Q585 Summary

Summary prepared by Fielding M. McGehee III. If you use this material, please credit The Jonestown Institute. Thank you.

To read the Tape Transcript, click here. Listen to MP3 (Pt. 1, Pt. 2).
To return to the Tape Index, click here.

FBI Catalogue           Unidentified Individuals Speaking

FBI preliminary tape identification note: One Tracs 60/Marie Jackson

Date cues on tape:     Early spring 1977 [reference to Marshall Kilduff doing article, Tim Stoen’s June travel plans]

People named:

Bible verses cited: None

Summary:

(This tape was transcribed by Nicole Bissett. The editors gratefully acknowledge her invaluable assistance.)

This tape consists of several telephone calls, two of them with Marceline Jones at the recording end, and four with Mike Prokes. None mention a specific date, but there are several clues to indicate the tape was made in spring 1977: Mike Prokes talks to a woman about someone’s travel plans to London for June 4, the date and place where Tim Stoen went when he left the Temple for the last time; a Temple member speaks to Marceline about a reporter named Marshall Kilduff who gathering information for what would turn out to be the New West article of August 1; and there is a report that Jim Jones will resign from the San Francisco Authority, which he does in August.

A couple of the calls show how the Temple worked to assist its members: Prokes speaks to a woman in the public defender’s office about getting a man released to Temple custody, whereupon the Temple would send him to Guyana (there was no one named Hector who died in Jonestown, so either he was not released, or other arrangements were made for him); and an unnamed woman speaks to Prokes about getting her son out of jail because she doesn’t have $200 to pay for bail.

The longest conversation is between Marceline and a writer named Albert E. Kahn, whose relationship with the Communist Party and with such well-known people as Paul Robeson and Pablo Picasso is compelling to Jim Jones, who seeks to create a sense of his own gravitas on the left. The call is light and cheerful, even as Kahn urges Marceline to convince her husband to get some much-needed rest.

Prokes’ longest call is with Donetter Lane, the president of the San Francisco Council of Churches and a woman who was active in the causes championed by the Temple. Lane would have a deeper connection with the Temple after the deaths, when she became the driving force behind the Guyana Emergency Relief Committee, which – in conjunction with the Receiver – organized and oversaw the transfer of the Jonestown bodies to their final place of rest.

FBI Summary:

Date of transcription: 3/7/79

In connection with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the assassination of U.S. Congressman LEO J. RYAN at Port Kaituma, Guyana, South America, on November 18, 1978, a tape recording was obtained. This tape recording was located in Jonestown, Guyana, South America, and was turned over to U.S. Officials in Guyana and subsequently transported to the United States.

On March 6, 1979, Special Agent (name deleted) reviewed the tape numbered 1B47-26. This tape was found to contain the following:

Side B

Last half of tape is inaudible. The rest of the tape is incoming phone calls to the People’s Church in San Francisco, California.

Differences with FBI Summary:

The summary is accurate and meets the FBI’s purposes.       

Tape originally posted December 2022.