The Prosecutions of Larry Layton

(A compilation of original source documents by Fielding M. McGehee III.)

Laurence (Larry) Layton was a member of Peoples Temple and Jonestown resident who participated in the attack at the Port Kaituma airstrip on November 18, 1978, that resulted in the deaths of Rep. Leo Ryan and four others. Layton himself was initially charged with murder, but the criminal trials he faced in the years that followed were for conspiracy to murder and for the wounding of two Jonestown defectors, Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Layton spent approximately 18 years in either the Georgetown Gaol in Guyana or U.S. federal prisons before his release in April 2002.

The government records below outline many of the details of his arrest, his incarceration, the investigations into his role in the attacks, and his trials. They are arranged in chronological order. Almost all records are either cables generated by the U.S. State Department and its embassies – particularly in Georgetown but also other Caribbean and South American countries – or serials generated by the FBI and its field offices, notably in San Francisco, during its RYMUR investigation. All were obtained by this website under the Freedom of Information Act.

While there is some overlap, the records fall generally into the broad categories of:

• Layton’s arrest and detention;
• Judicial inquiries and trials in Guyana;
• Efforts to deport Layton to the U.S.;
• Proceedings against Layton in U.S. federal court.

The chart below includes: the date (year, month and day) and time (in Greenwich Means or Zulu time) of the cable or serial; the State Department or FBI citation; the office of origin; a brief description of each document’s contents; a PDF of the document; and its text.

Arrest, Detention and Investigation

Judicial inquiries and trials in Guyana

Efforts to deport Layton to the U.S.

Proceedings against Layton in U.S. federal court