Love Them to Death: At War with the Devil at Jonestown

375 Pages·17.544 MB·English

by  Timothy Oliver Stoen

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Love Them
to Death
AT WAR WITH THE DEVIL
AT JONESTOWN
Timothy Oliver Stoen
Foreword by Giselle Fernandez
Copyright © 2016 Timothy Oliver Stoen
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 153747877X
ISBN 13: 9781537478777
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015906912
CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
North Charleston, South Carolina
For John Victor
This is a photo of my son, John Victor Stoen. He
was six years old the day this photo was taken in
Jonestown, Guyana. It was November 18, 1978,
the day he was murdered by Jim Jones. The pho­
tographer was Greg Robinson of the San Francisco
Examiner. He was shot and killed that day at the
nearby airstrip by Jim Jones’s agents. Courtesy of
the San Francisco Examiner.
To Grace
How much I have loved you. How much I have tried to give you a good
life.
—-James Warren Jones, November 18, 1978
We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most
abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your
own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so
long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture
his inner mind, we reshape him... We make him one of ourselves before
we kill him.
—George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four'
I have Tim Stoen...in my psyche tonight... I’m a man filled with rage... I
could kill him. I could really kill him. Literally kill him... I got the man
that’ll get him. All I got to do is say the word, “Go.”... Tim Stoen...hasn’t
made a move in the United States, there hasn’t been somebody on his
bottom side. (Shouts) Just waiting.
—James Warren Jones, April 1, 1978
Evil is in opposition to life. It is that which opposes the life force. It
has, in short, to do with killing. Specifically, it has to do with murder—
namely, unnecessary killing, killing that is not required for biological
survival.
The issue of evil inevitably raises the question of the devil...
Evil is revolting because it is dangerous. It will contaminate or other­
wise destroy a person who remains too long in its presence. Unless you
know very well what you are doing, the best thing you can do when faced
with evil is to run the other way.
I have learned nothing in twenty years that would suggest that evil
people can be rapidly influenced by any means other than raw power.
—M. Scott Peck, MD, People of the Lie1
We’re in a war... [W]e have an absolute—absolute—informer who
stepped forward, told us of the plans of—of Stoen.
—-James Warren Jones, April 2, 1978
I believe he is willing to murder all 1,100 people now living under his
dictatorial control in Jonestown, Guyana.
—Timothy Oliver Stoen, San Francisco Superior Court, October 3,
1978
[D]o you think I’d put John’s [John Victor Stoen’s] life above others?...
[H]e’s no different to me than any of these children here.
Red Brigade showed them justice. The congressman’s dead.
Bring the vat with the Green C on it. Please bring it here so the
adults can begin.
—James Warren Jones, November 18, 1978
Jonestown Story Riveted the Public... The mass suicides and murders
in Jonestown, Guyana, was the most widely followed event of 1978, with
a remarkable 98 percent of Americans saying that had heard or read
about it.
--George Gallup, December 29, 19783
The CIA would have to acknowledge that Jones succeeded where their
MK-Ultra program failed in the ultimate control of the human mind.
—Dr. Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University4
Somebody—can they talk to—and I’ve talked to San Francisco—see
that Stoen does not get by with this infamy—with this infamy. He has
done the thing he wanted to do: have us destroyed.
We will win. We win when we go down. Tim Stoen has nobody else to
hate. He has nobody else to hate. Then he’ll destroy himself. I’m speak­
ing here not as, uh, the administrator. I’m speaking as a prophet today.
—James Warren Jones, November 18, 1978
Contents
Foreword...............................................................................xiii
Preface...................................................................................xix
Chapter 1 Philistine.................................................................................1
Chapter 2 Paranoid.................................................................................21
Chapter 3 Altruist...................................................................................39
Chapter 4 Agitator.................................................................................52
Chapter 5 Utopian.................................................................................69
Chapter 6 Organizer...............................................................................84
Chapter 7 Authoritarian.......................................................................101
Chapter 8 Celebrity................................................................................116
Chapter 9 Machiavellian.......................................................................135
Photographs........................................................................155
Chapter 10 Dictator................................................................................178
Chapter 11 Narcissist.............................................................................198
Chapter 12 Murderer.............................................................................217
Chapter 13 Avenger...............................................................................239
Chapter 14 Prophet...............................................................................260
Chapter 15 Vanquished.........................................................................277
Epilogue................................................................................291
Acknowledgments................................................................297
Notes....................................................................................303
Selected Bibliography.........................................................337
Index.....................................................................................341
xi
Foreword
I met Tim Stoen in my early twenties more than two decades ago, stand­
ing in line at the Broadmoor Hotel’s famous singing tavern, the Golden
Bee. I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know of his heart-wrenching
story, his intimate connection to Peoples Temple and the maniacal cult
leader Jim Jones, or the crushing loss of his son, John Victor, during the
mass murders and suicides in Guyana that Tim tried so hard to avert.
In fact, when I learned about his history and his journey to reconcile
and heal such a painful past, I marveled even more at the man I met
that night at the Golden Bee and the gentle spirit I would come again to
know all these many years later, a man whose inextinguishable, incan­
descent spirit, despite all, was not only able to survive such assault but
somehow transcend it.
That night at the Bee, I knew nothing of any of this. I simple encoun­
tered a vibrant spirit incapable of being a stranger. I was with a young
man that evening that happened to be my brother, but Tim did not
know that, nor did the possibility of his being a suitor deter Tim’s en­
thusiasm to connect. He was just pure intent, purity, bright light, and in­
nocence. There was nothing contrived or premeditated about him. He
simply wanted to know me, and his laser focus and high-voltage energy
were not possible to turn away. He was too real, too kind, too present.
So much light.
There was a certain naiveté about Tim, as if he operated in a dif­
ferent world where there was only goodness, only life to enjoy and live
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Timothy Oliver Stoen
in the moment. I remember thinking I’d never met someone so open,
so vulnerable, so loving as this gentle being. I’ve always used the word
purity to best describe him. The dictionary definition calls it the qual­
ity of being pure, a freedom from anything that debases, contaminates,
pollutes.
And that, more than anything, captures the essence of who this
man is, and why I so marvel at his resilience and capacity to transcend
darkness. Despite the nightmare Tim lived, Jim Jones did not debase,
contaminate, or pollute his spirit, and that alone is remarkable and so
worthy of examination and understanding. Tim is a testament to man’s
capacity to transcend darkness and hold on to light no matter what.
It was this purity about him that cut to the core of me and that would
later define the story he would come to disclose.
I was a young cub reporter just starting out on the air in Colorado
Springs. I had read all about Peoples Temple and the assassination of
Congressman Leo Ryan and four others on the Jonestown airstrip in
November 1978. I of course read all about the unfathomable murders
and suicides in Jonestown itself of 907 people, 304 of them children,
who followed the edicts of a diabolical cult leader named Jim Jones and
drank the cyanide-laced grape Flavor Aid that caused their deaths.
When Tim shared with me his connection to this nightmare, it
was then that I witnessed his pain—the crushed spirit, deeply hurt
by such loss and betrayal. I remember having so many questions and
yearnings to know every detail of every event. I wanted to understand
this maniacal Jones and how my beautiful friend, an assistant district
attorney in San Francisco, who was so highly educated and success­
ful—Wheaton College, Stanford Law School—could be lured into
this twisted lair.
The stories were riveting, real, crushing, and so very human.
Listening so closely to Tim, I innately understood howjim Jones’s social­
ist vision could captivate a young, ideal-driven Tim in the late sixties,
whose passion for justice and deep sense of equality cut deep to his core
and his hope for humanity. I remember feeling no judgment of Tim,
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