Undated letter from former Temple member Michael Cartmell
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[Editor’s note: Minor spelling errors have been retained.]
My Dear Friend,
While I appreciate your giving me an opportunity to go abroad, I am unable to do so until sometime later this summer, if at all. Also, since I am working I do not need any money. I will be financially able to move away on my own shortly.
If I am correct, Lew’s [Lew Jones] and Terry’s [Terry Carter Jones] and Tim’s [Timothy Tupper Jones] and Sandy’s [Sandy Cobb Jones] babies should have been born by now. Even though I cannot see them, I wish them well.
Please tell my mom that I am sorry to hear about her blood pressure problems, but my absence or presence will have no bearing on them. The only solution is for her to lose her excessive weight. Also tell her that she need feel no guilt about anything she said to me about Clyde. I couldn’t care less what anyone who was as real to me as the mythical unicorn, thought of me. Frankly, as we all know, Jim is the only genuine father and role model I ever knew.
Even though he will not believe it, please give Jim my very best regards.
Respectfully,
Mike Cartmell
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Typewritten document on Michael Cartmell, undated
[Editor’s note: Minor spelling errors have been retained Original document typed in all caps.]
Mike Cartmell
Point one: that J.J. centralized power into his own office because that is his “thing” and he went to Guyana and took everything with him because he wanted to retain that power and to keep closer control over people and finances.
Point two: J.J. treated him like a son when he was growing up, but after he was grown, he found out through his own analysis that J.J. considered him a fool, and often plotted against him: believes J.J. broke up his marriage by telling things about him to Suzanne [Jones, Jim’s adopted daughter] and vice versa, and that the final straw was when he heard J.J. and several people in the apartment planning (the night before his third bar exam test) to keep him up all night with confrontation so he would flunk his bar exam. Claims someone told him about J.J. discussing him, saying he was a homosexual and was having an affair with a man in the D.A’s office. Claims he was willing to be plotted against because he had such high regard for J.J. & socialism, but that the final straw was his bar exam.
Point three: he says the things he read in the newspapers are things that he knows are absolutely true, because he was involved in many illegal activities himself, such as carrying money out of the country, and bullying and threatening people who lad left the church. Great risk to his own life.
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Re: mike hearing discussion of him in the apartment – Marceline [Jones] tried to explain to him that coincidences can make you believe you are hearing things that you aren’t. Said it has happened to her many times. Mike replied that he is a very accurate analyst of evidence: that’s his job, and he doesn’t imagine things. Marceline made the point that he claims to know that ex-members are threatened and bullied because he was in on much of it himself, so we have to take that into consideration any time we communicate with him: i.e. no treats. He promised not to do anything to hurt us, because he has to “true to himself”. He says he has to figure out what happened to him for the last twelve years of his life, and put it all together. He will put the church into its proper perspective. He said marceline doesn’t know everything that went on, because she was kept isolated in RWV [Redwood Valley]. Marceline replied she has been married to J.J. for twenty-eight years. She asked, what does he have to gain from living at the top of a church or the back of a bus. Mike said “that’s his decision, if he wants to live like that, but he has no right to impose it on other people.” he makes a big point about how he is just worried about his family: he wants to know that they are ok. He said he felt good about his mom because he knows she is selfish to the core, and he knows she won’t take any abuse. He said he feels he can trust a selfish person to act in their own interest, but when a person claims to be unselfish, he sees it as bullshit. Everyone, he says, operates out of sef-centered motivation, and J.J. is no exception. He said he felt terrible when he saw how children were crowded into communes, that was no life for them. He said he once saw a man say he can’t be spanked because he had hemmoroids, and J.J. said “I can heal your hemorroids” and he (mike) knew that “he can”‘t heal anybody anymor ethan i can”. Marceline told him about her cancer, and mike said “it’s nice that that cleared up” but he would never acknowledge that it was a healing. Tom said something about “all that has been built here, “to which he said “just what has been built here? What is this” to which tom said “whether you like it or not, this is a large growing movement, etc..and it’s very successful” and mike said “the point is should it have been built at all?” this came about when he was
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complaining that centralization was contrary to the socialist ideal. We were maintaining that nothing would have been accomplished without centralization. He disagreed with all the decisions being made by one man. When the subject of the children’s dorm came up he said “now I am sure that the children are under the direction of the dorm, not their parents.” and Marceline said that the parents have time with their children every day, and the child can spend the night with their parents if they want to, and mike said “as long as they don’t get too attatched”. On this point he smiled, as if he had caught us in a big lie. Earlier, he had said that he got a real awakening when he took a tour of san quentin, and he found that the prison inmates had more personal freedom than temple people do. He said what cinched it was when a child pointed to a small cage and made a joke “that looks like my room.” Cartmell chose to read that as a true and revealing statement. He volunteered about John [Victor Stoen], he said “whether he stays with his parents or whether he stays over there in Guyana is irrelevant to me. I’m only interested in my family.” he mentioned reading the article in Herb Caine [Caen], and he said “Terri [Carter] said you are writing a book to answer the charges. I haven’t seen a thing.” Marciline answered that we are writing a book to explain what was done and why everything was done. He enumerated the qualities that were important to him: physical courage, integrity, individuality, and sportsmanship. Another thing he said that rang familiar was “there are problems with the system. But the way to heal the system is not to run away and build a seperate life somewhere. You have to stay in the system and use its institutions to bring changes.”
He said there were many more things he couldn’t speak to yet because he wasn’t sure about their validity yet, he was only speaking on things that he was absolutely sure of. But he was going to study those twelve years in the temple and find out exactly what happened, what was true and what wasn’t.
Complained about the way people explained to the congregation after death.
“Maxine Swaney was a good, loyal, hard working member. She was killed in a car that someone was driving after being up all night in service. In fact, she was crushed under cans of food she was moving for the temple. Did anyone say ‘good old Maxine, she was a sweet person’? No, instead a message went around that she wasn’t following fathers’
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teachings, and that’s why she’s dead.”
He made a point of praising people in the church while he was attacking J.J. while he was telling Marceline that she had been secluded from what was going on she said she had spent a lot of time in Jonestown he also told her that he admired and respected her for her work as an inspector ofo nursing homes. When he was complaining about centralization & the d of p he said that there were great people in the movement.” I believe that some of the best people in the world have worked hard to build what you have, but now its all in j.j.’s hands, nobody else has any control over it.”
Said that socialism is supposed to bring out the dignity and respect for the individual. But his individualism and dignity were crushed and destroyed repeatedly in P.C. said if there was fascism anywhere, it was in the temple.
When he brought up the thing about hot peppers shoved up somebody’s ass, marceline asked him if he had heard that from Ron and Yllonda [Yolanda] Crawford, he said “no, strangely enough those are two of the very few people i haven’t talked to.”
As he was leaving, he claimed that he had no interest in helping the conspiracy: in fact he didn’t believe there was a conspiracy because his experience in the D.A.’s office had taught him that the last thing a conspiracy would want was press coverage, because it would play into the victim’s hands. He said he was on his own, nobody cared about him and that was the way he liked it, and he was not giving any information to any body, only collecting information, because he had to study the last twelve years of his life to find out what happened to him. Tom asked what he was going to do after he thought he had put it all together, and he said “obviously i can’t do anything with it, but see that it doesn’t happen to me again.” Marceline explained that above the personal loss she felt for him, her main concern was that he not help any enemies, and he went off again on how he didn’t help anybody, none of the enemies trusted him anyway, because they all thought he was a double agent. Said he was sure he would see Marceline again before she leacves, she had his number. [Marginal handwritten note: “Obviously Carter”]
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He said that if J.J. thought he could to go a poor struggling country and use the same tactics he used here, he was wrong. He said that that was a poor, struggling country, and begging for things would not be profitable.
He said that he was convinced that his parents are happy now, but what angered him was that his dad was losing his pension. “my dad is losing a sizeable pension. Suppose, someday they decide they’ve had enough, and they want to leave there to live on their own. Do you think they could do it without any money or means of support? No way. What would happen would be that furst they’d get a couple of kicks in the ass, and then they’d be threatened and bullied, the way everyone else was.” (the retirement was in reference to his dad quitting work.) “i know exactly what’s going to happen now. My parents are going to be told that I’m a big enemy, and so on. I’d like for them to know that I love them and care for them, but i know that they’re not going to be allowed to think that. But what can I do about that?”
Said nothing was ever accomplished in P.C. meetings.
Made a long, elaborate point about the self-image of children: that children of all races deserved to have a good self-image, white, oriental, and black, not just black. Infered we gave preferential treatment to black.
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Michael Cartmell Resumé (not transcribed)