[Editor’s note: This article by Marshall Kilduff appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on June 15, 1978.]
The People’s Temple jungle outpost in South America that was portrayed yesterday as a remote realm where the church leader, Rev. Jim Jones, orders public beatings, maintains a squad of 50 armed guards and has involved his 1100 followers in a threat of mass suicide.
This description was provided by Deborah Layton, 23, who was a top aide of Jones until she asked American consular officials 1 month to safeguard her departure from Guyana, when the temple has its agricultural mission.
Peoples Temple officers in San Francisco last night relayed – via shortwave radio from Guyana – and reputation of the charges from two of the South American mission’s residents, identified as Lisa and Larry Layton, the mother and brother of Deborah Layton.
“These lies are too ridiculous to refute,” Lisa Layton said. “… We are treated beautifully here…”
Larry Layton said, “We are treated beautifully.”
San Francisco Temple officer Tim Clancy [Clancey] added, “We absolutely refute all the charges. This just makes us believe more than ever that there is a conspiracy against the church.”
Jones became the center of a storm of controversy last summer when he slipped out of San Francisco with his followers for Guyana. Public charges were made by former followers that Jones had performed false medical cures to win converts, that he oversaw beatings of church members in closed meetings, and that he amassed more than $5 million in donations.
According to Layton, Jones has become a “paranoid” obsessed with “traitors” in his own ranks who question him or do not work hard enough in the farm fields and with an outside world that has publicized his critics.
The fever-pitch emotions of temple members that allowed Jones to dispatch them to civil rights causes and liberal political rallies in California has now turned to a military-style vigilance against an imminent attack by unspecified “mercenaries,” Layton said.
The temple fields are controlled by two rings of khaki-uniformed armed guards, men and women members of “security alert teams” who have access to 200 to 300 rifles, 25 pistols and a homemade bazooka, Layton said.
Discipline, she said, is handled in public meetings of the entire church community. On one occasion an elderly woman was humiliated by being forced to strip, younger members are “knuckled” by having fists ground into their foreheads, and others are ordered to an underground “box” where they must sit for days at a time, Layton said.
Jones has ringed the work fields with loudspeakers and costs for stretches of up to six hours, she said. Farmhands are expected to work from 5:30 AM to 6 PM with an hour for lunch and another hour for dinner before more sermons lasting until midnight, Layton said.
The diet consists mostly of rice, purchased in the Guyana capital of Georgetown because the farm is not expected to be self-sufficient for another three years she said.
She said that on the occasion of visits from outsiders whom Jones wishes to impress, church members are treated to meat and vegetables. Other trusted followers she claimed were drilled to give optimistic opinions about life at the mission, called Jonestown.
Jones, who often went on elaborate lengths to protect his public image in San Francisco, has remained at the mission, refusing even to venture into Georgetown, she reported.
Among his concerns has been a pending child custody case in the Guyana capital.
She said the 1100 followers were told to drink a bitter brown liquid potion, after which they supposedly would fall asleep and then be shot by Jones’ guards. The rehearsal went as far as having the community drink a phony potion before Jones called it off, Layton added.
Layton said she was able to leave Guyana by wangling a trip to Georgetown. After several days she secretly arranged with American consular officials to obtain an emergency passport and flew to New York on May 13. She is now living in San Francisco.
“Everyone there wants to leave, I’m sure of it,” she said. “But you never get a chance to be alone. Everyone is told to spy on other people.”
Layton, who was in charge of church finances here before joining the Guyana colony last December, said Jones controls bank accounts in Europe, California and Guyana containing at least $10 million.