Jim Jones

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“Slowly The Loving Atmosphere Gave Way To Cruelty”

December 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

New West, the magazine that Clay Felker launched as the Left Coast sister to New York, managed to survive only a few years, but it made its mark. A 1977 exposé by Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, “Inside Peoples Temple,” about the Rev. Jim Jones, which alleged all manner of abuses by the preacher, drove him and some of his followers to relocate from California to Guyana, where the real madness began. I didn’t realize until reading this piece what pull Jones had among San Francisco politicos. An excerpt about a family that quit the church.

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“After Elmer and Deanna Mertle joined the temple in Ukiah in Novem­ber, 1969, he quit his job as a chemical technician for Standard Oil Company, sold the family’s house in Hayward and moved up to Redwood Valley. Eventually five of the Mertle’s children by previous marriages joined them there.

“When we first went up [to Redwood Valley], Jim Jones was a very compassionate person,” says Deanna. “He taught us to be compassionate to old people, to be tender to the children.”

But slowly the loving atmosphere gave way to cruelty and physical punishments. Elmer said, “The first forms of punishment were mental, where they would get up and totally disgrace and humiliate the person in front of the whole congregation. . . . Jim would then come over and put his arms around the person and say, ‘I realize that you went through a lot, but it was for the cause. Father loves you and you’re a stronger person now. I can trust you more now that you’ve gone through and accepted this discipline.’”

The physical punishment increased too. Both the Mertles claim they received public spankings as early as 1972 – but they were hit with a belt only “about three times.” Eventually, they said, the belt was replaced by a paddle and then by a large board dubbed “the board of education,” and the number of times adults and finally children were struck increased to 12, 25, 50 and even 100 times in a row. Temple nurses treated the injured.

At first, the Mertles rationalized the beatings. “The [punished] child or adult would always say, ’Thank you, Father,” and then Jim would point out the week how much better they were. In our minds we rationalized … that Jim must be doing the right thing because these people were testifying that the beatings had caused their life to make a reversal in the right direction.”

Then one night the Mertles’ daughter Linda was called up for discipline because she had hugged and kissed a woman friend she hadn’t seen in a long time. The woman was reputed to be a lesbian. The Mertles stood among the congregation of 600 or 700 while their daughter, who was then sixteen, was hit on her buttocks 75 times. “She was beaten so severely,” said Elmer, “that the kids said her butt looked like hamburger.”

Linda, who is now eighteen, confirms that she was beaten: “I couldn’t sit down for at least a week and a half.”

The Mertles stayed in the church for more than a year after that public beating. “We had nothing on the outside to get started in,” says Elmer. “We had given [the church] all our money. We had given all of our property. We had given up our jobs.”

Today the Mertles live in Berkeley. According to an affidavit they signed last October in the presence of attorney Harriet Thayer, they changed their names legally to Al and Jeanne Mills because, at the church’s instruction, “we had signed blank sheets of paper, which could be used for any imaginable purpose, signed power of attorney papers, and written many unusual and incriminating statements [about themselves], all of which were untrue.”•

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“Thirty-Three Containers Were Marked And Identified”

August 7, 2014 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

Some strange stories never seem to truly end. The Jonestown Massacre occurred in 1978, and the survivors will always carry scars (here and here), but some of the victims are likewise still trying to find peace. From the Associated Press:

“The cremated remains of nine victims of a 1978 mass cult murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, have turned up in a former funeral home in Delaware, officials said Thursday.

The state Division of Forensic Science has taken possession of the remains, discovered at the former Minus Funeral Home in Dover, and is working to make identifications and notify relatives, the agency and Dover police said in a statement.

The division last week responded to a request to check the former funeral home after 38 containers of remains were discovered inside. Thirty-three containers were marked and identified. They spanned a period from about 1970 to the 1990s and included the Jonestown remains.

Bodies of the massacre victims were brought after the deaths to Dover Air Force Base, home to the US military’s largest mortuary.”

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“His Ideals Were Lofty — The Results Are For Others To Judge”

February 19, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Harry Stack Sullivan.

Posting something about a survivor of the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples Temple cult reminded me of an odd obituary I came across a couple months ago. It was a 1991 New York Times postmortem about psychotherapist and commune leader Saul Newton, who was an avowed enemy of the traditional family, who wanted to break our accepted bonds–chains, as he saw them–smash them to bits. He thought he could create a new reality.

I vaguely recall speaking some years ago to an old NYU professor who was a believer of Newton’s and spoke glowingly of the late doctor. I was left chilled by the conversation. From the Times obit:

His beliefs had radical political themes. Earlier he was a union organizer, an avowed Communist and a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. In recent years, he was an ardent foe of nuclear arms and power.

‘Hated and Loved’

“He was both hated and loved,” said Esther Newton, his eldest daughter, who was not involved in his therapeutic community. ‘His ideals were lofty — the results are for others to judge,’ she said. “He was very bright and creative, charismatic and definitely difficult, handsome, attractive to women and tyrannical.”

At its peak in the 1970’s, his organization had hundreds of members living in three buildings on the Upper West Side. Its formal name was the Sullivan Institute for Research in Psychoanalysis; a subsidiary group was the Fourth Wall Repertory Company, a theater organization based in the East Village.

In recent years the Sullivanians declined in membership, beset by unfavorable publicity, investigations by state authorities into charges of professional misconduct by therapists, child custody lawsuits, the organized opposition of disaffected former members and estranged relatives of members, internal disputes and Mr. Newton’s deteriorating health.

The group’s name was derived from the late Henry Stack Sullivan, a prominent American psychiatrist. In 1957, Mr. Newton and Dr. Jane Pearce, his wife at the time, split off from the Sullivan-oriented William Alanson White Institute to form their own organization. Most mental health experts view the Newton group as having distorted Mr. Sullivan’s name and theories.

Through their unique brand of psychotherapy, Mr. Newton and his disciples controlled virtually all aspects of their followers lives, former residents said.

Members were taught that traditional family ties were at the root of mental illness and needed to be broken to foster individual growth, ex-members said. They were assigned to lived in group apartments and were expected to sleep with different sex partners, changing as often as each night. Married couples did not live together. Permission was required to give birth. Children were raised by babysitters, with parental visits allowed one hour a day and one evening a week. Members often broke off contact with their own parents and other relatives. Under outside criticism, some of these practices were moderated in recent years.•

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“We Were Good Law-Abiding, Brainwashed Followers”

February 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Rev. Jim Jones went off the deep end in 1978, taking with him some true believers who had initially followed willingly and others who had approached reluctantly. There were survivors, and their stories can be instructive in understanding group delusion. Deborah Layton, a Jones aide who survived the massacre, has just published a book on the topic. She did a very candid Ask Me Anything at Reddit in connection with the publication. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

I hope this isn’t taken the wrong way, but I find the circumstances surrounding the Jonestown tragedy completely fascinating.

As someone who was in Jonestown, do you think that it was Jim Jones’ plan all along to commit this atrocity?

Deborah Layton:

It is not shameful to find the story so fascinating. Trust me, I continue to try to make sense of the losses.

When I had finished writing Seductive Poison I was asked by a BBC documentary film crew to accompany them back to Guyana and into Jonestown. I was hesitant until the producer came on the phone and told me in his research he had come across a woman’s dissertation about the history of Guyana that some 100 years ago a white minister convinced his Amerindian flock to kill themselves and come back as white men. I realized Jones must have known this story.

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Question:

What attracted you to that lifestyle? Were recreational drugs abundant in Jamestown?

Deborah Layton:

Innocence and naivete, the belief I was joining an organization much like the peace corp. I thought I could work hard for 2 years, help the poor and the needy, and continue on with my life.

There were no recreational drugs, ever, in Peoples Temple. We were good, law-abiding, brainwashed followers — unbeknownst to all of us, only Jones was using medications.

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Question:

As far as you know, did Jim Jones tend to prey on specific demographics/people with specific (vulnerable) personality traits? I’m sure he had to have had a special kind of aggressive charm about him to recruit as many followers as he did, but how much would you credit the sheer size of Peoples Temple membership to his recruitment preferences?

Deborah Layton:

He went after well to do idealistic college students– through whom he could siphon money from their parents; he targeted poor, black seniors–then siphoned their SS checks. More joined because of the positive press he received. Most believed they were only pitching in to help an organization with good deeds. No one thought they would be forbidden from leaving. Some who left were found, brought back, then punished, one man was killed. Jones used his political clout to procure more politicians then used those associations to intimidate his parishioners.

Jones often met with new visitors, wooing them with the amount of attention he gave them, telling them how he needed their qualities in his organization, that together he and they could change the wrong in the world–racism, classism….

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Question:

Knowing what you know now, what would you say your very best life advice is?

Deborah Layton:

No one joins a cult. No one joins something they think will hurt or kill them. People join political movements, social organizations attend off-campus dinner socials believing they are mingling with like-minded people. It is often too late when one realizes they’ve been deceived.

Although my experience is extreme, I saw this tendency again when I worked on the trading floor of an investment banking firm — where invisible boundaries are crossed believing the end justifies the means. When you believe in something and think there will be a great payout, whether in spiritual points or money it is often hard to take a closer look and walk away from so much. At some point in all our lives we have been entrapped and did not know how to extricate ourselves. The less extreme and most common are abusive relationships.

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Question:

How do you feel about the fact that “drink the Kool-Aid” is such a popular phrase?

Deborah Layton:

It’s a complete misnomer, because in fact 140 babies, parents and senior citizens in Jonestown were coerced and murdered. Babies do no commit revolutionary suicide. Jones had it planned. We innocents had no idea.

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Question:

Was there a lot of sex abuse in the community? A lot of cults seem to have that.

Deborah Layton:

Peoples Temple was a celibate organization. Having said that, Jones did rape men and women against their will — for the purpose of breaking down their sense of self and soul.

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Question:

Are there any people or organizations which are currently active that you fear may go the way of Jonestown?

Deborah Layton:

Yes, some call themselves churches, however, if joining means turning your back on everything you’ve known — your family, friends who are not in the organization — you are in danger.

Question:

Any in particular?

Deborah Layton:

You know them.

Question:

Is it the church that’s involved in the study of scientists?•

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“He Was A Hero In Certain Circles Well Before The Assassination Of President Kennedy”

January 8, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I think you know my feelings about JFK conspiracists, but Mark Lane, author of 1966’s Rush to Judgement, a broadside directed at the Warren Commission, has lived a colorful existence even beyond that explosive chapter in American history. A lawyer for anti-war factions and civil-rights groups in the 1960s, Lane later became a legal representative for Jim Jones and his Jonestown settlement in Guyana, which in 1978 descended into madness and mass death. He was on the scene when the cult members prepared to follow their mad leader’s orders–to drink his Kool-Aid–and survived by escaping and hiding somewhere safer–the jungle.

Here’s Lane, in 1966, discussing the Warren Commission with William F. Buckley.

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“It Sounded Like Boris Karloff Welcoming Us To His Castle”

January 22, 2013 in Excerpts, Urban Studies | Permalink

In 1979, a year after the People’s Temple, the American cult that relocated to Guyana, was torn asunder by homicide and mass suicide, People reexamined the jaw-dropping descent of Rev. Jim Jones, a charismatic, paranoid man who could not hide his haunting eyes behind even the darkest glasses, and his disciples. From “The Legacy of Jonestown,” a passage about a couple who escaped the self-imposed slaughter:

With uncanny timing, Richard Clark launched his long-planned escape from Jonestown on the morning of the massacre. “I can’t say I’m psychic, but I can always feel danger,” says Clark, 43, now a presser for a San Francisco dry cleaner. Quietly he told his companion, Diane Louie, that ‘something definite is going to happen, and I want to be out of here when it does.’ Diane passed the word to seven others. Hacking through the jungle with a machete, the little group—including four children—found the path to the railroad. Then, by foot and train, they made their way to Matthew’s Ridge some 30 miles away. That was where they learned of the tragedy they had so narrowly escaped. 

Before they came to Guyana, Clark and Louie had envisioned Jonestown as a tropical paradise. Their disillusionment began during the 24-hour boat trip from Georgetown to the Peoples Temple community in May 1978. Hot and overcrowded, the fishing boat was crawling with “huge roaches with eyes as big as mine,” Clark remembers. Adds Louie, 26: “It was the first time I had an idea of what a slave ship must have been like.” Both were chilled to hear Jones’ voice greeting them on the loudspeaker when they arrived. “It sounded like Boris Karloff welcoming us to his castle,” Clark recalls. “There was no longer the love.”

Even today Clark, who joined the Temple in San Francisco in 1972 and left his wife at the leader’s order, believes Jones had supernatural healing and mind-reading powers. But the grim reality of Jonestown shook his faith. “You could see people starving, hungry, sick,” he says. “But they couldn’t face the fact that Jones was doing it.” Soon after his arrival, Clark began to plan his departure. To shield himself from Jones’ propaganda, he took a job on the pig farm, out of earshot of the maniacal broadcasts—then volunteered to clear the jungle so he could hunt for escape routes. And he prepared himself mentally. “I began to program myself to hate Jones,’ he says, ‘because this was the only way that you could fight him.”

Still together, Clark and Louie are troubled by memories of lost friends. Clark also grieves for two stepchildren who refused to accompany him and died in Jonestown. Although the couple and other survivors entered group therapy back in the U.S., they soon gave it up. “The tape-recorded sessions reminded me of the Peoples Temple,’ Louie says. ‘I got more help and sympathy talking to my family and friends.” She is once again working as a surgical technician, but failed in an attempt to study nursing. ‘I couldn’t concentrate,” she says. Clark is bothered by high blood pressure and bad dreams. “I feel like I’m getting better,” he says. “But I don’t think anyone who’s been in a concentration camp will ever get over it.”•

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“The Would-Be Perpetrator Was Not A Jihadist, But The Man Who Would Become One Of History’s More Infamous Villains”

August 12, 2011 in Excerpts, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

"He called it 'revolutionary suicide.'"

I posted some time ago about Congressman Leo Ryan, who was murdered in 1978 on an airstrip in Guyana as prelude to the Rev. Jim Jones’ Kool-Aid massacre. Scott James of the Bay Citizen section of the New York Times has a scary addendum to the shocking story. Jones apparently had a 9/11-style act of terrorism in mind. An excerpt:

“Twenty-five years before the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, a religious extremist plotted to hijack a commercial airliner — filled with 200 or so unsuspecting passengers — and deliberately crash it.

The target was San Francisco. And the would-be perpetrator was not a jihadist, but the man who would become one of history’s more infamous villains: the cult leader Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, whose headquarters was then on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco.

With the hijacking plot, described in a coming book and recently confirmed by a former Peoples Temple leader, Mr. Jones is said to have wanted to cause death on a scale that the world would not soon forget. He called it ‘revolutionary suicide,’ a warped vision of religious martyrdom he would ultimately fulfill two years later, in 1978, with cyanide poisonings and shootings in Jonestown, Guyana, that left 918 people — most of them church members — dead.”

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There were 918 dead but some survivors:

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