As the summer of 1978 turned into fall, the Peoples Temple legal staff that remained in the wake of Tim Stoen’s departure – lawyers Eugene Chaikin and Harriet Tropp, and support staff Bea Orsot, June Crym, Kay Nelson, and Paula Adams – began soliciting affidavits from Jonestown residents in support of its lawsuit against its former attorney. The process was not unfamiliar to Temple members. The campaigns to discredit Grace Stoen as a mother of John Victor Stoen, to dispute Tim Stoen’s claim of paternity of the child, to challenge the allegations of Ukiah newspaper reporter Kathy Hunter following her May 1978 visit to Georgetown, among others, featured sworn affidavits by Temple members in Guyana and the United States.
What was different in this campaign was that, as the affidavits catalogued the scope of Stoen’s work for the Temple, they portrayed the man who had served as chief counsel for seven years in glowing terms. For example, Tim Stoen helped Exia Marie Duckett, Helen Snell and Mark Boutte in setting insurance claims stemming from car accidents; Tim Stoen counseled Russell Moton, Jeff Carey and Joe Wilson on criminal matters; Tim Stoen represented the Temple in negotiating tax disputes, according to Temple staffers Harold Cordell, Sharon Amos and Mike Prokes. The affidavits do include scattered criticisms of the former Temple attorney for losing legal papers or not filing documents in court in a timely manner, but they are footnotes to the Temple’s central message.
And the message was simple: Tim Stoen’s involvement in the legal decisions made every day during his seven-year tenure in the Temple was so deep and so pervasive, his representation of any party in litigation against his former client constituted a conflict of interest that disqualified him from pursuing these actions.
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Editor’s note: The affidavits on this page document the legal advice and personal assistance that Tim Stoen gave to individual members of Peoples Temple. They have been arranged in alphabetical order by last name of the affiant. In instances where several versions of a single affidavit appear in these pages, the most complete – and sometimes, the only legible – copy is fully transcribed, with legible earlier drafts appended. The PDF for this page presents the same affidavits by RYMUR number.
The page opens with notes of conversations of Temple staff as to the nature of the campaign for affidavits they were working towards.
Temple lawyers reviewed and approved the affidavits, Eugene Chaikin signing off with his initials “E.C.” or “Gene”; June Crym with “J.C.”; and Harriet Tropp with “H.T.”
Minor typographical errors have been corrected throughout these affidavits. In addition, because many of the texts in this document were early drafts, the handwritten insertions and corrections by Temple attorneys have been incorporated as part of the text. Only the most significant changes in language have been noted.