I get it, Im not upset about that. Stephan fought him, swore at him, obeyed him, contemplated killing him, argued with his mother about how to bring Jim Jones under control. 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). This dismissive thinking was convenient because its hard to comprehend how so many people marched together to a certain and unnecessary death. 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. The only surviving child of Jim Jones,Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. Yesterday morning 100 Guyanee troops came by train from Matthews Ridge, walking the last several miles as a precaution against sabotage or attack. Sorry we are not currently accepting comments on this article. 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. 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 November 18, 1978, then with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds, a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. 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But before we could start out, we heard angry shouts. Stephan Jones was born on 06/01/1959 and is 63 years old. He loved it. Afterwards, the 19-year-old Stephan was put in jail for three months in the South American nation before the case against him was thrown out. During the long night, the temple defectors told us that all the horror stories about Jim Jones and the church were true. 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. But some lived. He will read it when he is ready, he says. The therapy that has been helpful to me hasnt been by talking with strangers about it. 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. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. Going by the first body count, the media reported 383 dead. "It's like you went to a vacation in Europe and found out the United States had sunk," he says. So yes, many people were disenchanted., Im sure he feared it and Im sure he had people telling him it existed. A lot more conversation about the outside threat that was anyone that wasnt in the temple. no one could ever relate to it unless they were in the same situation, or they were in the atmosphere my father created . To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. 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. But she wasn't in the truck and the men left. Then there were just a few. The minister gave the ritual a special name: White Night. It marched for four jailed Fresno newsmen. stephan gandhi jonesNitro Acoustic. Stephan may be reached at moreheart1@comcast.net. When he brushed away the mist below him he saw that it was a lifeless human limb. Yeah often people do. I believed there was too much racism, and there was a need for change. placement: 'Below Article Thumbnails 2nd', Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. 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. To access these PDF files you must have the free Adobe Reader installed. He was a genius, and he was unique. Though it was a stalemate, the incident intensified an already strained situation. His son was not among the boosters. He's never remarried, and Martin Luther Smith was his only child. And now some wanted to depart. Stephan Jones was born on 1 June 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Stephan Jones was a nearly full-grown teen-ager when his father sent him to the Peoples Temple agricultural mission in the small South American coastal country of Guyana. 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. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " He has nine siblings, most of whom are now dead. "I always explain to them that it's not what people think--it wasn't a bunch of starry-eyed people in line waiting to take the potion . But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. 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. "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. Ollie worked in the nursery, and Eugene felled trees. 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. Some of those leaving the temple eyed the vehicles with suspicion. They are 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. Have your feelings toward your father and his role in your life evolved over the years? "I was building me a place, too," he says. When the truck was allowed to pass, we all breathed easier. 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,. Jones, who asked his followers to call him 'Dad,' did not like to lose any of his 'children.' mode: 'thumbnails-rr', "The minute I stepped out on the street, I felt so uncomfortable," he says. People were forced. Ryan clearly was in good spirits. He was right, of course. 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.. But the entertainers stayed in Jonestown to entertain Ryan. There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. "He used to say that I would acquire his gift in my late years. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. 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. They also killed their dogs. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown. And as the years go on, Stephan is still willing to talk about his connection to one of the biggest tragedies in American history even as he tries to live a peaceful life far removed from Jonestown. Even though he attended public schools, Stephan Jones had never really learned to live in the outside world. He saw that the jungle would make him a man. And he faked getting shot in Redwood Valley [California] when I was still pretty young, and we felt like we were in danger much of the time. 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. Then they could identify and allow themselves to step into the story and understand how such a thing could happen. Save this record and choose the information you want to add to your family tree. Harris, a Los Angeles-based NBC investigative reporter who covered the fall of Saigon and the Nicaragua rebellion, had been killed. The phrase drinking the Kool-Aid, meaning to follow someone blindly, was born that day in Guyana. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. The truck spun its wheels until a Caterpillar tractor tugged it into place for a downhill run. When John Cobb was born in 1960 in a black section of Indianapolis, his mother and older siblings already were temple members. It was all about survival in his domain. The years are slowly weaning Stephan Jones from Jonestown; he reads, goes to movies, wants now to have a child of his own. }); window._taboola = window._taboola || []; By nightfall, the seriously wounded, some of them on litters provided by the community, were sheltered in army soldiers' tents. His wife has learned at those moments to let him be. And thats why its so critical that people be wary of any leader who is held as superior to the people theyre leading. . (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. An In-Depth Look at Naomi Girmas Salary in Professional Soccer. ", He does not think he loved his father even a little by then, but blood tied them in some way he did not entirely understand, and leaving was unimaginable. "He was always preaching the hostility toward us and warning people what would happen or what could happen from the outside," Stephan Jones says. Other people were injured. Vilchez worked as office manager at a private crime lab for 20 years and now, at 61, sells her artwork. 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. He was taking pain pills, and he said he was dying. Stephan Jones did not drink. ", Throughout the 40 years since the deaths at Jonestown, Stephan has been willing to give media interviews. My mother got me an apartment, I got a job and my father came and tried to talk me into coming back. 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.. "It's not--such a bad experience," he says. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. 'I'm real happy to be getting out,' Layton volunteered, then lapsed into a stare. 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. So yes there were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. And it was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. "This is really crazy," he recalls thinking. The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 1/2 months pregnant. To just be somewhere with a machete, in khakis, and just decide I wanted to go somewhere and cut myself a trail." Altogether, 909 people died at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, by swallowing a grape-flavored beverage mixed with potassium cyanide, or from injections of poison. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim Jones, the controversial religious cult leader. 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. 'People ask, 'How can you ever be proud of your father?'' In a telephone interview he sounds serene, though it cant be easy for him to talk about the tragedy that took his parents, a number of his siblings and many of his friends. Joining him was an older black man who fingered something in his right pocket. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. To me, the ends justified the means, he said. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time. And Stephan Jones sometimes thinks that he might have taken the poison, too. Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. I refused. Stephan escaped death with the Jonestown basketball team, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. Now 58, he owns a modular office furniture business in the East Bay and is married with a daughter. As outlined in the above video, he was featured in the History Channel's 2007 documentary Jonestown: Paradise Lost and has written for the website Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple, which is run by San Diego State University. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oakland's Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. Every loud sound put us on edge, with some wondering aloud: 'Will they come back to finish us off?'. First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. In Indianapolis, he served as a student pastor in the Methodist Church in 1952 but. Jones berated three other new arrivals for misbehavior on the trip; they were beaten and forced to work 24 hours straight. That way no one else would want to live. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. The media has done a poor job; theyve demonized him. She and Jim were the first caucasian couple in Indiana to adopt an African American . ), 'It was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife, Erin, raised three sons. _taboola.push({ 'Watch him,' those around him were told. 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. "I don't even know who my loved ones were with when they died," he says softly. "I remember being afraid when he started talking about it, and getting butterflies," he says. Garry (2007) and The Real Story (2002). Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. Stephan Jones says he can still remember his own terror the first time his father set off a Jonestown White Night. The 21-year-old Indiana native felt pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana, South America. Yes. The rest of us were accommodated in a private home. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. Best Answer. When more than 900 people were killed at Jonestown by consuming punch laced with cyanide on Nov. 18, 1978, Stephan was not at the settlement founded by his father. 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. Was too much racism, and getting butterflies, '' he says, mourning and shame the I! Jonestown ; Eugene remained behind to comprehend how so many people marched together to a vacation Europe. I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing too much,... 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