Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. They divorced when Jordan was 6. He loved it. The bodies surrounded a podium from which Jim Jones, aided by armed men to hold down the unwilling, had cried out in encouragement while men, women, and children drank red Flavor-Aid mixed with potassium cyanide. More than a few bottles of rum were consumed or poured on wounds. But in 1973, Johns oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco. Then it was boxing matches for adults. "And it could happen to anybody.". The temple really became my family, she said. Like why would they follow such a madman and to such a crazy final act, and we probably know by now that it wasnt a mass suicide, but thats how it has been portrayed.. But even Stephan Jones never imagined that death would come the way it did, so redolent of madness and evil, so savage that a kind of panic still crawls into his voice when he talks about it. Jonestown: It was the bodies that photographers favored most. And the temple was his life first in Indiana, later in California. ': Golf glamor girl Paige Spiranac defends 'FUNNY' Woods tampon prank after 15-time major winner was forced to apologize, He's still got it! Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. Photographer Greg Robinson (right)was one of the five people killed. This is really crazy, he recalls thinking. 1998-11-08 04:00:00 PDT JONESTOWN, GUYANA-- "My father was a fraud."- Stephan Gandhi Jones, son of Jim Jones A lone palm tree stands where Jim Jones exhorted his followers to die for him, but the . Joining him was an older black man who fingered something in his right pocket. 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 is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. 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. Do you think people can ever see your father not just as a villain but as a complex figure? Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. And I looked around and there were at least 15 people looking at me. As the larger plane landed, the temple truck, with several persons in the back, started to advance. 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. He sought treatment, and eventually, the father of three settled into a quiet life in California. He made a promise once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, Smith said. All had been captivated by his promises of a model socialist society based on equality and love under his leadership. "This is really crazy," he recalls thinking. And Stephan Jones sometimes thinks that he might have taken the poison, too. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. When the rains approached, he would stand and watch the water come, pushing solid and steady toward him like some enormous stage set being wheeled across the hills. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business. Jones berated three other new arrivals for misbehavior on the trip; they were beaten and forced to work 24 hours straight. (all adoptive) Stephanie Jones (died in 1959); Suzanne Jones; Agnes Pauline Jones; Stephan Gandhi Jones; James Warren (Jimmie) Jones, Jr.; Lew Eric Jones; Timothy Glenn Tupper (Day) Jones; Jim Jon (Kimo) Prokes; (?) They also killed their dogs. placement: 'Right Rail Thumbnails', Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. In Biographical Summaries of Notable People . It's like my hurt for them, or my missing them, is the only thing I have left of them." The slaughter at Jonestown was the worst civilian tragedy in U.S. history before September 11, 2001. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. Jones himself, after some artfully applied pressure to the mayor's office, was appointed to the San Francisco Housing Authority, where once-tedious meetings about public housing suddenly erupted into vigorous cheering sessions, with temple members applauding the pronouncements of Commissioner Jones. As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. Court Records. I said there must be another way.. 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 that day, The bodies of five people, including Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., are shown above on the airstrip at Port Kaittuma, Guyana, after an ambush by members of the Peoples Temple cult on November 18, 1978, John Cobb looks at names of family members on the Jonestown Memorial in Oakland, California. ", 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. I think most people would have welcomed some kind of action that took Dad out of the picture but I didnt feel like we had enough people to back us up, or I didnt know those people.. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. Stephan Jones was 6 years old, the only biological child of James and Marceline Baldwin Jones, when his father moved from Indiana to northern California with his family and 140 of the parishioners who had come to believe there was something extraordinary about the Rev. 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4. target_type: 'mix' They would survive and both return home to California. Im not trying to defend him. I think there are people who are interested in it because of whats going on in the world. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. . Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. He was not prepared for suicide. There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. I could still hear the groaning and crying of the targets. Some of those leaving the temple eyed the vehicles with suspicion. | "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. Jones wasn't the same man. I appreciate that question. OAKLAND, Calif. Jonestown was the highlight of Mike Touchettes life for a time. Speier's right leg had a gaping wound, and her arm was injured. And as the years go on, Stephan is still willing to talk about his connection to one of the biggest tragedies in American history even as he tries to live a peaceful life far removed from Jonestown. America was a genuinely unfriendly place for a boy from an interracial family and community, and Jim Jones knew how to fan that into a fear of everything that lay beyond the temple walls. I'll kill you! Like everyone else, he died there, his son said. It's unclear if he is currently married or if he retains a relationship with his surviving siblings. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. My best guess is that Jones felt the press people weren't fooled by the staged setup at the mission. . Jim Jr. would go on to lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow, In the aftermath, Jim Jr. built a new life. Grueling field work was not to her liking. }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; In California, he was steeped in temple life. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. Every loud sound put us on edge, with some wondering aloud: 'Will they come back to finish us off?'. Another hit my wrist and knocked off my watch. But after temple gunmen killed the congressman, three newsmen and a church defector on the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jones ordered a poisoned grape-flavoured drink administered to children first. 'Naaah.' Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he still has the position of. . Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. Rebelling, they refused Jones order to come back. In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. 'She gives us the order that were supposed to kill ourselves,' Vilchez recalled. Stephan Jones was born on 06/01/1959 and is 63 years old. "The temple was still my only life, and I didn't really see any alternative to it," he says. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons with two now coaching basketball at the high school and college level. Being in Jonestown before Jim got there was the best thing in my life.. One day, when she was in high school, she came home and told her parents that her religion class had discussed Peoples Temple; only then did her father share the story of how his family was nearly wiped out. window._taboola = window._taboola || []; Finally, attorneys for both Ryan and the temple decreed that the courtroom was the proper place to decide the custody issue. And he would have arrived too late, anyway. Jim Jones. After that I didnt sleep well last night., I wouldnt say therapeutic. Play it now! "But there's a sadness . Stephan Gandhi Jones. They have three children. . But he said his discontent festered. Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husband's eyes. Another to experience the trauma of Jonestown was Stephan Gandhi Jones, the biological son of Jim and his mistress Marceline. 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. 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. 'He started firing at the front and missed the pilot,' said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. When the truck was allowed to pass, we all breathed easier. ", Jim Jones moved to Guyana in 1977, just as New West magazine was preparing to publish a lengthy account of defectors' allegations about Peoples Temple. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened revolutionary suicide.. But some lived. Harris, a Los Angeles-based NBC investigative reporter who covered the fall of Saigon and the Nicaragua rebellion, had been killed. I guess maybe somebody who hadnt been in the temple their entire lives and was just stepping into it couldve seen it coming. She was the adoptive daughter of Rev. But the reality is that it was far from a mass suicide. NBC reported that Stephan Jones was the vice president for an office installation company in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says hes now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. The church provided free drug rehabilitation, medical care, food. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. But he said his discontent festered. Jim was the Rev. Then they could identify and allow themselves to step into the story and understand how such a thing could happen. 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. And I think he genuinely cared about those things, but my understanding of my father just from my own experience and stories is that unconsciously he was always primarily managing other peoples perception of him. Rev. When he brushed away the mist below him he saw that it was a lifeless human limb. ", Stephan Jones used to say he could have stopped the slaughter if he had been there. This June 2016 photo provided by Jim Jones Jr. shows, from left, Ross Jones, 21, Erin Fowler-Jones, Robert Jones, 27, and Ryan Jones, 25, and Jim Jones Jr., in Pacifica, Calif. My companion, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, would be murdered in an ambush. Hes 61 now. He was ill from when he was very young and was using fear to control me when I was barely more than a toddler. Its nose wheel had been broken the week before and four soldiers were guarding it with M-I6 rifles. The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. At the temple-exit guard post, the truck was halted. And in his growing community near the town of Ukiah, Jim Jones preached to the faithful about communalism, racial equality, "apostolic social justice" and the power of belief. There is little his father said or taught him then that stays with him now; his memory is of a man wandering around the house in his underwear or his pajamas, sleeping by day, watching the news or "Hogan's Heroes" on television and announcing that he could tell whether his son was lying simply by staring into his eyes. "Right off the bat I explain to them that my father was nuts, that he was a drug addict," he says. Reviews. 1931. They must be prepared to die in the defense of socialism. When he was 10 years old he listened as Jim Jones had sex with a mistress in the next room. Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. He was in Georgetown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 with the Jonestown Basketball Team. The reports were wrong, they say. He asked me to make one last mission with him to Jonestown. For years it was largely forgotten along with a number of other insanities in the United States in the 1970s. Five others were wounded seriously. "You can tell when it's a man; the positions are different," Jones says evenly. "I don't know what was happening . Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. He lives just outside San Francisco and works as an office systems installer, arranging furniture and office interiors. Im not saying he didnt cause it, create it. He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. 'So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong,' he said, including his father's sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened 'revolutionary suicide.'. He is talking, in the first of two evenings' long conversations, between spoonfuls of almond chicken at a Chinese restaurant. They were at a basketball tournament five years ago, in November 1978 when the congressman and the reporters came to Jonestown. In the past, Stephan has also been known as Stephan Gandhi Jones and Stephan G Jones. He keeps his voice very soft, as though practice has taught him to hold certain subjects to a whisper in public, but his gaze is direct. Now, Stephan Jones is the father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. He says that to understand how a thing like that can happen, you have to do what leaders like Jim Jones and his successors dont want us to do to read. Stephan Jones did not drink. I stopped and listened. Jim Jones was cultivating his growing celebrity--elected officials visited the San Francisco temple, Mayor George Moscone had used temple members as campaign workers, and much was made of the 1976 photo that showed Jim Jones and Rosalynn Carter together during the Democratic Central Committee meeting in San Francisco. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. 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). They were playing in a tournament in Georgetown, Guyana about 150 miles from Jonestown and were still in Guyana's capital when the murder-suicide occurred. "I still get very angry," Stephan Jones says. Jones berated three other new arrivals for misbehaviour on the trip; they were beaten and forced to work 24 hours straight. Jim Jones. Jim Jones had years earlier conceived his South American settlement as a distant haven where Peoples Temple members could live in communal isolation, protected from unfriendly reporters and all the other enemies Jones denounced through his congregation. 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. 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.. One day, when she was in high school, she came home and told her parents that her religion class had discussed Peoples Temple; only then did her father share the story of how his family was nearly wiped out. The pilot had radioed for help after the shooting, but during the night the only thing we heard were more rumors about the imminent arrival of Guyanese troops and medical evacuation planes. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part she played in the Peoples Temple, an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. I also didnt really know what Id be dealing with if I did, but sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs. "When it really came down to it, I thought there wasn't any need, because I thought he'd be dead in a couple months anyway," he says. There are no many details about his siblings and some had been adopted. Not so many people died. Vilchez worked as office manager at a private crime lab for 20 years and now, at 61, sells her artwork. His body was found with a gunshot wound in the head. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanan capital of Georgetown to raise money. Stephanie was one of six victims in the car accident coming back from Cincinatti.Birth name: . "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. A bit later the number was revised upward to 408. no one could ever relate to it unless they were in the same situation, or they were in the atmosphere my father created . . You describe yourself in your writings as a rebellious kid. He built a long career in health care, while weathering his own serious health problems. Read More Jim Jones. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. And I dont know if it was paranoia. I would either have had to fight, or I would have taken it. the whole thing he drove into people's minds for so long--I certainly don't mean to say that what happened was a sane act or that it was a good act, but--", Jones hesitates. ", Stephan Jones' lips draw back when he talks about his father; he looks for an instant like a cornered dog. The only surviving child of Jim Jones,Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. 'Liquidator,' " Stephan Jones remembers being called, as he lay on his prison cot and listened to the mosquitoes swarm. " Then there were just a few. I get it, Im not upset about that. . Recent interviews with Stephan include: "Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the . We apologize, but this video has failed to load. 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." What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about the Peoples Temple or your father? Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, had come to the temple's agricultural project to determine whether the followers of Jones were free to leave the jungle settlement. 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.. Theater of popular music. They have a total of three daughters. In code, his father told him everyone was going to die in revolutionary suicide., I argued with my Dad, he said. He dreams he is in a crowd, and his father is talking about suicide. Stephan Jones was born on 1 June 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. 'We were so scared, too, man, that they'd do this to you,' said one of the people who took us in. The bottom layer consisted of about 300 babies and small children whose bodies had been ravished by the humidity and jungle insects. 'What we were calling the cause really was Jim,' she said. But some lived. In the days before Ryan's fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. A black man with a 'corn rows' hairstyle came up to the rear of the truck. But before we could start out, we heard angry shouts. The church provided free drug rehabilitation, medical care, food. And I say, 'My name is Jones.' 'They're in deep trouble now,' observed one of the relatives who had accompanied us. More than 900 members of the Peoples Temple had lived in theagricultural missionin the distant jungle of Guyana, South America, led by the cult leader Rev. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. He also made sure that the other disciples who were in the capital would do nothing hasty. Jordan Vilchez's parents were Berkeley progressives in the 1960s - her father African-American, her mother Scotch-Irish. Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. 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). he said. . He was a genius, and he was unique. 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. A number of Jonestown survivors have spoken out about the mass suicides and murders that killed the only life they ever knew and how they have managed to build new ones in the four decades since the tragedy. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. "I don't know. What would you say the biggest lesson is from Jonestown? "He was always preaching the hostility toward us and warning people what would happen or what could happen from the outside," Stephan Jones says. This return to the cult of Jim Jones is part of a re-examination of dangerous cults and movements in Americas past, like the Osho cult, which had a similar murderous potential. He was taking pain pills, and he said he was dying. Of course, even if he wanted to forget Jonestown, his name was an ever-present reminder. present) (3 children). He said: "So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye . I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim Jones, the controversial religious cult leader.

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