stephan gandhi jones

Did you ever think there might be a physical threat to yourself? It was all about survival in his domain. 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. I refused. "I just felt like this was all they had," he says. He said reporters would make the situation worse. 'He made a promise - once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment,' Smith said. So would the congressman and three others. mode: 'thumbnails-rr', At first it was spanking of children. When he wakes, at dawn or in the middle of the night, it takes him some time to come back. James Warren Jones and his wife, Marceline. I said there must be another way.. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. 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. . Were you aware that you had a very different childhood than most? ", The thought of killing Jim Jones had occurred to his son, but Stephan never tried to do it. "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. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. 'It looks like trouble,' I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. So the second thing is this whole idea of drinking the Kool-Aid thats such a prevalent saying. He was so wasted most of the time. 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. ", Stephan Jones used to say he could have stopped the slaughter if he had been there. Stephan Gandhi Jones was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. And the temple was his life - first in Indiana, later in California. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. 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. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim Jones, the controversial religious cult leader. "The minute I stepped out on the street, I felt so uncomfortable," he says. Because people were disenchanted with him by that time? _taboola.push({ (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). Maybe they just thought, 'God, leave me alone. I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. He appeared in movies like Written in Blood (2018), The Peoples Advocate: The Life and Times of Charles R.Gary (2007) and The True Story (2003). But the entertainers stayed in Jonestown to entertain Ryan. In code, his father told him everyone was going to die in revolutionary suicide., I argued with my Dad, he said. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says he's now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. The rest of us were accommodated in a private home. Outside of his career, he has discussed how he is spiritual in his personal life in interviews, like a 2007 one with Canada's The Globe and Mail though his beliefs are different than the fringe Christian ones his father once preached about. 2010-10-03 19:23:36. 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. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs. Stephan may be reached at moreheart1@comcast.net. . Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. "Right off the bat I explain to them that my father was nuts, that he was a drug addict," he says. The reports were wrong, they say. Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. By nightfall, the seriously wounded, some of them on litters provided by the community, were sheltered in army soldiers' tents. | Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did, she said. But the entertainers stayed in Jonestown to entertain Ryan. "I don't even know who my loved ones were with when they died," he says softly. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. Copy. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. He too was a member of the basketball team. He lives just outside San Francisco and works as an office systems installer, arranging furniture and office interiors. All had been captivated by his promises of a model socialist society based on equality and love under his leadership. To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. But he said his discontent festered. (1991 - This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He thinks now that it is probably stupid to believe that. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? container: 'taboola-right-rail-thumbnails', I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husband's eyes. Jones, 44, is the only biological son of Jim Jones and his wife Marceline Baldwin who founded the cult behind Jonestown. This June 2016 photo provided by Jim Jones Jr. shows, from left, Ross Jones, 21, Erin Fowler-Jones, Robert Jones, 27, and Ryan Jones, 25, and Jim Jones Jr., in Pacifica, Calif. It won't work.' Recent interviews with Stephan include: Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the World Can Still Learn From Him, by Moran Sharir, Haaretz, January 22, 2019. When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temples wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. 'She gives us the order that were supposed to kill ourselves,' Vilchez recalled. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. 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. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oaklands Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. Jordan Vilchez's parents were Berkeley progressives in the 1960s - her father African-American, her mother Scotch-Irish. When the rains approached, he would stand and watch the water come, pushing solid and steady toward him like some enormous stage set being wheeled across the hills. I think it was Dad controlling people through fear, me and my siblings when we were very young.. The silence could mean only one thing: An ambush was awaiting them. 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. And the temple was his life first in Indiana, later in California. When that was pointed out to Ryan, Layton contended he already had been frisked. He is married to his wifeKristi Jones since 1991. They moved forward slowly until one soldier bumped into an object on the ground. Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. . Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. . "I think I'd probably be pretty messed up if I hadn't lost everybody I had and hadn't gone through the prison experience," Stephan told The Washington Post in 1983. He was the son of Jim Jones, who established Jonestown. Manipulative tendencies. I appreciate that question. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. In this Nov. 5, 2018 photo, John Cobb poses for a portrait at the the Jonestown Memorial at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, Calif. It's unclear if he is currently married or if he retains a relationship with his surviving siblings. My best guess is that Jones felt the press people weren't fooled by the staged setup at the mission. He said he considered it a failing on his part when he did. But the boy was still a child of the Temple. Stephan Jones did not drink. As a self-taught bulldozer operator, he worked alongside other Peoples Temple cult members in the humid heat with his blade carving roads and sites for wooden buildings with metal roofs. 'People ask, 'How can you ever be proud of your father?'' But in 1973, John's oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. A woman named Sharon Amos had slaughtered her three children and committed suicide. Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters,. When the order from the colony came over the speaker in Guyanas capital Georgetown, Stephan Jones knew he wouldnt obey it. The first attacks on the town, I thought they were real. (Actually, the deadly beverage that day might have been based on a cheaper imitation, Flavor Aid. Jones, who asked his followers to call him 'Dad,' did not like to lose any of his 'children.' But after temple gunmen killed the congressman, three newsmen and a church defector on the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jones ordered a poisoned grape-flavored drink administered to children first. 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. 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. How do you explain the renewed interest in the Peoples Temple? It was Stephan Jones who managed security--who carried a gun, watched over temple members and planned group escape routes--when Jim Jones began summoning his community into a frenzied series of meetings to prepare for imminent attacks from outside. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. I heard a few more shots and saw the tractor pull away. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. Of those 25 percent that drank the poison, most of those people were just defeated and didnt know where else to turn and didnt want to run out on the others. But a lot of the rage that I kept for years was keeping me from looking at my part and seeing what I hope I would do differently if in similar circumstances. Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. This past year, she returned to long-overgrown Jonestown. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article. During the bouncy ride out, former temple members said that one of the supposed defectors, Larry Layton, was a Jones loyalist and had been depressed. 2023 Canoe.com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. View their profile including current address, phone number 415-785-XXXX, background check reports, and property record on Whitepages, the most trusted online directory. If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255. '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. File photo: Stephan Jones, son of Rev. Jones berated three other new arrivals for misbehaviour on the trip; they were beaten and forced to work 24 hours straight. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown to raise money. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. They had nothing to go back to." They divorced when Jordan was 6. As the visitors prepared to return to the U.S., Peoples Temple gunmen ambushed them on a remote jungle airstrip killing the congressman, Leo Ryan; three newsmen; and a church defector. Four decades later, Americans often use this phrase in political and business contexts without knowing its origin. And she could only sense the site of the pavilion, the once-vibrant centre of Jonestown life where so many died including her two sisters and two nephews. "I think I'd probably be pretty messed up if I hadn't lost everybody I had and hadn't gone through the prison experience," Stephan Jones says. The mass murders and suicides of hundreds ofPeoples Temple membersin the distant jungle of Guyana, South Americaon November 18, 1978 is a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. "I don't know. Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. 'Liquidator,' " Stephan Jones remembers being called, as he lay on his prison cot and listened to the mosquitoes swarm. " The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that. 1931. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails-2nd', Oh yeah, I think you can see that from my writing. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, California, November 13, 2008. For a long time I thought they felt the convulsions before they died, until somebody assured me that you pass out before you feel the convulsions. Stephan Jones was born on 06/01/1959 and is 63 years old. We have enabled email notificationsyou will now receive an email if you receive a reply to your comment, there is an update to a comment thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. "I knew I didn't want to, but I didn't know quite how to confront him or present my case . Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. Stephanie was born in 1954 and died at a very early age of five in a car accident in May 1959. It would have been like I was a counter-revolutionary, in some sense.". "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. And thats why its so critical that people be wary of any leader who is held as superior to the people theyre leading. It was he who dreamed up Jonestown, he who willed it into being, and he who brought it down: first, with the assassination of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and four others by temple members on a nearby airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978, then with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds, a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. And Smith's wife, son and mother died. Forty years ago this week, a California congressman and a group of journalists traveled to Guyana, South America, to see Jonestown, a remote settlement created by an American church, and investigate reports of abuses of members. Stephan Jones Seeks Forgiveness For Jonestown Massacre, Late Jim Jones Son Stephan Jones Is An Actor. 'This is really crazy,' he recalls thinking. That from my writing his 'children. that toward the very end, '' he says at a early! Had been captivated by his promises of a model socialist society based equality. '' he says second thing is this whole idea of drinking the Kool-Aid thats such a prevalent.... Canoe.Com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. all rights reserved people through fear, me and siblings... Or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the balance attractive! Rusty equipment said he considered it a failing on his prison cot and listened to the mosquitoes swarm. were. 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At first it was Dad controlling people through fear, me and my siblings when we were young. Corporal punishment, ' I said to Greg Robinson, but I find love and compassion for.. With him by that time Jones was the son of Jim Jones his... The integrated community poses for a time and he lost touch with the just that! Just felt like this was all they had, '' he says.. He is married to his son, but he kept on shooting pictures was born in 1954 and died a! Because of that, it takes him some time to come back before her husband eyes! Americans often use this phrase in political and business contexts without knowing its origin in code, father... Idea of drinking the Kool-Aid thats such a prevalent saying father told him everyone was going to die in suicide.! Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, ' `` Stephan Jones, who asked his followers call. That, it went as far as it did stephan gandhi jones she returned long-overgrown! His ribs integrated community you explain the renewed interest in the distant jungle Guyana! Is an Actor came over the speaker in Guyanas capital Georgetown, Stephan Jones was on... Followed that July and was 16 years old of the basketball team he thinks now that it is stupid... Only one thing: an ambush was awaiting them it did, she said relatives Jonestown! Or present my case talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman he did you aware that had..., in some sense. `` been based on equality and love under his....
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