The expression was born of the perception that Jim Jones disciples were gullible people who gladly drank the poison because their leader told them it would do them good. She entered Guyana on August 10, 1977. I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush.

'We were trying to build a new world, a progressive socialist organization.'. Prior to Stephans birth, Jim and Marceline had adopted two children from Korea: a four-year-old named Stephanie and a two-year-old renamed Lew Eric. He continued to play basketball, and was active in other ways, swimming, riding his bike, and lifting weights (Gorney). They are amused; they embrace him. When people ask about his past, he says he was "overseas," or "in volunteer service." For 19 of his 24 years, they were all he knew. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. A bit later the number was revised upward to 408. Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana, USA.

As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones' dream after they attended a service in Fresno. Stephan spent many hours visiting with her whenever he got the chance (Reiterman 400). Jim Jones was cultivating his growing celebrity--elected officials visited the San Francisco temple, Mayor George Moscone had used temple members as campaign workers, and much was made of the 1976 photo that showed Jim Jones and Rosalynn Carter together during the Democratic Central Committee meeting in San Francisco. "I still get very angry," Stephan Jones says. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. In the days before Ryan's fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. The silence could mean only one thing: An ambush was awaiting them. Or lost touch with reality? When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temple's wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that.

Five were dead, five seriously wounded, five suffered relatively minor wounds, nine were unhurt, and six were believed lost or hiding in the dense underbrush along the Kaituma River. In his spare time he swims, or rides his bicycle, or lifts weights, or plays basketball. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana, USA. We didnt see that coming. Jim Jones, pictured in 1976,dreamed up Jonestown. Which probably wasnt true. Top left: Marceline and baby Stephan. Sharir, M. (2019, January 22). He fired at me, but it misfired. Maybe they saw no hope--because they didn't see themselves leaving, but they didn't want to go on with Jim Jones. The soldiers realized very quickly that the enemy wasnt waiting for them. Stephan felt that the attack was real, though he knew his father wasnt above staging such episodes (Reiterman 361). On the morning on November 18, 1978, Stephan awoke in good spirits, with an optimistic outlook on the future. "I think he would be admitting in his own warped mind that he was not this great revolutionary he had tried to build himself up to be . Some of them had started out with him in the earliest days in Indiana and moved with him to California. Also learn how He earned most of networth at the age of 62 years old? . And I just flew out of bed, grabbed my ax, walked out to the post that was supporting the speaker and raised the ax like I was going to cut it down. I would argue that even a lot of the good works that he wanted to do early on were an attempt to impress my mother and her family. Stephan Gandhi Jones was born on June 1, 1959 to parents Jim and Marceline Jones in Indiana. Is this surge in public interest in Jonestown an exhausting experience for you? "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. I noticed them in real time. Stephan Jones, Jim Joness sole surviving child, was born in Indiana, United States, on June 1, 1959. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business.

That's what triggered it.'. . "He used to say we were the only two people of our kind in the universe," Jones says, clasping his hands behind his head and gazing out his apartment window. She was Adopted daughter of Marceline Mae Baldwin Jones and Rev. When he was ordered to Georgetown to help with supply shipments, Smith said he concocted an escape plan: Ollie and other temple singers and dancers, he believed, would soon be sent to Georgetown to perform, and the family would flee to the U.S. Embassy. The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. And frankly, Im much more trusting of the reluctant leader, one who says Lets go and not Go.. 'He kept on saying I looked like his mother': Brooke Shields reveals she declined to sleep with JFK Jr. after their first and only date despite him being the 'best kiss I've ever had', 'We just wanted to save the kids': Three hero cops who took down Nashville school shooter say they're haunted by stepping over victim on floor - and reveal they had NEVER worked together before, Stop being so (Micro)soft! "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. He has learned, he says, to understand his own resources and the depths of his emotions.

"There was always that guilt fed to you by my father that kept you in check, kept you thinking, 'Maybe I'm wrong'--the guilt for being selfish and questioning this.". To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz, 'My father was ill from when he was very young and was using fear to control me when I was barely more than a toddler.

All these lives were wasted and I don't know why.

His father, finally, is beginning to let go. Jordan Vilchez's parents were Berkeley progressives in the 1960s - her father African-American, her mother Scotch-Irish. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says hes now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. 'We built a community out of nothing in four years,' recalled Touchette, now a 65-year-old grandfather who has worked for a Miami hydraulics company for nearly 30 years., 'Being in Jonestown before Jim got there was the best thing in my life.'. that one last act would be admitting he was a coward, and about nothing. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from https://www.haaretz.com/life/2019-01-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/four-decades-on-jim-jones-son-tells-how-it-was-at-jonestown/0000017f-e640-d62c-a1ff-fe7b2ea00000, A collaborative project of Cowles Library at Drake University and the Special Collections Department of Library and Information Access at San Diego State University, Chronological List of Annotated Documents, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple, https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/11/07/jonestowns-haunted-son/f9369588-008b-497a-9ad3-b303dc01a8df/, https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=17058, https://www.haaretz.com/life/2019-01-22/ty-article-magazine/.premium/four-decades-on-jim-jones-son-tells-how-it-was-at-jonestown/0000017f-e640-d62c-a1ff-fe7b2ea00000. People on in the brush sees the men and women he knew but he. A note smuggled to us from two members spirits, with an outlook., imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. 19 of his 'children. ',... 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File photo: Bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. And I had good reason to be enraged with him I was enraged long before he died, and openly so. They have three children. 'So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong,' he said, including his father's sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. I mean, here are hundreds and hundreds of people who feel differently than I do--who's right?".

"When it really came down to it, I thought there wasn't any need, because I thought he'd be dead in a couple months anyway," he says. For the young Caucasian, there was more: "The white man was so preached against by my father as a way of winning black people, and here I am a white man, feeling like everybody resents me and I have something to apologize for," he says. Jim Jones. That way no one else would want to live., Stephan Gandhi Joneswas the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. Stephan responded: This is funny. Well, he was using these words, I dont know if hed actually do that, hes a good and gentle man in so many ways, but he wanted to take dad out, and I was the one to convince him that dad would do that himself and we were going to have chaos on our hands. First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. 'Destroyed,' he said, 'from within '.

Stephan was around 17 years old when he moved to Jonestown in February 1977 to help build the compound. Only one son, Stephan, was born to Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones.

In 1991, he married Kristi Jones, and they had three children together (IMBd). Stephan Gandhi Jones was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. The 40th anniversary is offering Americans an opportunity to deal with this neglected sore, with the story receiving treatment in both book and documentary form, a story of a trajectory from charismatic preacher and leader to head of a murderous cult. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. The first attacks on the town, I thought they were real. And his sense of self resided in his perception of other peoples perception of him. "I think I have a lot of the same tendencies he had. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part he played in an idealistic group that imploded so terribly.

You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous.

But we never felt he would go through with it because we saw him as such a coward.. Stephans high school experience was marked by grueling weekend temple trips, multiple switches in schools, difficulty making friends outside of the temple, and sports (Reiterman 309).

Stephan missed his mother, but was happier than hed ever been. In a recent interview, he stated that he was sober.

Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. The people involved include Agnes Pauline Jones, Timothy Glen Jones, Jim Jon Prokes, Jim W. Jones Jr, Lew Eric Jones, John Moss Jones, Suzanne O. Jones, and Stephanie Jones. The rest of us were accommodated in a private home.

Because people were disenchanted with him by that time? Stephan Gandhi Jones was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. I thought there were reasons for people to want to get us. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA.

Photographer Greg Robinson (right)was one of the five people killed. At 16, she was put on the Planning Commission where the meetings were a strange mix of church business, sex talk - and adulation for Jones. We'd also just seen the warm, cheerful embraces between some of those leaving and some who were staying. She was Adopted daughter of Marceline Mae Baldwin Jones and Rev. Stephans dislike of the church services only grew stronger as he became privy to more of the Temple secrets, and was aware at a young age of the many things that were told to be truths, but were actually manipulations by Jones (Reiterman 106). the whole thing he drove into people's minds for so long--I certainly don't mean to say that what happened was a sane act or that it was a good act, but--", Jones hesitates. People were forced. He dreams he is arguing with his father, arguing passionately, and although he knows his arguments are better, his father always wins. But this wasn't only the worst day of Trump's life - it was the moment America became a banana republic, 'She can handcuff me anytime!' Life became more tolerable after the couple's baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. In the summer of 1977 a large contingent of Peoples Temple members moved to Jonestown, growing the population from around 50 to over 1,000 over the course of a month (Reiterman 337). At another White Night in spring or summer 1978, Stephan wanted to see if his father would call of the event on his own, so he told his mother of his plan for both of them to stand back and watch (Reiterman 425). Even though he attended public schools, Stephan Jones had never really learned to live in the outside world. Also dead was Bob Brown, the NBC cameraman and the kind of guy who loved action stories.

I dont know about the inner circle but many of us, and even my brother Tim, when he turned to my side, he wanted to kill my father, he was so angry. They have three children. It was all about survival in his domain. 'Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did,' she said. But of course Dad was most terrified about anybody turning against him because it really screwed with the illusion that he had created. The picture, he recalls, was about hit men. And the temple was his life - first in Indiana, later in California. I keep remembering what Jones had said in the pavilion.

He loved it. ", Stephan Jones' lips draw back when he talks about his father; he looks for an instant like a cornered dog. He too was a member of the basketball team. Its not entirely surprising that many Americans and others want to understand how thousands of people can become blind followers of a tempestuous leader, and how it can end. Among the films in which he appeared were Written in Blood (2018), The Peoples Advocate: The Life and Times of Charles R. Gary (2007), and The True Story of Charles R. Gary (2007).

Peoples Temple lost the game, but only by 10 points, which seemed worth celebrating. 'In an hour, that promise was broken.'. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. "This was when he started bragging about taking 16 people on in one day, and all that crap. My best guess is that Jones felt the press people weren't fooled by the staged setup at the mission. Gorney, C. (1983, November 7). A loud series of pops echoed across the field. There is little his father said or taught him then that stays with him now; his memory is of a man wandering around the house in his underwear or his pajamas, sleeping by day, watching the news or "Hogan's Heroes" on television and announcing that he could tell whether his son was lying simply by staring into his eyes.

They were forced. Rebelling, they refused Jones' order to come back.

And he would have arrived too late, anyway. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. He says the congregation was full of elderly people, many of them hard-working black men and women who had given this minister everything they possessed. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. He used this kind of threat to control his people. Jones, who asked his followers to call him 'Dad,' did not like to lose any of his 'children.' Plunged into a new world, those raised in the temple or who joined as teens lost the only life they knew: church, jobs, housing - and most of all, family and friends. It would have been like I was a counter-revolutionary, in some sense.". There he argued with Tim Stoen, but didnt gain any information on what was happening in Jonestown (Reiterman 544). That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time.

Is this a process thats still going on or have you reached a point where youve come to terms with who you are in this situation? In Ukiah, Stephan tired of the repetitive, high-energy Temple sessions and would sometimes sneak out with his friends and brothers. They don't normally believe it at first. 'I said there must be another way.'. Some of those leaving the temple eyed the vehicles with suspicion. You don't tell God he needs help. Stephan Gandhi Jones was 19. 'If anything, we felt pity for him,' he said, 'and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.'. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part she played in the Peoples Temple, an idealistic group that imploded so terribly.

Others had joined in San Francisco and continued with him to the promised land in the South American jungle. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1983/11/07/jonestowns-haunted-son/f9369588-008b-497a-9ad3-b303dc01a8df/, IMDb. It was easy to see and feel what was attractive about my father. The bottom layer consisted of about 300 babies and small children whose bodies had been ravished by the humidity and jungle insects. Discover Stephan Jones's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. Jim Jones. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said.

Speier's right leg had a gaping wound, and her arm was injured.

.' [November 2008], View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro, Kristi Jones 'To me the ends justified the means,' he said. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? Yesterday morning 100 Guyanee troops came by train from Matthews Ridge, walking the last several miles as a precaution against sabotage or attack. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. There were times when Jones reassured Stephan, or convinced him that they were a special pair. 'I focused my rage on Dad and his circle, rather than deal with me,' he said. A few of us jumped from the truck and ran over there. Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. Prior to Stephans birth, Jim and Marceline had adopted two children from Korea: a four-year-old named Stephanie and a two-year-old renamed Lew Eric. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his fathers grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. Stephan grew up in a high-stress environment as the Peoples Temple grew and gained media attention (Reiterman 72). Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. His biggest regrets revolve around the team's refusal to return to Jonestown. They were at a basketball tournament five years ago, in November 1978 when the congressman and the reporters came to Jonestown. " Pause for effect. " Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since And Smith's wife, son and mother died. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article.

She returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years in March, Jordan Vilchez poses for a portrait in Richmond, California last week. I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. America was a genuinely unfriendly place for a boy from an interracial family and community, and Jim Jones knew how to fan that into a fear of everything that lay beyond the temple walls.

He dreams he sees the men and women he knew, older now, changed by the years.

Jonestown: It was the bodies that photographers favored most. He thinks now that it is probably stupid to believe that. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. Official Sites. Later, when they attended public school in Ukiah, Stephan and his siblings would fight at home but band together in public, with Stephan sometimes getting physically violent with other students in his defense of his siblings (who were sometimes attacked with racialized hate-speech)(Reiterman 181). They have three children. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. I think it was Dad controlling people through fear, me and my siblings when we were very young.. He was so wasted most of the time. So yes, many people were disenchanted., Im sure he feared it and Im sure he had people telling him it existed. I had been hammered for years with the message that there was an outside threat, and from an early age my father talked about people wanting to bomb us. This attitude continued into adulthood, and only intensified when in Jonestown. He also made sure that the other disciples who were in the capital would do nothing hasty. 1959: The Joneses adopted Suzanne (b. Now 58, he owns a modular office furniture business in the East Bay and is married with a daughter. I dropped to my belly. In October 1978, Jones began sleeping with nineteen-year-old Shanda James (Reiterman 455), though when she wrote him a note saying she wanted to be with someone else, Jones had her put in the ECU and drugged, to the great displeasure of many of the younger men. "They just needed this messiah, this purpose. 18 Nov 1978 (aged 51) Jonestown, Barima-Waini, Guyana. A bullet ripped through my left forearm. IMDb. The therapy that has been helpful to me hasnt been by talking with strangers about it. WebShe lived in San Francisco, California before she moved to Jonestown, Guyana where she lived in Dorm 1. Stephan was around 17 years old when he moved to Jonestown in February 1977 to help build the compound.

All had been captivated by his promises of a model socialist society based on equality and love under his leadership. I made that last trip with him and he made me stay in Jonestown.

He is talking, in the first of two evenings' long conversations, between spoonfuls of almond chicken at a Chinese restaurant. Toward the end, as he watched the array of barbiturates, amphetamines and tranquilizers that now slurred his father's speech and sometimes left him physically unable to leave the Jonestown house, Stephan Jones says murder seemed almost redundant. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues.
The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. Early Life Stephan Gandhi Jones was born on June 1, 1959 to parents Jim and Marceline Jones in Indiana.



So grew the young Stephan: the quiet witness steeped in rage. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since Trailers, a few clearings and some wood or pole-and-canvas buildings were all that marked the Jonestown settlement when Stephan Jones arrived. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " And I had good reason to be enraged with him'. "He was a gentle man in a lot of ways," Jones says, stretched now over the sofa in his small apartment. Then, after a 1977 New West magazine expose of temple disciplinary beatings and other abuses, she was sent to Jonestown. At one point, Stephan was alerted that someone may have tried to shoot Jones again, though when he investigated Stephan suspected the shots had come from someone standing within Jonestown, not in the jungle (Reiterman 364). American soldiers who arrived discovered that beneath the layer of bodies was another layer, and yet another. At first it was spanking of children. Learn How rich is He in this year and how He spends money? It began with a note smuggled to us from two members. | The note said: 'Please help us get out of Jonestown.' Haaretz.com, the online English edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, gives you breaking news, analyses and opinions about Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World. The guy you see in all the images.

"He used to say that I would acquire his gift in my late years. He was just 14, Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. On the night of November 17, Stephans basketball team competed against the Guyana national team. After the latter one he was sent to a psychiatrist in disguise, since Jones didnt want anyone to know that his son needed mental counseling. There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs. "Who they spoke to. The woman sang as they coupled, and when Stephan Jones' mother told the boy she knew about it, she also told him--it is this he remembers as the crescendo of the betrayal--that his father had even described the song. The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. Have your feelings toward your father and his role in your life evolved over the years? And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12.

'I just have to love him and forgive him.'. In code, his father told him everyone was going to die in 'revolutionary suicide. The rest was jungle, damp and hot and so thick with growth that Stephan Jones would stand among the massive trees and feel the 20th century fall away. His son was not among the boosters. Maybe they just thought, 'God, leave me alone. Stephan Jones believes his father must have killed himself: that he could not leave his own shooting to someone else. ", Jim Jones had warned them over and over that invading soldiers would torture their children; maybe that is what they feared most, Stephan Jones says. Jones claimed that someone had tried to snipe at him through the window, but that a premonition led him to duck just in time. He was a genius, and he was unique. Stephan ran to the U.S. Embassy and appealed for a helicopter to take him to the colony to try to stop the disaster, but no one listened. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. Its been almost ten years that Ive been putting up with this shit. I think there are people who are interested in it because of whats going on in the world. Photo from Peoples Temple files, acquired from Reiterman 393. 'They're in deep trouble now,' observed one of the relatives who had accompanied us. The team decided to go to the Pegasus hotel where the Concerned Relatives were staying and get more information from them, defying Jones orders (Reiterman 523). Youve known about it for a month and youre going nuts. Each day's news bulletins compounded the already unimaginable: There were 400 bodies; there were 900 bodies; there were, in the precise wording of the American military men sent to investigate, "smaller bodies under larger bodies and children under those." The Washington Post.

WebStephan helped erect a basketball court and form a team. Jim Jones (top middle) with the early Jonestown settlers in 1974. Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. He arrived in the U.S. in 1967 as a medical graduate Discover Stephan Jones's Biography, Age, Height, Physical Stats, Dating/Affairs, Family and career updates. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. A black man with a 'corn rows' hairstyle came up to the rear of the truck.

WebShanti Gandhi (born 10 February 1940) is an India-born American cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon and was a Republican member of the Kansas House of Representatives, representing the 52nd District from 2013 to 2015.He won a contested party primary and won again in the 2012 general election..