER TWO Rory Hithe Died: November 8, 1973 Shot to death during an argument Rory Hithe was member of the Peoples Temple and an official of the Western Addition Project Area Committee; a neighborhood action group in a section of San Francisco that Jim Jones had targetted for political infiltration and control. During a heated argument about San Francisco's anti-poverty politics, Rory Hithe was shot and killed by Temple guard Chris Lewis, in full view of a room of witnesses; most of whom were also members of the Peoples Temple. Jim Jones had ordered Lewis to kill Rory Hithe, whose death, like Maxine Harpe's, was a Peoples Temple affair. The motive for the killing is unclear. It has been suggested that Hithe's death resulted from a conflict with Jones over Western Addition neighborhood politics, but this theory does not take into account that, at the time, Jones was powerful enough to replace Hithe on the Committee with another follower who was in closer agreement. Murder for neighborhood politics was Orignal page 216 Jonetown not warranted. There had to be another motive. In November of 1973, Rory Hithe's Temple information envelope was the next dossier filed under "H." Perhaps more interesting than the story of Rory Hithe, is the story of his assassin, Chris Lewis. There is no doubt that Lewis killed Hithe there is only the question of whether or not it was in self-defense. The fact that a loaded gun was within reach during the argument, in itself suggests premeditation. Lewis was arrested and charged with murder and assault. Hithe's sister, also a Temple member, was wounded in the attack, hence the assault charge. Chris Lewis joined the Peoples Temple in 1969 after Jones allegedly cured him of heroin addiction. He was a tough, ghetto-wise brawler who had served time in prison for burglary and grand theft. His primary function in the Temple was to train Cartmell's agents in techniques of breaking and entering and to act as liaison with San Francisco's underworld fencing operations. Jones encouraged his congregation to donate not only their property and money, but also their personal possessions to the Temple, which needed to liquidate the furniture, clothing and jewelry they acquired. Throughout their history, the Temple operated no less than six thrift shops, first in Ukiah, then in San Francisco and eventually in Guyana. The Temple stores were very profitable. The clerks were volunteers, the merchandise was donated and the business was a tax exempt charity. Nearly every dollar taken in was pure profit. But the stores could not sell all the items the Temple acquired. A $10,000 diamond ring, for example, not only looks out of place in the window of a thrift shop and would probably never sell, it might raise questions as to its origin Also Orignal page 217 Jonetown many of the donated items had been previously stolen and might be listed on police hot sheets. An expensive typewriter, with the serial numbers ground away, could not be offered to the public. Cartmell's agents conducted many burglaries, primarily intended to gather information, but, on occasion, they would steal an expensive item just to disguise the true nature of the break-in. All of this questionable merchandise had to be liquidated and fencing was the most expedient alternative. With his underworld connections, Chris Lewis was just the man for the job. Jones called a special meeting of the Temple Planning Commission to discuss Lewis' arrest. Witnesses recall him saying: I have always allowed Chris certain latitude in his actions and his living situation, because he has contacts that are very helpful in some areas of my work, areas that few of you are aware of. I cannot allow him to go to jail. We need to maintain his contacts. And more important, I do not fully trust Chris. If he were left in jail it is very probable that he would tell everything he knows about our group. His testimony would be harmful to our welfare. It is imperative that we keep him out of jail at all costs.[77] ____________________ [77]Jeannie Mills, _S_i_x _Y_e_a_r_s _W_i_t_h _G_o_d_: _L_i_f_e _I_n_s_i_d_e _R_e_v_e_r_e_n_d _J_i_m _J_o_n_e_s_'_s _P_e_o_p_l_e_'_s _T_e_m_p_l_e (New York: A & W Publishers, Inc., 1979), p. 248. Orignal page 218 Jonetown Jim Jones and his attorney, Tim Stoen, immediately went to work on Lewis' defense. Jones paid the $20,000 fee to hire famed San Francisco criminal lawyer James Martin MacInnis to represent Lewis. He later told the Planning Commission that the total cost for defending Lewis was $36,000. Perhaps he was exaggerating or perhaps he used the extra money to buy the court. In any event, Lewis was acquitted of all charges on the grounds that he had killed Rory Hithe in self- defense. Lewis was released from jail but was not free, as he soon found out when Jones presented him with his signed blank statement that now read as a confession to murder and perjury. Once blackmailed, the newest member of the Angels of Death could then be trusted and Jones appointed Lewis to his elite staff of personal bodyguards. Jones informed him that he had discovered, through his connections with the Mafia in San Francisco, that there was an open contract out on Lewis's life. If this was true, it was probably a result of a Temple activity as Lewis worked exclusively for Jim Jones. Jones hid Lewis and his wife, Dorothy, in a Redwood Valley trailer owned by Temple photographer Elmer Mertle and his wife, Deanna (a.k.a. Al and Jeannie Mills). After only one month in the trailer, Lewis complained to Jones that, "The country life may be okay for some folks, but for a city dude like me it's worse than prison."[78] Jones then moved the Lewises out of California until it was safe for Chris to return to his duties in San Francisco. Lewis was always considered to be one of Jones' favorite aides but, on one occasion, he was called in front of the Planning Commission in Redwood Valley and ____________________ [78]Ibid., P. 249. Orignal page 219 Jonetown reprimanded for an incident with the San Francisco police. Jones said: I understand that you were picked up by a policeman for speeding, and you later bragged to Gene [presumably Temple attorney, Eugene Chaikin] that you used a phony name on the ticket. What are you trying to do to this church, Chris? Lewis defended himself: It's true that I used a phony name. In some of the work I do in San Francisco, it's necessary for me to use different names, but they're all legal. I go to the Driver's License Bureau and make a statement that my real name is Chris Lewis but I am using a different name, and they issue me a driver's license with the name I choose. It's very legitimate, and can't get me or the church into difficulty.[79] In spite of his eloquent defense, Jones punished Lewis by ordering him to disrobe in front of the congregation and swim an unreported, but presumably punishing, number of laps in the Temple's indoor swimming pool. In late 1977, Lewis once again got into trouble with the authorities when a San Francisco policeman ____________________ [79]Ibid. P. 273. Orignal page 220 Jonetown stopped his car on a traffic violation and discovered a loaded handgun under his front seat. Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is illegal, and according to his last attorney, Steve Alkind, Lewis faced an almost certain jail term. While out on bail, Lewis and his wife traveled to Guyana to seek Jones' help in raising money for his defense. The Lewises were received as long-lost friends in Guyana. Jones assured them that, when the need arose, he would provide the capital that would, once again, pay for Chris' acquittal. But in truth, Jones had no intention of helping Lewis again. Jonestown and the Peoples Temple were scheduled for destruction in less than a year and, though Lewis was still valuable to Jones, his usefulness would soon be outlived, and did not warrant an additional investment. Lewis may have sensed this as he did not want to leave the jungle sanctuary. Jones had to convince him that it was in everyone's best interest that he return to San Francisco and face the charges. As a last resort, Jones literally pushed the Lewises out of Jonestown by hosting a farewell party in their honor. It was a gala banquet with music and dancing, and the following morning, after everyone had said their good-byes, the Lewises felt compelled to return to San Francisco where Chris worked harder than ever, as Jones had promised him that income he generated for the Temple would help finance his defense. Eventually, Lewis needed to pay his attorney, so in early December, he radioed Jonestown for the money. He was told that Jones was not available at the moment, but would return his call as soon as possible. Jones never radioed back. Lewis tried again and again, but each time he failed to contact his patron. Orignal page 221 Jonetown On December 10, 1977, just a few days after his last radio message to Jonestown, Chris Lewis was murdered outside the Temple's thrift shop in the Hunter's Point section of San Francisco. Two gunmen simultaneously fired two shots each into Lewis's back and ran. The police found Lewis dead with four holes in his back and $1,000 cash in his pocket. The gunmen were never identified and the murder remains unsolved. When news of Lewis's death reached Jonestown, Jones staged quite a show of grief. He blamed the enemies of the Peoples Temple and went so far as to circulate rumors that he had a difficult time restraining Lewis's Temple friends from taking revenge on the outsiders who had murdered him. While Jones shed his crocodile tears, his wife, Marceline, was using Lewis's death to threaten Wade and Mabel Medlock,, two uncooperative Temple members. The Medlocks, an elderly Black couple, had signed their Los Angeles properties over to the Temple but they refused repeated requests that they move to Guyana. Two weeks after Lewis was murdered, Marceline Jones ordered the Medlocks to move to Jonestown and once again they refused. Marceline responded, "What happened to Chris Lewis will happen to You.[80] The threat was repeated a few days later in a phone call from Temple assistant pastor, Hugh Fortsyn, who warned, "You know what happened to Chris Lewis? You better watch it."[81] On May 25, 1978, the Medlocks filed a formal complaint with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office, charging the Peoples Temple with extorting $135,000 worth of real estate from them. They insisted that they had signed the papers under duress in the presence of Jim Jones and Temple guard, Jim McElvane. They also reported hearing a rumor that it was Jim ____________________ [80]Klineman Butler and Conn, P. 221. [81]Ibid., P. 221. Orignal page 222 Jonetown McElvane and Jim Crokes who had murdered Chris Lewis. There is no indication that the police even tried to question McElvane, Crokes or anyone else in the Temple regarding Lewis's death. Jim Jones had previously perfected the "two man assassination technique." The two assassins of Chris Lewis had, on the count of three, both fired two bullets so that neither man could ever be certain which one fired the fatal shot -- they were equally responsible. As they later discovered, Jim Jones could then blackmail two new Angels for one murder. In this case, two Jims for one crime. The story of Chris Lewis took place as a direct or indirect result of one incident, the killing of Rory Hithe; a murder without apparent motive until one considers the Temple's "H" file. ******************************************************* VICTIM NUMBER THREE Truth Hart Died: July 16, 1974 Congestive Heart Failure Truth Hart had traded all her worldly possessions for the right to live out her later years in Heaven with God. "Heaven" was the communal estate of the Peace Mission in Philadelphia. "God" was the Black preacher, George Baker, who was self-ordained "Father Divine" in 1919. Father Divine had become one of the foremost authorities on not only shepherding a Negro flock, but on shearing them as well. Through extortion, he was able to build his Peace Mission into a multi-million dollar business. His contributions to Orignal page 223 Jonetown the science of mind control may well earn Father Divine a place in history as the "Father of the Twentieth Century Cult Figures in America." Starting in the late 1950's, Jones made periodic pilgrimages to Philadelphia to seek the advice of his mentor in building a Negro church empire. In 1965, as Jones prepared to move to California, much to the surprise of the Peace Mission followers, Father Divine died. Jones seized the opportunity to steal as many sheep from the mission flock as possible. Temple workers began an intense letter-writing campaign, intended to convince the Peace Missioners that Jim Jones had inherited their deceased leader's divinity. Jones made several attempts to persuade Divine's widow - an attractive blue-eyed blonde in her late thirties - to name him heir to the Peace Mission's throne, but Mother Divine considered Jones' request an insult to her late husband's memory. She would not be moved. Most of Divine's followers were elderly Black women. Though they may have had a moderate income from Social Security, financially speaking, their inclusion in the Peoples Temple would be more of a liability than an asset. They did offer Jones something he needed; Black bodies without a will of their own. In July of 1971, Jones and two hundred and sixty Temple members arrived at the Peace Mission's headquarters in Philadelphia in a determined effort to convert the congregation. Temple aide Grace Grech Stoen later recalled her role in canvassing the Mission's neighborhood with an open invitation to anyone in range of her loudspeaker: ...I was really good, too... We went around to the Divine Mission Orignal page 224 Jonetown from one of their churches or hotels and gave a speech saying, 'If you want to go, the busses will be leaving at such-and-such a time,' and talking about Jim Jones's work and stuff like that.[82] The Temple assault team had limited success in convincing the Peace Missioners to board the Temple busses for their new "heaven" in California. At least fifteen new recruits did accept the invitation and among them were Truth Hart and her friend, Mary Love. As outlined elsewhere, one of Jones' life goals was to perfect techniques of assassination that mimicked disease or natural cause. (His and the CIA's) two main areas of study were induced cancer and induced t heart failure. Truth Hart would fall victim to both. Truth was received with some degree of importance in Redwood Valley as Jones assigned her to live in the luxurious showplace home of attorney Tim Stoen and his wife, Grace who later recalled Truth as, "a little weird woman" who would get especially excited about certain foods. "Food was very precious to her."[83] Soon after her arrival at the Stoen's house, Truth contracted intestinal cancer, a disease that even the medical novice can see might have been a direct result of something she had eaten, or, in Truth's case, something she had been given to eat. Once the cancer was confirmed, Truth was cured, not by the faith healing powers of Jim Jones, but by surgery. After the operattion she was assigned to Birdie Marable's rest operation, home; a Temple operated facility in Ukiah where she ____________________ [82]Ibid. P. 107. [83]Ibid., P. 209. Orignal page 225 Jonetown fully recovered only to succumb to the second half of the experiment. Jones asked Temple nurse Faith Freestone Worley if there was a drug that could induce a fatal heart attack. Faith identified Phytonadione, the generic name for vitamin K1, commonly referred to by its trade name, Mephyton. Phytonadione is used to treat a deficiency of Prothrombin; a natural chemical that permits the blood to clot. An overdose might produce blood clots that would eventually lodge in the heart and trigger a massive coronary; but there were problems. The drug does not accumulate in the body so one massive dosage was necessary. Also, it had only been effective in killing subjects with pre-existing heart conditions; healthy subjects often survived the ordeal. Faith was ordered to develop a catalyst that, when added to Phytonadione, would produce a pulmonary embolism pill (or "PEP," as they code named it), that would have a 100% kill rate. With his extensive medical knowledge and reference resources, Jones certainly did not need Faith to develop the PEP, but her involvement was calculated to set her up for blackmail. During one closed meeting on the subject, Jones allowed Faith to see him write "Phytonadione" and "Truth Hart" on a small slip of paper before he dramatically burned it. She was also allowed to overhear a rumor that the drug she had recommended was being given to Truth without her knowledge. Faith soon realized that she was being implicated in a plot to kill Truth Hart. Truth Hart was deeply religious and venerated the Bible. Jones used her faith to alienate her to the point where she wanted to leave the Temple. He would Orignal page 226 Jonetown single her out and preface the profanity, obscenity and blasphemy in his sermons with: "Close your ears, Truth, here comes another one."[84] Truth's only response was; "I don't see how you can bring such terrible things out of your mouth."[85] What begins as innocent teasing, escalated to a full scale attack. Jones succeeded in making Truth feel so uncomfortable that she expressed a desire to leave the Temple. It was "H" file victims express their important that the discontent with the Temple just prior to their death as Jones would later use the deaths as an example to the congregation of what would happen to them if they also decided to leave the Peoples Temple and the protection of the "Father." A few days before Truth's death, Faith Worley, Sally Stapleton and other aides heard Jones predict: "That woman (Truth) will die soon.[86] Birdie Marable, entrusted with the care of Truth's life, presented an obstacle to her death. The Temple's fleet of Greyhound busses were about to depart on their annual cross- country trip and Jones insisted that Birdie join the vacation party. At first she declined but later she accepted when Jones and others convinced her that she needed a vacation and that everything would be fine at the rest home, as Mary Love would assume responsibilities in her absence. On the evening of July 15th, 1974, Mary Love treated her old friend, Truth, to a condemned prisoner's last meal; an exquisite gourmet dinner laced with a massive dosage of PEP. Mary monitored Truth's condition throughout the night. Come morning, Truth was very weak but still alive. The PEP had not been as effective as Jones had hoped. Mary had been well prepared with a contingency plan. She started tormenting Truth; pinching her and forcing her to take ____________________ [84]Ibid., P. 209. [85]Ibid. P. 209. [86]Kerns and Wead, P. 143. Orignal page 227 Jonetown alternately hot and cold baths to put an undue strain on her heart. She then placed her back in bed, gave her a final pill, and Truth Hart, age 66, died immediately. Temple nurse Judith Ijames reported the death at 11 AM on July 16th. Mary Love was quick to point out to the investigating coroner that Truth had died of a heart attack. She also reported that she had been concerned about Truth's deteriorating condition and was phoning a local physician when she heard Truth call out. Mary then dropped the phone and ran to her room, but was too late; Truth Hart had died. An autopsy was performed but no tests were made for toxins in Truth's stomach or bloodstream. Based upon the autopsy report and Mary Love's statements, the coroner determined the cause of death was "congestive heart failure due to rheumatic heart disease." The death certificate was signed by Sheriff Reno Bartolmei, the same man listed as custodian of the fund for Maxine Harpe's children. Birdie Marable was informed of Truth's death during her bus trip. She was so upset at the news that she phoned Jim Jones, who would only say, It's better this way, Birdie."[87] The Temple bus was Birdie's only way back to California so she remained with the tour, but immediately upon her return she resigned from the Temple and her position at the rest home to begin a campaign to expose the Temple's mistreatment of senior citizens placed in their care. She reported several incriminating incidents to the _U_k_i_a_h _D_a_i_l_y _J_o_u_r_n_a_l but, like everything else in Mendocino County, Jones controlled the press and Temple spies who worked at the newspaper suppressed Birdie's story. Birdie Marable was not the only one who threatened to incriminate the Temple in Truth Hart's ____________________ [87]Ibid. P. 124. Orignal page 228 Jonetown death. Janie Brown and Ella Mae Hoskins, two elderly residents of Birdie's rest home, had actually witnessed the events of July 16th. At first they were afraid to speak out, lest they suffer the fate of their friend, but six months later, Janie Brown (the braver of the two) could no longer remain silent. During an open Temple meeting, Jones warned his congregation that what happened to Truth would happen to them if they wanted to leave the Temple. Janie, in a fit of anger, stood up and shouted at the pulpit, "I don't care what anybody says about Truth Hart, I know what really ."[88] happened. A few days later, on January 29, 1975, Janie Brown died. Her death was not reported to the authorities. Neither the sheriff nor the coroner signed the death certificate. No cause of death was listed. The Temple would continue to collect Janie Brown's Welfare and Social Security benefits for years to come. Ella Mae Hoskins remained silent until October 14, 1975, when Birdie Marable convinced her to make a statement to the police to document what she had witnessed. The sheriff's department refused to take Ella Mae's statement but finally gave in five weeks later when Birdie and others staged a protest demonstration outside the sheriff's office demanding that action be taken. Ella Mae swore in an interview with investigator Jan Kespohl on November 21, 1975, that on the morning in question, Mary Love (who had since changed her name to Mary Black : ...was pinching Truth and hurting her. She made Truth get up and take a bath and Truth was awful sick. Then Mary Black gave Truth ____________________ [88]Ibid., P. 144. Orignal page 229 Jonetown a pill, and I was standing at the doorway watching. She then gave Truth some water to drink and went back into the kitchen, and Truth was dead before Mary got back into the kitchen.[89] Despite the rather incriminating evidence, the sheriff's department refused to reopen the investigation into Truth Hart's death. No one, not even Mary Black, was questioned. As far as the sheriff was concerned, the case was closed and regardless of any new evidence, the case would remain closed. In spite of her open criticism of the Peoples Temple and her inevitable inclusion in the Temple's "H" file, Ella Mae Hoskins survived. She even survived the mass death in Jonestown, as Jones never invited her to move to Guyana. Following the carnage, Ella Mae was interviewed by Doug Wead, contributing author of _P_e_o_p_l_e_'_s _T_e_m_p_l_e _- _P_e_o_p_l_e_'_s _T_o_m_b_, who asked her about Truth's death, "Was this just a family legend that grew with time or were the residents of the home immediately suspicious of the death?" Ella Mae, then over eighty years old, responded in a clear voice, "We all believed it was murder immediately!"[90] In the final analysis, Jones had been very selective in casting the characters in this stage play. Truth Hart was the perfect guinea pig for his experiments with the Pulmonary Embolism Pill. She had no next of kin, no one to mourn her passing or claim her body. Not even Jones, who had spent much time and money to recruit, relocate and support Truth in life, would have anything to do with her in death. She was buried, at the county's expense, in potter's field and ____________________ [89]Klineman Butler and Conn, pp. 211-212. [90]Kerns and Wead, pp. 145-146. Orignal page 230 Jonetown quickly forgotten by all but a few. Of course, Jones blackmailed Faith Worley and Mary Love, presenting them with a photocopy of their signed confessions to the murder of Truth Hart. Faith, who could now be trusted, was promoted into the ranks of the Angels. For the duration, she was a top aide, Jones' personal nurse, and the Temple's expert on poisons. Four years and four months later, Faith was once again called upon to lend her expertise to the cause when Jones ordered her to help Dr. Larry Schacht prepare and distribute the Fla-Vor-Aid cyanide Valium mixture that killed most of the nine hundred victims in Jonestown. The first to form a line in front of Faith and her vat of poison were the mothers holding babies. Faith used squeeze bottles to squirt the poison directly down the infants' throats so they could not spit out the bitter tasting potion. The next in line were the adults who volunteered to die. Faith handed each a paper cup of death. Many residents resisted only to be wrestled to the ground and dragged, kicking and screaming, to the feet of Faith who injected them with a hypodermic needle. Others tried to run but were shot by the outer ring of guards surrounding the pavilion, and were carried, some dead, some half-dead, to Faith, who injected them as well. By legal definition, Faith Worley murdered most of the Jonestown victims. The guards were the only accomplices and Jones, who, at the time was broadcasting encouraging remarks on the public address system, might not have even been prosecuted. Faith murdered Jonestown. Her body was never accurately identified in the aftermath, her passport was not among those found there. Faith Worley's fate has yet to be determined. Orignal page 231 Jonetown Jones was also very clever to have selected Mary Love as a co-assassin. If something had gone wrong, if the police believed Ella Mae Hoskin's statement, Jones could always have taken the position that Mary Love did kill Truth, but that it stemmed from a long-term animosity that had its roots in the Peace Mission in Philadelphia. When Mary was presented with a copy of her signed confession, she attempted to outwit Jones by changing her name from Mary Love to Mary Black. She discovered, as did others who tried a similar defense, that this tactic simply did not work. She was blackmailed for life. There was another excellent rationale for selecting the major characters of this play, as will be evident later in this chapter, but despite the apparently logical casting, it is extremely uncanny that Grace, Faith and Love killed Truth. ******************************************************* VICTIM NUMBER FOUR John William Head Died: October 19, 1975 Multiple head lacerations suffered in a fall John Head was a twenty-two year old resident of Redwood Valley whose encounter with the Peoples Temple was both short and sad. John was being treated for depression by the Temple staff at the Mendocino State Hospital in Talmadge, a few miles south of Redwood Valley. It may have been an administrator, a physician, a nurse, a dentist, a barber or even a cleaning woman who first befriended John; it does not Orignal page 232 Jonetown matter. Somehow his life was condensed into a manila envelope and presented to Jim Jones. John told his new Temple friend that he had recently received a $10,000 insurance settlement from a motorcycle accident in which he was the innocent victim. His new friend convinced John to use the money to invest in silver. John purchased $10,000 worth of silver bullion from the Shamaz Trading Company in Ukiah and stored his "nest egg" in safety deposit boxes at the local branch of the Bank of America. If it were not for John's silver, he might be alive today. His new friend also persuaded John to quit his job at a masonite factory in Ukiah. After several months of unemployment, John was faced with the reality that he needed to liquidate some of his silver nest egg to support himself. He was exactly where Jim Jones wanted him to be -- everything was precisely on schedule. Harold Cordell was a charter member of the Peoples Temple, having joined forces with Jim Jones in 1953. He was a high ranking Temple guard and strongarm man who chauffeured Jones in his bulletproof bus. He was also a volunteer deputy sheriff and had been issued a concealed weapons permit by Sheriff Reno Bartolmei. Cordell was a mean, tough, dangerous man who had very little trouble controlling John Head. On September 27th, 1975, Cordell and an unidentified Temple guard, escorted the heavily sedated John Head arm-in-arm into the Bank of America to withdraw his silver. Cordell had persuaded John that since he needed to liquidate his nest egg that it was wiser to donate the bullion to the Temple, that in turn would consider him a member in good standing and provide all his needs for life. The Temple also Orignal page 233 Jonetown offered a sense of purpose and belonging that was lacking in John's life at the time. On September 28th, John informed his parents that he had joined the Peoples Temple and had been assigned to their Los Angeles facility. Ignoring his mother's objections, John left the following day for Los Angeles. He would never see his family again. On October 18th, John placed a collect call to a former neighbor in Redwood Valley from the pay phone across the street from the Los Angeles Temple. He explained that he was unhappy in the Temple and wanted to leave, but was too embarrassed to admit his mistake to his family. The neighbor offered John a place in his home but John said he had no money for the trip to Redwood Valley and besides, "they" would not let him leave. On October 19, 1975, at 11:15 AM, three weeks after John had donated his life's savings to Jim Jones, he died of multiple head wounds suffered when he was thrown from the roof of a three-story warehouse at 212 North Vignes Street in Los Angeles. Allegedly, John's head hit the pavement with such force that he literally bounced twenty feet in the air. He died instantly. The police and the coroner treated John's death as a routine suicide. His eyeglasses and footprints were found on the roof above his body and, with his history of mental depression, the authorities considered John a typical "jumper." Case closed. The autopsy report revealed the presence of alcohol and phenobarbital in John's bloodstream. This, in itself, is a deadly combination. According to his family, John neither drank nor had a prescription for phenobarbitol and since he depended totally on the Orignal page 234 Jonetown Temple for his needs, they must have given him the drugs. John's parents will never accept that their son committed suicide. According to his mother, Ruth Head, "We don't think he did this on his own and nobody that knew him thinks that."[91] Maternal instincts aside, Mrs. Head presented the Los Angeles police with hard evidence to support her contention that her son had been murdered by the Peoples Temple. There was the question of the $10,000 donation just three weeks earlier and the phone call just the day before. If they wouldn't let John leave, as he had told his former neighbor, then how could he have slipped away that fatal Sunday morning? Why did he walk the four miles from the Temple to the deserted warehouse district of North Vignes Street? These questions were never addressed by the police. Perhaps the police ignored the questionable circumstances surrounding John's death because the most incriminating evidence pointed to their own involvement. The initial police report listed John Head as jumping from a bridge over the Los Angeles River between First and Temple Streets. How could the police have accurately identified John and falsely identified the scene of his death by several city blocks? And what irony in their mistake, _F_i_r_s_t _a_n_d _T_e_m_p_l_e_! Jones was wise to have John Head killed in Los Angeles, several hundred miles from his family in Redwood Valley. The Heads found communications with the L.A.P.D. difficult, if not impossible. One year later, their complaints were heard by the district attorney's office of San Francisco, who, in their subsequent report on the criminal activities of the Peoples Temple, stated: "One alleged victim, John ____________________ [91]Klineman Butler and Conn, P. 218. Orignal page 235 Jonetown William Head, died in Los Angeles, and the complaining witness, Head's mother, was referred to Los Angeles authorities."[92] The coroner's inquest that followed ignored the evidence of Temple involvement and merely confirmed the original findings that John Head committed suicide. The case was closed again. A signature of Jim Jones' work was the consistently logical planning of his operations that, once understood, can be easily anticipated. Though there are no eyewitness accounts of the events of October 19th, it is logical to assume that this is what really happened: Harold Cordell was in town for the day, having driven the bulletproof Greyhound bus that carried Jones and his top aides to the Sunday morning services at the Los Angeles Temple. While Jones was preaching to his Los Angeles congregation, Cordell and the unidentified co-assassin walked the heavily drugged John Head to the edge of the warehouse roof just as they had walked him into the Bank of America three weeks earlier. Each man grabbed an arm and a leg, and, on the count of three, threw John, head first, over the edge. Then, as Jones had instructed, they phoned the L.A.P.D. to report the suicide at First and Temple streets. It is possible that Jones had planned the incident at the First and Temple Street bridge but, when the time came there were bystanders at the bridge and the trio walked up North Vignes Street to find a less conspicuous location. But, more than likely, the First and Temple Street report can be attributed to Jones' sadistic and quite consistent sense of humor. The assassins thought it was funny, they laughed at the irony of it all, that is, until Jones presented them with their signed confessions to the murder of John Head, and reminded ____________________ [92]Lane, P. 430. Orignal page 236 Jonetown them that their call to the L.A.P.D. had undoubtedly been recorded and a voice print comparison plus the signed confessions would certainly send them to prison for the rest of their lives. Two additional Angels were then baptized into the ranks of the blackmailed. Following Head's death, Cordell was promoted into the inner circle of to top Temple aides. Since he traveled everywhere with Jones, he was assigned as one of the several cosmetic doubles who impersonated the Reverend in situations he considered to be potentially dangerous. Cordell went on to complete his twenty-five year association with Jim Jones by playing a significant role in the final hours of Jonestown. He was among the so called "Jonestown defectors" who accepted Congressman Ryan's offer of safe passage back to the United States. Among the sixteen defectors who boarded the dump truck with Ryan for his fatal trip to Port Kaituma airstrip were true defectors as well as planted Temple spies like Cordell, Larry Layton and Patty Parks whose job was to insure that the targetted victims were killed. The first shots were fired low, intended to down but not to kill. Patty Parks was killed only because she was bent over when the shooting started, apparently a mistake. Cordell was so close to the action that Park's brains splattered in his lap, yet he survived the ordeal without a scratch. He was lucky because he was on the winning side of the assault at the airstrip that was intended to kill Ryan and others but spare the loyal Temple members. Harold Cordell had done his duty and he was spared as were most of his family like his son Mark, who was in Georgetown at the time with Jones' sons, Jimmy, Tim and Stephan, for a Orignal page 237 Jonetown conveniently scheduled basketball tournament with the Guyanese national team. According to Temple aide, Annie Moore, Jones bragged to his Angels about killing John Head but it was never clear to her whether he took credit for predicting or perpetuating the murder. Jones did have good cause to be proud of the operation, as it netted the Temple $10,000 in silver bullion, two more Angels, another example to maintain control over his congregation and the fourth death in the "H" file, all from a basic plan that took less than a month to execute. ******************************************************* VICTIM NUMBER FIVE Azrie Hood Disappeared: presumed dead Date unknown, cause unknown During one of the Temple's cross country bus trips, Birdie Marable met and recruited Azrie Hood, an elderly resident of Marshall, Texas. Azrie joined the Peoples Temple but remained in Texas where she corresponded with Birdie, Ross Case and other Temple members in California, and sent them more in donations than she could afford. Soon after Azrie joined the Temple, she began to suspect that she was being watched and followed. She was not paranoid; "they" really were out to get her. Patty Cartmell's intelligence agents were busily compiling data for Azrie's identification envelope, an envelope they filed under "H." Orignal page 238 Jonetown Azrie phoned Birdie Marable in a panic to report that she was certain that her telephone had been tapped. Birdie offered to send Azrie the airfare for the proposed flight from Shreveport, Louisiana to her sanctuary in California. Birdie told Azrie that she would pick her up at the San Francisco airport for the last leg of the journey to Redwood Valley. Azrie declined the offer of money and told Birdie that she would pay her own way to California but needed to wait for the first of the month when her social security check was scheduled to arrive. Within hours of that fatal phone call, Azrie Hood disappeared, never to be seen again. There is little question that she is dead, or that the Peoples Temple killed her. ******************************************************* VICTIM NUMBER SIX Bob Houston Died: October 5, 1976 Crushed under the wheels of a train car It took Jones five years to gain sufficient control over Bob and Phyllis Houston to force an end to their relationship. They were divorced in 1974. As was typical in such situations, Jones brought Phyllis into his harem of mistresses. She was assigned to work with Patty Cartmell's intelligence team through her new job as radio dispatcher for the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Phyllis routinely reported the Sheriff's activities to Cartmell, but if those activities involved a Temple member, she reported Orignal page 239 Jonetown directly and immediately to Jim Jones. Phyllis died in Jonestown. Though contrary to the socially accepted norm, Jones saw to it that Bob Houston was awarded custody of his two daughters. He also ordered Houston to marry a Temple aide, Joyce Shaw, which he reluctantly agreed to do. Houston was having difficulty adjusting to this transition period as he felt that he had relinquished control of his life. His morale was at a low ebb and so, once again, Jones played on this frustrated musician's love of music to maintain control over him. Jones formed a production company with the stated purpose of recording and commercially distributing the music of the Peoples Temple "under the direction of Bob Houston." The record company was never much more than a shell and served only to regenerate Houston's interest in the Temple. Bob and his new wife, Joyce, were transferred to the San Francisco Temple where they managed a dilapidated tenement house as a foster care home for twenty-four welfare children, including Bob's two daughters. Joyce, who had worked as an eligibility caseworker in the Mendocino County Welfare Office and had authored the first edition of the Temple's "Living Word" magazine, was then employed as a psychological tester at the University of California, presumably on the Berkeley campus. Bob had two jobs in addition to his responsibilities at the foster care home. During the day, he worked as a probation officer at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center. His position at the Youth Center was very valuable in targetting welfare recipients as potential candidates for his and other Temple-operated foster care homes. At night, Bob worked as a switchman at the Southern Pacific Railroad Orignal page 240 Jonetown yard in Oakland. He never really understood why Jones had insisted he accept the job at the railroad yard. Bob Houston proved to be one of Jones' busiest and most profitable followers. Whether he realized it or not, his work at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center helped to secure subjects and financing for Jones' experiment in mind control. He directed the Temple's music department and managed one of their foster care homes. Between his two full time jobs, Bob was able to contribute $2,000 a month to the Temple's coffer. Jones must have felt some reluctance when it came time to order his execution. Jones, in typical form, began to openly criticize Bob Houston several months before his death. He claimed that Houston was "too smart for his own good" because he allegedly questioned Temple policy, but any excuse would have sufficed to justify the harassment. The major attack occurred on July 16, 1976 when Joyce Houston, following Jones' instructions, bought a bus ticket and left San Francisco, her husband Bob and (allegedly) the Peoples Temple. All at once, Bob was solely responsible for two full time jobs and two dozen children; and if that was not enough to break him, Jim Jones was. Jones told his congregation that Bob was responsible for Joyce leaving the Temple and that he deserved to be punished. All the zombies agreed, and Bob was called on the floor for several boxing matches. A boxing match was a clever means to legally beat an adult parishioner senseless. The victim (in this case, Bob Houston) would be issued a pair of boxing gloves and ordered into a ring with a larger opponent whom Jones had selected. It was considered cowardly for the accused to defend himself. He was expected to stand unguarded and accept his Orignal page 241 Jonetown punishment. The beatings were so brutal as to require a fresh opponent every round. Temple nurses stood by to treat the victim's wounds with the most painful of antiseptics. The fights always fell short of death when Jones shouted, "Stop!" Victims were expected to say, "Thank you, Father," for their rightfully deserved punishment. The boxing matches were clever in that, if anyone ever questioned the practice, Jones could provide scores of witnesses to the "sporting event" who would testify that both contestants wore gloves and that, though it was unfortunate, one of them had to lose the fight. Despite the break up of his marriage, his overwhelming work load and Jones' harassment, Bob Houston did not waver from his appointed schedule; that is not until Joyce telephoned him on October 2nd. Joyce had phoned Bob to tell him something terrible about Jim Jones but no one knows exactly what she said. She may have told Bob that Jones had deliberately destroyed his two marriages or that he was using him to control Congressman Ryan or that he intended to kill Bob and eventually everyone in the Peoples Temple. She may even have told him that Jones was a CIA agent. Whatever she reported was so effective that, the following day, Bob wrote Jones a letter of resignation. The next day, October 4th, Bob and Jones had a violent argument regarding his letter. On October 5th, Bob Houston was killed; crushed by a train car at the Southern Pacific yard. His lantern was found on a nearby flatcar; his work gloves were neatly folded on the car's coupler. The police declared Bob's death accidental despite the fact that nearly everyone who knew him suspected foul play for one reason or another. His co- workers at the railroad yard reported to the Orignal page 242 Jonetown investigators that it was extremely odd that Bob was not wearing his work gloves at the time of his death. The only other time they had ever seen him remove his gloves at work was to shake hands with a friend. Their observations were accurate. Bob was not a switchman; he was a musician who would have taken extra care to protect his hands from the harsh, dirty work in the railroad yard. His co-workers surmised that Bob had removed his gloves to greet someone who had come to visit him at work. Since he died before putting them back on, they concluded that his visitor(s) had witnessed his death. Of course, no witnesses stepped forward to testify. Rumor was that Jim Jones had ordered Bob Houston's death. The day after the accident, Jones' aide and mistress, Maria Katsaris, informed Temple members in Los Angeles: Did you hear what happened to Bob Houston? He threatened to leave the church and wrote a letter to Jim. He was killed. Smashed between two trains.[93] Weeks later, in a sermon, Jones warned his congregation, "Bob Houston wrote a hateful letter to the church. See what happened to him?"[94] Accusations of the Temple's responsibility in Bob Houston's death continued to circulate for months before settling in the San Francisco District Attorney's Office. Jones responded to this threat of exposure by ordering Joyce Houston to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Southern Pacific Railroad. Unable to deny the unusual circumstances surrounding ____________________ [93]Yee and Layton, P. 159. [94]Ibid. P. 159. Orignal page 243 Jonetown Bob's death, Jones chose to advocate the foul play theory but direct the blame towards Southern Pacific. The mere filing of the lawsuit was sufficient to accomplish the desired results. With the suit pending, the District Attorney took a wait and see attitude and the investigation was stalled indefinitely. It is crucial to understand what Joyce Houston knew at the time. She knew that Jones had been attacking her late husband for months prior to his demise. She knew she had warned Bob about Jones on October 2nd, and that he had resigned from the Temple on October 3rd, argued with Jones on October 4th and was killed on October 5th under extremely suspicious circumstances that she apparently felt warranted a wrongful death action. It is only logical that this alleged Temple defector would file suit against the Peoples Temple, however she filed against Southern Pacific because Jones had ordered her to do so. She had never left Jones' control, he still planned her every action. Joyce helped stage her own husband's death; the sixth and final homicide in the "H" file. Sammy Houston immediately suspected that Jim Jones was as instrumental in his son's death as he had been in his life yet he remained silent for over a year. He confided his suspicions only to Associated Press colleague Tim Reiterman out of fear that the Temple would retaliate if he went public with his accusations. Actually, Sammy was preoccupied with fighting a losing battle with cancer of the larynx. He did not speak out because he had lost the ability to speak. In November of 1977, following the failure of the San Francisco D.A.'s investigation, Sammy wrote to his old friend, Leo Ryan asking for help. Orignal page 244 Jonetown Congressman Ryan and his top aide, Joe Holsinger, visited the Houstons' San Bruno home, where, with the help of a chalkboard and his wife, Nadyne, Sammy presented his case against the Peoples Temple. He asked Ryan to look into the death of his son but of more importance to Sammy was the welfare of his two granddaughters who were still in the hands of the Peoples Temple. Following Bob's death, Jones had sent the girls to New York City for a "vacation." While in New York, the two were transferred to a flight to Guyana and transported to their new home in Jonestown. Sammy had heard rumors of child molesting in the jungle sanctuary and was legitimately concerned for his pretty twelve and thirteen year old granddaughters. He asked Ryan to visit the girls in Jonestown and, if at all possible, to escort them back to the United States. As Joe Holsinger later recalled, Ryan accepted the challenge; promising his old friend, "Sammy, I will do n everything I can to get your grandchildren back."[95] Everything was proceeding exactly to Jones' masterplan. ************************************************* RYAN REVISITED Leo Ryan's political career had progressed steadily since the late 1960's when he first came to the attention of Jim Jones. Republican Congressman Paul McCloskey had challenged Richard Nixon for the presidential nomination and was gerrymandered south, leaving the reapportioned 11th Congressional District (Ryan's home district) without an incumbent. Ryan seized the opportunity and campaigned for the vacant post. He ran unopposed in the primary and won the general election with 61% of the vote, an impressive ____________________ [95]Kilduff and Javers, P. 129. Orignal page 245 Jonetown victory considering that Ryan was the first Democrat to represent the area in over thirty years. When newly elected Congressman Ryan set out for Washington, D.C., he brought with him his singular style of personal investigation. Though his style did not change between the California Assembly and the United States Congress, the subject of his investigations did. In California, Ryan had pursued a wide variety of issues, but in Washington he would focus his work on one main topic: the domestic operations of the Central Intelligence Agency. His interest in the CIA became the dominant factor in Ryan's life in Washington and his death in Guyana. Congressman Ryan's concern over the CIA's domestic spy operations was legitimate and well founded. It had been reported that there were more intelligence agents illegally operating in Ryan's San Mateo county and the adjacent Santa Clara County than in all other parts of the United States combined; Washington, D.C. included. The area, dubbed Silicon Valley, had evolved to become the center of high technology in the U.S. and boasted the highest concentration of military and industrial secrets in the world. Consequentially, hundreds of foreign intelligence agents were drawn to the area. Only some fit the stereotyped image of an enemy spy seeking military secrets. Most foreign agents in Silicon Valley were sent by friendly countries to steal, not military, but industrial and technological secrets. To combat the assault, the CIA sent thousands of counter intelligence agents into Silicon Valley to ferret out the foreign agents and guard what they considered the national security and economic future of the United States. The Orignal page 246 Jonetown end result was that Ryan's home district was thoroughly infested with spies; "theirs" and "ours". Ryan, who was a member of the Government Information and Individual Rights Subcommittee, accurately perceived the CIA's presence in California as a threat to the rights of the citizenry. The main problem was that many CIA operatives were violating the law in the pursuit of their work. Innocent citizens were being hurt in the name of national security, and Ryan was concerned. There were several factors that encouraged the CIA agents in California to break the law. First, the agency did not issue detailed instructions to its operatives, only general objectives, and too often the methods to achieve those objectives were left to the discretion of the individual agent. Many agents believed that their secretive work in U.S. security was above the law and their higher purpose gave them license to break the law. Some thought their work was special, others thought that_ _t_h_e_y were special. This egotistical attitude remains a problem to this day. Also, there were agents who used their cover and contacts to further criminal activities they would have pursued even if they were not employed by the agency. This group was the inevitable criminal element found everywhere. Though their percentage was low, the collective damage they inflicted was high. The last type of criminal agent was the scientist or businessman who, quite often, had been blackmailed into working for the CIA. The agency had long since concluded that they did not want the majority of people who applied for employment. The applicants were, for the most part, law and order right wingers with inflated egos and Wyatt Earp complexes. The CIA, whose middle name is Orignal page 247 Jonetown "intelligence", needed a higher caliber employee, and therein lay the problem. The more intelligent a person, the less likely he was to join the CIA. The talented people needed to be recruited. They were pressed into service, coerced into service, and even blackmailed into service using the same brutal tactics that Jim Jones used to blackmail his Angels. These were frustrated agents who often resented the CIA's control of their lives, but within their dilemma was an advantage; a certain degree of immunity from prosecution that many took full advantage of out of pure spite. But, unquestionably, the major factor that encouraged the illegal activities of CIA agents stationed in Leo Ryan's home district was their very assignment in that district, as domestic operations were strictly prohibited by the agency's charter. It was not until years later, when such activities were under threat of exposure, that the CIA persuaded President Ronald Reagan to amend their charter to sanction what they had been doing for years. But at the time, the CIA was illegally operating in California. It is ludicrous to assume that the individual agents in California would obey the law in pursuit of their work when their work, in itself, was a violation of the law. It suffices to say that by 1972, when Leo Ryan was first elected to Congress, the CIA operations in his home district were massive, illegal, threatening, and very much out of control. Immediately upon arriving in Washington, as if it were the primary reason he had campaigned for Congress, Ryan drafted an amendment intended to stop, or at least control, the CIA's illegal operations in Silicon Valley and elsewhere within the United States. Orignal page 248 Jonetown The Hughes Ryan Amendment to the National Assistance Act would be the only major piece of legislation Ryan would introduce in his six years in Congress. The amendment transferred responsibility for overseeing the CIA from the Armed Forces Committee, which often turned a blind eye to the agency's activities, to the International Relations Committee of both houses of Congress. The CIA fought Congressman Ryan and his amendment tooth and nail (or, more aptly, cloak and dagger) and would have successfully defeated the legislation if it were not for Ryan's impeccable timing. He introduced the bill at the height of the Watergate scandal when the public was shocked to learn of the crimes of Howard Hunt and other agency operatives in the United States. Despite the agency's strong objections, the Hughes Ryan Amendment passed into law, earning Leo Ryan two distinctions; a seat on the International Relations CIA Oversight committee, and a very prominent position on the CIA's list of enemies. As if Ryan were not already in serious trouble with the agency, he proceeded to taunt them further by demanding to be informed of all their domestic operations. The official position of the CIA was that such operations did not exist, but top agency officials and Ryan knew better. Unable to hide their illegal work from the foremost investigator in Congress, the CIA admitted to Ryan that they were operating in California but they fed him token reports of their projects; all of which they justified as necessary to safeguard the national security. Surprisingly, Ryan greed that the reported operations were necessary and a made no attempt to expose them to the public. But Orignal page 249 Jonetown during the course of his investigations, he uncovered evidence to support the contention that the CIA had sponsored several cults that practiced mind control on their members. The cults were not a matter of national security but experiments in the control of people for power and profit; a clear violation of human rights. Ryan set out to expose these CIA cults in what might be compared to a blind man kicking a sleeping crocodile. The agency did not cooperate with Ryan's demands for information, for if they had, they would have told him about Jim Jones, and they did not. Ryan discovered that the CIA cults, like their business fronts, were difficult to identify and monitor, as they were designed to be financially self-sufficient. The agency could then account for every dollar of their congressional budget without divulging their profit making operations or the projects those profits helped to finance. The first cult Ryan investigated was the Unification Church, whose leader, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, was alleged to have strong ties with the CIA in Korea. Ryan lacked hard evidence and, apparently, the ability to convince the other members of his committee that there was a conspiracy and so his colleagues successfully stopped the investigation. In his frustration at the failure of his efforts, Ryan was quoted as saying, "Well, _s_o_m_e_t_h_i_n_g has to be done about those people."[96] The next alleged CIA cult to come to Ryan's attention was the Symbionese Liberation Army; the revolutionary group who kidnapped and brainwashed millionaire heiress, Patricia Hearst. ____________________ [96]Reston P. 280. Orignal page 250 Jonetown ******************************************************* Patricia Hearst Kidnapped: February 4, 1974 The kidnapping of Patricia Hearst is presented here because it was the first public arena that Congressman Leo Ryan shared with the CIA and Jim Jones. Donald David DeFreeze was a small time thief and paid informant for the Los Angeles Police Department. Following her ordeal, Patty Hearst described DeFreeze: I think he _w_a_s a paid informant. His crimes were average crimes, they weren't anything spectacular or revolutionary. He was a two-bit crook. He got caught on an earlier charge and started informing to keep from going to Jail.[97] In midsummer 1970, prison reform was a major issue in California politics. As Leo Ryan checked into Folsom Prison for his undercover research in prison problems, Donald DeFreeze was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to a six-to-fourteen year term at Vacaville State Prison in spite of, or perhaps because of, his relationship with the Los Angeles Police Department. Almost immediately, DeFreeze infiltrated and gained control of the Black Culture Association; a prison reform group begun two years earlier with the stated purpose of educating Black inmates, upgrading their skills and self-esteem and providing society with a more responsible citizen upon their release. By ____________________ [97]Lawrence Grobel, "Playboy Interview: Patricia Hearst," _P_l_a_y_b_o_y_, _X_X_I_X _(_M_a_r_c_h _1_9_8_2_)_, _P_. _8_8_. Orignal page 251 Jonetown 1972, he was described as the "most dynamic member of the association."[98] It is interesting to note that in the prison reform movement in California, Donald DeFreeze was the most outspoken inmate, Leo Ryan was the most outspoken politician and Jim Jones was the most outspoken civic leader. Under the direction of DeFreeze, the Black Culture Association quickly changed form with the addition of several new middle management members. Thero M. Wheeler, a Black inmate at Vacaville, was one of the first to be brought into the association by DeFreeze. Wheeler was a member of the revolutionary Venceremos Organization; a now disbanded CIA controlled group, "many of whose members spent time cutting cane in Cuba to support the Castro government.[99] Next to join the association was a group of Caucasians from outside the prison system. Willie Wolf and Russell Little led this final assault on the association and, with their White comrades, successfully purged the association of its charter Black membership. As one former Black member recalls: They (the young whites) called me a pig and a Central Intelligence agent. They made me so mad I finally quit.[100] With the Black members ousted from the Black Cultural Association, DeFreeze and his lieutenants were left with a shell of an organization that would evolve into the Symbionese Liberation Army. He had successfully destroyed the only effective Black inmate organization in California. In November 1972, DeFreeze was transferred from Vacaville to Soledad Prison. In March of 1973, he ____________________ [98]Symbionese Liberation Army: Terrorism From Left," _Y_o_r_k _T_i_m_e_s_, February 23, 1974, p. 62, col. 2. [99]Ibid., p. 62, col. 3. [100I]bid., p. 62, col. 3. Orignal page 252 Jonetown replaced a senior prison trustee in a boiler room job. He escaped from prison his first day at work. The following day the old trustee was back at his post in the boiler room with no reason given for his absence. Prison officials were quick to point out that DeFreeze had "outside help" in his escape. True, he had help, but the evidence would suggest that the help came, not from outside, but from inside the prison system. Five months later, in August 1973, Thero Wheeler escaped from Vacaville Prison to join Donald DeFreeze, Willie Wolf, Russell Little, Joseph Remiro, Angela Atwood and the other SLA members to begin their odyssey. It was common knowledge around Santa Rosa Junior College that, once a week, the Peoples Temple students trained in the tactics of guerrilla warfare. They were seen in the open fields on the outskirts of town doing calisthentics, marching in formation and drilling with broomstick rifles. They "shot" passing cars which they pretended were tanks. They learned survival tactics and how to navigate using maps, compassses and the stars. They read books on military tactics and terrorism. The training was very professional. These Temple college students would become the armed guards of Jonestown. Their purpose was in Guyana, not in California where Jones found it too risky to deploy them. If any were caught in illegal acts it would certainly reflect on the Temple, as hundreds of Santa Rosa students could testify that the Temple had trained them. The problem arose that Jones' superiors had given him a task that required a small militia for a project in California. He had one but couldn't use it. Donald DeFreeze solved his problem. Orignal page 253 Jonetown According to the New York Times, by the summer of 1973, the SLA was offering its services to leftist organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area that advocated revolution. There are indications that, well before November, the group's leadership sounded out other radical organizations, offering to act as the guerrilla arm for those who sought revolution.[101] History will probably record that it was during this period that Donald DeFreeze first met Jim Jones, but this researcher believes that since both men were operatives of the CIA their initial meeting occurred sometime before the summer of 1973. In any event, DeFreeze offered his services and Jones accepted. Jones confided to members of the Temple as well as left-wing organizations outside the Temple that he agreed with and supported the goals of the SLA. He went so far as to reprint the SLA's declaration for distribution among his followers and circulated the report that his bodyguard, Chris Lewis, had given SLA leaders sanctuary after their prison break. Three weeks after the SLA made news by kidnapping Patty Hearst, the San Francisco Police Department's Intelligence and Antiterrorist Divisions and the FBI started an investigation into allegations that Jim Jones was the mastermind behind the revolutionary group. One Temple member, described only as a Black woman in her mid fifties, told police investigators that she had seen SLA leaders Donald DeFreeze and Nancy Ling Perry, as well as Patty Hearst's boyfriend, ____________________ [101I]bid., p. 62, col. 1. Orignal page 254 Jonetown Stephen Weed, at Temple services in Ukiah. Her report was never made public but Jones felt it was enough of a threat of exposure that he ordered Tim Stoen to write two letters to the SFPD in which Stoen said, "As an assistant district attorney, I can attest that Rev. Jones consistently... attacks scathingly the B.L.A. (Black Liberation Army--of which Rory Hithe is said to have been a member), the S.L.A. and other groups." Stoen went on to say that the Temple had totally disassociated itself from Chris Lewis, who was under suspicion for harboring SLA fugitives, citing that Lewis had left the Temple and San Francisco but neglecting to say that Jones had merely sent him to Guyana until the crisis passed. In August 1973, The Peoples Temple hierarchy held a top- secret meeting in an open cow pasture at a Temple operated ranch in Redwood Valley. They often conducted their critical meetings out-of-doors for fear that the Temple's buildings had been bugged by electronic surveillance devices. Tim Stoen presided and told Patty Cartmell, Terry Buford, Sandy Bradshaw and the others that, although Jim Jones would not attend, that he would be informed of the results of the meeting. Stoen said, "We want to be able to say that we were acting independently and Jim had not been advised of our actions.[102] There were two items on his agenda; Marcus Foster and Patricia Hearst. For several years, the Temple has been stealing Black welfare children from the ghettoes of Oakland and assigning them to Temple foster care homes.. The welfare fraud scam was central to the Jonestown plan as it provided both the necessary federal funding as well as the guinea pigs for the experiment. The project was being threatened by the one man in a position to view ____________________ [102L]ane, p. 257. Orignal page 255 Jonetown the mass exodus of school aged Black children from Oakland to the Peoples Temple, Oakland school superintendent, Marcus Foster. Foster had uncovered too much and was beginning to talk about Jim Jones. Everyone at the cow pasture meeting agreed that he needed to be silenced. The second item on the agenda has been described as a contingency plan in the event that Jim Jones was arrested. The group decided that the best course of action was to kidnap a public figure as ransom for their leader's release. Several potential victims were discussed but the group settled on Patricia Hearst. She was sufficiently famous to warrant public attention. Her family was wealthy enough to pay a large ransom, if necessary. But more important, her father, William Randolph Hearst, was the publisher and editor of the _S_a_n _F_r_a_n_c_i_s_c_o _E_x_a_m_i_n_e_r_, a newspaper that Jones had declared war with just eleven months earlier. In September of 1972, the _E_x_a_m_i_n_e_r_'_s religious columnist, the Reverend Lester Kinsolving, penned a series of damaging articles on the Peoples Temple. Only four of the eight installments were published as several hundred Temple followers stopped the expose by picketing the newspaper's office with placards and Bibles. Now, almost one year later, the _E_x_a_m_i_n_e_r threatened to print another expose. Jones surmised that the only way to control the _E_x_a_m_i_n_e_r was to control William Randolph Hearst and the only way to control Hearst was to control his daughter, Patty. Lester Kinsolving presented another problem. Patty Cartmell's intelligence agents burglarized his home looking for information. They even went so far as to tunnel under his house so they could overhear conversations from the crawl space beneath the floors. Orignal page 256 Jonetown Ultimately, Lester Kinsolving, the first man to warn about the dangers in the Peoples Temple, was totally discredited: In 1976, Lester Kinsolving, an Episcopalian priest whose syndicated columns appeared in twenty newspapers and who was host of four radio shows, lost his credentials as a journalist after the National Council of Churches complained that he acted as an agent for the South African government.[103] On November 6, 1973, Marcus Foster was assassinated by an unidentified gunman. The Symbionese Liberation Army claimed responsibility in a communique'. At first the authorities did not believe the SLA even existed, that is until a second communique described how Foster had been shot with a cyanide-tipped bullet; a fact the police had deliberately kept secret. For the first time they took the SLA seriously. In January, Russell Little and Joseph Remiro were stopped by police on a traffic violation and arrested for murder when the officers discovered SLA literature in their van. That evening, the SLA's headquarters in Concord, California was burned by a fire of undetermined origin. No one was injured but the incident foretold their ultimate demise eighteen months later in Los Angeles. On the evening of February 4, 1974, three SLA soldiers kidnapped Patty Hearst from her Berkeley ____________________ [103I]bid., p. 262. (footnote) Orignal page 257 Jonetown apartment. For the next fifty-seven days, they held her bound and blindfolded in a small closet while DeFreeze made his ransom demands. At first it was thought that he would propose a prisoner exchange; Patty in exchange for the release of Remiro and Little, but, in a surprise move, DeFreeze demanded that the Hearst family feed the poor of California as ransom for Patty. On February 14th, two days after the SLA's first communique on Patty's abduction, Jim Jones and four top Temple aides, Tim Stoen, Karen Layton, Michael Prokes and Annie Moore offered themselves, in a published article in the _P_r_e_s_s _D_e_m_o_c_r_a_t_, as hostages in exchange for the newspaper heiress. Jones knew that ultimately someone would make the Peoples Temple/SLA/ Patty Hearst connection so, in an effort to set the record wrong, he publicly confirmed his involvement but at the same time implied his innocence. It was his typical defense. There was no risk to Jones in his Valentine's Day offer as he controlled the SLA and besides the publicity was helpful in building his humanitarian image. To complete the deceit, he offered $2,000 as the first contribution to the Patty Hearst ransom fund that, apparently, he tried to have established, but that never existed. The Hearsts returned the Temple's check but not before Jones' generosity was widely reported in the local media. DeFreeze first demanded that the Hearsts give a $70 box of food to every Californian with a welfare, social security pension, food stamp, disabled veteran or Medicare card, as well as anyone with papers from probation, parole, jail or bail. The Hearsts refused this proposal as it would have cost $230 million; the total assets of the family and the Hearst foundation Orignal page 258 Jonetown they controlled. DeFreeze must have been quite accurately informed to arrive at the seventy dollar per person figure. DeFreeze countered that the Hearsts should do something to feed the poor of California as a demonstration of good faith before negotiations for Patty's release could begin. William Randolph Hearst offered an immediate $2 million food giveaway in San Francisco with an additional $4 million program to follow his daughter's release. In a press conference, Hearst said: Arrangements have been made for $2 million to be delivered to tax exempt charitable organizations approved by the Attorney General of California and capable of making the distribution for the benefit of the poor and needy.[104] Hearst enlisted two unlikely characters to administer the food giveaway program: Ludlow Kramer, Washington state's secretary and Peggy Maze, director of "Neighbors in Need", a Seattle-based group formed to subsidize unemployed aerospace workers who had lost their jobs during a massive lay-off at Boeing. A steering committee was formed to oversee the food distribution. Heading the committee was Cecil Williams, the Black pastor of San Francisco's Glide Memorial Church who was receiving the SLA's communiques and American Indian Movement (AIM) leader, Dennis Banks. Both men were very close to Jim Jones. Williams and Jones were good friends who shared a common profession, style and neighborhood while Banks ____________________ [104"]Hearst Pledges $2 Million in Gesture to Kidnappers," _N_e_w _Y_o_r_k _T_i_m_e_s_, February 19, 1974, p. 1, col. 1. Orignal page 259 Jonetown owed Jones a large debt. A year earlier, Jones had paid the nineteen thousand dollar bail that released Bank's wife, Ka- Mook, after federal authorities arrested her for her part in the Wounded Knee Indian uprising. At the SLA's insistence, the Western Addition Project Area Committee chaired the coalition. The WAPAC had been under Jones' control ever since Lewis killed Hithe. Though Jones was the self-proclaimed spokesman for San Francisco's poor Blacks, headed an organization that was best qualified to administer the food giveaway and had close contacts with the program, his name was noticeably missing from the press reports. The Peoples Temple combined forces with Peggy Maze's "Neighbors in Need" program to form the "People in Need" food giveaway that represented the ransom of Patty Hearst and a windfall profit for Jim Jones. Jones reminded his congregation that they were the poor of San Francisco and deserved their fair share of the free food. Through his contacts within the program, he was able to provide his followers with advanced information as to exactly where the food would be handed out. Temple busses transported hundreds of parishioners to the random distribution points just prior to their opening. On one occasion, Temple guards hijacked a delivery truck en route to a distribution point and stole the entire contents of the truck. No one, not the local press that covered the story or the bystanders who witnessed it, realized that most of the recipients of the food giveaway were members of the Peoples