PD - Man arrested in shooting of ex-Peoples Temple members 12/9/05

Son not charged in 1980 killings

Man arrested in shooting of ex-Peoples Temple members
By MICHELLE LOCKE
ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERKELEY - Prosecutors have decided not to charge a man jailed this week in the 25-year-old murders of his parents, both prominent Peoples Temple defectors.


Edward Michael Mills, 43, was arrested Saturday as he arrived at the San Francisco International Airport from Japan, where he had been living.

However, prosecutor Chris Carpenter said Thursday that charges will not be filed. "Based on all of the evidence, we didn't feel it was sufficient to meet the standard," he said.

Mills' arrest came in the 1980 killings of his parents and sister, murders that at the time spurred fears that death squads were finishing the job started by cult leader Jim Jones in the Guyana jungle.

Police said they don't believe the murders, committed when Mills was 17, were related to the Peoples Temple, the organization founded by Jones that ended in November 1978 when he ordered more than 900 of his followers to drink poisoned punch at Jonestown, their Guyana compound.

"At this stage it does not appear that there was any motive associated with the Peoples Temple," said Berkeley police spokesman Joseph Okies.

Al and Jeannie Mills had been staunch members of Peoples Temple, joining in 1969 when Jones was packing in crowds as he preached interracial harmony and advocated helping the poor and sick.

But the couple left in 1975 after their daughter was beaten more than 70 times with a paddle because - according to old news accounts - she embraced a friend Jones deemed a traitor.

In 1978, as questions about Temple activities intensified, Jones retreated to Guyana. Later that year, California congressman Leo Ryan led a delegation of journalists and relatives of temple members to Jonestown. Some members chose to leave with him and the party was ambushed at the airstrip; Ryan and four others were killed. Ryan's aide, Jackie Speier, now a state senator, was shot several times but survived.

Back at the compound, Jones ordered his followers to die, starting with the babies.

On Feb. 26, 1980, Al Mills, 51, Jeannie Mills, 40, and their daughter, Daphene, 15, were found shot in the head at their home in Berkeley. Jeannie Mills' mother discovered the bodies.

According to news accounts from the time, Edward Mills told police he had been watching TV and didn't hear the shootings. Okies said Edward Mills had gunpowder residue on his hands but there wasn't enough evidence to make an arrest.

Mills later received $247,000 from his parents' estate, according to news stories from the time.

For years, the case lay dormant. But two years ago, Berkeley police reopened the investigation as part of an ongoing effort to look at evidence in unsolved cases using new methods and technology.

Newsbusters: CNN's 'Escape From Jonestown' Downplays Democratic Connections

View the original post and all its comments here: CNN's 'Escape From Jonestown' Downplays Democratic Connections http://newsbusters.org/blogs/michael-m-bates/2008/11/14/cnns-escape-jonestown-downplays-democratic-connections
(this posting is merely a scrapbook copy)
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/
By Michael M. Bates
November 14, 2008 - 11:37 ET

On Thursday, CNN aired "Escape from Jonestown," presented by CNN special investigations unit corespondent Soledad O'Brien. This week marks thirty years since the horrific deaths of more than 900 people, roughly a third of them children, at Jonestown. The massacre was orchestrated by "Reverend" Jim Jones. What CNN barely referenced was Jones's connection to several leading Democratic politicians of the time. O'Brien did identify Jones as a believer in socialism and, with a survivor, passingly alluded to his influence in the Democratic Party:

O'BRIEN: In 1975, Jones moved his church headquarters from Redwood Valley down to San Francis, to a larger stage, where he became a political force and a face in photo-ops.

GOSNEY: Roslyn (sic) Carter was campaigning for Jimmy Carter. I believe that was 1976. And there was going to be a rally downtown. Literally, we stuffed the building. We were -- we were the rally.

Jones was much more than a face in a photo-op. Democratic San Francisco Mayor George Moscone appointed him to the city's housing authority. Willie Brown, who later served as Democratic Speaker of the California Assembly, in 1976 introduced Jones as a combination Martin Luther King, Angela Davis, Albert Einstein and Chairman Mao.

That same year Senator Walter Mondale, later elected vice president, invited Jones to meet with him on his campaign plane. The People's Temple chief also had a personal meeting with Jimmy Carter's wife, Rosalynn.

Jones referenced that in 1977 when he wrote to the First Lady and recommended the U.S. government give Cuba medical supplies. He mentioned his "deep appreciation for the privilege of dining privately with you prior to the election." She replied by saying she'd enjoyed the experience and hoped the U.S. would adopt his suggestion on Cuba.

When Jones moved his operation to Guyana, he brought with him written accolades from several liberal Democrats.

Wrote Walter Mondale: "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."

Alaska Senator Mike Gravel thought the People's Temple "was almost too good to be true." California Congressman Don Edwards expressed the wish that "there were more like the people of the People's Temple Christian Church."

Joseph Califano, an official in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and secretary of health, education and welfare for Jimmy Carter wrote Jones: "Knowing your commitment and compassion, your interest in protecting individual liberty and freedom have made an outstanding contribution to furthering the cause of human dignity."

Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey said that Jones' work "is testimony to the positive and truly Christian approach to dealing with the myriad problems confronting our society today."

No, Jim Jones was more than just a face in a photo-op. He benefited from the attention and praise of several notable Democratic politicians of the era. In a two-hour program, that relevant part of history should have been reported.

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/

****
****

Related post on watchpaul (mine) - with links to Jonestown Apologist's Alert (Tom Kinsolving's blog):

So, as the Anniversary of the Jonestown Massacre approaches, there are specials on the various networks, and stories in the paper. It's that time of year when Tim Stoen has to endure yet another few days of exquisite torture; interviews, attention and notoriety. This year is a big one, the 30 Year Anniversary.

Everyone 'knows' what happened, or thinks they do. This article in the Chronicle 10 days that shook S.F. gives a pretty good accounting with one major, repetitive flaw.

The Chronicle always leave out the early exposés written by Les Kinsolving. He was the Religion Writer for the San Francisco Examiner back then, and he had been approached by people who were very concerned about what was happening in People's Temple. They were begging the paper to 'do SOMETHING!'

His series was killed because of pressure from the Temple, including pressure from the Temple's Attorney, Jim Jones' second-in-command-right-hand-man, Tim Stoen.

Kinsolving's pieces can be viewed here, including the pieces that did not run.
1. THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD Examiner [September 17, 1972 Page 1]
2. 'HEALING' PROPHET HAILED AS GOD AT S.F. REVIVAL Examiner [Monday, Sept. 18, 1972]
3. D.A. AIDE (Stoen) OFFICIATES FOR MINOR BRIDE Wednesday, September 20, 1972
4. PROBE ASKED OF PEOPLE'S TEMPLE Wednesday, September 20, 1972
5. THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE AND MAXINE HARPE (never ran)
6. THE REINCARNATION OF JESUS CHRIST -- IN UKIAH (never ran)
7. JIM JONES DEFAMES A BLACK PASTOR (never ran)
8. SEX, SOCIALISM, AND CHILD TORTURE WITH REV. JIM JONES (never ran)
They can also be viewed here: jonestownapologistsalert.blogspot.com/

Stoen apologized to Kinsolving a few years ago. (Press Democrat) presumably that apology is meant to cover not only getting the stories killed but the plot to kill Kinsolving himself.

The Chronicle would do well to get over whatever its reason for ignoring Kinsolving's work. Leaving out this important part of the story does a disservicve to their readers.

The story of the people who tried to do something, who tried to stop the madness long before the massacre is one that really ought to be told. No one took them seriously, no one listened, and they risked their lives to get the truth out. IF anyone had paid attention, 900 people might be alive today.

His weren't the only pieces that were squashed by pressure from the Temple (Indianapolis Star reporter Carolyn Pickering had the goods on Jones years before that....), there's alot to be told. And the newspapers have alot to atone for.

(And CNN isn't makin' it any better: CNN's 'Escape From Jonestown' Downplays Democratic Connections)

Stoen raises his (redacted) head

Haven't heard much from Jim Jones former second-in-command/right hand man lately. But it's classic Stoen. "Christians have no luxury of dalliance now. We must take ground in the human-destiny battle forced upon us by the corporate juggernaut of hubristic Biotech." B

October 26, 2007

Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died - That’s the title novelist Tom Wolfe gave his 1996 article in Forbes ASAP on the threats posed by biotechnology, published two months before the Rubicon announcement in February 1997 that Dolly the sheep had been cloned.

In 2001, Francis Fukuyama wrote Our Post-Human Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution. Quoting Wolfe, Fukuyama describes the following “distinct possibility”: “The wealthy routinely screen embryos before implantation so as to optimize the kind of children they have . . . . Human genes have been transferred to animals and even to plants for research purposes and to produce new medical products; and animal genes have been added to certain embryos to increase their physical endurance or resistance to disease . . . . [Y]oung people begin to suspect that classmates who do much less well than they do are genetically not fully human. Because, in fact, they aren’t.”

Evangelicals have been slow to wake up to this threat to human dignity. While we have slept, environmentalists and pro-choice feminists have taken the lead in seeking a ban on human cloning. In 2003, however, while Congress was succumbing to the biotech industry’s spin machine, Charles Colson and Nigel Cameron took a first step, drafting “The Sanctity of Life in a Brave New World: A Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity.”

Signed by many Evangelical leaders, the manifesto seeks a “comprehensive ban on all human cloning and inheritable genetic modification” as well as the prohibition of discrimination based on genetic information. The manifesto quotes a prescient statement from C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man: “If any one age really attains, by eugenics and scientific education, the power to make its descendants what it pleases, all men who live after are ‘the patients of that power,’ slaves to the ‘dead hand of the great planners and conditioners.’”

In 2004, the drafters of the manifesto followed up with a lucid primer entitled Human Dignity in the Biotech Century. With chapters written by authorities on various issues in the biosciences, it presents a call to action, citing as a model William Wilberforce’s sustained and successful struggle against slavery in the British Empire.

Pro-life Christians need to do four things, say the authors. First, they need to expand the pro-life paradigm from “saving babies” to “human dignity.” This involves more heavy lifting in policy debates, including the hard work of becoming familiar with developments in biology. Second, they need to challenge nonstop the biotech industry’s “experts” who want no regulation by rules of ethics. In a twist that should not surprise anyone, BIO, the industry group, has named its chief lobbyist “vice president of bioethics.”

Third, pro-life Christians need to develop “durable collaboration” with environmentalists, progressives, and pro-choice feminists (who dread the commodification of women) against the increasing number of libertarians who want biotech business to be free to do what it chooses. And fourth, say Colson and Cameron, pro-lifers must work with the Council of Europe, UNESCO, and other international organizations for a “universal instrument” in bioethics.

As to philosophical approaches, there are, says Fukuyama, three springboards to action on biotech issues: religion, utilitarianism, and human nature. Evangelicals and Catholics will be motivated by the conviction that humans are created in the image of God. The biotech industry will rely on utilitarianism. Conscientious secularists, says Fukuyama, can be reached through a revived understanding of the laws of (human) nature.

In sum, the biotech future of compromised human beings is upon us. Christians have no luxury of dalliance now. We must take ground in the human-destiny battle forced upon us by the corporate juggernaut of hubristic Biotech.

—Timothy Stoen, Attorney
Mendocino, California
Online at The Center for Public Justice (ooooh! another nice sounding name!) -An independent organization for policy research and civic education, whose mission is to equip citizens, develop leaders, and shape policy.

Yeah, Stoen is just the kind of guy you want shaping public policy.

hat tip: RS

Jonestown Filmmakers Missing the Mark

Jonestown Filmmakers Missing the Mark PAT LYNCH
Posted July 27, 2007 from the Huffington Post

The phone calls about Peoples Temple and the Jonestown, Guyana tragedy began coming in last spring. Young people who hadn't been born when the tragedy happened November 18, 1978 asked the same question: "Didn't NBC shoot more than 18 minutes of footage inside Jonestown?" They represented companies from the United States, Canada, South Africa and most recently Australia.

As the NBC Nightly News producer who began shooting a series on destructive cults in March, 1978, the story had come full circle. I personally screened more than three hours of dramatic footage shot inside Jonestown by the cameraman who died doing his job. What happened to it? These queries started my investigation of Peoples Temple once again. In two years all the classified material about the massacre is supposed to be released to the public. The government has kept their secrets well for almost 30 years.

For me, the story began May 2, 1978. My crew and I were filming the Synanon cult's property from a deserted public road in Marshall, California, when armed men, women and children with shaved heads held us captive for three hours. The story flashed across the AP wire, phoned in by Pulitzer Prize winner Dave Mitchell, owner of the Point Reyes Light weekly. My employer, NBC News, ignored the story. I didn't understand why, but it was a foreshadowing of what would happen when my far more dangerous story about Peoples Temple was ready for air in October, 1978.

The war between me and the management of NBC and its lawyers had begun. What I didn't know at the time was that our new corporate president Fred Silverman was calling the shots. And Les Crystal, the new young president of NBC News, was doing Silverman's bidding and caving in to corporate pressure. My work on Peoples Temple and the destructive cults was in serious jeopardy as was I, the first woman investigative producer on NBC Nightly News. But I didn't know it.

Synanon, I learned later, had taught such cults as Peoples Temple and Scientology how to manage the media through intimidation and litigation. (Two members of Synanon would be arrested only weeks before the Jonestown massacre for putting a live rattlesnake in a critic's mailbox, almost killing him.) I was able to get a watered down series about Synanon on Nightly News that June though NBC lawyers toned down the reports to avoid a lawsuit. After the series aired, Les Crystal made his first move to kill any further work on the "destructive cults," which now were calling themselves religions. Only the I.R.S.'s grave concern about cults avoiding taxes by labeling themselves a religion stopped Crystal from killing the project outright. It wasn't clear to me why Crystal wanted to kill these reports. So I got to work.

I interviewed former Peoples Temple members and Concerned Relatives who told stories about brainwashing, drugs, guns, beatings and suicide drills called "white nights." They also told these stories to the State Department and U.S. government officials in socialist Guyana, where the Reverend Jim Jones had moved almost 1,000 of his followers. Many in this colony feared their loved ones would die if "outsiders" tried to enter Jonestown.

My interviews were completed in October. I wanted to get the Peoples Temple story on the air as quickly as possible. California Congressman Leo Ryan announced he was going to Jonestown in November to see for himself what was happening to the people in his district. I was warned by Concerned Relatives and former members that the trip would end in disaster unless Ryan was provided with heavy security. I believed NBC's airing of my dramatic material would help provide that security

"NBC BOSS LIFE THREATENED" proclaimed the New York Post banner headline November 2, 1978. "GUARD ON TV CHIEF."
Fred Silverman, I later learned, was so upset being stalked, the mass cult picketing, written death threats (that were sent to the FBI without me knowing about them), the Synanon rattlesnake attack, and cult followers reportedly getting into his apartment building and threatening him and his family that he let news management know my report shouldn't air. Instead, Congressman Ryan's Jonestown trip in November would be covered as a news event by a California crew rather than as a more hard-hitting investigative report. I tried to reach the reporter. My calls were not returned. I felt like a pariah rather than a journalist who had unearthed an important story. On November 13th, the NBC crew passed through our New York office en route to Guyana. Again, the reporter did not return my persistent calls. And then, what had been predicted in my spiked report, happened. On November 18th, 918 people -- including hundreds of children and senior citizens -- were murdered.

Some committed suicide. Congressman Ryan, the NBC reporter and cameraman, a photographer and a Temple member who wanted to leave were assassinated on the airstrip by Jones' enforcers, firing from a truck sent by their demented leader. Jones' mass suicide was a massacre, unlike anything in American history. I was told that the original footage was kept under lock and key by NBC's law department and that a dub was bought by the FBI for its own investigation. We were given another set of dubs to edit for air. Only then was I put back on the story -- because I knew the story and the people.

NBC News' failure to air my reports before this tragedy aroused media criticism. Les Crystal replied that "intimidation had nothing to do with his decision to stop the investigation of the destructive cults." He wrote in a bylined article in Variety, January 3, 1979, that NBC had begun some "preliminary filming on the growth and influence of cults in the United States, but there never were any threats made. There never were any demands that we drop the project." He ended by saying that "after much heart-searching and sleepless nights, we have concluded that it was not possible for anyone to foresee the unprecedented events that took place in Guyana." Not possible to foresee the events? I wanted to scream, "You killed the story, Les." But without the evidence I have now, I knew I'd sound like a disgruntled employee kicking the graves of the NBC staffers who died there. I left NBC News voluntarily. Later that year, Les Crystal was fired. Fred Silverman prevailed until 198l.

In March of '81 syndicated columnist Jack Anderson got on to information about my suppressed investigation and interviewed people I had worked with, but too much time had elapsed. By then the government had classified everything important. His story died quickly. So when, 28 years later, I started getting calls about missing NBC footage, the story that haunted me for so many years came back in a rush.

The NBC archivist stuck to her story that she had only 18 minutes of Jonestown film. 18 minutes? I had personally screened 30 film cassettes about the destructive cults and at least three hours of dramatic footage shot in Georgetown, Guyana and in Jonestown the week of November 13, 1978. The dramatic confrontational interview with Jim Jones by the poorly prepared, aggressive NBC reporter whose ignorance of danger and Jones' mental condition, made worse by drugs, also was missing.

What had happened to the original film? I called the soundman and field producer who survived Jonestown. They corroborated my recollection of the amount of footage shot -- and the interview with Jones. Then I got in touch again with the archivist at NBC. She stuck by the 18-minute story but would "keep looking." I told her I viewed a pirated version of the NBC coverage that ran over three hours. Nevertheless, no one from the network archives could give me an answer about that missing film. The NBC lawyer assigned to the Jonestown project "couldn't remember." (The Jonestown Institute, which collects primary source information on Peoples Temple -- and which provided me with this pirated tape -- sent me proof they had obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that the FBI is in possession of 12 hours of footage from NBC. They are suing the FBI for everything.)

Leo Ryan's mother, Autumn, told me in 1981: "We will never get to the bottom of what really happened in Guyana and why Leo died. It's a massive government and intelligence cover-up." Ryan's top aide, the late Joe Holsinger, claimed in testimony before a House Foreign Affairs Committee that the C.I.A. had conducted a covert operation in Guyana, and that Jonestown was part of it. Ryan had co-sponsored the Hughes-Ryan Amendment -- the law which requires prior congressional approval of all CIA covert operations. CIA operations in Guyana remain classified.

I didn't realize the extent of the media cover-up until I began revisiting these issues 28 years later. How could NBC lose -- or worse, destroy historical footage of an event like Jonestown? Why? And what about my interviews with the people who predicted from firsthand experience what would happen if the Ryan party entered Jonestown? The documentaries aired recently as the anniversary approaches are a revisionist history of the event. "Lovely people. Tragic story."

The real story has yet to be told and must be told for at least three reasons. First, there's the matter of accountability for 918 needless deaths. Second, there's the issue of journalistic responsibility. Those who made these fateful decisions at NBC, including former company president Fred Silverman, former NBC News president Les Crystal and NBC lawyers, are still alive. Finally, at a time when the media is criticized for missing the truth about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for its own lack of transparency, telling this story is not only a way to come clean but a cautionary tale for all news organizations.

FRANKLIN JONES in Trinidad (not People's Temple)

THE GUY IN TRINIDAD IS NOT RELATED TO JIM JONES - BUT HIS NAME IS FRANKLIN JONES...





Dan Hamburg's new life
Ex-congressman to talk about politics, spirituality

by HANK SIMS

Former Congressman Dan Hamburg [photo at right] will be coming to Arcata Tuesday to give a presentation about religion and politics, and about his relationship with his guru, Ruchira Avitar Adi Da Samraj.  [photo below left]

Hamburg, who since leaving Congress in 1994 has been an environmental activist and a Green Party candidate for governor, said in a telephone interview from his Ukiah home that he was scared and also a little excited about the upcoming event. He looked forward to introducing others to a spiritual practice that attempts to "heal the world from its crazy death wish."

"I've been a devotee for two years," he said. "I'm not an expert, I'm not there as a missionary. I was asked by [Adi Da adherents] in Humboldt to come up and talk about my own experience."

Adi Da, whose "Adidam" organization owns land in Trinidad, was given the name "Franklin Jones" upon his birth in Long Island, N.Y., in 1939. During the `60s, he gained some notoriety as "Da Free John," an author of spiritual books. Today, the Adidam Web site bills him as the "promised God-man" who has the power to "perfectly fulfill the deepest longings of the human heart." Adi Da is currently residing on a small island he owns near Fiji. (see "Adidam comes to the North Coast,"  Journal, Jan. 14, 1999)

Hamburg said that he and his wife learned of Adi Da through an Arcata friend who had supported his congressional campaign. At first he struggled with Adi Da's writings, he said, and he continues to question his own devotion to the guru's rigorous spiritual program. But over time, his background as a student of religion -- he holds a master's degree in the subject from the California Institute of Integral Studies, a San Francisco alternative school -- helped show him the way.

"As a politician I've always been interested in the nexus between politics and spirituality," he said "Like a lot of people of my generation, [the Rev.] Martin Luther King was a huge inspiration."

As a practicing devotee, Hamburg said that he does daily meditation sessions and sends about 10 percent of his income to Adi Da. Despite the apparent similarities, Hamburg said that he didn't think it was fair to compare Adidam to a cult. For one thing, people are free to come and go from the organization without fear of anything worse than griping from former co-worshippers.

"When I quit the Democratic party, a lot of people dumped shit on my head," he said. "If you break the code, there's a price to pay. But in Adidam, the only price is maybe some people think you're a quitter, or that you don't get it. That's it."

Hamburg's speech will take place at 7 p.m. on May 18 in the Hotel Arcata. For more information, call 677-3584.



ADIDAM COMES TO
THE NORTHCOAST
by   SCOTT R. GOURLEY
and  ROSEMARY EDMISTON






I do not simply recommend or turn men and women to Truth.
I Am Truth. I Draw men and women to My Self.
I Stand always Present in the Place and Form of Real God.
I accept the qualities of all who turn to Me,
dissolving those qualities in Real God, so that Only God becomes
the Condition, Destiny, Intelligence, and Work of My devotees.
I am waiting for you. I have been waiting for you eternally.
Where are you?


-- AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ

THE GURU DIDN'T COME HERE BECAUSE HE wanted to change it," says devotee Jim Calladine. "He was drawn here because of what was here. At least that's my personal interpretation."

Seated in a sun-drenched living room overlooking Trinidad Harbor, Calladine is the antithesis of many preconceived notions surrounding the followers of the religious leader Adi Da. From the Timex Indiglo watch on his wrist to the Maxima and Saab parked in the driveway of the rented house, the 60-something Calladine projects the image of someone who fits well in the city of Trinidad.

That's just the point.

Beginning in the fall, the followers of Avatar Adi Da Samraj entered the community with the stated intention of being good neighbors. And they are expanding their presence as these pages reach readers' hands.

During a New Year's Eve day interview, Calladine said the religious group was closing escrow on a Stagecoach Road home and had just had its offer accepted to purchase the Shadow Lodge. Prior to September, few area residents had heard of the religion known as Adidam or its leader, Adi Da.

News of the religious group's arrival has led some residents to question if the organization is a cult, while others are concerned about increased traffic in their quiet neighborhood. Calladine emphatically argues against the notion Adidam is anything like a cult, and says traffic concerns are being addressed.

But in 1985 Adi Da was the target of a lawsuit accusing him of leading a cult marked by sexual abuse, humiliation and greed. The accusations were false, church leaders contend, and the lawsuit was later dropped.

In a series of articles in April 1985, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Adi Da's alleged exploits during the 1970s in the San Francisco Bay area and in a "hermitage" on the remote Fijian island of Naitauba, quoting former members, one of whom sued leaders of the religious group on charges of sexual abuse. At the same time, a half dozen angry defectors accused the religious group of false imprisonment, brainwashing, sexual abuse, assault and involuntary servitude. High-ranking members of Adidam, then known as Johannine Daist Communion, responded with a lawsuit of their own, accusing the disgruntled former followers of extortion.

At the time, Adi Da was known as Da Free John and his commune was based in the Marin County city of San Rafael. Thirteen years ago, the Chronicle wrote, Free John's empire built primarily on the earnings of followers was worth an estimated $5 million.

The Chronicle covered the story almost daily over several weeks in 1985, at which time followers of Free John's admitted to "sexual experimentation," but denied abusing anyone. They also said that their spiritual leader, who once had nine "wives," was now living a life of solitude and contemplation.

Both of the lawsuits were eventually dropped, said Michael Wood, Adidam's attorney and a member since 1973. He recalled 1985 as a difficult time for the church and said the accusations all stemmed from a bitter divorce between a member and former member.



"The bottom line is it's all about things that were 25, 30 years ago," he said. Today the group does not attempt to hide its history, and has just released a book chronicling the movement's activities since its inception in 1972.

That book, Promised God Man by church member Carolyn Lee, Ph.D., addresses some of Adidam's more controversial periods, which included sexual exploration. Without reading the book, Wood fears, outsiders will not understand his religion. He nevertheless offered explanation.

"An unexpected life that is tending to self-suppression we don't believe is a base upon which one can truly grow in spiritual terms," he said during a telephone interview from Adidam's sanctuary in Lake County. "We think you need to inspect and understand who you are, what moves you, what you truly value. And on that basis there's a possibility of your growth and real happiness."

Following that doctrine, Wood said, the church in the '70s spent many years experimenting with everything from food to work, worship, exercise, money and sexuality. "Obviously sexuality would be a part of that. Why wouldn't it be?" he said.

And as for Adi Da's wives, he said, the spiritual leader "had a circle of ladies around him that served him intimately."

Claiming some 1,800 members worldwide today, the devotees and students (as they prefer to be called) of Adi Da follow a religion described as being similar to Hinduism and Buddhism which includes among its ranks the former members of the rock bands Pearl Jam and Live, one follower said. The church is no longer involved in sexual experimentation, Wood said.

Adi Da's journey to Trinidad began in Queens County, N.Y., on Nov. 3, 1939, when Franklin Albert Jones entered the world at 11:21 a.m. Devotees believe that as an infant Jones experienced his first spiritual awakening.

Today, followers of Adi Da are extremely protective of their "teacher," as they refer to him, refusing a reporter's request to interview or meet the man. And devotee Calladine went further, asking that a reporter not even drive by the Stagecoach Road house. Followers are also restricted access to the religious leader, and are required to be a part of the group for a period of weeks before meeting Adi Da.

Jones' story can be gleaned, however, from devotees and former followers, Jones' autobiography, the newspaper articles and several Internet websites adidam.org or religioncults.com, a cult-watch website.

Jones' early religious experiences took place in a Lutheran church on Long Island, N.Y., where he later served as an acolyte during adolescence before entering Columbia College in September 1957. According to Adi Da's autobiography, The Knee of Listening, it was six months later when he returned to his old pastor to express doubts about some of his earlier Lutheran studies. His spiritual introspection continued during the next few years through his graduation in June 1961.

Following a summer job as a hotel waiter, during which time he experimented with peyote, Jones entered graduate school at Stanford University where he focused his undergraduate philosophy background toward a master's degree in English.

During this time, his autobiography states, Jones took "large doses" of cough medicine and was a poorly paid subject for hallucinogenic drug trials which included mescaline, LSD and psilocybin that were being conducted at the local Veterans Administration hospital.

Responding to what he called a vision, Jones prepared to leave California in June 1964 in search of a spiritual teacher in New York City. Shortly before his departure, as he stood on the ocean-front cliff outside a small cabin where he had been living above Tunitas Beach, he experienced what he calls "a Divine storm, a revelation of Truth, a transformative Blessing, a Spiritual Initiation! It was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen. It was a tangible Divine Vision. ..."

Settling in Greenwich Village, Jones continued his studies of the world's philosophical, mystical and spiritual literature. While studying under the Yogic teachings of Swami Rudrananda (also known as Albert Rudolph), Jones entered a Protestant seminary for a year of biblical Greek study that was required for entry into Philadelphia's Lutheran Theological Seminary.

April 1968 included a brief trip to Swami Muktananda's Ashram in India, an introductory journey that served as the precursor to a month-long visit the following year. The next spiritual milestone seems to have occurred in May 1970 when Jones, his companion of many years and a third friend gave away their material belongings and returned to India for what they believed to be an indefinite period, according to the autobiography. The period lasted just three weeks before Jones reported visions of the Virgin Mary that directed him to take a pilgrimage to Christian holy places in the Middle East and Europe.

That pilgrimage lasted through early summer 1970 and ended with resettlement in Los Angeles in August. It was there, in September 1970, that Jones reported a "Great Event" of personal re-awakening; an event which eventually led to his 1972 self-offering as "The True Heart Master" to any who would respond.

In late 1973 Jones directed his growing number of devotees that he should now be addressed as Bubba Free John, a name based on a childhood nickname for "friend" combined with the essential meaning of Franklin Jones. Free John declared himself "the Divine Lord in human Form" in January 1974 and shortly thereafter the group obtained an aging hot springs resort near the Lake County town of Cobb. It was at this former resort, which Free John renamed "Persimmon," that he began instructing devotees in the practice of "worshipping the Divine through images."

Over the past 20 years, Adi Da's name changes included not only Da Free John but Dau Loloma, Da Love-Ananda, Da Avadhoota, Da Kalki, Da Avabhasa, Adi Da, Adi Da Samraj and Adi Da Love-Ananda Samraj. In addition, the same two decades were marked by property expansion beyond the Adidam's 1,000-acre sanctuary and meditation retreat near Cobb to include additional sanctuary locations in Fiji and on the Hawaiian island of Kaui, according to Adi Da's autobiography. In fact, Adidam's members are located around the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Holland, Germany, Australia and New Zealand.

Calladine responded to the cult accusations recently over breakfast at the Seascape Restaurant in Trinidad.

"If you went back and checked in literature to see who has written about cults, Adi Da has probably written more about cults than anybody," he said. "What's meant by a cult? (Adi Da) basically says, `What's the test of a cult and are we a cult?' When we actually don't function in the way he calls on us to do as part of his teaching, then, he says, `You are functioning like a cult does,' as a criticism of us.

"As far as a cult is concerned, his definition is that a cult is easy to get into and hard to get out of. We don't meet that test because it's hard to get into our church and easy to get out of it."

And those that wish to join must first have a clear understanding of the philosophy. "Otherwise, why would you want to be involved?" asked Calladine. "That kind of behavior is not what you would find in a typical cult."

It was the redwoods that ultimately drew Adi Da and his followers to Humboldt County. Calladine cites writings by the man he calls his "teacher" which represent the trees as non-human examples of a "great process" that includes all living things.

It was 1997 when Adi Da first began talking about visiting this area. As the former operator of 75 Canadian travel agency offices, Calladine was assigned the job of making the trip arrangements and conducted research visits with his wife as far north as Brookings, Ore. An excursion into Oregon and possibly Canada was planned for fall 1998.

"That trip started in the middle of September and the first stop was here in Trinidad," Calladine said. "We had a rented house called Abalone Cove which was down on Patricks Point Drive. We were there for a couple of nights and (Adi Da) loved it. And, in fact, the first thing he said was, `I want to stay longer here.'"

They stayed an additional night in Trinidad before continuing to Portland, where Adidam's leader announced he wanted to return to Trinidad.

"And so I headed back down here while everybody else was still up there to find a place where we could stay," Calladine recalled. The ideal home would be available for extended stays or possible purchase.

"It's not that we have hundreds of places around. We don't," Calladine said. "But that's always an eventuality. He might want to do that. So we always have to look; is it a place that possibly could be purchased if that's what turns out?"

Adi Da himself was not part of the process. In fact, his followers take care of nearly every detail of their spiritual leader's life.

The group obtained a lease with option to buy for an unoccupied 2,700-square-foot home on Stagecoach Drive. Since Adi Da had already left Portland, Calladine videotaped the home and drove the tape up to Brookings for a midnight showing to his teacher. Returning at 2 a.m. with Adi Da's approval, Calladine arranged for a furious top-to-bottom cleaning of the home with the help of teams who rushed up from the Lake County sanctuary.

Adi Da arrived in Trinidad later that day. A month later, in October, it was decided the group would purchase the property. When news of Adidam's arrival spread, homeowners from the North Stagecoach Road Association worried aloud that the group might convert the house into a church, changing the character of the rural neighborhood.

"That was not our intention then, or now, or ever will be because this place will actually be used by my teacher only for certain times of the year; probably for two or three months of the year," Calladine said. "It's used as a residence. However, in addition to being used as a residence, people do come over, small groups of people at a time probably 10, 12, perhaps 15 maximum when he is around, not on any kind of predictable schedule."

Along with Adi Da, two other people will stay in the house. And several followers have rented homes around the city of Trinidad, including a "serving staff" that cooks and delivers meals to the house as well as the rental that Calladine and his wife share with Bill Dunkelberger, a former Marine Corps lieutenant colonel with Vietnam combat experience, and his wife, who maintains a daily journal of the group's activities in Trinidad.

"Wherever Adi Da goes, a lot of other things also take place," Calladine explained. "For example, he's constantly writing, so we have editorial staff who are there to deal with it. He is constantly in communication with people all over the world via an e-mail system that we have. He's constantly asking about people all over the place and so there's communication going back and forth. He functions on about 50 channels at the same time so he generates a prodigious amount of activity that has to go on in association with him."

Calladine's own spiritual journey began in Canada's Anglican Church and led him as an adult to a self-declared "God-man" named Meher Baba before he discovered the writings of Adi Da more than a dozen years ago.

Adi Da's writings include approximately 50 published books with 18 additional volumes awaiting publication.

In explaining Adidam's religious doctrine, Calladine acknowledged "some similarities to Hindu as well as considerable similarities to Buddhism as well." The religion is based on a sequence of beliefs in a building-block process that begins with the premise: There is nothing but the Divine.

Based on the conviction that humans are no exception to that rule, the beliefs then focus on the point that not all humans have the divine experience. Rather, Calladine identifies everyone's experiences as "being separate beings," a state that Adi Da attributes to an individual activity that he calls "self-contraction."

"The process, therefore, of God realization, he says is fundamentally not a matter of adding anything. In other words, if there's nothing but the Divine, what is there to add?"

Using the analogy of a closed fist (self-contraction) transforming into an open hand (realization), Calladine says that the process can't be accomplished by the individual alone. It requires a teacher.

Following an additional religious principle that "you become what you meditate on," Adidam followers meditate on Adi Da.

Adidam adherents generally follow a vegetarian diet focused on raw rather than cooked food. The exception is between early-December and mid-January, a time of celebration that includes parties where activities like drinking and smoking are permitted.

In Calladine's sparsely furnished rental was a small Christmas tree with three potted poinsettias, an incongruity that he attributed to the general celebration period as well as the Christian background of many church members. Later that day he was planning to drive down to a New Year's celebration at the Lake County sanctuary where the group was to be entertained by a live band of church members which includes the former drummer from Pearl Jam as well as the former lead singer from Live.

The new year should also see the completion of Adidam's purchase of Trinidad's Shadow Lodge, which will likely house seven to eight couples year-round, with additional members staying there on retreat when their leader is in town.

As for the Stagecoach Road neighbors, the religious group recently met with some two dozen neighborhood residents.

"They had various concerns including: Are we a cult? And, what are we doing there?" Calladine said. "We aired everything and we said to the neighbors, `Look, your complaints about traffic are completely right. There's been way too much traffic and that will change.' And it has. Because we were just disorganized. There was quite a bit of traffic and it was annoying to the neighbors. And quite properly. ...

"So we discussed everything with them and subsequently we heard from many of them, almost all of them, saying that they understand our situation and they've kind of relaxed about it now that they know where we're at and where we're coming from."

Calladine also reassures concerned residents that Adi Da's followers are not evangelical and do not go door-to-door.

"We want to be good neighbors," he said, adding "We are active and much more is going to be seen of us over the next couple of years."

page 2 Ukiah Daily Journal, Ukiah, Calif, Friday March 9, 1979

page 2 Ukiah Daily Journal, Ukiah, Calif, Friday March 9, 1979

Temple
Cont from page 1

Said Dewey, "We do not believe that any children were placed from this county in Temple foster homes ___ but we're waiting to substantiate that. Our best evidence over the last two years is ___."

A "few" children placed here by other counties, he added, may have died in Jonestown.

Dewey said his department didn't place children in temple foster homes because it believed they would not have "freedom of choice" in "religious training."

"We can't even count on one hand - over ten years - where we placed a kid in one of those S____ homes of theirs," said the welfare director. "Maybe we might have put one in for a day or two until we could find a place - because we had to put a kid where there was a bed - but we here didn't place them."

Asked what the department's policy was, Dewey _____, "I'm saying our referral procedure was never to sue any of their homes."

Because the department kept a close watch on foster children placed in homes it ____?screened? temple members increasingly opted for legal guardianship, a tactic which removed them from social services jurisdiction.

Dewey said temple members became legal guardians to __ children in Mendocino, San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa and Los Angeles Counties.

Four of the seven children in Mendocino County guardianships died at Jonestown, according to Dewey, who said three children from Bay Area guardianships also died there.

Dewy said the four dead youngsters from local guardianships did not come from here originally, but just where they came from remains a mystery.

He would not release the names of children involved in temple guardianships, saying they were confidential on orders from Mendocino County District Attorney Joe A____ and the U.S. General accounting office, which is investigating foster child placement and the temple.

Former Mendocino County Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen said temple attorney Eugene Chaikin did the legal work for temple guardianships in Mendocino County, according to Dewey, who ?mentioned? but didn't reveal "documentation" supporting his assertion.

Dewey also said? James? Sc___? pf ___ had placed here approximately 120? foster children who were "in and out" of licensed and unlicensed homes between 19__ and 1977?

More than 200? of the imported youngsters were from the bay Area and Los Angeles, living illegally with temple families not licensed to have them, alleged Dewey who recalled "We then were asking those jurisdictions in the Bay Area what was going on and why they were placing those kids here without our authority."

When social services discovered children in unlicensed temple homes, it forced Jones to send them back to where they had come from, he said.

Dewy declined to name Bay Area probation officers and social workers who were sending foster youngsters to licensed or unlicensed temple homes here.

Although People's Temple didn't include child abuse in the report___ ___ twisted behavior that led to Jones ____, some of its members allegedly practiced it at home in ways ranging from beatings to sexual molestation, according to the social services director.

Dewey, who could not "hazard a guess" as to the total number of Chile protective Service cases involving temple adults, said that in five of the cases, Jones or his aides intervened on behalf of the accused and hired the "best" attorneys for them.

The cases are not public record, said Dewey, declining to name the "best" attorneys.

Nevertheless, parents who were temple members committed no more child abuse than members of any other...

article clipping ends there
continues...

...religious group, said Dewey whose department monitored the temple very closely for violations against children.

Neither informants nor anyone else, said Dewey, reported child abuse or batterings at temple meetings. "We ?never?," he said. "went to the temple and saw a kid that had been beaten in the temple - never happened, never happened."

Relying? on reports from ex-members and informants, Dewey said that what took place at the temple was "at least: paddling and usually the paddling of adults.

Even though social services didn't make ____life easy? ____ for Jones in Mendocino County, Dewey said Jones left the area mostly because of the income, power and ___ rewards big cities offered.

"I think he had to broaden his base, he had to get to San Francisco, and set up a base there where he could control the political environment..."

"I don't think he did that up here, I didn't see it then, and I'm not seeing it in retrospect now."

According to Dewey, controlling the political environment largely ___ manipulating politicians by showing an ability to produce =votes for or against them, and "as the arena down south that's an acceptable practice."

Outside Tim Stoen, Dewey didn't think Jones controlled powerful people in Mendocino County, nor did Dewey have any evidence to show Jones controlled public agencies like the Ukiah Police Department or the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office.

Were Dewey's efforts to stop Jones from breaking welfare law in Mendocino a success?

"He survived," said Dewey, "I'm questioning the success. You can always do better. We did as good a job as we could at the time - I'm convinced of that, yes."

Life seems quaint now at the Mendocino County Social Services Department.

Welfare applicants sit in a tiny waiting area with a ____

Venetian blinds cleave the sunlight of a winter afternoon.

Behind a tall partition shutting out the waiting area, department staffers go about their well-oiled business in the ____ and p____ ____.

Dennis Dewey is working another ?endless? day.

He has a lot to do this month, sending the Mendocino County Grand Jury information about the man who again permeates his life, about the war? that was ___ and cold, the success of internal security, the way he could admire Jones' charisma and detest his duplicity.

Dewey may one day testify before the grand jurors, who no doubt will listen to his story of his war against apocalypse with a measure of awe, humility and gratitude - and perhaps with some perplexity over what measures government should take to curb a religion's abuse of freedom.

Five of Ryan's killers identified as Ukiahans

transcribed from a blurry newspaper article

Five of Ryan's killers identified as Ukiahans
Kathy Hunter (owner and editor)
Ukiah Daily Journal

Five of the ____ men who gunned down Cong. Leo Ryan and ___ others as they were leaving Jonestown by chartered plane with some People's Temple members who "wanted out" of their jungle "prison" were reportedly from Ukiah.

The information was called in late this evening by a Guyanese government official.

In a guarded telephone call from Georgetown, where the government monitors nearly all of incoming and outgoing calls, the informant said that ____ Bob Nice and Al _____ were dead, but no information was available on Tom K____, Joe W____ and S___ Kelly, who were reportedly with the group who murdered the Congressman, two NBC ___ and a San Francisco Examiner photographer, along with Patricia Parks of Ukiah, a temple member who begged Ryan to "get her out."

The information has yet to be ?confirmed? and when the U.S. embassy in Georgetown was called a spokesperson by the name of _____ said he could give out no information "at this time."

Many doors are locked and barricaded in Ukiah and other parts of California, where ____, led by Jim Jones, was active. Ukiah___ were seeking - and receiving - police protection from the possibility that Jones pre-____? ?statement? that no matter who died in Guyana -___ "hit squad" would return to the United States to "take care of"" temple critics and detractors. Several ex-members of the cult here have gone into hiding.

Temple sold most of Co. holdings
by Mitchell Land___ng
Journal Staff Writer

Little is left of the massive property holdings acquired by the People's temple during its heyday in Mendocino County.
Only two pieces of People's temple property remain in the county - the church itself on East Road in Redwood Valley and the "Happy Acres ___-?ranch? on Road? K>?

Nearly a million dollars worth of property was sold by the temple here in 1976 and 1977. Records in the County Recorder's Office show that ?much? of the property had been given to the church by its members.

The church building is reported to be in escrow at present.Informed sources say it is being sold to the Redwood valley Community Church.

The Temple building, including the adjacent house formerly occupied by Rev. Jim Jones has been assessed at close to $200,000. This is at Prop. 13 - or 1975 - values.

Happy Acres, also known as the Road? K ranch, is assessed at $100,000? $186,000? It takes up some 37 acres including 11 acres of vineyard and has been used as care home for the mentally retarded.

____ Wells confirmed that People's Temple property could be listed under some other name, making it difficult to locate in county records.

There was no property listed under the name of James Jones.

Jones' signature is found? on numerous transactions made by the temple over the past few years, however records indicate that the church underwent a campaign of getting rid of its Mendocino County property during 1987 and 1977.

During those years some ___ pieces of property owned by the People's Temple were sold. There are few sales listed before 1976 and more after Dec? 1977?

And County deed records show an interesting pattern in a number of ?cases?, the church was given property by its members for immediate resale.

In those cases, property was given to the temple and sold the same day. It is also likely that many properties were given to the temple after a period of ______ ___ years, but this is more difficult to establish.

During 1976, the Temple sold 11 properties worth $217,000? There were atually 14? parcels involved in the 11 sales, and sic of these were given to the ___ the day of hte sale.

In 1977, 14 sales were made, Four of these involved property given to the church the same day.

Total sales in 1977 ___________ $700,000? records show. The ?total? ____ over two years is some _____.

Wells said the actual sales were probably more than the assessed cash value, which is the figure indicated on the deeds.

One former member of the People's Temple has told the San Francisco Chronicle ___ members were routinely ordered to sign their deeds, often without knowing what they ____.

During 1976 and 1977, all deeds were notarized by the three notary publics - Grace ?Stoen?, James Randoph, and Harold _____.

All were members of the temple at the time.

Among the people who gave the temple their property were Linda Amos and Gerald ____, Patricia Parks. Amos is reported to have killed herself at Temple headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana on Saturday. Patricia Parks was one of those killed at the Port Kaiiuma airstrip that night.

Others who handed over property include ________, Raymond? ____ and Violet Go_____, Tim and Grace ____, K___ and Eugene? Chaikjns. (Eugene Chaikins was the temple's attorney), James and Betty P____. T___(tom) and Wanda Kice? Charles and Carol T____ and Delores? Evans?.



At least 17 area residents died in Temple mass suicide

Names of the 12 former residents of Ukiah and Redwood Valley were on a partial list of ___ victims of the Jonestown mass suicide and massacre which occurred Saturday in Jonestown, the Guyana religious agricultural community founded by Jim Jones, pastor of the People's Temple Church.

Included, all from Ukiah are Velma? Barnes, Jack Beam, Dorothy Bockley? Patricia? Patrick? Cartmell, Patty Cartmell, Candace Cordell, Chris Cordell, Amanda Fair?, a Mr. Fa__ Ma___ Harris, Paulette Jackson and Karen Layton.

From Redwood Valley, Jim Jones, Marceline Jones, D___ Kahalas?, Tim Swaney??? and Billy Jones, reportedly the pastor's grandson.

According to latest reports, ___ Temple Members committed suicide or were shot shortly after an execution squad killed Cong. Leo Ryan, three newsmen and Patricia Parks of Ukiah, who was leaving the commune with the delegation, as they prepared to take off from a small airport near the Temple _______.

Newsweek - 'The Most Horrible Night of My Life'

Newsweek
April 7, 1997
Section: National Affairs
Page: 44-45
Memo: STOEN, 59, is a lawyer in Mendocino, Calif.

'The Most Horrible Night of My Life'
An ex-Jonestown believer on the pull of cults - and how his 5-year-old paid the ultimate price.

TIM STOEN   
WHEN I WENT TO JONESTOWN with my 5-year-old son, John Victor, in February 1977, I believed I was going to make the world a better place. I guess I was a super-idealist. Fed up with racism and poverty in America, I was looking to create a utopian society where people of all races and classes could create a community. I had met Jim Jones 10 years earlier when we worked for a group that gave legal advice to poor people in northern California. Jones had a reputation for compassion and guts, and I wanted to use his group, the People's Temple, to promote my own view of a model society. I ultimately became Jones's lawyer and the People's Temple's business and political adviser. Of course, Jones always had some opportunism in him, but I was too ideologically blinded to see it. I paid a price for that. The price was my son's life. Since news of the Heaven's Gate mass suicide broke, I've seen all sorts of experts on TV talking about why people join cults. There are no simple answers. These people aren't necessarily from dysfunctional families. My loving parents gave me everything in the world, and I was a successful assistant district attorney. People join cults in moments of weakness - when they're angry about something in their personal life or in the world around them. For many in our throwaway, hedonistic society, life has become empty. Anything that involves a family - which is what a cult is - can be very appealing. People want simplicity; a cult provides ready-made answers.

I learned that lesson the hard way. The five months I spent in Jonestown were wonderful. Here were people of all back-grounds-professionals and drug addicts, janitors and secretaries, blacks, whites, Native Americans-creating a new world. I did diplomatic work with the government of Guyana, along with working in the sawmill, pushing crabwood boards into a planer in the tropical sun. In the afternoons, I taught reading and writing to my son and the other children.

But when I returned to California for a brief visit in July 1977, my wife, Grace - who had been a counselor at the People's Temple in the United States - forced me to see how Jones's utopia had rotted. She told me about Jones's increasing paranoia and his threats against her. She said he forced the children to beat each other. Suddenly I realized that Jones recognized only power. I had trusted his ideology so much that I had left John Victor in Jonestown during my visit home. When I tried to get him out, Jones refused. Grace and I spent months filing lawsuits and traveling to Guyana to free our boy. In November 1978, we accompanied Rep. Leo Ryan on his mission to Guyana to investigate alleged human-rights abuses. When Jones heard we were with Ryan, he specifically forbade us to travel to the compound. That's why I'm alive today. While waiting in our hotel, we heard that Ryan and his four companions had been killed on the Jonestown airstrip. We realized immediately there would be a collective suicide. We knew our son, along with the other 913 people in the compound, would die. We couldn't do a damn thing. It was the most horrible night of my life.

This will be a difficult time for the families of those who died in Rancho Santa Fe. Remember that almost anybody can get swept away. Think of the good things your children did. This kind of horror can be overcome. Jones taped himself during the collective suicide. Among the things he said: "We win when we go down. Tim Stoen will destroy himself" That did not happen. In May 1991 I became a Christian. I must accept responsibility for protecting Jones all those years, but because of God's forgiveness I am at peace. I hope the victims' families find their paths to that peace.
Blood and belief: On Jim Jone's orders, 914 of his followers killed themselves in 1978. TIM CHAPMAN - BLACK STAR.

A survivor's story: 'Anybody can get swept away' GERRY GROPP

USA Today - JONESTOWN MASSACRE: The Unrevealed Story

Another perspective...

JONESTOWN MASSACRE: The Unrevealed Story
USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 1999 by Jeff A. Schnepper

The testimony of Rev. Jim Jones' mistress opens a Pandora's box of sex, lies, drugs, politics, and murder.

IN NOVEMBER, 1978, the world was stunned by dramatic pictures and stories about Rev. Jim Jones and the mass suicide of hundreds of people in Jonestown, Guyana. While the deaths were real, the stories were fabrications created to cover up the theft of more than $26,000,000, planned mass murder (not suicide), and the fiscal rape of the treasury of San Francisco by corrupt politicians.

Jones' second in command, Teresa Buford, was a survivor of the massacre. Her confession, revealing the true nature of what happened, details Jones' blueprint for creating his own nation, funded by U.S. taxpayers' dollars stolen as part of San Francisco's corrupt political system. Buford's allegations have been supported by Charles Garry, Jones' first lawyer, eight boxes of notes and correspondence found by The New York Times, and newly unsealed records turned over to the California Historical Society. In my research, all discrepancies between what she alleged and what was reported in 1978 have been resolved by independent documentation supporting her position. I believe Buford. This is her story.

Terri Buford was Jones' mistress and financial manager of the Peoples Temple in California. The daughter of a former naval commander and spy, Buford reveals the mind control and brainwashing techniques used by Jones and his followers to manage the members of the Peoples Temple. That was just the beginning, however. Jones' objective was power. Using the Temple as a base, he manipulated its members to vote for and support local California candidates. Membership in Jones' church reached 20,000 in California by the early 1970s and his church had 13 buses used to transport large groups on short notice to any political rally or demonstration he supported. In the successful 1975 San Francisco mayoral campaign of George Moscone, Temple members went from precinct to precinct, voting over and over. Officials at the polling places never confiscated the voters' yellow registration forms. There were more votes cast than registered voters. When Moscone's opponent, John Barbagelata, complained about voter fraud, Jones sent him a box of candy with a bomb. Though the bomb misfired, Barbagelata muffled his complaints.

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Four hundred voter registration books disappeared and never were recovered, as the entire voting list of the 1975 election vanished without a trace. Timothy Stoen, then Jones' righthand man, was moved from Ukiah, Calif., to San Francisco as Assistant District Attorney and put in charge of the Voter Fraud Unit. In effect, the prosecutors were responsible for investigating themselves. The 1975 fraud resulted in not one conviction.

Those government officials he could not influence with his ballot power, Jones owned through drugs and blackmail. Buford was the head of Jones' "diversions" unit, formed specifically to blackmail politicians whose sexual activity was photographed or tape recorded. Allies were rewarded handsomely with financial and sexual favors. Millions of dollars then were stolen from the government of San Francisco by Jones and the Temple through the scheme of signing up adopted children for government benefits endorsed by politicians elected with phony balloting in rigged elections. These benefits were paid to the Temple by politicians empowered and owned by Jones. The children were put on the streets with $100-a-day quotas to be met by begging or suffer severe beatings for their failure.

Temple staff members were placed in key positions in the government to ensure the continued flood of new money. In Ukiah, Jones-controlled workers served in the Department of Social Services, Juvenile Hall, the Public Health Department, and the Offices of County Government. In effect, the entire local government was on Jones' payroll. In San Francisco, Jones himself was rewarded with the job of heading the city's Housing Authority.

Jones arranged free government housing for his Temple members. Properties that were in tax delinquency as well as repossessed, foreclosed, Veterans Administration, and HUD homes were kept apart from the city's public auction block and diverted to the Peoples Temple's holdings. Through Jones' Housing Authority position, he and his staff amassed a huge fortune in city properties, all considered tax-exempt due to the religious classification the Temple enjoyed. Jones was attempting to create a pseudo-religious empire modeled on the merger of religion and politics.

San Francisco Mayor Moscone and politician Harvey Milk were murdered in 1978, nine days after Jones' death. Temple member Bonnie Malman had been sent by Jones to have sex with Moscone long before he was mayor. She became his secret lover and a spy for Jones. Milk originally had been a Temple supporter who had been involved with Buford in the many sordid sex schemes involving California politicians. He saw Guyana as an experiment that "didn't work." Milk disassociated himself from the Temple and believed that Jonestown political forces were plotting his death to silence him. He was right.

Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Transcripts

Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project : Transcripts
Transcript prepared by Fielding M. McGehee, III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown InstituteThe Jonestown Institute. Thank you.
Tape Number : Q 681

Updated Channel 2 news report, Fall 1977, part of series that includes tape Q 665
Tape begins in middle of anchor’s introduction

Anchor:  …surrounding its activities. Tonight he continues his special series of reports and recaps some of the information already brought out about the 20,000-member church.

Jim Clancy:  This is a bag of garbage, just like any other bag of garbage that you and I throw away several times a week. But former members of the Peoples Temple say their pastor, the Reverend Jim Jones, used bags of garbage like things, along with other things, in order to create revelations before his congregation. Linda Dunn was for years a member of the Peoples Temple and at one time the personal secretary of Reverend Jim Jones, religious leader, chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission and a well-recognized political power broker. She was also a member of a small group of people who helped Jones present  astounding revelations about the personal lives of his congregation.

(Break for change of location)

Dunn:  We obtained names of people who had come into the meetings um, for the first time or else someone who had written a letter asking for help. Uh, we’d take their names and their addresses, uh, go to their homes, and talk with them, get any information — we’d go in disguise, of course, so they wouldn’t know we were from Peoples Temple — uh, get any information we could at all, any of their personal information, uh, description of their house, where they lived, uh, any little mementos in their house that were very personal, anything that would make them believe that there was no way that anyone other than (pause) God himself could have that information.

Clancy:  What was their reaction when he sprung that on them in a church meeting?

Dunn:  (Short laugh) Very effective. They really did think that he was God.

Clancy:  And then did that lead to greater offerings from them, signing over their house, things like that?

Dunn:  Oh certainly. Absolutely.

(Break for change of location)

Clancy:  After talking with former Temple members, we were able to get some of the materials that were collected on people by the Temple, things as tape recordings, notes on uh, their habits, uh, who was living in their family, what kind of ailments they might have had. Interestingly enough, they kept track of things saying, "Not dumb," "Not young." They kept track of people from Los Angeles, Compton, Fresno, Seattle, Washington, Ukiah, all over. Here’s a typical one of how they would classify people in gaining these revelations. They have, "Revelation to L.A." L.A. is the initials of the person that went for a "V" — that means a visit — on 5/16/72. Here it says, "Direct." That means they had direct contact with the person. And it lists things that they got from this person’s office, such as checks — these were copied down, might have been lying on the desk or on a shelf — a bill from the City of Paris (ed. note: store?), a statement of a payment uh, on a previous balance, things like that. Again, a revelation to L.A. This time, they went through the garbage, and they got out things like telephone credit cards. And the garbage goes on for (Dramatic turning of pages) page after page after page, everything, diapers, uh, cards, Kraft orange juice uh, one quart bottle, uh, what they contained, things like that. Now this person was a member of the Temple at the time, and they would use this to find out if the person was obeying the diet, doing things like that, and of course it was also used in order to make people believe that Reverend Jim Jones could tell what was going on in their private lives without ever having contacted them there. (Pause; change of location) According to former members of the church, the gathering of information went further than just looking through people’s garbage and paying them visits.

(Break for change of location)

Dunn:  The counselors took me in a room and they asked me, you know, if I would uh, do something for Father to help the cause — that was how they called him, you know — and, you know, I was brainwashed at the time, so I did. They asked me to break into my mom and dad’s house and take a bunch of articles, you know, that supposedly belonged to my— to the um— to the Temple, but later I found out, some of them did belong to my mom and dad.

Clancy:  What kinds of articles were they interested in?

Dunn:  Uh, they— like— just things like uh, camera equipment and candle(?) equipment and tapes, and different things like that.

Clancy:  They— things that would concern the church, photographs of what went on inside?

Dunn:  Yes.

Clancy:  That was because your father had been the photographer for the church.

Dunn:  Uh-huh.

Clancy:  What did they say when you brought those things back?

Dunn:  Well, they, you know— they praised me a lot and everything, you know, built me up to the people in the Temple, uh, you know. They really built me up a lot.

Clancy:  Linda’s story includes having church members distract her parents at work and provide her with a van in order to haul out the goods. She had to break into her parents’ home, and what she says about Peoples Temple involvement raises more than a few questions about other break-ins associated with this story, most notably at New West Magazine. But just gathering information for revelations and other purposes wasn’t enough to win over the most conservative of his congregation. Reverend Jones was also a miracle worker.

(Break for change of location)

Dunn:  We would put together um, chicken guts or anything that we could get that would look like uh, some sort of growth, put it together with human blood in a plastic bag, and uh, fake this material coming out of the person who was being healed. A nurse would of course come along beside and— and help her spit up her cancer or his cancer or whatever, and uh, she would take this bag of material and— and palm it down into her mouth from— and throat and bring it up, and everyone would think it was a, a cancer coming up, and that was another thing that was very effective, made people believe that he was God. Um, another thing to— to make them give more money.

Clancy:  Remember that the trick deceived even the person on which it was performed. This is an actual photo of a Peoples Temple cancer cure that was smuggled out. And Reverend Jim Jones didn’t just like the chicken raw for miracles, according to members. He liked it Southern fried, too.

(Break for change of location)

Clancy:  Did he ever perform miracles so to speak that you observed, like uh, you know, similar to loaves and fishes that uh, Christ performed?

Woman:  Yes. Um— Once my husband and I were standing in back of the temple in Redwood Valley, and we saw two um, buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken being brought to the office, the back door office. And um, a few minutes later, Jim said that we had ran out of food and that he was miraculously going to —

Man:  — materialize uh, some chicken. And all of a sudden, they brought in two uh, uh, plates of chicken, a bunch of chicken legs, and everybody was just raising their hands and crying and —

Woman:  Everybody wanted the miracle chicken.

(Break for change of location)

Clancy:  Former members of the Temple claim that Reverend Jones developed an atmosphere of paranoia among his congregation, particularly older black people. He told stories and plays were staged which told of a white supremacist takeover that led blacks and whites in favor of civil rights off to the gas chambers. They say it encouraged people to sell their homes and turn over the money to the Temple for the purchase and development of a 25,000-acre mission in British Guyana in South America. Tonight, Reverend Jones — shown here in a rare photo — is reportedly at that mission, and there is no indication of when he will return. Jim Clancy, Channel 2 Action News, San Francisco.

End of Tape.
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