[Editor’s note: A number of these affidavits also appear on a page of Affidavits about Temple defectors and critics.]
B-2-d-6
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Michael Klingman
I, Michael Klingman, being duly sworn, declare:
I am now a member of the Peoples Temple Christian Church and I reside at 2451 Road K, Redwood Valley, California. I first attended the Peoples Temple in February, 1971. At that meeting, held in Redwood Valley, Jim Cobb was confronted by Pastor Jim Jones and the congregation for engaging in rifle practice. Cobb admitted that he was doing this secretly and clearly without the permission or support of the pastor and congregation. Pastor Jones stated that such endeavors were completely contrary to the principles of the church and demanded that such activity cease immediately and permanently. Cobb responded that he had always thought of himself as dying violently in a revolution and that he did not plan to live past age 30.
Dated: July [blank space for date], 1977.
[blank line]
Michael Klingman
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public in and for the
State of California
[blank line]
—
B-2-d-7
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Jackie B. Colbert
I, Jackie B. Colbert, being duly sworn, declare:
I lived with Myra Wilson until I was 13 years of age. I moved to 698 N. Oak Street, Ukiah in July of 1973. Birdie Marable lived across the street. She used to come to our house and visit every day unless we were gone on the weekend. She used to sit down and talk with my foster mom. At this time they only visited I didn’t drink. Birdie would swear a lot when she talked. When she moved to Washington Court on Washington Street in Ukiah, she would come to the rest home days. She sometimes left the patients unattended.
One day I couldn’t find my mom and I walked to Washington Court to see if she was at Birdie’s. She was there and this was the first time I had seen my mom with beer and Birdie had beer. And my little brother Harold was drinking beer too. He had his own can of beer. He is mentally retarded and was 13 then and a foster child.
This was around 10 PM at night. My foster mom offered me a beer in front of Birdie. I said, “no, that’s o.k.” Birdie was living alone at this time.
Birdie would say things like “I’ll kick some asses in that church,” referring to Peoples Temple. She was always making threatening comments like this about Peoples Temple.
At different times I could smell liquor on her.
Myra told me that when she died everything was willed to Harold and I. But when she died, Birdie went and got her furniture. All of Myra’s furniture was in Birdie’s garage. I saw it with my own eyes.
The next time I saw Birdie and Myra drinking, I came home from school and Myra wasn’t home. I went over to Birdie’s house again. This was the same week. They were drinking again and Birdie was smoking. And this time I reported it to Jack Beam.
The third time I saw them drinking, it was night time several weeks later just a few days before Myra died. Birdie and Myra left Harold and me unattended alone and Myra came home around midnight and had been drinking. (The house was always dirty and beer cans were all over.) I was sick and trying to find her. She said she had been with Birdie. After she started drinking with Birdie, she developed problems with edema of the legs and phlebitis, and she had to take water pills. She also had an enlarged heart.
A day or so later I found my mom dead in the laundry room. I was 13. Don and Thelma Jackson with Peoples Temple got me legally.
Dated this [blank space] day of July, 1977.
[blank line]
Jackie B. Colbert
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public in and for the
State of California
[blank space]
—
B-2-d-8
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Pauline Groot
I, Pauline Groot, being duly sworn, declare:
Birdie Marable had a care home with four seniors. She wanted somebody to be there at night so she could be somewhere else. She offered me room and board in return for me living there, and always being home at night. I agreed.
There were several things funny about this deal from the beginning. One was that my room was separate from the rest of the house, a “guest room” in a separate building from the rest. While I was legally on the property, if there have been any emergency with the old people such as a fire or a heart attack, I wouldn’t even have it known about it.
Another problem was that, when I moved in, she promised to put a bed and a heater in the room. She did put the bed in but as for the heater, I had to borrow it from the house, and it had no thermostat, so the room was always cold when I came home at night and always cold when I got up in the morning. She even tried to prevent me from borrowing the heater from the house.
I would have been quite willing to live in the house with the seniors. There was a very comfortable couch in the living room, and it was much warmer there. Birdie frequently kept an open hearth fire in the living room. I could have slept on the couch in comfort, and kept an eye on the fire, and kept my ears open for trouble. I could have stored my clothes and stuff in the guest room. I actually did this one or two nights.
But Birdie wanted me in the guest room out of the house. She said I was a nuisance and didn’t look tidy on her good couch. So she made me stay in the guest room, and leave the seniors unprotected at night.
This worried me. I talk to Penny Kerns about it before moving in. Penny advised me not to move in at all, or at the very least, not to move in until after Birdie put in a bed and a good heater, in that room, and to get some money for being there. So I did try to do as Penny advised.
The next thing I heard was that Birdie had threatened to cut up Penny Kerns with a knife. I did not personally witness the threat, but I believed it. It sounded like something Birdie would do. I didn’t want any more trouble so I moved in. I even did some chores for Birdie, after she’d promised me I wouldn’t have to. I stayed in my guesthouse mostly, and stayed out of Birdie’s way as much as possible. I heard her say that she had already put her husband in the hospital in a fight, and so I stayed out of her way even more.
One of the seniors was a big capable woman, who did most of the cooking and chores. I don’t know how Birdie was able to get money for caring for her, she was quite able to take care for herself and others. Another senior, a little wispy woman, begged me to write a letter and keep it secret from the others. She said her mail was opened and her person was threatened. I wrote the letter. A few weeks later she had moved to Los Angeles. She said she was relieved to get away.
After about two months of this I saw a chance to get out. I moved myself and all my goods and gear at night, without letting Birdie know where I was going. She never did find me. I heard she wanted to kill me too, but she never got the chance.
Dated this 30th day of July, 1977.
/s/ Pauline Groot
Pauline Groot
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public in and for the
State of California
Martha E. Klingman
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B-2-d-9
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Kathy Tropp
I, Kathy Tropp, being duly sworn, declare:
Curtis Buckley had been living with Dick and I for about one year when he came down with tonsillitis. He had a susceptibility to tonsil inflammation, and infections. He was taking erythromycin for it. He got sick on or around Thanksgiving, 1972. He withdrew more over the next two days, finally getting extremely moody, refused to take his medicine, and seemed very angry. The next day his behavior was trancelike, and disoriented. I had to go to work, and so did my husband, Dick, so I started arranging people for him to stay with. Renée Jackson kept him at her house, and told me after I got back (she had him for a weekend) that he was crying at night, saying he was afraid of “little men” and wouldn’t go into the bedroom. She insisted he go to bed and told him there was nothing to worry about. He also got violent with her the next day, she said. When Curtis came home, he had the same spacey manner; for the next two months he never lost it. Events after that were that he was counseled by our pastor, Jim Jones. Curtis’ behavior toward Dick and me was more dependent, childish. He continued to complain about seeing little men. Mark Boutte was living with us at the time. At one point I asked the Mertles to keep him for a day or two. I may have asked them to keep him for a longer time; I do remember that after one night, Elmer Mertle called me up and told me to come and get Curtis. I don’t remember exactly what he did to alarm them, but when I came over to get Curtis, both Elmer Mertle and Deanna Mertle were sitting there looking
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very scared. I don’t know what he did. Dick and I took Curtis to San Francisco to see a doctor. We stayed over at Janet Shular’s house. I think we took him down there to stay with her. She agreed to take him. We talked about schools for him and therapy. At some point, Curtis seemed better, started talking. He said he had used a slingshot and shot and killed a bird, on his last day at school before he got sick. The child who gave him the slingshot also gave him some pills, he said. This seemed to explain his weird behavior. We figured he had taken drugs. I don’t know if this admission on his part came now or later. I was at work when Janet Shular called me, about three weeks after he had gone down there to stay with her. Curtis had very suddenly “snapped out” of his state and was talking and crying and acting very normal. It may have been then that he told Janet about the slingshot, killing the bird, and the boy giving him drugs.
Curtis came home to stay with us again. We seemed to have more of a rapport after that. That spring we moved to a house in Calpella. Curtis asked me if he could move to San Francisco. I didn’t think it was a very good idea and I told him so. At that time the church work was centered in Redwood Valley, and I saw his going to the city as a move away from it. Curtis had a relapse around April of that year. He started acting spacey again. Curtis went back to Janet’s and started acting like himself after a couple of days, in which time it was agreed he should stay with her.
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He fell back into the spacey thing several times after he moved to San Francisco. Janet told me about it. It seemed to coincide with times that his tonsils were inflamed, and Janet eventually started avoiding antibiotics with him, since he seemed to have this reaction to them.
Dated this [blank space] of July, 1977.
[blank line]
Kathy Tropp
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public in and for the
State of California
[blank line]
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B-2-d-10
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Don Jackson
I, Don Jackson, being duly sworn, declare:
One Sunday morning, in October 1975, about 11:30 AM, I saw Birdie Marable in a heated argument, cursing, using profanities, and acting like a wild beast. I walked over to the stairway at the back of our church to see what was going on. She was cursing loudly and began hitting Ronnie James in the face and threatening to kill him if he did not get out of her way. She was extremely drunk. She tried to tear Ronnie’s head off. This occurred at the back stairway of Peoples Temple Church, 1859 Geary Street, San Francisco, California.
Dated this 23 day of July, 1977.
/s/ Don Jackson
Don Jackson
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public in and for the
State of California
Martha E. Klingman
—
B-2-d-11
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit
The undersigned, being duly sworn, deposes and says:
Jim Cobb, Wayne Pietila, Mickey Touchette and I were members of the Peoples Temple Christian Church during 1972 and parts of 1973. During that time, we spent a great deal of time together because the People’s Temple subsidized our college education and we lived in church sponsored dormitories. I continued in close contact with them until September 1973, when they, along with others, left. In December of that year, Wayne rejoined the church and left again about six months later. in January and February of 1974 Jim Cobb visited me several times.
During the above years, Jim Cobb and Wayne Pietila spent a great deal of time studying guerrilla warfare, weaponry, and explosives. They advocated change for violence, and said to me personally, that they were accumulating weapons. I often saw them with guns. After I left the church territories and went on to law school, they frequently held catharses, in which I heard of several participating church members in the college dorms beaten or being ordered beaten up by Jim Cobb and Wayne.
Wayne and Jim Cobb approached me on several occasions with requests to buy weapons. If the accusations about people being threatened with death are true, they are so only because Jim and Wayne made them. When Wayne returned in December 1973, he explained to me in a private conversation that he, Jim Cobb and Mickey Touchette and the others who went with them had left not because they were disillusioned with Jim’s leadership, his methodology, or goals, but because the church was not radical enough. According to Wayne, they hoped to
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form a revolutionary coverage for purposes of violent militant guerrilla activity. He further stated that he and the others were armed to the teeth as they drove out of state on their way from the church, and that had any law enforcement officers pulled them over, Wayne and the others were prepared to shoot and kill them.
I was shocked and disappointed when Jim Cobb deserted his lovely wife, Sharon, and ran off with Mickey Touchette and the other so-called revolutionaries. In January and February 1974, Jim Cobb paid several visits to me in San Francisco. He confirmed Wayne’s statement that their reason for leaving was to commit revolutionary actions, and they left because Jim Jones was unwilling to do so, or involves the church.
Further, I was chief of the group who counted offerings during the period when Mickey Touchette was a member of the offering crew; I was responsible for tallying the offering count. She never knew the amounts of offerings. I attended all the services and never once heard Jim Jones misrepresent to the congregation the amount of the collections.
Dated this 21st day of July, 1977.
/s/ Michael Bryce Cartmell
[space for notary seal below]
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B-2-d-12
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of Jane Mutchsmann
I, Jane Mutchsmann, being duly sworn, declare:
In September 1975 I was called on the phone early one morning, about 7:30 AM, by Janet Shular. She said something had happened at her home and she wanted me to call Leona Collier, Bay Area secretary of our church, for her advice. She said to tell her that the same thing had “happened to Curtis Buckley that had happened to Margaret Bass” recently. (Margaret had passed.) I called Leona on her job at Sledge Lock. I told her what Janet had said. Leona said she could not take off work and asked if I would go over to Janet’s home immediately.
I caught the Muni bus to Janet’s as my car was not working at the time.
On arriving there, Jane looked distraught. She said Chris Buckley had died in the night. She said she found out right before she called me. Janet said Curtis had gone to the movies the night before. When Curtis got home he was “groggy” as if on drugs. Janet said she assumed that some other youth had given Curtis drugs while at the movie.
She said she had Glenn Hennington walk Curtis for a long time to get him out of the “drug state.” It was late, she said, when she asked his friend and roommate, Glenn Hennington, to take him to his room downstairs. She said at that point Curtis fell down some stairs and hit his head. She said Glenn knew this but didn’t tell her until the morning.Janet said she thought a good night’s sleep would bring Curtis out of it.
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I went downstairs to see Curtis. He was lying on his back in bed. I touched his face and slapped it lately. He was cold, no breathing, and a bubbly substance, like soap bubbles but brownish, was coming out of his mouth continually.
I called Leona back and verified what had happened. Janet said she would take the body to the hospital, Mount Zion Emergency, and explain what had happened. She didn’t want to call an ambulance, she said. I rode with Janet in the car to the hospital. I stayed in the car with the body, and Janet went in the hospital to explain the situation. I did not go in.
Dated: July 22, 1977
/s/ Jane Mutchsmann
Jane Mutchsmann
[space for notary seal below]
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B-2-d-13
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Alfred Tschetter
I, Alfred Tschetter, being duly sworn, declare:
I am a certified radiologic technologist, and I live in San Francisco, California.
My dad was a Mennonite Minister and I was brought up in religion and it was my whole life. I was married at age 20 I moved away from the Mennonites immediate vicinity. I joined the Baptist church.
In 1951 I moved to California with the intention of going into the dairy farming business as I had in South Dakota. After surveying the economic situation, I decided not to enter dairy farming and spent one year servicing cars. In 1952 I had the opportunity to become an orderly and in the hospital a wise radiologist approached me to encourage me to finish my education to become a radiologic technologist. I received my training in Dallas, Texas, and was a member of a German Baptist Church. I was elected to the Board of Deacons. One day as we were eating dinner, the chairman of the Board of Deacons was so inebriated and it took three of us to get him into a taxi to get him home. That same evening we had a Board of Deacons meeting and that was my last day in the organized church. To me it was all too much hypocrisy, teaching one thing and doing another.
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While back to visit my 91-year-old mother, who was in a fairly decent convalescent hospital and as a Mennonite who was taught from childhood to take care of our own, which also follows the teachings of Jim Jones… I realized that my mother was 91 and slightly feebleminded, but she was not to the point where she belonged in a convalescent hospital. I felt that my family had neglected her or did not want to take responsibility of someone who had reared them. A number of years before my wife and I had offered to take mother and keep her the rest of her life.
As I was driving home from North Dakota to California, I realized that I belong in the teachings Pastor Jim Jones. And I made up my mind that I would write a letter to Pastor Jim Jones asking if I could return to the church, which I did. He invited me to come back a number of times and also sent a group of people to visit me, which I greatly appreciated.
The years I spent out of Peoples Temple – I was never at any time harassed or questioned or asked anything. I was given no pressure to return to the church. I returned on my own and at the kind invitation of the Pastor.
As a medical person and from my own experiences, I know that these healings are real. I have witnessed hundreds of them. I know most of the healings he does are beyond all medical hope. Being a part of the medical profession, I know that these feelings were genuine and could not have been faked.
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Just this spring in Los Angeles I personally took the blood pressure of a woman and it went from 180/12 to 120/80 in less than one minute. I know that this is medically impossible.
All the time that I was out of the church, I lived in Ukiah, California. I saw and worked with people from the church nobody ever said a negative word and were kinder and nicer to me then some of the non-church patients that I had.
Dated: July 28, 1977.
/s/ Alfred Tschetter R.T. (CRT)
Alfred Tschetter
Subscribed and sworn before me,
this 28th of July, 1977.
/s/ Martha E. Klingman
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B-2-d-14
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of Leona Collier
I, Leona Collier, being duly sworn, declare:
The following is what Janet Shular told me on a Thursday in September 1975. We were walking in a Safeway store. She told me that Curtis Buckley went out and got some dope. I asked her if she had taken him to a doctor. She said “no, I couldn’t do that.” I said, “well, is he all right?” She said, “yes, he’ll be fine.” I asked her what happened. She said he went out and got this dope Wednesday night. He wasn’t home when she got home later.
She said, “you know, I gave him a good whipping about this. I got tired and I walked him around and I turned him over to David. David really whipped his ass good and put him in cold water, alternating between whipping him and cold water, walking him up and down the hallway.” Later on that night she said she turned him over to Glenn Hennington, and Glenn whipped him and walked him around. She said Glenn admitted giving him Vivarins to wake him up.
On Friday on my job she called me and told me that Curtis was dead. I told her I couldn’t leave my job. I called
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Jane Mutchsmann because I was scared Janet would go into hysterics. Janet and Glenn Hennington wrapped Curtis in a sheet and took him to Mount Zion Hospital.
Dated: July 28, 1977
/s/ Leona Collier
Leona Collier
[space for notary seal below]
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B-2-d-15
State of California
City and County of San Francisco
Affidavit of
Lillie Mae Victor
I, Lillie Mae Victor, being duly sworn, declare:
In 1975 Deanna and Elmer Mertle asked me to move in with them. I was 17 years old. We lived in Berkeley in their rest home, with 8 rooms on each of the 2 floors. Deanna kept me out of high school to use me as a house slave. She made me clean every room, change every sheet on each bed and wash them, mop every room on each floor (16 rooms) plus the hallways and 4 bathrooms. I had to clean the bowel movement out of the toilet bowls. I work from 8 AM to 5 PM. Then I had to do the dishes after all the meals. Deanna constantly made racist remarks to me and about me. She said “sometimes I think you require a slave master to beat you, if that’s what you require, then I will beat you.” She told me to lie down, she said she would put me in a trance and see why I was so hostile. Once when I had a cold I was really congested and had bad pain on one side of my head, in my back and arms. I asked Deanna to take me to the doctor. She refused and gave me somebody else’s medicine.
Sandy Rozynko, 16 years old, and Diane Mertle, age 15, their teenage daughter, would sleep in the bed and I had to sleep on the floor. Many mornings around 4 AM Elmer Mertle would come into our bedroom, sit on the bed, and play sexually with Sandy Rozynko. I woke up to see him sneaking around our room several times; he’d be in there about five minutes.
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In 1975 Deanna and Elmer Mertle bought a big old house in Oakland, on Telegraph Avenue, that they were fixing up to sell. All of its windows were broken out. They told me to stay there and watch the house, all alone, 3 or 4 times. They left me in the daytime there and didn’t come back for me until the next day. There was no heat, no blankets. I slept on the couch in the front room covered with my coat. They also had an old house in Redwood Valley they had put up for sale. I had to mop and wax it with a rag on my knees all day and practically all night.
I had the flu and was left here in San Francisco at the church. Deanna said I was rebellious and didn’t like doing what I was told, that I can’t follow through on coming home. “Sometimes I don’t know whether you are crazy or retarded,” Deanna said to me. She said that a white person in that church would not let their white son marry a black girl like me. She said I was nothing but shit.
I saw Deanna and Elmer Mertle steal money from a church project. I saw them take it out of the box. They would spend it at K-Mart, the Gap, McDonald’s, pizza parlors. They were stealing the money that the high school students in the church were saving for their education.
There was a patient in their rest home who had bowel movement all over her body. Deanna made me clean up the mess and the patient. I had to give all the patients baths while Deanna laid in bed and slept. While Sandy Rozynko and Diane Mertle were in school, I had to stay there and work. Deanna told me she was a racist, that she hated black people even before she came to the church. She said if Jim Jones ever
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gave me anything to do, I couldn’t follow through with it. She said Jim only praises weak people. She asked me once when she was bringing me home why I cared about Jim.
Elmer and Deanna a rifle in their home in Redwood Valley. Deanna told me I could not look at TV until all my work was finished. She said, “I am not going to criticize you for a week; I am going to see how good you can work without a slave master.”
Deanna was always yelling and screaming at me about working. She said I had no character at all. When I cleaned up the bowel movement from a patient who had died, she said that showed growth on my part and then I have a little bit of character. They always talk about me behind my back, and when I walked in they would turn around and start smiling.
Sometimes I would fall asleep mopping the floor from being so overworked. The chores I had to do each day were washing and cleaning dishes and kitchen after each meal; mop 16 rooms and wax them; fix each bed, 2 beds in each room; wash the clothes; give patients baths; clean 4 bathrooms; vacuum the living room; dust furniture; clean windows; sweep all the stairs; water the grass; two other odd jobs Deanna could find. Sandy Rozynko and Diane Mertle did not work.
Deanna would try and buy your friendship and keep you like a slave. She would turn down all confidence in yourself so
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she can be held up high. She makes you paranoid and makes you feel like you owe her a debt.
Dated: July 23, 1977
/s/ Lillie Mae Victor
Lillie Mae Victor
Subscribed and sworn before me,
a Notary Public for the State of California.
Martha E. Klingman