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He said: "So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye . Another to experience the trauma of Jonestown was Stephan Gandhi Jones, the biological son of Jim and his mistress Marceline. . Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business, Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones' dream when he opened a new church in Fresno. "There's just nothing like it," he says. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails-3rd', He asked me to make one last mission with him to Jonestown. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. And there was more social rhetoric and action in my life and a lot more fear. "This was when he started bragging about taking 16 people on in one day, and all that crap. Ollie worked in the nursery, and Eugene felled trees. The slaughter at Jonestown was the worst civilian tragedy in U.S. history before September 11, 2001. I would argue that the means justify the end, but not the other way around.. Trailers, a few clearings and some wood or pole-and-canvas buildings were all that marked the Jonestown settlement when Stephan Jones arrived. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. A large poncho covered his belt area so no one knew for sure and no one challenged him. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. They have altogether three daughters. Thank goodness he lived before me.". Toward Nov. 18 they crowd up faster and closer, but even in the spring and summer, when the anniversary is tucked safely off on the other side of the year, even then he cannot keep the dreams away. When he was 10 years old he listened as Jim Jones had sex with a mistress in the next room. By subscribing to this BDG newsletter, you agree to our. He cries out, "My God, you're not dead!" I guess maybe somebody who hadnt been in the temple their entire lives and was just stepping into it couldve seen it coming. Now, Stephan Jones is the father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. Other people were injured. 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. Well, once we got to California and we were going to public school, there it was very evident to me that my life was very different from the lives of most of the other kids. You're not taking any more drugs." 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.". File photo: A vat that contained a drink laced with deadly cyanide sits on a sidewalk at Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana, November 20, 1978. "I was building me a place, too," he says. He was so wasted most of the time. You don't tell God he needs help. He was right, of course. More than 900 people lived in the agricultural mission, with its dining pavilion, tidy cottages, school, medical facilities and rows of crops. . In this photo taken Monday, Oct. 22, 2018, former Peoples Temple member Eugene Smith poses for a photo in a park in San Francisco. Little Jimmy became part of their Rainbow Family of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. His unplanned departure left them alone. But we never felt he would go through with it because we saw him as such a coward.. placement: 'Right Rail Thumbnails', 'I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. They are amused; they embrace him. There was a gaping wound in his shoulder and possibly his ribs. These people have given their lives, for whatever reason . After more than 22 years at Californias transportation department, Smith retired in 2015. He was in Georgetown, Guyana on November 18, 1978 with the Jonestown Basketball Team. ", 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. 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. When that was pointed out to Ryan, Layton contended he already had been frisked. Where they were lying. 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. We didnt see that coming. He was a genius, and he was unique. They divorced when Jordan was 6. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. target_type: 'mix' I believe 100% that not everyone would have been dead, he said. "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. 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They have a total of three daughters. Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. According to his 1983 interview with The Washington Post, he was in this line of work even back then. And the temple was his life - first in Indiana, later in California. They have three children. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones dream after they attended a service in Fresno. that one last act would be admitting he was a coward, and about nothing. During the long night, the temple defectors told us that all the horror stories about Jim Jones and the church were true. An emotional tug-of-war ensued between a mother who wanted to stay and the father who wanted to go. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part she played in the Peoples Temple, an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. He converted to Catholicism and registered Republican. . Partner of Terry Carter Jones, aka Mary Theresa Carter, Mary Theresa Jones, Terry Carter Jones (died November 18 . He does not know. 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'. He will read it when he is ready, he says. While working as a hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, and they married in 1949. 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. This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. A lot more conversation about the outside threat that was anyone that wasnt in the temple. "I would have been a traitor to the greatest cause there ever was . The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. He was just 14, Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. Also dead was Bob Brown, the NBC cameraman and the kind of guy who loved action stories. Though I couldn't see over the tall brush, I could hear the shots become less frequent. 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. He's never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. stephan gandhi jonesNitro Acoustic. 'He started firing at the front and missed the pilot,' said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. February 27, 2023 endeavor air pilot contract No Comments . I think there are people who are interested in it because of whats going on in the world. 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. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, the two temple members who asked for help in the note, also were seriously injured. He loves basketball; he is agile and strong and was tall even before he reached high school. Stephan Gandhi Jones is 6-foot-5, lean, broad at the shoulder, olive-eyed, black-haired, handsome as a billboard model. He is an actor, known for Written in Blood (2018), The People's. Stephan is among one of the Late Jim Jones sons survivors and he is still disturbed by those past events. With their lives, the story of Jonestown continues, even now. He too was a member of the basketball team. They have altogether three daughters. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. This November 1978 file photo shows the Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, after bodies were removed, in Jonestown, Guyana. 'When I left at 21, I left a part of myself there,' she said. I got the gun. 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. 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. Her only natural child, Stephan Gandhi Jones and adopted son, Jimmy Jones, Jr. aka James Warren Jones, Jr. were both in Georgetown, Guyana for a basketball game representing Jonestown on November 18, 1978. }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; We were trying to build a new world, a progressive socialist organization.. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the first shot was fired. Hes an executive at the office furniture company where he began working immediately after Jonestown. I just have to love him and forgive him.. 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. I wouldn't have run.". Stephan Jones Seeks Forgiveness For Jonestown Massacre, Late Jim Jones Son Stephan Jones Is An Actor. The note said: 'Please help us get out of Jonestown.' Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. This return to the cult of Jim Jones is part of a re-examination of dangerous cults and movements in Americas past, like the Osho cult, which had a similar murderous potential. Publicity Listings I see it in politics, I see it in advertising, I see it in a variety of places, and I feel theres no more pernicious or toxic belief than that. I make a point of avoiding pointing fingers and giving specific names. He was ill from when he was very young and was using fear to control me when I was barely more than a toddler. We're talking 30 people, but that's a lot of people to be looking over your shoulder.". For moreEntertainment,Celebrity BabiesfolloweCelebrityMirror. By nightfall, the seriously wounded, some of them on litters provided by the community, were sheltered in army soldiers' tents. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails-2nd', How Twins Megan Rapinoe and Rachael Rapinoe are Breaking Barriers for the LGBTQ+ Community? Jones berated three other new arrivals for misbehavior on the trip; they were beaten and forced to work 24 hours straight. Stephan fought him, swore at him, obeyed him, contemplated killing him, argued with his mother about how to bring Jim Jones under control. Stephans address on November 18, 2018 at the 40th Anniversary Memorial Service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California is here. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. Then-San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman was wounded in the airstrip shooting and flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he wrote the following eyewitness account. Best Answer. Did you ever consider the ultimate rebellious act: to defect from the temple? White devil.' All of us were falling and slipping through the mud around a six-wheel-drive dump truck that would take us (the congressional delegation, the press, the defectors and a group of concerned relatives of temple members) to the Port Kaituma airstrip. Other Works "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. 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. They have three children. | 29. "I don't even know who my loved ones were with when they died," he says softly. Reviews. 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. 2023 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is a, Reflections and Articles by Stephan Jones, Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the World Can Still Learn From Him,. But even Stephan Jones never imagined that death would come the way it did, so redolent of madness and evil, so savage that a kind of panic still crawls into his voice when he talks about it. Because Dad was such a mess . Then, after a 1977 New West magazine expose of temple disciplinary beatings and other abuses, she was sent to Jonestown. 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. She gives us the order that we were supposed to kill ourselves, Vilchez recalled. Jon was born on January 31, 1975, in Oakland, California. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as Stephan Gandhi Jones. "He was a gentle man in a lot of ways," Jones says, stretched now over the sofa in his small apartment. His father, finally, is beginning to let go. He converted to Catholicism and registered Republican. 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. PORT KAITUMA, Guyana - 'I feel sorry that we are being destroyed from within,' the Rev. 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. As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. "But there's a sadness . I focused my rage on Dad and his circle, rather than deal with me, he said. I dont think he went from being an altruistic, selfless, humble man to what he became. There were many photographs of the bodies, taken from various angles, in color and black and white, and in each photograph, as though defying the viewer even to believe the report of the camera, row upon row of clothed human backs lay swelling in the jungle damp. Life became more tolerable after the couple's baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. I believed there was too much racism, and there was a need for change. And I say, 'My name is Jones.' 'This is really crazy,' he recalls thinking. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. File photo: Bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Stephan Gandhi Jonesis the son of the notorious religious cult leaderJim Jones. "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. Its nose wheel had been broken the week before and four soldiers were guarding it with M-I6 rifles. When Jim Sr., a local Democratic Party darling, met with future first lady Rosalyn Carter, Jim Jr. proudly went along. I know Ive reached a better place and I dont fear lapsing back into the darkest times, but its a daily process and one that Im grateful to have.. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. Oh yeah, I think you can see that from my writing. The 59-year-old, Jim Jones son Stephan Jones has gone through a lot after the mass massacre in Jonestown led by his father, Late Jim Jones on Nov. 18, 1978. And all of the children died first. Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. While Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre focuses on the women who were involved with Jim Jones, Stephan continues to have empathy and love for his mother, who apparently struggled with her husband's affairs. 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 parishioners who had come to believe there was something extraordinary about the Rev. Published: 01:29 EST, 14 November 2018 | Updated: 12:15 EST, 14 November 2018. What they said. Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks. All the people who lay there around him had followed him. A while later, the young temple escort on the tailgate shook his head and said: 'I don't understand why they did it this way. , for whatever reason been a traitor to the greatest cause there ever was address November... 16 people on in one day, including his mother, youngest brother and soldiers!, Mary Theresa Jones, aka Mary Theresa Jones, aka Mary Theresa Jones Terry. Me a place, too, '' he says were true going in... 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