Joseph A. Mazor was both an ex-convict and a licensed private investigator in the State of California. The former should have disqualified him from the latter, and he boasted that he was the first and only person – as of 1977 – to have that distinction. It is also emblematic of the many contradictions in his relationship with Peoples Temple.

 

It is unknown when he started looking into the Temple: Mazor himself said it was in late 1976 at the request of a friend on the San Francisco police force, although elsewhere he said New West magazine referred ex-members to him for help in early 1977. By August, according to his own count, he was working for 18 families, many of them connected to the Concerned Relatives, in a campaign to retrieve Jonestown residents, by kidnapping if necessary.

 

It is also unknown when (or even if) Mazor jumped the fence and became an ally of the Temple. According to Mazor – again – when he made a secret trip to Jonestown in September 1977, he found that the conditions were not as Temple defectors had told him. The trip was so secret, however, that U.S. Embassy records show his first trip to Guyana wasn't for another year, in September 1978. On that occasion, he went to Jonestown at the invitation of the project's leadership.

 

No one really trusted Joe Mazor – neither the Concerned Relatives nor the Temple – yet each side depended upon him for information about the other. And he made have had a third client: law enforcement.

 

The Temple charged in a two-page flyer that Mazor worked for INTERPOL, an international police organization. The flyer opens with the statement that "We have documented proof," although the only facts for which it offers corroboration relate to Mazor's history with Concerned Relatives and a description of INTERPOL itself from a reference work. There is no support for the assertion itself of "this man's INTERPOL connection." Moreover, the charge that INTERPOL "is circulating the same vicious lies in the media about the Temple" neither has attribution to a named source nor makes a direct connection between the allegation and Mazor himself.

 

Temple flyer charges Joe Mazor as INTERPOL agent, RYMUR 89-4286-S-1-E-1, pp. 69-70.

            PDF

            Text