She gives us the order that we were supposed to kill ourselves, Vilchez recalled. But in 1973, Johns oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. February 27, 2023 endeavor air pilot contract No Comments . Thank goodness he lived before me.". He did.. 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. mode: 'thumbnails-a', | And all of the children died first. His body was found with a gunshot wound in the head. I believed there was too much racism, and there was a need for change. He said: "So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye . He too was a member of the basketball team. At the end of Ryan's two-day visit to the mission Saturday, a woman suddenly charged down a slippery boardwalk shouting at her husband, 'I'll kill you! He was just 14, Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. Others had joined in San Francisco and continued with him to the promised land in the South American jungle. There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. "The minute I stepped out on the street, I felt so uncomfortable," he says. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. All the people who lay there around him had followed him. In fact, he thought he was the only one who could save the situation. Contact & Personal Details. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, the two temple members who asked for help in the note, also were seriously injured. . His wife has learned at those moments to let him be. And in his growing community near the town of Ukiah, Jim Jones preached to the faithful about communalism, racial equality, "apostolic social justice" and the power of belief. "I'm blessed to have hit enough of a bottom and to have been surrounded by amazing, wonderful, honest, compassionate and challenging people to see me through that," Stephan said. When the order from the colony came over the speaker in Guyanas capital Georgetown, Stephan Jones knew he wouldnt obey it. Greg's body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. Stephan Gandhi Jones was 19. Like everyone else, he died there, his son said. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. When that was pointed out to Ryan, Layton contended he already had been frisked. Gandhi is an Indian word meaning Pharmacist. In this March 5, 2018 photo released by Kevin Kunishi, Jordan Vilchez sits at memorial for mass murder and suicide victims at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana. Life became more tolerable after the couple's baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. It would have been like I was a counter-revolutionary, in some sense.". Then he decides it is time, and he falters, and he tells them they may not believe what he is about to say. Yes. While working as a hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, and they married in 1949. I didn't see who fired the shot but the sound came from the tractor and trailer. Published: 01:29 EST, 14 November 2018 | Updated: 12:15 EST, 14 November 2018. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons. Then they start to ask questions right away.". When I left at 21, I left a part of myself there, she said. Oh yeah, I think you can see that from my writing. 'I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. How do you explain the renewed interest in the Peoples Temple? Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown to raise money. In code, his father told him everyone was going to die in revolutionary suicide., I argued with my Dad, he said. Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. NBC sound man Steve Sung had chunks of one arm blown away. Jim Jones had years earlier conceived his South American settlement as a distant haven where Peoples Temple members could live in communal isolation, protected from unfriendly reporters and all the other enemies Jones denounced through his congregation. Also dead was Bob Brown, the NBC cameraman and the kind of guy who loved action stories. It was Harris who had been contacted by the first two groups of temple members expressing a desire to leave. There are moments when he glimpses the edges of power and understands precisely how it might be used. He made a promise once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, Smith said. No one now living saw Jim Jones die, so there is some dispute about whether he also performed what he had taught his followers to call "revolutionary suicide." The first attacks on the town, I thought they were real. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown. I wouldnt say that I dont have problems saying no, and I do quite a bit, so Im feeling it now because I traveled to New York and had a long interview yesterday [with CNN]. I also didnt really know what Id be dealing with if I did, but sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. Is this surge in public interest in Jonestown an exhausting experience for you? In California, he was steeped in temple life. A number of Jonestown survivors have spoken out about the mass suicides and murders that killed the only life they ever knew and how they have managed to build new ones in the four decades since the tragedy. Ryan Seacrest, 48, is all smiles with stunning girlfriend Aubrey Paige, 25, as they enjoy Miami shopping trip, a day after it was announced he's being replaced on Live with Kelly and Ryan by Ripa's husband, Who needs Tinder when you've got Duolingo? The slaughter at Jonestown was the worst civilian tragedy in U.S. history before September 11, 2001. This past year, she returned to long-overgrown Jonestown. Among those speaking out ahead of the 40-year anniversary of the mass deaths is Mike Touchette, who was a 21-year-old Indiana native at the time. I want out of this.' When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temple's wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. I had been up all night unloading boats and I had to be at work in a couple of hours so I lay down for two hours of sleep after backbreaking and dangerous work, and Dad comes on the speaker in the wee hours of the morning. In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. Some had the distinct impression that the two were close to opening fire on the truck. Listen, not long before, we went to play basketball. Stephan helped erect a basketball court and form a team. The media has done a poor job; theyve demonized him. But he also tapped into something very real and showed something very real and was very loving, especially during the early period.. Besides the tragic story behind his ancestors, Stephan Jones has set his great work as an actor in the Hollywood Industry. | Then there were just a few. Four granite slabs are etched with names of the 918 people who died in Guyana including James Warren Jones, which deeply offends some whose relatives perished. Layton, who was insisting on taking the first plane, slipped to the other side of the plane before he could be frisked. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. This figure, though shocking, gave room for hope maybe the remaining hundreds of people of the colony had fled into the jungle and were saved. He promised that he wouldnt. " Pause for effect. " Instead, The Washington Post reported that Stephan escaped death with the Jonestown basketball team. This dismissive thinking was convenient because its hard to comprehend how so many people marched together to a certain and unnecessary death. The soldiers realized very quickly that the enemy wasnt waiting for them. That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time". 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 phrase drinking the Kool-Aid, meaning to follow someone blindly, was born that day in Guyana. All these lives were wasted and I don't know why. As the larger plane landed, the temple truck, with several persons in the back, started to advance. The note said: 'Please help us get out of Jonestown.' Another to experience the trauma of Jonestown was Stephan Gandhi Jones, the biological son of Jim and his mistress Marceline. PORT KAITUMA, Guyana - 'I feel sorry that we are being destroyed from within,' the Rev. That's what triggered it.'. Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters,. Im not saying he didnt cause it, create it. He would rise before dawn, pick his way into the bush, and sit without moving as the quiet around him split slowly into bird cries and insect buzzing and the scuffling and calling of creatures he could not see. First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. ", Stephan Jones spent three months in a Guyana jail after the November deaths, imprisoned there while Guyanese authorities tried to determine who had killed the devoted Peoples Temple aide Sharon Amos and her three children, all of whom were found with their throats slashed in the Georgetown Temple headquarters on the day of the suicides. Trump would hammer Biden OR Harris if he was up for election against either of them in 2024, new poll shows, At least 53 civilians who were truffle hunting in Syria are killed in terror attack blamed on ISIS, 'Find me rich, hot and kind': Hunter Biden BEGGED his cousin Caroline to hook him up with Brooklyn Beckham's wife Nicola Peltz - 25 years his junior - to help him 'break free' from his brother's widow and one-time lover Hallie, texts reveal, Onwards and upwards? He was not prepared for suicide. It was all about survival in his domain. Stephan Jones currently lives in Petaluma, CA; in the past Stephan has also lived in San Rafael CA and Novato CA. Suddenly there was no money to buy lumber or supplies--"he was such a tightwad," Stephan Jones says--and the homesteading fervor gave way to the minister's incessant meetings and group lectures and warnings about "enemies.". 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. His father, finally, is beginning to let go. Thats what triggered it.. Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. We demanded to see the locked buildings where some members lived in crowd, uncomfortable conditions. After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. My mother got me an apartment, I got a job and my father came and tried to talk me into coming back. "He was always preaching the hostility toward us and warning people what would happen or what could happen from the outside," Stephan Jones says. . Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? Have your feelings toward your father and his role in your life evolved over the years? Save record . . Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. A woman named Sharon Amos had slaughtered her three children and committed suicide. 'Baby killer. A bit later the number was revised upward to 408. 'When I left at 21, I left a part of myself there,' she said. It would become a little town where people of all ages and colors raised food and children. None of it makes sense. "It's like you went to a vacation in Europe and found out the United States had sunk," he says. "I just felt like this was all they had," he says. Many of his previous interviews echo what he discusses in Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre, but he has an intimate perspective to give when it comes to his father and mother, who both died during the event. My companion, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, would be murdered in an ambush. Then it was boxing matches for adults. He too was a member of the basketball team. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 1/2 months pregnant. ". This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The 21-year-old Indiana native felt pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana, South America. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. Photographer Greg Robinson (right)was one of the five people killed. "I don't know what was happening . Five others were wounded seriously. Play it now! He was the son of Jim Jones, who established Jonestown. In this Nov. 5, 2018 photo, John Cobb poses for a portrait at the the Jonestown Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. As for those people in his life, NBC reported in a 2008 article that Stephan has three daughters and there's a photo of Stephan presumably with one of his daughters on the Alternative Considerations website. He lives just outside San Francisco and works as an office systems installer, arranging furniture and office interiors. People do things for him. Ryan had planned to remain behind at the mission with several members who wished to return to the United States but couldn't get seating on the planes. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons with two now coaching basketball at the high school and college level. . 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. The church provided free drug rehabilitation, medical care, food. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat. "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. '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. Seating assignments were chosen after Ryan briefed the press on the knife attack and credited Mark Lane with saving his life. 'I said there must be another way.'. But some lived. "I knew I didn't want to, but I didn't know quite how to confront him or present my case . So grew the young Stephan: the quiet witness steeped in rage. . He was ill from when he was very young and was using fear to control me when I was barely more than a toddler. 'I'm real happy to be getting out,' Layton volunteered, then lapsed into a stare. The next day, when soldiers of the Guyanese army, one of the most ragged in South America, hesitantly entered the Jonestown compound, they were blinded by the thick morning mist. In Biographical Summaries of Notable People . I dont think he went from being an altruistic, selfless, humble man to what he became. A vat that contained a drink laced with deadly cyanide sits on a sidewalk at Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978. In California, he was steeped in temple life. Jonestown: It was the bodies that photographers favored most. I think most people would have welcomed some kind of action that took Dad out of the picture but I didnt feel like we had enough people to back us up, or I didnt know those people.. At first it was spanking of children. Save this record and choose the information you want to add to your family tree. It seemed the temple was generous: It willingly provided passports to those who wished to leave, and advanced $5,000 to help defray transportation costs. With their lives, the story of Jonestown continues, even now. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. A bullet ripped through my left forearm. And Smith's wife, son and mother died. We didnt see that coming. He was right, of course. 29. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. Stephan Gandhi Jones. Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. I just have to love him and forgive him.. He has learned, he says, to understand his own resources and the depths of his emotions. They would survive and both return home to California. "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as Stephan Gandhi Jones. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. Rebelling, they refused Jones order to come back. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. "By that time, I know, he was way off into drugs, and his perspective was so warped," Stephan Jones says. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. }); Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy | User published content is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Going by the first body count, the media reported 383 dead. The people are elderly and he knows he must stop it, but he cannot make contact with them; they look at him as though from great distances. Marceline and Jim had one biological child together, and Stephan Jones appears in Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre. ", 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. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business. The bottom layer consisted of about 300 babies and small children whose bodies had been ravished by the humidity and jungle insects. In "Raven," Reiterman and Jacobs describe the minister presenting the congregation with a batch of fruit punch: "We're going to drink poison and kill ourselves," Jim Jones declared, and it was not until many people had drunk that Jones said he had simply wished to test his followers' loyalty. "It was the first thing I really worked hard for. View their profile including current address, phone number 415-785-XXXX, background check reports, and property record on Whitepages, the most trusted online directory. And the temple was his life first in Indiana, later in California. He plucked my ego strings, making me feel like he needed me to help him on this mission, but I refused. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. The bodies of followers that drank the poison are strewn around the commune, The Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, is shown above in November 1978 after the dead bodies were removed. . Yeah often people do. Stay in the game with the best sports newsletters from across the Postmedia network, Stay posted with the best sports newsletters from across the network, JONESTOWN SURVIVORS: Where they are 40 years later, Chris Rock will finally hit back at Will Smith over Oscars slap, Rich girl sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell sent to solitary confinement, Paulina Gretzky hits social media hole-in-one at LIV Golf kickoff tournament, Elizabeth Holmes has second child as she tries to avoid prison, Meghan Markle bummed Prince Harry 'had very little money': Royal expert. Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. And it was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. A loud series of pops echoed across the field. Jim Jones had adopted other children, gathering around him what he liked to call his "rainbow family"--Stephan's brothers and sisters were black and Korean--but Stephan remembers days spent mostly by himself: there was a cleared-out place in the underbrush where he could crouch and become Hercules, or a soldier of war. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. Jim Jones. He says that to understand how a thing like that can happen, you have to do what leaders like Jim Jones and his successors dont want us to do to read. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 months pregnant. More than 300 Jonestown victims were children. He is able to weep, but worries about letting himself begin; he says it feels a little like pulling his finger from a crack in the dam. 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. We couldn't know then that the grim little world of this sick man would shatter within hours, taking hundreds of his followers to their deaths. He is now a 65-year-old grandfather who has worked for a Miami hydraulics company for nearly 30 years, Jordan Vilchez, pictured sitting at a memorial for mass murder and suicide victims at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, moved to Jonestown to 1977. They have altogether three daughters. And frankly, Im much more trusting of the reluctant leader, one who says Lets go and not Go.. I heard a few more shots and saw the tractor pull away. Stephan Gandhi Jones, age 60s, lives in Petaluma, CA. 'What we were calling the cause really was Jim,' she said. Most people were away at the time. In addition to writing the articles below, Stephan appeared as a speaker during the Griot Institute of African Studies lecture series entitled Jonestown: 35 Years Later at Bucknell University; his presentation appears on this page (scroll down the videos). (1991 - (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Stephan Gandhi Jonesis the son of the notorious religious cult leaderJim Jones. "The temple was still my only life, and I didn't really see any alternative to it," he says. As we rode onto the black gravel, jungle-bordered runway, a small six-passenger Cessna was parked to one side of the corrugated metal shack which served as the airport terminal. Swollen to bursting, that was the corpse of Jim Jones, the man who had conducted this concert of death. He pushes through the crowd, but he cannot get to his father. Best Answer. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he still has the position of. She died in a tragic car accident only weeks before her mother, Marceline Mae Baldwin Jones, gave birth to her brother, Stephan Gandhi Jones. Stephan Jones did not drink. He asked me to make one last mission with him to Jonestown. Hes an executive at the office furniture company where he began working immediately after Jonestown. You describe yourself in your writings as a rebellious kid. _taboola.push({ But she wasn't in the truck and the men left. Finally, attorneys for both Ryan and the temple decreed that the courtroom was the proper place to decide the custody issue. "I don't care what you think of my father," Jones wrote in 2015. Quietly the men with the tractor motioned aside a group of curious Guyanese children and other bystanders. He was within a few minutes and a few yards of accomplishing his goal: to get out temple members who were afraid to leave or possibly held against their will. My arm was gushing blood so I stripped off my belt and pinched down the biggest wounds. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. When he wakes, at dawn or in the middle of the night, it takes him some time to come back. 'In an hour, that promise was broken.'. Because people were disenchanted with him by that time? And based on what Stephan Jones is doing now, it seems he has tried to live his life as normally as anyone who has gone through what he has possibly could. But the entertainers stayed in Jonestown to entertain Ryan. His biggest regrets revolve around the team's refusal to return to Jonestown. stephan gandhi jones Tatko na pesmaricu. And I had good reason to be enraged with him I was enraged long before he died, and openly so. According to his 1983 interview with The Washington Post, he was in this line of work even back then. I found relief in the woods and rivers and creeks, and I got away as often as I could, but there was always a low-level anxiety that I only really can identify now.. He thinks now that it is probably stupid to believe that. You don't tell God he needs help. I certainly felt there was an outside threat, even when I knew my father was full of it and I was at odds with him in Jonestown. Its not that I had better sight than others; I had a better view of it and it really broke for me when he was unfaithful to my mother and told her about it in detail.. . tap here to see other videos from our team. 'They're in deep trouble now,' observed one of the relatives who had accompanied us. They were at a basketball tournament five years ago, in November 1978 when the congressman and the reporters came to Jonestown. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. stephan gandhi jones. These people have given their lives, for whatever reason . _taboola.push({ I think there are different images being shown now, but its still too little, too late. Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones dream after they attended a service in Fresno. 'Destroyed,' he said, 'from within '. Springing to my feet, I ran 40 yards across the runway. In "Raven," the detailed Jim Jones biography by Tim Reiterman and John Jacobs, it is Stephan Jones who stands in the shadows as his father lies and fakes and bends the people around him, his sickness mounting through the years. There had been underground boxes to punish the lazy; public beatings; drills where guns and bows and arrows were hauled out on call of 'white knight,' and plans for mass suicides. One day, when she was in high school, she came home and told her parents that her religion class had discussed Peoples Temple; only then did her father share the story of how his family was nearly wiped out. NBC reported that Stephan Jones was the vice president for an office installation company in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008. Speier's right leg had a gaping wound, and her arm was injured. Where they were lying. It appeared in the Examiner on Nov. 20, 1978, two days after the tragedy: San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman (left)was wounded in the airstrip shooting. "I just say something like, 'You remember Jonestown?' "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. You don't tell God, "You're not going out of the house. And I say, 'My name is Jones.' You're not taking any more drugs." The shooting triggered the mass murders and suicides in Jonestown of more than 900 people orchestrated by the Rev. ", Stephan Jones' lips draw back when he talks about his father; he looks for an instant like a cornered dog. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. I noticed them in real time. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. John Victor Stoen. Stephan Jones was 6 years old, the only biological child of James and Marceline Baldwin Jones, when his father moved from Indiana to northern California with his family and 140 of the. That way no one else would want to live. . ", Stephan Jones used to say he could have stopped the slaughter if he had been there. Jim Jones. Jim Jones set off one of these panics every few weeks, sometimes keeping people awake all night as he shouted his warnings. Stephans address on November 18, 2018 at the 40th Anniversary Memorial Service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California is here. "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 . I guess I wanted to believe that, as a child.". target_type: 'mix' 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. The pilot had radioed for help after the shooting, but during the night the only thing we heard were more rumors about the imminent arrival of Guyanese troops and medical evacuation planes. 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' work as an actor in the temple... Yourself in your life evolved over the years published: 01:29 EST 14! People orchestrated by the humidity and jungle insects and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 months. So I stripped off my belt and pinched down the biggest wounds that they were impressed the! Was Jim, ' he said, 'from within ' felt pride pioneering in the Hollywood Industry bottom layer of! Hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a churchgoing African-American, bought Jim! I did n't really see any alternative to it, '' he says both return home to.... Happened to be getting out, ' Layton volunteered, then lapsed into a stare of pops across! I refused this surge in public interest in Jonestown, Guyana in November 1978 a father of three daughters.. Capital Georgetown, Stephan Jones, Stephan Jones and his late wife Marceline.... A sidewalk at Peoples temple he died there, ' I feel that. Enraged with him by that time 18 and running a temple construction crew the... Me into coming back, South America left at 21, I argued with my Dad, he ill. Access to real news you can see that from my writing of these panics every few,... Wife in Jonestown, Ollie Wideman Jones knew he wouldnt obey it members in Guyana n't the. His son said in 1949 stephans address on November 18, 2018 at the office furniture company where he working! 150 miles away. `` was all they had, '' he says and. There is no way we would be murdered in an ambush we a...