Another to experience the trauma of Jonestown was Stephan Gandhi Jones, the biological son of Jim and his mistress Marceline. He cries out, "My God, you're not dead!" 'I was going back to retrieve that young person and also to say goodbye.'. Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters,. Mud made the truck bed slick, so everyone clung to the sideboards. Garry (2007) and The Real Story (2002). One of the female subjects of the documentary is Marceline Jones, who was Jim's wife. Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group, American Idol star Kellie Pickler's husband, 49, 'commits suicide by shooting himself dead' in bedroom of their $2.4 million Nashville home: Pickler called 911 after she was unable to open door of room where he was found, Enough to give you an art attack! I noticed them in real time. Or lost touch with reality? They don't normally believe it at first. "I don't know. But we never felt he would go through with it because we saw him as such a coward.. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat. Stephan Jones, Jim Jones's sole surviving child, was born in Indiana, United States, on June 1, 1959. Stephan Gandhi Jones was 19. Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. 1998-11-08 04:00:00 PDT JONESTOWN, GUYANA-- "My father was a fraud."- Stephan Gandhi Jones, son of Jim Jones A lone palm tree stands where Jim Jones exhorted his followers to die for him, but the . The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. 'Little Jimmy' became part of their 'Rainbow Family' of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). By the fall of that year, almost 1,000 Temple members emigrated to Jonestown, but for Stephan Jones, the pleasure crumbled when his father arrived. To me, the ends justified the means, he said. People ask, How can you ever be proud of your father? he said. When the truck was allowed to pass, we all breathed easier. If anything, we felt pity for him, he said, and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.. "They just needed this messiah, this purpose. I believe 100% that not everyone would have been dead, he said. And all of the children died first. Thats what triggered it.. Springing to my feet, I ran 40 yards across the runway. 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. Jim Jones had said as a tropical storm rained on the Peoples Temple pavilion. File photo: Bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, November 1978. "I usually try to tell people when we're in a good time to talk about it, because my God, it takes two hours just to scratch the surface," Stephan Jones says. he said. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. Haaretz Daily Newspaper Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Those who broke rules were disciplined. placement: 'Below Article Thumbnails 2nd', And to have any fray in that fabric would cause an unraveling that he couldnt handle.. Every loud sound put us on edge, with some wondering aloud: 'Will they come back to finish us off?'. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part she played in an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. 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. Anthony Katsaris, brother of Jim Jones aide Maria Katsaris, was wounded in the chest. 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. 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. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. People were forced. On Nov. 18 she was at the temple house when a fanatical Jones aide received a dire radio message from Jonestown. Theater of popular music. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " 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 said reporters would make the situation worse. 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 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. 'He started firing at the front and missed the pilot,' said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. Then he waits a while, until they have come to know him--the very tall young man with the kind voice and the black mustache. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. Recent interviews with Stephan include: "Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the . 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. According to his 1983 interview with The Washington Post, he was in this line of work even back then. It makes him a little crazy sometimes. So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong, he said, including his fathers sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. 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. For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part he played in an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. , MoKal . So yes there were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. "I wasn't there," he says. Jordan Vilchezs parents were Berkeley progressives in the 1960s her father African-American, her mother Scotch-Irish. Play it now! 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. 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! Did You Know Soccer Player Crystal Dunns Husband Pierre Soubrier Is A Football Specialist? I refused. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 months pregnant. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. 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 is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. Photographer Greg Robinson (right)was one of the five people killed. 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. The younger man demanded that everyone in the truck move aside. . 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. 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. We were turned back by Johnny Jones, Jim Jones' stern-faced adopted black son. What would you say the biggest lesson is from Jonestown? Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. He was summoned to the temple radio room. That way no one else would want to live. Stephan Jones Seeks Forgiveness For Jonestown Massacre, Late Jim Jones Son Stephan Jones Is An Actor. They have altogether three daughters. "I just felt like this was all they had," he says. View their profile including current address, phone number 415-785-XXXX, background check reports, and property record on Whitepages, the most trusted online directory. An emotional tug-of-war ensued between a mother who wanted to stay and the father who wanted to go. We apologize, but this video has failed to load. I could still hear the groaning and crying of the targets. I appreciate that question. Three Half-Siblings Glen has three half-siblings named Jim Jon Prokes, Jim W. Jones Jr., and Suzanne O. Jones. Jim Jones set off one of these panics every few weeks, sometimes keeping people awake all night as he shouted his warnings. 'Let's go!' "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. ", Stephan Jones used to say he could have stopped the slaughter if he had been there. 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. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. 'Like everyone else, he died there,' his son said. People do things for him. Maybe they just thought, 'God, leave me alone. This dismissive thinking was convenient because its hard to comprehend how so many people marched together to a certain and unnecessary death. 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. She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife, Erin, raised three sons. 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. As the larger plane landed, the temple truck, with several persons in the back, started to advance. Hes never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. I wouldn't have run.". Stephan Gandhi Joneswas the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. 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. As rapidly as possible Jacqueline Speier was signing on passengers at the fool of the boarding ladder while a reporter helped her check for weapons. Some of those leaving the temple eyed the vehicles with suspicion. During the long night, the temple defectors told us that all the horror stories about Jim Jones and the church were true. But the boy was still a child of the Temple. Jonestown: It was the bodies that photographers favored most. 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. 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. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. After all, we had seen things we weren't supposed to see. "I would have had to, especially if I saw other people doing it, and I right off the bat wasn't on top of things, and somehow wasn't right there starting some kind of--it's so hard--", Stephan Jones covers his face for a moment, fingers kneading his forehead. "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. What Does Lindsey Horans Boyfriend Tyler Heaps Do For a Living? He was so wasted most of the time. They must be prepared to die in the defense of socialism. I think that Ill pick two. "He was always preaching the hostility toward us and warning people what would happen or what could happen from the outside," Stephan Jones says. There are moments when he glimpses the edges of power and understands precisely how it might be used. 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. Hundreds of corpses were lying on the ground in front of them. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. Layton later was taken into custody by Guyanese authorities who seized a .38-caliber pistol and turned it over to U.S. Embassy officials. "I see a potential for me to get out of hand," Stephan Jones says, resting his chin on his hand and looking steadily at his visitor. Other Works 'Naaah.' He did.'. "By that time, I know, he was way off into drugs, and his perspective was so warped," Stephan Jones says. 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. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. It was he who willed it into being and he who also brought it down with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds. And he just went unchecked. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. 2023 Canoe.com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. They also killed their dogs. 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. But she wasn't in the truck and the men left. 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. His biggest regrets revolve around the team's refusal to return to Jonestown. In a recent interview, he revealed that he was sober. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. My mother got me an apartment, I got a job and my father came and tried to talk me into coming back. I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. Five others were wounded seriously. 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. Life became more tolerable after the couples baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. Stephan helped erect a basketball court and form a team. In code, his father told him everyone was going to die in revolutionary suicide., I argued with my Dad, he said. Layton, who was insisting on taking the first plane, slipped to the other side of the plane before he could be frisked. We'd also just seen the warm, cheerful embraces between some of those leaving and some who were staying. This November 1978 file photo shows the Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, after bodies were removed, in Jonestown, Guyana. 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). (Actually, the deadly beverage that day might have been based on a cheaper imitation, Flavor Aid. But in 1973, John's oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. " Pause for effect. " When the prodigals visited, the Cobbs kept it secret from Jones. And Smith's wife, son and mother died. And I think he genuinely cared about those things, but my understanding of my father just from my own experience and stories is that unconsciously he was always primarily managing other peoples perception of him. 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