Toward the end, as he watched the array of barbiturates, amphetamines and tranquilizers that now slurred his father's speech and sometimes left him physically unable to leave the Jonestown house, Stephan Jones says murder seemed almost redundant. Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. ", Stephan Jones used to say he could have stopped the slaughter if he had been there. Heres How To Watch The Alex Murdaugh Trial Live, Morgan Doughty Filed A Lawsuit Against The Murdaugh Family, Sophie Turners Joan Charts The Rise Of A Famous British Jewel Thief, Alex Murdaugh Faces Life In Prison For Allegedly Killing His Wife & Son, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. The shots still were popping at an amazing clip. "It was the first thing I really worked hard for. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanan capital of Georgetown to raise money. Then it was boxing matches for adults. When he was 10 years old he listened as Jim Jones had sex with a mistress in the next room. They were under siege, Jim Jones would cry; the snipers were after him; the Guyanese army was about to descend; the children would be taken away and probably tortured. People do things for him. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oaklands Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. In the days before Ryans fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. A few of us jumped from the truck and ran over there. Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. He lives just outside San Francisco and works as an office systems installer, arranging furniture and office interiors. 'Let's go!' In California, he was steeped in temple life. We couldn't know then that the grim little world of this sick man would shatter within hours, taking hundreds of his followers to their deaths. He was in Georgetown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 with the Jonestown Basketball Team. Stephan seeks forgiveness for themselves and for his father. They would survive and both return home to California. He imagines the guards with guns, and the sky clouding over, and the air suddenly wild with fear, and the sight of the children. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. He loves basketball; he is agile and strong and was tall even before he reached high school. I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush. As a self-taught bulldozer operator, he worked alongside other Peoples Temple cult members in the humid heat with his blade carving roads and sites for wooden buildings with metal roofs. Some had the distinct impression that the two were close to opening fire on the truck. Altogether, 909 people died at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, by swallowing a grape-flavored beverage mixed with potassium cyanide, or from injections of poison. None of it makes sense. I stopped and listened. When John Cobb was born in 1960 in a black section of Indianapolis, his mother and older siblings already were temple members. And I dont know that he could actually have done that. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. Siblings by adoption include Agnes Paulette Jones (1943-1978); Stephan Gandhi Jones(Born 1959); Jimmy Jones, Jr. aka James Warren Jones, Jr.(born 1960); and Timothy Tupper aka Timothy Glenn Tupper Jones, Tim "Day" Jones (1959-1978). He would rise before dawn, pick his way into the bush, and sit without moving as the quiet around him split slowly into bird cries and insect buzzing and the scuffling and calling of creatures he could not see. They have three children. 'The reality was we were folks who could be counted on to stand up,' he said. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, American Idol star Kellie Pickler's husband, 49, 'commits suicide by shooting himself dead' in bedroom of their $2.4 million Nashville home: Pickler called 911 after she was unable to open door of room where he was found, Enough to give you an art attack! 'It looks like trouble,' I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong, he said, including his fathers sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. Others had joined in San Francisco and continued with him to the promised land in the South American jungle. He built a long career in health care, while weathering his own serious health problems. While religious leader Jim Jones has historically been blamed for the tragedy that occurred at his Guyana compound, the A&E special Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre argues that the women closest to Jones were also partially responsible. Stephan Jones Seeks Forgiveness For Jonestown Massacre, Late Jim Jones Son Stephan Jones Is An Actor. People ask, How can you ever be proud of your father? he said. Ryan, his thick gray hair bloodied, was near the front of the plane. Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business, Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones' dream when he opened a new church in Fresno. Recent interviews with Stephan include: "Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the . He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. Did you ever consider the ultimate rebellious act: to defect from the temple? Then-San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman was wounded in the airstrip shooting and flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he wrote the following eyewitness account. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. And then he went to my mother. Garry (2007) and The Real Story (2002). 'If anything, we felt pity for him,' he said, 'and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.'. Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. I would either have had to fight, or I would have taken it. He does not know. It was just more controlled. Only two days later did the picture became clear. "This is really crazy," he recalls thinking. . It was all about survival in his domain. That way no one else would want to live. "I don't care what you think of my father," Jones wrote in 2015. (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). "The minute I stepped out on the street, I felt so uncomfortable," he says. As the larger plane landed, the temple truck, with several persons in the back, started to advance. Stephan was around 17 years old when he moved to Jonestown in February 1977 to help build the compound. 1959. As we rode onto the black gravel, jungle-bordered runway, a small six-passenger Cessna was parked to one side of the corrugated metal shack which served as the airport terminal. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. A bit later the number was revised upward to 408. Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. We used curtains for bandages. ". 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. Number one: People cant understand what was attractive about Dad. Little Jimmy became part of their Rainbow Family of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. Its not that I had better sight than others; I had a better view of it and it really broke for me when he was unfaithful to my mother and told her about it in detail.. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened 'revolutionary suicide.'. }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; You don't tell God, "You're not going out of the house. We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. And to have any fray in that fabric would cause an unraveling that he couldnt handle.. The Joneses adopted a black baby in Indiana in 1960, and Jim gave the 10-week-old infant his own name. There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs, afraid to venture anywhere for fear of his legal problems. ", The thought of killing Jim Jones had occurred to his son, but Stephan never tried to do it. In addition to writing the articles below, Stephan appeared as a speaker during the Griot Institute of African Studies lecture series entitled Jonestown: 35 Years Later at Bucknell University; his presentation appears on this page (scroll down the videos). 'I'm real happy to be getting out,' Layton volunteered, then lapsed into a stare. In this Nov. 5, 2018 photo, John Cobb poses for a portrait at the the Jonestown Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. The 59-year-old, Jim Jones son Stephan Jones has gone through a lot after the mass massacre in Jonestown led by his father, Late Jim Jones on Nov. 18, 1978. He has nine siblings, most of whom are now dead. The people are elderly and he knows he must stop it, but he cannot make contact with them; they look at him as though from great distances. On Nov. 18 she was at the temple house when a fanatical Jones aide received a dire radio message from Jonestown. This November 1978 file photo shows the bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. I dont think he went from being an altruistic, selfless, humble man to what he became. Hes never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. This figure, though shocking, gave room for hope maybe the remaining hundreds of people of the colony had fled into the jungle and were saved. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. He plays forward. I found relief in the woods and rivers and creeks, and I got away as often as I could, but there was always a low-level anxiety that I only really can identify now.. Even the few people that actually took the poison. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs. Save this record and choose the information you want to add to your family tree. . Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, the two temple members who asked for help in the note, also were seriously injured. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; Recent interviews with Stephan include: Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the World Can Still Learn From Him, by Moran Sharir, Haaretz, January 22, 2019. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? In Biographical Summaries of Notable People . When I left at 21, I left a part of myself there, she said. He was a genius, and he was unique. And there was more social rhetoric and action in my life and a lot more fear. "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. Not so many people died. On Nov. 18 she was at the temple house when a fanatical Jones aide received a dire radio message from Jonestown. In "Raven," Reiterman and Jacobs describe the minister presenting the congregation with a batch of fruit punch: "We're going to drink poison and kill ourselves," Jim Jones declared, and it was not until many people had drunk that Jones said he had simply wished to test his followers' loyalty. I wondered why it happened. He dreams he is arguing with his father, arguing passionately, and although he knows his arguments are better, his father always wins. I had been up all night unloading boats and I had to be at work in a couple of hours so I lay down for two hours of sleep after backbreaking and dangerous work, and Dad comes on the speaker in the wee hours of the morning. . Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. While working as a hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, and they married in 1949. "He was a gentle man in a lot of ways," Jones says, stretched now over the sofa in his small apartment. During the long night, the temple defectors told us that all the horror stories about Jim Jones and the church were true. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says he's now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. Guyanese civilians set up a guard station for us, standing watch all night armed with only a shotgun, a machete and a long-bladed knife. Reviews. Stephan Gandhi Jones is 6-foot-5, lean, broad at the shoulder, olive-eyed, black-haired, handsome as a billboard model. As for those people in his life, NBC reported in a 2008 article that Stephan has three daughters and there's a photo of Stephan presumably with one of his daughters on the Alternative Considerations website. Jim Jones, pictured in 1976,dreamed up Jonestown. That's what triggered it.'. Yes. 'I focused my rage on Dad and his circle, rather than deal with me,' he said. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 1/2 months pregnant. ", Stephan Jones spent three months in a Guyana jail after the November deaths, imprisoned there while Guyanese authorities tried to determine who had killed the devoted Peoples Temple aide Sharon Amos and her three children, all of whom were found with their throats slashed in the Georgetown Temple headquarters on the day of the suicides. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. They are amused; they embrace him. File photo: Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, after bodies were removed, in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. They were forced. . By the time Stephan Jones was 16, his father had moved the family to the big temple building in a black neighborhood of San Francisco, where politicians and black leaders had begun paying considerable attention to Jim Jones' racially mixed congregation and fervently preached exhortations to adjust society under a socialist god. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. When people ask about his past, he says he was "overseas," or "in volunteer service." Life became more tolerable after the couple's baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. 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Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. When Jim Sr., a local Democratic Party darling, met with future first lady Rosalyn Carter, Jim Jr. proudly went along. From hair trends to relationship advice, our daily newsletter has everything you need to sound like a person whos on TikTok, even if you arent. 'Little Jimmy' became part of their 'Rainbow Family' of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said. A vat that contained a drink laced with deadly cyanide sits on a sidewalk at Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978. I think there are people who are interested in it because of whats going on in the world. (Actually, the deadly beverage that day might have been based on a cheaper imitation, Flavor Aid. "This was when he started bragging about taking 16 people on in one day, and all that crap. Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. target_type: 'mix' 'I just have to love him and forgive him.'. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. The reason I ended up in Jonestown is that I left. He loved it. His body was found with a gunshot wound in the head. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. When more than 900 people were killed at Jonestown by consuming punch laced with cyanide on Nov. 18, 1978, Stephan was not at the settlement founded by his father. Each day's news bulletins compounded the already unimaginable: There were 400 bodies; there were 900 bodies; there were, in the precise wording of the American military men sent to investigate, "smaller bodies under larger bodies and children under those." Grueling field work was not to her liking. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oakland's Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. A lot more conversation about the outside threat that was anyone that wasnt in the temple. "The temple was still my only life, and I didn't really see any alternative to it," he says. People raced over to the outdoor pavilion. I try not to speak in terms of what I couldve done because I see no value in that.. I know Ive reached a better place and I dont fear lapsing back into the darkest times, but its a daily process and one that Im grateful to have.. In the past, Stephan has also been known as Stephan Gandhi Jones and Stephan G Jones. . On Nov. 18, the day Rep. Leo Ryan and four others were shot to death on the airstrip at Port Caituma, Guyana, Stephan Jones and his teammates went to the movies in Georgetown. He said he considered it a failing on his part when he did. The picture, he recalls, was about hit men. In a telephone interview he sounds serene, though it cant be easy for him to talk about the tragedy that took his parents, a number of his siblings and many of his friends. I would have been doing more than just leaving a family. Four granite slabs are etched with names of the 918 people who died in Guyana- including James Warren Jones, which deeply offends some whose relatives perished. I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. Im not trying to defend him. But we never felt he would go through with it because we saw him as such a coward.. But some lived. He will read it when he is ready, he says. I see it in politics, I see it in advertising, I see it in a variety of places, and I feel theres no more pernicious or toxic belief than that. 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