Wade Medlock and Mabel Medlock v. Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, Enola Nelson, Enola Nelson Realty, Hugh Fortsyn [Hue Fortson], James McElvane et al. was at its core a property dispute case. Filed on June 6, 1978 – and listing Tim Stoen as the only attorney for the plaintiffs – it sought compensatory damages for the sale of extorted property, general damages for pain and suffering for more than $2 million, and punitive damages of $16 million. It also charged that the Temple had threatened Wade and Mabel Medlock when they refused to go to Guyana.
The Medlocks had joined Peoples Temple in 1971. Residents of Los Angeles, the Medlocks owned a maintenance company and had used some of their company’s profits to buy two parcels of real estate, a house in Baldwin Hills and rental property in Los Angeles. Four years later, according to the allegations in their lawsuit, Jones exhorted the Medlocks to sell their properties and turn over the proceeds to the Temple, which – among other purposes – it intended to use to develop Jonestown. When they resisted, Jones “gradually increased … the pressure,” and eventually called the two seniors into the Los Angeles Temple and – in the presence of several members, including one who was a realtor – forced them to sign documents authorizing the sale of the two properties. “You will either sign these papers or you will die,” the lawsuit quotes Jones as telling them during that February 1977 meeting. Recalling that Jones had once bragged that he had killed someone who reneged on a real estate deal, they took the threat seriously and signed a number of papers, most of them without having read their contents.
The suit charged that “by fraud and deceit and by threats of death and bodily harm,” Jones and the other defendants extorted the Medlocks’ property. The “apparent consent” in turning over these properties “was obtained … through duress and menace of unlawful and violent injury.”
Similar threats were made when the Medlocks refused to go to Guyana, according to the lawsuit, especially after Wade Medlock said, “I don’t believe in Jim anymore.”
Wade Medlock and Mabel Medlock v. Jim Jones, Peoples Temple, Enola Nelson, Enola Nelson Realty, Hugh Fortsyn [Hue Fortson], James McElvane et al., RYMUR 89-4286-BB-31-b-15 – BB-31-b-35
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Peoples Temple Appeal in Decision on Change of Venue, RYMUR 89-4286-BB-31-b-171 – BB-31-b-200; also at RYMUR 89-4286-BB-17-a – BB-17-a-29
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