Note: - this letter ran in the letters to the editor of the North Coast Journal following their story - it contains details not found in the books on Jonestown.... Then Stoen responds. It seems Stoen has a curious propensity to stay in the face of the people he has wronged, seeking forgiveness, perhaps, or for some other more twisted psychological reason.
It references John Barbageleta - after it came out, a friend of mine called and found Barbagaleta's son, who said his father was a trusting man, and basically indicated that Stoen was not what he tries here to make himself out to be.
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Stoen's past:
I'm sure Tim Stoen would like to bury the past. ("Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown", Sept. 25) He lost his son to Jim Jones' madness. It's hard to imagine a worse punishment for being a fool, and I pity him.
That he would later seek political office, however tells me he has not honestly faced his past, for he was party to one of the most blatant election frauds in San Francisco history. Consider this sentence in your report:
"When George Moscone, whom the Temple had supported, was elected mayor of San Francisco, he repaid Jones with a seat on the city's Housing Authority."
That appointment was no small deal. It would be the equivalent, on the national stage, of nabbing the job of Ambassador to Paris. In other words, Jones did not merely endorse Moscone, he delivered the margin of victory. I know; I was then administrative aide to Supervisor John Barbageleta, the man Moscone beat in the run-off election.
How Stoen and Jones did this was simplicity itself. The run-off election meant the city needed a new batch of poll-watchers, and the People's temple supplied them, one or two for each precinct.
At the time, voters signed in sequentially. After the election, which Moscone narrowly won, we examined those sign-in sheets. On each, the last 10 or 12 signatures were in the same hand, with the same pen or pencil. In other words, after everyone voted, the poll-watchers cast ballots on behalf of the no-shows.
We protested, but the court ruled that even if there had been fraud, there was no way to prove for whom, these fraudulent votes had been cast. Cook County could not have done it more neatly.
As Stoen himself is quoted in your report, "I went along with Jones' end-justifies-the-means' philosophy."
Indeed.
Lee Wakefield, Arcata
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 2, 2003
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Stoen responds:
Since he knew how to reach me, it would have been a gracious act for Lee Wakefield ("Stoen's past", Oct 2) to have confronted me personally before making the stunningly serious charge - a false charge, for which he has zero evidence - that I was "a party" to an election fraud whereby his boss, John Barbagelata narrowly lost to George Moscone for San Francisco mayor in 1975. Had he done so, he would have been surprised to learn that John Barbagelata himself came to disbelieve that charge so totally that he, a man characterized in San Francisco as Mr. Integrity as well as Mr. Conservative, made me his personal lawyer for the last five years of his life.
In October 1987 - nine years after Jonestown - I happened to read in the San Francisco Chronicle that John Barbagelata was, indeed, blaming me as the gray eminence behind Jim Jones for his loss to Moscone. Breaking my normal pattern of disregarding attacks, I wrote John a letter to the following effect: "I know you have strong feelings about my role in the People's temple. I consider you to be a just and upright man. If you would like to confront me about it, consider this an overture. Bring any witness you like."
John, in his gruff voice, called me up at my Mendocino office and said, "Tim Stoen, confession will be good for the soul." I said, "John, you won't get anything juicy from me, but I will tell you the truth." He said, "Gotta talk to you, gotta talk to you." He invited me for dinner at his home in St. Francis Wood.
I met John around 6 o'clock at his West Portal office. At the door of his home, I was met by his patrician wife, Angela, who had a delicious meal spread out for me, with a fire burning in the fireplace. Their many children were present as well. Around 9 p.m. I said, "John, I want you to look me in the face. I know of no People's Temple wrongdoing in your election, or in any election." John said, "I believe you." Angela said, "After all these years." When we parted around midnight, Angela said, "Aren't you glad you wrote that letter?"
A few months later I invited my former wife Grace and her husband Walter to dinner at the Inn at the Opera for Grace's birthday, together with John and Angela Barbagelata, who afterwards came over to my apartment. Next day, Angela called me to say John had come home and said, "Tim Stoen and i once were enemies, and now we're friends. And that Grace - why she's from the Middle Ages!" When I called Grace and told her, she said "That's so sweet."
One day in the spring of 1989 I was in my office in Sacramento when a call came in from John Barbagelata. He asked if I would become his personal lawyer. I told him it would be an honor. For the next five years, until his death in 1994, I represented John Barbagelata in numerous matters. I conducted a full-blown trial for him in the case of Barbagelata v. Donohoe (San Francisco Municipal Court, Case No 029477_ I represented him before city officials on a ballot measure. My last case for him involved a dispute with the Olympic Club.
During the course of my being his lawyer, John Barbagelata became my best friend in California. When I had to stay in San Francisco overnight, John and Angela insisted I stay in their home. When John got sick he asked me to visit him at the hospital, which I did. I was at his funeral.
In sum, John Barbagelata and I bonded, which could not have happened if John had even the slightest conscious or sub-conscious belief of my being implicated in his mayoral loss. The real reason for our mutual respect was probably a matter of temperament: Each saw the other as willing to "go to the wall" for his beliefs. I look back on this friendship as one of the high points of my life.
Tim Stoen,
Assistant District Attorney, Humboldt County
North Coast Journal, Thursday, Oct. 9, 2003
The original NCJ article which prompted the letters can be viewed here:
Standing in the Shadows of Jonestown
For the editorial introducing the piece
Tim Stoen's story
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