Instead of finishing high school, Vilchez moved to San Francisco, where she lived in the church. (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. The media has done a poor job; theyve demonized him. "They say, 'Yeah.' He did what was expected of him. When the prodigals visited, the Cobbs kept it secret from Jones. He's 61 now. Another to experience the trauma of Jonestown was Stephan Gandhi Jones, the biological son of Jim and his mistress Marceline. I noticed them in real time. 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. I made that last trip with him and he made me stay in Jonestown. "I say, 'Mom,' " Stephan Jones says, recalling a desperate mother-son huddle toward the end, " 'We're talking about a man who think's he's God. 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. On Nov. 18, the day Rep. Leo Ryan and four others were shot to death on the airstrip at Port Caituma, Guyana, Stephan Jones and his teammates went to the movies in Georgetown. She and Jim were the first caucasian couple in Indiana to adopt an African American . 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. February 27, 2023 endeavor air pilot contract No Comments . The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. Layton later was taken into custody by Guyanese authorities who seized a .38-caliber pistol and turned it over to U.S. Embassy officials. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " "I wasn't there," he says. "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. 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. 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. When John Cobb was born in 1960 in a black section of Indianapolis, his mother and older siblings already were temple members. STEPHAN Gandhi Jones is - in the eyes of the world - the son of a mass murderer. This dismissive thinking was convenient because its hard to comprehend how so many people marched together to a certain and unnecessary death. The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that. 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. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. 'Let's go!' At the far end of the strip sat a yellow government plane. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as Stephan Gandhi Jones. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened revolutionary suicide.. For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. Rebelling, they refused Jones order to come back. He was just 14, Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. I believed there was too much racism, and there was a need for change. Jim Jones had said as a tropical storm rained on the Peoples Temple pavilion. 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. 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. Greg's body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. "I would have been a traitor to the greatest cause there ever was . Instead, The Washington Post reported that Stephan escaped death with the Jonestown basketball team. Comments may take up to an hour for moderation before appearing on the site. A few of us jumped from the truck and ran over there. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. White devil.' I had been hammered for years with the message that there was an outside threat, and from an early age my father talked about people wanting to bomb us. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. Stephan seeks forgiveness for themselves and for his father. Stephan Gandhi Jones, age 60s, lives in Petaluma, CA. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. His father spoke so ardently about his own self-sacrifice; Stephan Jones saw the specially prepared steaks and the color television, and in the temple apartment where they lived, he grew accustomed to glimpses of his father having sex with temple members--sometimes women, sometimes men. He saw that the jungle would make him a man. After more than 22 years at California's transportation department, Smith retired in 2015. Despite his unconventional upbringing and the horrific tragedy brought about by his father's religious group, the Peoples Temple, Stephan speaks candidly about his experience in the documentary. 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. 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. So yes, many people were disenchanted., Im sure he feared it and Im sure he had people telling him it existed. He was right, of course. In California, he was steeped in temple life. mode: 'thumbnails-a', Rebelling, they refused Jones' order to come back. 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. Which probably wasnt true. '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. target_type: 'mix' By the time Stephan Jones was 16, his father had moved the family to the big temple building in a black neighborhood of San Francisco, where politicians and black leaders had begun paying considerable attention to Jim Jones' racially mixed congregation and fervently preached exhortations to adjust society under a socialist god. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. target_type: 'mix' After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. that one last act would be admitting he was a coward, and about nothing. He climbed aboard the truck and we took off. Johnny Brown: Taking Care of His Own(2013), This site houses a variety of PDF documents. . Did You Know Soccer Player Crystal Dunns Husband Pierre Soubrier Is A Football Specialist? Where they were lying. 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. Grueling field work was not to her liking. Each day's news bulletins compounded the already unimaginable: There were 400 bodies; there were 900 bodies; there were, in the precise wording of the American military men sent to investigate, "smaller bodies under larger bodies and children under those." Do you think people can ever see your father not just as a villain but as a complex figure? He seems to have a tragic life after what had happened with his family. 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. After the incident, Stephan was put into jail for three months and that led him to drug addiction. Stephan Gandhi Joneswas the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. 'Destroyed,' he said, 'from within '. "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 . What we were calling the cause really was Jim, she said. So it was not this grand march to death, far from it. It's unclear if he is currently married or if he retains a relationship with his surviving siblings. . She died in a tragic car accident only weeks before her mother, Marceline Mae Baldwin Jones, gave birth to her brother, Stephan Gandhi Jones. . This November 1978 file photo shows the bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. Then two Guyanese medical evacuation planes flew us to the capital city of Georgetown, where a U.S. Air Force C-141 took us to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., stopping off on their way at the Roosevelt Roads Naval Base in Puerto Rico. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. John Victor Stoen. Mud made the truck bed slick, so everyone clung to the sideboards. People were forced. 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 that day, The bodies of five people, including Rep. Leo J. Ryan, D-Calif., are shown above on the airstrip at Port Kaittuma, Guyana, after an ambush by members of the Peoples Temple cult on November 18, 1978, John Cobb looks at names of family members on the Jonestown Memorial in Oakland, California. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. "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. In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. Recent interviews with Stephan include: "Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the . Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife. While working as a hospital orderly, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, and they married in 1949. So yes there were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. It won't work.' For years it was largely forgotten along with a number of other insanities in the United States in the 1970s. 'We think he's got a gun. 'Baby killer. In the days before Ryans fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temples wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. 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. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons. He keeps his voice very soft, as though practice has taught him to hold certain subjects to a whisper in public, but his gaze is direct. Other people were injured. Play it now! The therapy that has been helpful to me hasnt been by talking with strangers about it. . 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. Garry (2007) and The Real Story (2002). . It would become a little town where people of all ages and colors raised food and children. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. Is this surge in public interest in Jonestown an exhausting experience for you? It was he who willed it into being and he who also brought it down with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds. Contact & Personal Details. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. 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. None of it makes sense. I crawled until I came to taller bushes and brambles, clawing my way into a pocket in the brush. Vilchez returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years. An emotional tug-of-war ensued between a mother who wanted to stay and the father who wanted to go. 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.. 'We were trying to build a new world, a progressive socialist organization.'. Jim Jones radioed his son with orders to return to Jonestown, Stephan Jones refused to cut short the trip. "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. That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time. Among those speaking out ahead of the 40-year anniversary of the mass deaths isMike Touchette, who was a 21-year-old Indiana native at the time. He is an actor, known for Written in Blood (2018), The People's. You don't tell God he needs help. There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. "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. Jones, 44, is the only biological son of Jim Jones and his wife Marceline Baldwin who founded the cult behind Jonestown. ", 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 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. We demanded to see the locked buildings where some members lived in crowd, uncomfortable conditions. After the temple exodus to Guyana, he was given a public relations post in Georgetown - and was part of the basketball team. When he brushed away the mist below him he saw that it was a lifeless human limb. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. At the temple-exit guard post, the truck was halted. More than 900 people lived in the agricultural mission, with its dining pavilion, tidy cottages, school, medical facilities and rows of crops. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. He has read most of "Raven," which he believes to be the best of the books about his father, but he has never been able to bring himself to read the chapter about the suicides and murders. He contacted the people at the San Francisco branch of the Peoples Temple and instructed them not to take action. Listen, not long before, we went to play basketball. 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. To me, the ends justified the means, he said. "I don't know what was happening . 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