[Editor’s note: The article appears as a photograph here It was published on December 6, 1978, as part of a special 32-page Jonestown edition of the Guyana Chronicle.]
The following is an article I wrote during the Jonestown tragedy. The interview was conducted at the Tower Hotel in Georgetown in early December 1978, now long after the tragedy that took place on Nov. 18, 1978. It is retyped from a ragged tear sheet of the article as published in the Guyana Chronicle.
This was probably the only article of several that I wrote on Jonestown while working for the Caribbean News Agency/Reuters but the Guyana government, owners of The Chronicle, refused to run stories about Jonestown, on the pretense that it was an American affair, not Guyanese.
My series of stories included a number of exclusives because I was one of the first two journalists, the other being Charles Krause, then with The Washington Post, to be allowed into Jonestown after the deaths of some 935 men, women and children under the leadership of Jim Jones.
Small parts of the article are missing because of damage to the tear sheet by insects and those parts are indicated in the copy below in square brackets [].
The interviewees are Tim Carter and his brother Mike Carter and Mike Prokes.
Role as money-runners saved them
By Mohamed Hamaludin
It still hurts Tm Carter very much to recall the final moments he spent with his young wife and baby son two weeks ago.
His voice would falter, he would pause and be visibly fighting to hold back tears. “When I saw my wife, she was kneeling on the ground and she was holding nour son and I saw tears flowing down her cheeks.
“I don’t know, I can’t imagine, what was going through her head. I came up to her and looked down and said, ‘Our son is dead.’
“I leaned over and hugged her and said to her ‘I love you so much. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you’,” he said.
Seconds later, Gloria Carter went into convulsions and toppled over to lie next to the body of their 18-month-old child.
They were two more victims of the madness that was Jonestown on the night of November 18, last, when 909 members of the People’s Temple Christian Church perished in a mass suicide pact, shortly after American Congressman Leo Ryan, three American newsmen and a woman Temple follower were shot dead at the Port Kaituma airstrip a short distance away.
JUNGLE JAUNT
Mr. Ryan led a fact-finding mission to probe charges against the commune led by Jim Jones, who died with his followers.
Tim Carter, 30, was at the Jonestown settlement, 120 miles from here, when the macabre death plan was executed, as was his brother Mike, 20, and another Temple survivor, Mike Prokes, 31.
[Mike] Carter lost his wife Jocelyn, 20, and their 15-month-old daughter and the Carters lost their sister Terry.
Prokes lost his adopted son Randy, aged 3.
The three men were destined to be linked in the final moments of the tragedy, having been asked, according to them, to take the commune’s estimated half-million dollars (US) with “two to three notes to the Soviet Embassy in Georgetown.
They made their way to Port Kaituma, through the jungle trail, as hundreds were dying back in the settlement carved out of the forest in four years of hard toil.
There they were met by a policeman and taken into custody, and the following day they were helping the authorities identify the bodies of 900 of their co-religionists.
The three men are now lodged together in a hotel room in Georgetown assisting, with other survivors, in the unravelling of the enigma that was Jonestown.
It all began for Tim Carter January 1973, when he quit the life of a “Hippie” to join the Temple in San Francisco.
“I was looking for something that was socially progressive, something constructive, and People’s Temple seemed to be the answer,” he said. He came to Guyana and was Customs and Community relations Officer.
His brother, Mike, was in the state of Idaho with his father, and going to school, while his wife and child were already members of the Temple. He eventually convinced his dad to let him join and later moved to Guyana.
He was radio operator and electronics expert at the commune.
Prokes [set out to] do an expose [about the] Temple during his work [as] a reporter with Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) station in California, and ended up quitting his job to join the sect because he had found “something good.”
He moved to Guyana and became Press Secretary and Supplies Officer.
Clean shaven, apparently refreshed and relaxing in their hotel room when not besieged by newsmen and television cameras, the Carter brothers and Prokes continue to ponder over the organization of which they were members.
“I don’t know how history would judge Jim Jones. What happened was grotesque, totally unnecessary and a waste,” Tim Carter said.
“But the story of People’s Temple is such a complex one, so many different variables involved, leading to this final act of insanity,” he added.
Prokes felt that the Temple genuinely tried to create an ……by a conspiracy to destroy him and his organization.
Communication with the outside was now good and the lifeline with the world was the radio set which sometimes people had to shout above heavy static, he said.
It was the “isolation of Jonestown” that was one of the main weaknesses of Jim Jones’ jungle utopia, said Mike Carter.
“Jones so isolated himself that he lost his perspective,” added Tim Carter.
But there was a time when the commune was a thriving bustling settlement of active people, none of whom expected to die, the three men said.
“There is 60,000 board feet of lumber now lying on the Port Kaituma dock. You don’t order 60,000 feet of lumber if you are going to die,” Tim Carter said.
The commune had 50 cottages, each housing seven couples, and the plan was to build enough cottages so that there could be two couples to each, starting with 150 new buildings.
The three men are unanimous in their defence of the Temple against charges of malpractices, such as extortion and beatings.
VIOLENCE
“Many of them were fabrications, others were exaggerations,” said Prokes of the allegations.
Tim Carter said there had been beatings but even Jones allowed himself to be whipped, while on other occasions he prevented beatings when others demanded such.
[graf missing]
All physical violence in the commune, however, ceased about four months ago, Mike Cater said.
They agreed that they had heard of the “sensory deprivation” treatment of a few Temple members but had not witnessed any example of it.
This practice involved putting a violent person in a huge box in the ground so as to deprive him of sensory perception and so “reprogramme” him out of his violence.
“It is a form of psychotherapy. When it is used in mental institutions, it is called psychotherapy. When it is used in Jonestown, it is called an underground prison and a horror chamber,” Tim Carter said.
The three men argued over whether “brainwashing” can be used to describe what took place at the commune, in the sense that, according to Tim Carter, “even the American media goes in for brainwashing.”
Tim Carter is convinced that it was brainwashing for an evil purpose, looking back on it.
“Look what happened in the end,” he said.
Prokes agreed that the commune members could have been pushed to the point where they were willing to kill themselves as a final act of defiance.
“That’s what they did, the ones who did it voluntarily,” he said.
“I won’t call it mass suicide. I would call it mass murder, [line missing]
“I wouldn’t have let my son die. They would have had to [missing line] through my head. They would have had to force me, hold me down.
“You don’t spent 7 million dollars (US) on a project, a model community, and then kill yourself. It shouldn’t happen. There’s nothing in the world that would justify it,” he added.
Tim Carter is one of four Vietnam veterans who belonged to the Temple. He, Odel Rhodes and Robert Paul survived. Don Fitch died, he said. He agreed that his military training may have helped him survive the disaster of Jonestown.
Like most survivors of the tragedy, the Carters an Prokes agreed that the visit of Congressman Ryan marked the beginning of the end.
A message reached the commune on November 17, that Mr. Ryan and his party were at the airport and would be going to the settlement whether Jonestown liked it or not, Tim Carter said.
Jim Jones, at that point, called an alert, and he “sounded drugged” as he did it.
“He said, ‘Alert, alert, we’re being invaded. Alert, alert’,” Tim Carter said.
“His wife (Marceline) was furious with him. She said the people were relaxed, the place was beautiful and everything ready and they can come in. After an argument for about an hour, he agreed he was wrong and shouldn’t have done it,” he added.
Tim Carter and the other two said it was the first time they heard the use of the word “alert” and to them it [missing lines].
It is now history hat Mr. Ryan and his team went to the commune, sent Friday night without incident.
PERSONAL
Firstly, many people wanted to leave the commune. They included Larry Leyton, now accused of the Ryan Murders.
“His wife couldn’t believe it. [missing sentence] He said it was strictly personal. Those are his own words: ‘Strictly personal’,” Tim Carter said.
Another fellow wanted to leave Jonestown without telling his wife. There was “a lot of heavy emotion [missing words]. There was a “very heavy emotional current running through Jonestown that afternoon,” he said.
Secondly, an unusually heavy storm gathered over the area, kicking up dust everywhere, even inside the pavilion, our main meeting place (around which the bodies of the suicide victims were later found).
“The storm contributed to a a “kind of weird vibrations.” Tim Carter said.
Thirdly, an attempt was made on the life of Congressman Ryan who was planning to spend a second night in the commune. The assailant was described by the Carters and Prokes, and others, as Don Sly, a Temple member for a dozen years, and known to be reserved.
Tim Carter felt he “may have been ordered” to act, while Prokes felt he might have acted on his own.
RESCUE
Some two dozen persons jumped to the rescue the Congressman who was shouting “get the knife from him, get the knife from him.”
It was decided that Mr. Ryan should leave immediately, and an American embassy official would remain.
Even with the attack on Ryan’s life, the Carters and Prokes fekt Jonestown could have survived. According to them, the Congressman was pleased at what he saw and would have been satisfied even if half the members wanted to leave.
After the attack and the departure of the visitorsfor the airstrip, Mrs. Jones got on the loudspeaker and had everyone go to their cottages. “By this time people were in quite a state of shock. People were not even talking. It was very quiet. I went back to my cottage and was with my wife and my son.
“While we were there, they [missing lines]. My wife went to get some diapers for our son.
“If you know you are going to die, you don’t get diapers,” Tim Carter said.
Before the meeting at the pavilion began, a girl, Shirley Smith, had “flipped out,” dancing and screaming, “I’m gonna be a freedom fighter,” Tim Carter said.
“She had totally lost her mind. I could hardly recognize her at all, her whole face had changed.”
FEAR
“At that point you could have cut the fear,” he said.
Jones held a conference with his wife, Temple lawyers Mark Lane and Charles Garry (who stayed after the Congressman’s visit and at this point the three nen said they found themselves out of the picture because they were directed to take the money out of the commune.
The Carters felt they were selected because they happened to be the first ones noticed, while Prokes felt that with his background he was never really regarded as an insider and so would not be expected to die.
But they still had some time to get a feel of the atmosphere in the commune in its dying minutes.
“People cried. I had a feeling that the place was falling apart. I saw [missing words] feeling that the place was falling apart. I saw [missing words] of people, mothers [missing words] their babies who [missing words]. There were [bodies lying on the ground], children [missing words, Tim Carter said.
Then he saw [missing words] after that [missing words] was to get [missing words]. Not many [missing words].