National Cult Expert Pans Nelson's "Jonestown"; The First Censored People's Temple Expose Is Revealed

Let's give it to History Channel top executive Dan Davids--sensational timing, Danny!

And let's not forget his tact, oh yes. Much like his ratings-crazed news colleagues that jumped like circus canines to immediately broadcast those obscene photos of the Virginia Tech gunman. Never mind about the grieving families, or old-fashioned notions about decency.


Not even a week has passed, with yesterday being the first of a long line of memorial services and funerals for the slaughtered young people. And still, Davids just couldn't resist last night throwing at us a rerun of "Jonestown: Paradise Lost", graphic portrayal of another mass-murder.

It was just two days ago that we had a national day of mourning.



Why on earth couldn't Davids have at least waited a little while? Nothing against the docudrama per se, outside of a couple of serious flaws, the primary one being director Tim Wolochatiuk's turning to those notorious cult apologists Becky Moore and Mac McGhee for "expert advice".

The nagging question: Is this the kind of programming that we really had to have now??

Jonestown, of course, produced more victims, under entirely different circumstances. But these tragedies both share the same senseless criminal essence. Investigators of such atrocities have to uncover the causes and establish accountability, which the media is obliged to report.

We know our "safety-first" friendly gun lobby, National Rifle Association (NRA), has done whatever it takes to allow the most unhindered flow of guns to the public, even fighting to put "cop killer" armor-piercing bullets on those gun store counters. These fanatics have a stranglehold on Congress. In such an atmosphere, it's hardly surprising that former mental patients like the Va Tech killer could get hold of the weaponry to go on a murderous rampage.

It's no surprise, either, how Jim Jones was able to carry out his murderous rampage, on so many more people, albeit a dramatically different setting. The real question, still, is on accountability.

The media keeps on pretending they were on top of it, because reporters like Marshal "Pursued 'Em Early & Often" Kilduff say so. Negligent and dishonest.

California politicians and clergy--in particular Rev. John V. Moore--pretend they knew nothing until too late about this cult's nefarious nature. Negligent, spineless, and even more dishonest.

But the worst of the lot are the collection of cult apologist "New Religious Movement" scholars that infest universities across the nation, from Rev. Moore's daughter, Becky (San Diego State), to John Hall (UC-Davis), Catherine Wessinger (Loyola), Jeffery Hadden (Univ. of Virginia), and scores of others.

These people are the most insufferable, because they are hard-working shills for religious cults that ruthlessly brain-wash, enslave, and abuse others, often children. They are wonderfully adept at disingenuous arguments coached in fancy academic language designed to confuse readers with half-truths bathed in fantasy.

There's a nagging suspicion that one of them, a certain retired member of Columbia's academic community, went on something of a rampage against this blog in a rambling, fuming attack in one of the comment sections. She neglected to identify herself beyond leaving her first name: "Gillian".

But I'll wager--and she's welcome to correct me if not so--that this is the very same Gillian Lindt listed in the "Scholarly Resources" section (brimming literally with a who's who of apologists, including Godfather of Cult Promoters and vampire enthusiast, J. Gordon Melton) of the Moore/McGhee Jonestown-Wasn't-So-Bad propaganda website.

Fess up, now, Gill; did Becky and Big Mac send you?

In any event, I wish you luck in continuing to try "to make sense and figure out" the serious problem posed by cult apologists and deluded film makers who concoct twisted, sugar-coated portraits of a monstrously destructive cult called People's Temple.



Nationally recognized cult counselor Steve Hassan recently commented about Nelson's "Jonestown" film, the one you argue contributes "something enlightening" to us.

"I was deeply affected by the documentary," writes Hassan, "as it brought back in powerful detail much of what I felt back in 1978 that made me want to dedicate more time to fighting cults. I have met Grace Stoen and was supposed to testify before a hearing convened by Bob Dole in Washington DC. It was that taken over by cults and all ex-members were taken off the agenda and cult leaders were invited to speak. They pulled this off by having cult members picketing with signs like "Elect Bob Dole President, Repeal the First Amendment.

"In order to understand Tom Kinsolving's position, I recommend reading his blog at
http://JonestownApologistsAlert.blogspot.com. Basically his father Les Kinsolving investigated Jones and wrote articles to expose him way back in 1972, but because Jones was politically connected, his father's work was suppressed and minimized.

"There was a lot of evidence that Jones was very warped and corrupt from much earlier on than this film suggested. Kinsolving feels that Moore and others who were defending Jones during the days of the People's Temple show them to be very biased and I think that is true. They were painting a very idealistic picture because in the mind of members, that was why they were involved.

"The fellow who said, 'well at least we tried' is pretty sad. Most of the ex-members in the movie, with the exception of Deborah Layton and possibly Grace Stoen, did not seem to know and understand cult mind control issues. If they did, it wasn't included. It is pretty pathetic in this regard and I recommend that people write in an give their comments good and bad to the film at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/jonestown/feedback/index.html

"My problem with the Documentary is that while they did have ex-members stating facts, like 'Jones's words were blaring 24/7 at the compound at Jonestown', 'We were only sleeping 2- 3 hours a night' and 'People were afraid that they might be turned in by their family and friends if they ever said any negative about Jones (paraphrase)', the documentary didn't go into enough detail about what mind control is and how it works.



"For example, no one talks about the dual identity phenomenon, or thought-stopping, or phobia programming. In fact, my biggest gripe is to be found on the PBS web site for the show. The Teacher's Guide could be orienting students to questions like, 'What are the characteristics of a group that might be considered to be a destructive cult?', or 'If you were approached by a group to get involved, what questions should you ask to decide if this is a healthy group?' Go take a look at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/jonestown/? campaign=pbshomefeatures_1_americanexperiencejonestownthelifeanddeathofp eoplestemple_2007-04-09

There were some very interesting deleted scenes--especially the segment about Grace and Tim Stoen's son, and also Tim Carter's explanation for how he got away from the compound.

"Factually there was much left out of the documentary.

"They did dig holes and put children in them and tell them there were poisonous snakes and dangle ropes. They did do multiple rehearsals for drinking poison. Jones had taken all of their passports away. There was massive welfare fraud concerning many of the adopted children.

"Deborah Layton was a courier and transported huge sums of money to Switzerland for Jones. Ex-member Jeannie Mills and her family were mysteriously murdered in San Francisco and so much more. I think they could have done better edits to portray Ryan as the hero he really was. He actually listened to the concerned families and actually did something about the problem. Unfortunately, no politician has been willing since to put his or her life on the line to help people in cults- in the U.S or anywhere...."

It's interesting how Stan Nelson just couldn't seem to track down Steve Hassan, or any other genuine experts such as renowned social psychologist Dr. Phillip Zimbardo, to add to his film's "enlightenment." He opted instead for interviews with raging cult apologists like John Hall and Becky Moore.

What was Moore smoking when she invented this claim about the Jonestown day of mass-murder? "....Members of the Jonestown community did not see themselves as participating in a violent act," she wrote, "On the contrary, they saw themselves taking their leave quietly, peacefully, and yet as an act of protest. Jim's final recorded words demonstrate this...."

Oh, right. "Jim's final recorded words." Now there's some scholarly, bona fide testimony that perfectly complements the record of all the dead with injection marks between their shoulder blades, and the Jonestown prisoner whose so struggled that every joint had been torn out of her body, and the little children and infants who were force-fed the cyanide.

One thing is certain. Cult apologists are worthy to appear in film. Not, however, to "enlighten" us about cults. Their time would be better spent in documentaries on the clinical behavior of people trapped in denial.

As for most of our frequently shameless, self-serving media, as demonstrated by their behavior in recklessly broadcasting Va. Tech gunman's photos--a great incentive to publicity-craving copycat maniacs--they are just one rung below all this.

They'll have promoted the lie that the Jonestown massacre was inevitable long enough now that it qualifies for the Big Lie Award.

Moreover, they'll continue covering up their yellow streak from not closing down Jim Jones in 1972. None of the media, or our "Jonestown: Paradise Lost" director, or of course the mighty Lord Nelson, wants to reveal there were the devastating Examiner exposes rolling out in 1972, which one of Jones's inner circle said "drove Jones up the wall." They would have done more than that, had media editors just had any insight and backbone to allow the investigation to continue. Instead, they proceeded to serve up the cult's public relations about its "good works"; much like today, thanks to propagandist Stan. It seems only Tim Reiterman will talk about it, but then lies about "lack of substantiation."

Here is the first of the last four exposes by my father, which the Examiner editors censored, because they were so terrified by Jones's legal muscleman Tim Stoen. Decide for yourself if "substantiation" problems rest with my father, or creative writer Reiterman.






Jim Jones stands next to Tim Stoen with Grace Stoen and an unknown man holding John Victor Stoen, whom Jones claimed was his own son. image source


THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE AND MAXINE HARPE
by Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

Ukiah, Calif. September, 1972 - - The sister and former husband of the late Maxine Harpe, who was found hanging in her garage here in March of 1970 have asked the Attorney General's office to investigate the disposition of $2400 belonging to Mrs. Harpe -- which they allege was placed in a trust fund set up by the People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church.

Daniel Harpe, a local resident, and Mrs. William Key of Citrus Heights near Sacramento, in a joint letter to the Attorney General's office, asked that the People's Temple be required to release this trust fund set up for Mrs. Harpe's three children, who are now in custody of their father.

Their letter encloses a photostatic copy of a $2400 check issued by the Redwood Title Company as part of the proceeds of the sale of the Harpe's former home. The check is endorsed by Mrs. Harpe -- as well as by James Randolph, a member of the People's Temple.

Randolph is a social worker for the Mendocino County Department of Welfare who, the letter says, was "keeping company" with Mrs. Harpe at the time of her death, which the County Coroner's office ruled as suicide.

The letter also notes:

* That Mrs. Key contacted Mendocino County Assistant District Attorney Timothy O. Stoen, who told her that the People's Temple had placed the $2400 in a trust fund for the Harpe children -- to which she could not have access. (Stoen, in addition to his duties as Assistant District Attorney, is a member of the Board of Directors of the People's Temple.)

* That Harpe asked Mendocino County Sheriff Reno Bartolemei for assistance in recovering the $2400 from the People's Temple trust fund - - but that the Sheriff had replied that he didn't know anything about it; even though Harpe has since heard that the Sheriff is a trustee of this trust fund.

* That Mrs. Harpe had attended the People's Temple for more than a year prior to her death - - and that she had definitely sought advice from District Attorney Stoen.

But in a front page article published in the Ukiah Daily Journal on Sept. 21, Stoen wrote:

"The woman (Mrs. Harpe) referred to - - was not, incidentally a member of my church -- was somebody I did not know, had never talked with and certainly never counseled."

Stoen's statement in the Ukiah Daily Journal also took obvious issue with The Examiner's reporting of his relationship to and statements about the Rev. Jim Jones, charismatic pastor of the People's Temple.

"I never said at any time that I saw 40 people raised from the dead."

(But in a letter dated Sept. 12, 1972, Stoen wrote: "Jim has been the means by which more than 40 persons have been brought back from the dead this year... I have seen Jim revive people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying and all vital signs absent.")

Stoen's statement also contains the following:

"People's Temple Christian Church does not, as far as I know, advertise that Jim Jones raises people from the dead."

Yet the People's Temple's mimeographed bulletin, which was distributed at the 11 a.m. service on Sun. Sept. 10 (at which Stoen was present), specifically reported that in Los Angeles:

"Pastor Jones walked to the dead man and commanded 'Arise!' Instantly the man was resurrected before thousands there."

Stoen was not available for comment, as the District Attorney's office said that he began a five-week vacation.

Stoen's boss, District Attorney Duncan James, declined comment when asked if he had been fired.

James also declined comment on a report by The Indianapolis Star which concerned an alleged telephone threat, which was attributed to Stoen's wife, Grace.

The Indianapolis newspaper quoted Mrs. Cecil Johnson (whose daughters, Mildred and Gwin, recently left the People's Temple to return home to Indianapolis) as saying that she recognized Mrs. Stoen's voice during a 6:15 a.m. long distance telephone call last week.

Mrs. Johnson told The Star that she had been listening on an extension phone when the caller told her daughter, Gwin:

"The newspaper out here is harassing Jim. Your parents have signed something saying bad things about the Temple. You find out what they did and call me back. Get them to stop it. It's for your own safety."

Mrs. Stoen was one of some 150 People's Temple members who picketed The Examiner last week. When asked about the alleged phone call, she declined comment.

But Mrs. Stoen told a TV interviewer that her husband was an ordained minister -- which she had denied, when asked during a People's Temple service the previous Sunday in San Francisco. Her husband also told The Examiner, the following evening, that he was not ordained.

The issue arose over Stoen's admission that he had officiated at the marriage of one of the Johnson sisters, Mildred, despite the fact that Section 4100 of the Civil Code requires that in order to solemnize a marriage, the officiant must either be ordained or a judge.

Stoen told The Examiner that despite his being neither ordained nor a judge:

"I meet all the requirements of the Civil Code," but was unable at the time of this interview to state which section of the Code he had in mind.

And three days after this statement to The Examiner, Stoen's written statement appeared in the Ukiah Daily Journal, in which the Assistant District Attorney wrote:

"I am not only a duly authorized minister of my church, I have been ordained in another, and I have taken theological studies including two years of New Testament Greek."

Stoen's statement did not identify this other denomination which he claims had ordained him, nor does his statement provide any such information as to where, when, or by whom he was ordained.

[END OF FIRST OF FOUR EXPOSES CENSURED BY THE S.F. EXAMINER. STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT: "THE REINCARNATION OF JESUS CHRIST--IN UKIAH"]

PBS & Director Nelson Claim Jim Jones Cult's Ukiah Years Filled With "Social Advocacy"--While Covering Up Reported Killing & Terror

As you watch "Jonestown: Life and Death of People's Temple" on TV tomorrow night, or later on DVD, please keep in mind this caveat from American Heritage reviewer Allen Barra:

".....One in fact yearns for more information than we're given. We're never really told the infrastructure of Jones's organizations, or how the California and Guyana settlements were financed and built...."

Indeed. So many unanswered questions. But then again, director Stanley Nelson was swamped with all the "making up" he and Mrs. Nelson (script writer Marcia Smith) had to do.

People's Temple scholars: Prepare for landing on Leftest Planet PBS....On your mark, get set--FIND THOSE FICTION NUGGETS!



Jim Jones stands next to Tim Stoen with Grace Stoen and an unknown man holding John Victor Stoen, whom Jones claimed was his own son. image source


[THE FOURTH EXPOSE IN THE KINSOLVING SERIES ON THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE]

Wednesday, September 20, 1972
San Francisco Examiner
Page 1

PROBE ASKED OF PEOPLE'S TEMPLE

By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

The State Attorney General's Office has been asked to investigate the People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in Redwood Valley - as well as the conduct of the church's attorney, Timothy O. Stoen, who is also assistant district attorney of Mendocino County.

The written request was made by the Rev. Richard G. Taylor, who served as pastor of Ukiah's First Baptist Church for six years prior to his appointment in July as South Coastal Area minister for the American Baptist Churches of the West.

In his letter to Attorney General Evelle J. Younger the Rev. Mr. Taylor noted:

"In March of 1972, I requested that Sheriff Reno Bartolomie ask the Attorney General's Office to investigate the People's Temple and in particular the conduct of Timothy O. Stoen, attorney for The People's Temple and assistant district attorney of Mendocino County."

"Prior to that, I asked Mendocino County District Attorney Duncan James about Stoen's conduct with Maxine Harpe, a suicide whose funeral service I conducted."

"I knew that Mrs Harpe had been connected with the People's Temple Christian Church of Redwood Valley (near Ukiah). I had been informed by Mr. Stoen that prior to her suicide she had been engaged in counseling at the People's Temple, in which counseling Mr. Stoen had participated."

"Following Mrs. Harpe's death, her sister informed me that unidentifiable persons from People's Temple had occupied her sister's house and ransacked it."

"District Attorney James informed me that he had discussed this matter with Stoen, but no action was taken other than requesting Stoen to refrain from any further misuse of his office."

A spokesperson for the Attorney General's Office in San Francisco said that the requested investigation would be considered.

In Ukiah, District Attorney James confirmed the Rev. Taylor's statement that no action had been taken - but he otherwise declined to comment.

Mendocino Sheriff Bartolomie was not available for comment.

But Undersheriff Tim Shae firmly denied the claim of another of the People's Temple's three attorneys - that the Temple has armed guards at the sheriff's request.

Redwood Valley attorney Eugene B. Chalkin wrote the Examiner before any story on the People's Temple was published - as did 54 other Temple members. In his letter, dated September 11 - and hand delivered by Sharon Bradshaw of the Mendocino County Probation Department, Chalkin wrote:

"Our local law enforcement agency has requested that we have trained persons carry firearms, and we have reluctantly acquiesced to the sheriff's request."

But when this letter was quoted to Shea, the undersheriff replied:

"That is an absolutely untrue statement. We never requested this."

When informed that armed guards (three pistols and a shotgun) were spotted outside the People's Temple on Sunday morning September 10, Shea explained:

"That is private property and people may carry firearms on private property provided the weapons are not concealed."

Shea did not comment upon the letter of the Rev. Mr. Taylor who, while he was ministering in Eureka, served on the Mendocino County Planning Commission, the Community Center Committee, and as president of the Ukiah Ministerial Association in 1970.

In his letter, the Rev. Mr. Taylor also informed the Attorney General:

"What is of utmost concern is the atmosphere of terror created in the community by so large and aggressive a group, which effect is implemented by Stoen's civil office."

"The People's Temple, I understand, employs armed guards, contending that their pastor, the Rev. Jim Jones, has been threatened."

"From my experience, I seriously wonder if they have ever been threatened and whether instead they have not contrived such reports in order to justify armed guards at their services which attract crowds in excess of one thousand people."

"I have counseled with one paroled inmate of a California correctional institution who was sponsored on parole by People's Temple, but after he lived for some time in Redwood Valley, he planned to move away. Here again, a group of men from People's Temple held him incommunicado for four hours - leaving him terrified."

"For these reasons and because I sincerely believe more questionable activity is going on, I do request that your office conduct an investigation."

END OF EXPOSE #4


Postscript:

In the "Special Features" section on the PBS "Jonestown" film website are the video accounts of eight ex-Temple members, each clip separated by a dramatic "TURNING POINT" section in which they sensed something was "amiss" in what the director Nelson has described as a "social-activist experiment".

This fourth expose, about a desperate minister's attempt to stop Jim Jones IN 1972, was an unquestioned "Turning Point", that would bear incalculable ramifications. It would be the last published true investigation for nearly five years, thanks to the cowards on the Examiner's editorial board who caved into threats of a law suit by Tim Stoen.

All the rest of the local media, the San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury, as well as TV and radio stations, slithered beneath their news desks as well over the thought of standing up to Jim Jones. Some of them, like the late, famed Chronicle columnist Herb Caine, in spite of the Temple revelations, unforgivably promoted the lethal cult, all the way up to the slaughter in 1978.

And what does our "informative" Nelson documentary tell us about this critical episode, when the media turned ran away at the critical hour, when there was still time to stop Jones from morphing into a political Frankenstein?

Carefully stay tuned Monday night. Record it. Listen to every word, watch every scene.

You'll find nothing.

But MISSING information isn't the only thing ailing this production. Lying outright is the biggest epidemic. And the reason for much of that is the "research team" that put together all "facts" for Stanley, which you'll find in the credits, consists of Denise Stephenson--a college roommate of Becky Moore; Stephenson, you see, controls the Temple Archives at the California Historical Society. Our other sage is "Mac" McGhee, Moore's husband, who runs the cult apologist "Jonestown Institute". Together, they are a truly mind-numbing, maybe even--shudder--brain-washing fountain of ideas.

Of course, Nelson made the final decision to buy this conterfeit load of goods and mass market it. And PBS? Well, here's the "in-depth" story they offer about this cult's impact on Ukiah, as presented in their Jonestown site's "People & Events" section:

"Indiana minister Jim Jones moved his growing family and his Peoples Temple there in 1965. In California, the Peoples Temple continued to grow and develop into a political and social advocacy group. There were still religious services, but longtime members understood that those were a means to an end: social justice and racial equality."

And, pray tell, what did PBS say in its site about this media-turning-and-running-away point in its site? Did our Jonestown Institute Of Orwellian History get 'em like they did Nelson??

In a word, yeah. Actually it was an entire sentence.

"When local reporters suggested investigating Jones and the secrecy surrounding many aspects of the Peoples Temple, their editors or publishers would discourage them."

Wow.

Somebody really ought to contact PBS and suggest they stick this one in their site's "Teacher's Guide". The "ethics" section, perhaps?

One other addition they might consider. That is that HAD those craven editors at the Examiner not surrendered to Jim Jones and allowed the investigation to continue, the "rest of the story" would have seen daylight and over 900 could have had a chance. Here is one full accounting [from www.fonebone.net] of the Harpe episode that my father was on to, that has drawn from a number of post-Jonestown sources, including the book "The Cult That Died":


Maxine Bernice Harpe
Died: March 28, 1970
Hung by the neck

Maxine Harpe grew up in the small Northern California town
of Willits where she married her high school sweetheart, had
three children and settled down to a quiet life in Talmadge,
that is until 1969, when Jim Jones targeted her for
assassination. In a little more than a year, Jones and his
aides would destroy Maxine's marriage, family, career, and
love affair. They would steal her children and her life
savings and drive her to the brink of suicide.

Temple strongarm man and Mendocino County Welfare worker,
Jim Randolph, initiated a love affair with Maxine intended
to break up her marriage and bring her into the
congregation. Every relationship pursued by Jim Randolph, or
any other Temple member, required the prior approval of the
Temple's Relationship Committee and Jim Jones, who not only
issued binding judgments on proposed relationships, but also
proposed many himself. Maxine quickly fell in love with
Randolph; attesting to Jones' ability to pair villain with
victim. Spurred by Randolph's encouragement, Maxine left her
husband and moved into a Temple communal house with her
three children and Temple member Mary Candoo. During this
difficult transition period, Maxine was counseled and
encouraged by her welfare caseworker, Linda Sharon Amos, a
high ranking Temple aide who claimed to have once been a
member of Charles Manson 's gang. Amos helped Maxine secure a
job as a dental assistant at the Mendocino State Mental Hospital in
Talmadge.

Linda Amos and Jim Randolph were only two of the estimated
fifty Temple members who had infiltrated government agencies
in Mendocino County, but their function in the Welfare
Department was one of particular importance to Jim Jones.
Together with their colleagues, Amos and Randolph were able
to license several Temple operated foster care homes and
protect several additional homes that were unlicensed and
illegal.

Jones convinced his congregation that their children would
have a richer life experience living apart from their
parents. Families were disbanded and a the children, who
were now eligible for welfare assistance, were placed in
Temple foster homes. The children's welfare support checks
were signed over to the Temple and provided a substantial
portion of Jones' government subsidy. The Temple welfare
activities were not restricted to simple fraud; many Black
children were taken from the ghettos of San Francisco and
Oakland using tactics that bordered on kidnapping.

The illegal use of the Mendocino County Welfare Department
appeared to escape the attention of the Department director
Dennis Denny. Though it was impossible to ignore the Temple
foster care homes and to ignore the the Temple welfare case
workers, Denny never seemed to make the connection. Carrie
Minkler was one of the few case workers in the Welfare
Department who was not a member of the Peoples Temple. Ms.
Minkler, now retired, recalls working with Amos, Randolph
and other Temple members:

"You didn't open your mouth. You didn't mention
the Peoples Temple in our department. Even the
walls had ears. There wasn't anything that went
on in our office that Jim Jones didn't know the
next day...Peoples Temple workers went through
other workers' case files. The CIA could have
used them. The atmosphere was really tense."

It didn't take long to surround Maxine. She had a Temple
lover, a Temple house with a Temple roommate, a Temple
social worker, a Temple job with Temple co-workers, even the
attorney representing her in the divorce case was Temple
attorney Tim Stoen. The Temple was also Maxine's religion
and recreation. By March of 1970, every aspect of her life
depended upon the Peoples Temple as Jim Jones pulled the
plug on her life support system.

Three weeks before her death, Maxine received a check for
$2,493.81; her share of the divorce settlement. She signed
the check over to Randolph, whe deposited $2,000.00 in his
personal checking account and $493.81 in his savings
account, as per Jones' instructions. Once her life savings
were safely in Temple hands, everything bad happened to
Maxine at once.

Jones ordered Randolph to end his relationship with Maxine
and she was heartbroken. She was fired from her job. She had
no means of support; Randolph had all her money and wouldn't
give it back. She went to Linda Amos for financial
assistance from the Welfare
Department, but Amos not only denied her request but, in
addition, judged her a "mental depressant" and threatened to
place her children in a Temple foster care home as she was
unfit to be a parent. Her roommate, Mary Candoo, would
certainly parrot Amos' accusations.

Maxine realized she was under siege by a well organized
attacker and sought help from her attorney, Tim Stoen, but,
of course, her protest fell on deaf ears. She then turned to
the one man who seemed to be at the center of her problem.
She confronted Jones the day before her death. Jones was
furious and thoroughly humiliated Maxine in front of
Randolph and other Temple members who remember him saying,
"Why don't you just kill yourself? Get it over with!.... At
least Judas had the guts to kill himself. Others recall
Jones predicting, "That bitch (Maxine) is going to die,"
just one day before she did.

Everywhere she turned, Maxine felt an ever increasing
hostility. After the March 27th confrontation with Jones,
she was so afraid the Temple would take a more physical
approach to their harassment that she made a special request
to bring home a houseful of Temple children, whose presence,
she hoped, would discourage a physical assault. She was
wrong.

On March 28th at 1:30 AM, one of the children spending the
night at Maxine's house wandered into the garage to find
Maxine dead; hung by an electrical extension cord from the
roof rafters. A hastily scribbled suicide note on a torn
grocery bag instructed the children to phone the Temple in
Redwood Valley and wait in the house until they arrived.

Jim Jones, Jim Randolph, Patty Cartmell and Jack Beam
arrived at Maxine's house sometime before
dawn. Jones waited outside in the car while the others put
on surgical gloves and entered the house to remove any
evidence of Maxine's involvement with the People's Temple.
They untied the body, lowered it to the garage floor and
disrobed it to remove a red prayer cloth that belted the
waist. Temple members often wore these blessed prayer cloths
in concealed places on their person.

The body was then
redressed and rehung, carefully re-staging the scene for the
police investigator. The aides then ransacked the house to
locate and remove anything that might associate Maxine with
the Temple. They completed their work at approximately 8:30
AM, instructed the children to phone the police, and left.

Jones was safe in his Redwood Valley parsonage at 8:57 AM
when Deputy Sheriff-Coroner, Bruce Cochran, arrived at the
death scene in Talmadge. Twenty minutes later, Randolph,
Cartmell and Beam returned to the house and informed Deputy
Cochran that the children had phoned them but that they
really didn't know why as they had never met the dead woman.
Cartmell convinced Deputy Cochran that she should remove the
children from such a gruesome scene, and consequently, he
never got the opportunity to question the only eyewitnesses.
One of the children, nine year old Tommy Ijames, would later
recall the event:

"The children called the church before they
called the police, and they came very early in
the morning. They came in there and took all the
pictures of Jim Jones out. .. (prayer) cloths
they took from her, pulled her down
off the (rafter) and took them off her waist,
anything that had to do with the church... Jim
(Jones), he stayed in the car and didn't come
out... They pulled her down and they took the
clothes off her... They were taking all the...
little pamphlets of Jim Jones, and then (after
the coroner arrived) they acted like they didn't
know her...."

The Temple death squad had left Maxine's house twenty
minutes before the coroner arrived and returned just twenty
minutes after he arrived. They allowed him enough time to
assume that he was the first adult on the scene, but not
enough time to question the children, who were quickly
transported away. Such impeccable timing was typical of
Temple operations. Like the other agencies in Mendocino
County, Jones had spies in the Sheriff's office who informed
him of their every move.

Deputy Cochran's subsequent investigation proceeded exactly
as Jones had planned. It was Cochran's job to be suspicious
and he was. There was the unusual placement of a trunk under
Maxine's feet and the unexplained presence of children and
adults, all of whom were members of the Peoples Temple. But
eventually his investigation was to center on Maxine's
financial transactions just prior to her death. Cochran
contacted Jim Randolph's boss, Welfare Director, Dennis
Denny, questioning the legality of a welfare worker
depositing a welfare recipient' check
in his personal account; especially when that same welfare
worker was present at the scene of the recipient's apparent
suicide just three weeks later.

Denny defended Randolph's
actions and assured Cochran that there was no reason to
suspect foul play or improper conduct, but Cochran was not
satisfied. He pressured Randolph for a deposition regarding
his role in Maxine's finances and reluctantly he complied.
In a sworn statement, Randolph told the police that a few
weeks after receiving the money, he transferred $2,000.00
from his savings account to Temple treasurer, Eva Pugh, to
set up a trust fund for Maxine's children. He held the
remaining $493.81 until three days after Maxine's death when
he added that to the fund as well.

If Randolph's statement
is to be believed it would seem that he helped establish a
fund for Maxine's children before herdeath. Randolph
completed the deposition but refused to sign it until
Assistant District Attorney and Peoples Temple attorney Tim
Stoen had the opportunity to review the statement. Randolph
stalled, Stoen stalled, and the statement was never signed.

It was Tim Stoen who finally convinced Cochran to drop the
investigation when he informed him that he (Stoen) was co-
trustee of the children's fund, along with, of all people,
Cochran's boss, Sheriff Reno Bartolmei. Also, to disguise
their true involvement, the Peoples Temple had contributed
an additional $470.00 to the fund, that together with the
initial money and the accumulated bank interest, totaled
$3,000.00 for the three children. Linda Amos, Maxine's
welfare case worker, buttressed Stoen's statements with her
volunteered testimony as to Maxine's depressed state of mind
just prior to what certainly must have
been her suicide. Cochran's investigation quickly lost
momentum. Maxine's death was declared a suicide. The case
was closed and, despite future pleas from ex-Temple members
and the press, it was never reopened.

Richard Taylor, a local Baptist minister who knew Maxine
Harpe, was not satisfied with the superficial investigation
into what he believed as murder. Aware that the Temple
controlled most of Mendocino County, Taylor presented his
arguments in a long letter he sent to the state attorney
general's office in which he asked the state to investigate
Jim Jones' role in Maxine Harpe's death. Taylor was invited
to present his evidence to a deputy in the attorney
general's office but when he appeared to testify in
Sacramento, his notes on Jones were confiscated and he was
told that there would be no investigation due to
"insufficient evidence."

Immediately upon his return to
Ukiah, Taylor and his wife were deluged with threatening
phone calls that they believed "originated from the People's
Temple." Intimidated and frightened, the minister dropped
all attempts to prove that Jim Jones had ordered Maxine
Harpe's death.

Randolph may have avoided signing a statement for the police
but he did not avoid signing a blank statement for Jim
Jones. It wasn't long before he realized his mistake when
Jones presented him with a copy of his previously signed
blank statement which was now a typed confession to the
murder of Maxine Harpe. Only then did he understand why
Jones had instructed him to deposit Maxine's money in his
personal bank account and why he insisted Randolph be
present at the scene of the crime.

The police already
suspected him, and their suspicion, along with the signed
confession,
would certainly convict him of murder; especially since the
foreman of the Mendocino Grand Jury, who would bring down
the indictment, was none other than Jim Jones. Randolph was
promoted to the Angels and his only way out was a lifetime
sentence in prison. To further implicate him in Maxine's
death, Jones called him in front of a closed meeting of the
Temple's Planning Commission and, with a dozen witnesses
present, he accused Randolph of killing Maxine. He shouted,
"You know you did it (killed Maxine)!" But for all of
Jones's badgering, Randolph said nothing in his own defense.

Rumors of the Temple's involvement in the death of Maxine
Harpe continued to circulate in the press. Two and a half
years later, Lester Kinsolving penned a series of articles
in the San Francisco Examiner, in which he accused Temple
attorney Tim Stoen of wrongdoing in his counseling of Maxine
just prior to her alleged suicide. Stoen refuted the charges
in a statement that appeared in the Ukiah Daily Journal,
dated September 21, 1972, in which he said:

"The woman referred to (who was not,
incidentally, a member of my church) was
somebody I did not know, had never talked with,
and certainly had never counseled."

Stoen could not have forgotten that he represented Maxine in
her divorce or that he was a custodian of the fund for her
children or was instrumental in suppressing the coroner's
investigation into her death. He must have felt extremely
threatened to publicly report such a blatant, bold-faced
lie.

Jones profited from Maxine's death in several ways. He
gained a new Angel; a competent, intelligent slave, Jim
Randolph. He received the $3,000.00 trust fund and the three
children who, following their mother's funeral, were placed
in Temple foster homes and enrolled in the welfare system.
Their welfare support checks were signed over to the Temple
that profited at least $10,000.00 from overcharging the
welfare system and under-caring for the children.

In 1977, a special prosecution unit of the San Francisco
District Attorney's Office, looking into allegations of
illegal activities in the Peoples Temple, cited what their
subsequent report termed "Welfare Diversion," but rather
than pursue the investigation, the DA's office referred the
matter to the city's Department of Social Services and the
City Comptroller's Office with the recommendation that any
evidence that surfaced should be submitted to the DA's
welfare fraud expert, Don Didler. Didler, following the lead
of Mendocino County's Welfare Director, Dennis Denny, did
absolutely nothing. Together, Didler and Denny were very
effective in protecting the Temple's federal welfare
subsidy.

In retrospect, Maxine Harpe's story was a study in microcosm
of the events that would occur some eight years later in
Jonestown, Guyana.

In both cases, the victims were
systematically stripped of all self-esteem and lured into a
total dependence on Jim Jones, who, at the proper time,
denied them everything. Suicide appeared to be the best, if
not the only, alternative. It will never be known whether
Maxine's death was a suicide or a murder. She may or may not
have actually wrapped the wire around her neck, just as the
residents of Jonestown may or may not have voluntarily taken
poison; regardless, there is no doubt that Jim Jones killed
them all.

The Maxine Harpe death is but one of a half-dozen unsolved killings connected to People's Temple during its California phase. Director Nelson, with the invaluable assistance of his "Jonestown Institute," skillfully buried these bodies in his film, as if they just don't count.

But Nelson has much company in Obfuscation & Coverup, Inc. Too many of today's reporters are every bit as gullible as when they gave the People's Temple so much priceless promotion in its assent. Sacramento Bee reporter Jennifer Garza, for instance. Her 25th Jonestown Anniversary piece "What Was The Lure?" provided a fine sounding board for our two lively apologists, Moore and McGhee, just as Nelson does in featuring them as film narrators.

"People joined [the cult] because that's where their families went," claimed McGhee. "And in the end, they stayed because that's where their families were."

That's an interesting contrast to what defectors Grace Stoen, Jeannie Mills, and others said what "encouraged" cult members to remain captive: Anyone who tried to leave was promised they'd be murdered.

Maybe that's what Nelson really means whenever he crows about this notion of Jim Jones's fulfilling those "promises."

Our astute reporter Garza allows Becky Moore to unleash a blast of apologist methane. Garza prefaces this with the news that "many religious scholars are reluctant to describe People's Temple as a cult."

Religious scholars--such as our very own Prof. Moore.

"That's a term we use to describe religious groups we don't like," Moore says. "But it's so loaded with negative connotations. If we label something a cult, then we don't make any effort to understand it." But of course. And that's just why the very accomodating Nelson gave Becky the on-camera cue to enlighten viewers that the People's Temple, in fact, was nothing more than a "Black Church." (Yes, some "issues"...but surely none egregious enough--like the Harpe case--to apply the "c" word.)

Finally, Garza allows her this rosy seal of approval: "Moore adds there are many people who still praise People's Temple and much of the work the church did."

Praise be, indeed. Now let our public somehow survive the effects of such stupefying media messages.


NEXT POSTING: A SURPRISE "REST OF THE (CENSORED) STORY".

Illegal Marriages, Welfare Fraud, and More Phony Faith Healings--3rd 1972 People's Temple Expose

Former People's Temple Enforcer Tim Stoen during the deadly cult's heyday--who is now amazingly once again an appointed Mendocino County Deputy District Attorney

Deceitful. Delusional. The same, sad baldfaced lies.

The mountain of specious media accounts of the People's Temple is increasing exponentially these days, as we count down to April 9th's big PBS premiere of cult apologist director Stanley Nelson's "Jonestown" fantasy epic. This film is a textbook example in perverting the concept of a documentary, which is supposed to emphasize or express things "as perceived without distortion of personal feelings, insertion of fictional matter, or interpretation."

Lord Nelson's Ode to Jones--that is, before he suddenly turned Darth Vader in Guyana---is some piece of work. "Jim Jones promised the people who joined People's Temple they would be part of this social-action experiment," said Nelson, in yet another of his incredible interviews, with Inside Bay Area reporter Susan Young.

An experiment that featured the following "social-action experiments": Forced labor. Torturing five year-olds with cattle prods. Extortion. Welfare fraud. Malnutrition. Death threats. "For a long time," says the director, "he really delivered on that promise."

Reporter Young, like nearly all the rest of the media horde that have been seduced by Nelson's trick photography, lead off her story with this "promise-delivering" image:

"The first thing that strikes you are the filmed images of happy children, a riotous rainbow of races. Towheaded boys with Afro-haired girls, all holding hands, singing, giggling."

The more than lamentable thing about the stupidity of falling for this cult-staged film is the position that the children's demise--which Young does note in the next paragraph--was inevitable. Had the California media just had the guts to pursue Jones, rather than embrace him, there wouldn't have been a Jonestown. Because this cult would have had a merciful, just demise, without loss of life, long before that.

In this, the third installment of my father's expose series, the "social-action" unmasked here included an illegal Temple marriage, welfare fraud, and phony faith healing, in Indianapolis. It centers around a very suspect asst. Mendecino D.A. named Tim Stoen. Stoen, while he did manage to apologize in recent years to my father for some of the dirty work he did on behalf of Jones, still sadly manifests much of the deceit of many of the cult apologists ("religious scholars", they call themselves).

The way Stoen still clings to the delusion, and won't come clean, makes one wonder if he's been baptized in the same ethics cesspool as Stanley Nelson. Here is what Stoen told the Mendocino Coast Christian Men's Ministry in a "testimony" on his life story last February 24:

"....Joined People's Temple in 1970 to bring about a model utopia based on total economic and racial equality; was attorney for the People's Temple and Jim Jones from 1970 to 1977, becoming a socialist; helped establish Jonestown in 1973; lived there in 1977 with my five-year old son, John Victor, working in a sawmill: left the movement on a trip to the U.S. upon discovering Jones's abuses...."

Is the re-appointed Asst. Mendocino District Attorney, who never apologized for conspiring with Jones to murder my father or rig San Francisco's 1975 municipal elections, SERIOUS??

We're supposed to actually swallow the yarn that, as one of the most powerful members of Jones's inner circle (which he also denied publicly), for all those years from 1970 onward, while kids were being tortured and people were being extorted and threatened--Tim didn't have a clue?

Another full-blown symptom of a Full-Nelson chokehold on reality, something clearly not restricted to confused film makers in this Jonestown Fable Forest.

Interestingly enough, director Nelson has censored Stoen's critical role as Temple muscleman. Jim Jones' top enforcer has been let off the hook. Yet another twisted piece of this cult apologist revisionist wonder, to add to the censoring of this article's publication sparking Jones and Stoen to send up a picket line of cultists around the Examiner building that day.

You may just see the unlabeled footage in the film, however!



Tuesday, September 19, 1972
San Francisco Examiner

D.A. AIDE OFFICIATES FOR MINOR BRIDE
By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer


REDWOOD VALLEY - Mendocino County's assistant district attorney - who has written that his pastor, the Rev. Jim Jones has raised 40 people from the dead - has confirmed reports that he himself has solemnized the marriage of a minor girl who joined his church.

Timothy O. Stoen, who in addition to his duties as assistant DA, is attorney for and board member of Pastor Jones's People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in this hamlet near Ukiah, admitted he is not an ordained clergyman.

When asked by what authority he had officiated at the marriage of Mildred "Mickie" Johnson (who has now returned to her family in Indianapolis), Stoen contended:

"I meet all the requirements of the State Civil Code."

When asked which section of the state code permits an attorney (rather than a judge) to solemnize marriages, Stoen replied:

"I'll have to ask you to let me go back and check that."

The issue arose in a legal affidavit filed yesterday in Indianapolis by Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Johnson.

The Johnsons, former parishioners of the Rev. Mr. Jones when he was a pastor of the Indianapolis People's temple, charged that after Stoen married their daughter (to a man identified only as "Junius"), she was placed on the welfare rolls of Mendocino County.


Forced Donation


The Johnsons also charged that Mildred was obliged to give her monthly welfare check of $95 to The People's Temple - and that in August of 1971, Stoen had written them for permission to appoint a legal guardian for their other daughter, Gwin, age 18.

(The two girls were among former parishioners - including a number of teenagers - who followed the charismatic prophet-pastor, who left Indiana for California in 1965.)

Stoen confirmed that he had written the Johnsons for such permission. But he said that he had not known the Rev. Mr. Jones in 1965, when the Johnson affidavit says:

"Jones said that the world would end on July 16, 1967, and encouraged the congregation here to pool their money and follow him to California - where he promised they would find a place where only they would be safe from this impending disaster."


Curious visitors


The Johnson affidavit also charges that the Rev. Mr. Jones:

"Uses people to visit potential church members, noting anything personal in the house, like addresses on letters, types of medicine in the medicine cabinet, or pictures of relatives.

"Then, when they show up in church, he tells them things about their ailments and the kinds of pills they take."

When asked to comment on this charge, Stoen explained:

"I don't remember anything like this. I believe Jim's gift is authentic - or as he said in his sermon yesterday, he has paranormal gifts."

On Sunday, Sept. 10, at 11:15 p.m. (following this writer's first visit to a People's Temple service in Redwood valley), Stoen telephoned long distance to say among other things:

"I suppose you've heard a rumor that Jim Jones was run out of Indianapolis for faith healing?"

When asked to elaborate, Stoen explained:

"Well, I've seen the story in the Indianapolis Star."

What information did this Star story contain?

"I don't remember the details," replied the assistant district attorney.


Fast Trip


Yet immediately after the Indianapolis Star featured one of two stories about Prophet Jones and his faith healing, Stoen traveled from California to Indianapolis to confer with Dr. Jeanette P. Riley of the Indiana State Board of Psychology Examiners, according to Dr. Reilly.

When asked about this, Stoen explained that he made the trip but that Dr. Reilly had sent him to a meeting of the board - which had announced that it intended to investigate the Rev. Mr. Jones for allegedly claiming to heal psychosomatic diseases.

Yet the Indiana State Board took no action, as Jones had not used the title of psychologist.


No Case


"I explained to the board and to Indiana's Attorney General that Jim had done no wrong,"<>"and the Attorney General said he can come back anytime, as there is no case."

The announcement of the possible investigation by the state board came after the Indianapolis Star reported that on Oct. 13, 1971, the Rev. Mr. Jones told the congregation of the People's Temple of Indianapolis:

"With over 4000 members of our California Church, we haven't had a death yet!"

Star reporter Byron Wells, an eyewitness at the visiting pastor's afternoon and evening services that day, reported that at the afternoon service a woman was ordered to leave the auditorium in order that she "pass a cancer."


Similarity


Wells reported that when the woman returned, her alleged cancer was being carried about by an attendant - although the Rev. Mr. Jones warned everyone not to get too close. He also reported a striking similarity between those healed in the afternoon and those healed that evening.

The Star also reported that the Rev. Mr. Jones subsequently refused requests to allow that the alleged cancer be analyzed.

He was reported as explaining that he had "no objections," but that he has to abide with the wishes of his church leaders "not to become involved in more publicity."

The Rev. Mr. Jones was also reported as having said that he was afraid that the cancerous tissue would be switched on him in a deliberate attempt to discredit his power.


Dislikes Publicity


"I've done more than any other faith healer," he was reported as explaining, "that's why I don't want any more publicity, either favorable or unfavorable."

Apparently, the Rev. Mr. Jones, for all his charismatic effect, has not been able to prevail on his devoted flock in this regard. For this past weekend, when he was in San Francisco for special services at Benjamin Franklin Junior High School Auditorium, pamphlets were distributed throughout downtown San Francisco by his followers. These pamphlets advertised:

"PASTOR JIM JONES... Incredible!...Miraculous... Amazing!... The Most Unique Prophetic Healing Service You've Ever Witnessed!... Behold The Word Made Incarnate In Your Midst!"


END OF EXPOSE #3


Postscript: In light of the Indianapolis Star's admirable record in being the first actual newspaper to expose the fraudulent cult--covered up, AGAIN, by "Honest Stan's" film--I appealed to them not to fall down at his feet like the rest of the media. I sent this message:

To: INDIANAPOLIS STAR

Mr. Ryerson
Ms. Fine
Ms. Green
Ms. Thomas
Mr. Lloyd

I'm astonished--and disgusted--that of all newspapers in the nation, the Indianapolis Star, would continue lying down in the muck of denial and dishonesty regarding Jim Jones.

Yes, lamentably a native demon seed son he was. Yet WHY on earth wouldn't the Star want to take some credit in it's proud history of having their brave reporters Bryron Wells and Carolyn Pickering be the first in the nation to investigate the People's Temple?

You choose not to say ONE SINGLE WORD about your former reporters' work to stop Jones. Instead, readers are served up a March 16 reprint of a disingenuous, creme puff L.A. Times review of Stanley Nelson's insidious cult apologist film, "Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple."

If there is one shred of integrity at that paper, perhaps you might dispense with the "we just don't have the space" excuse and allow the people of Indianapolis to read the following excerpt (which was submitted today to two of your open forum sections):

October, 1971. Indianapolis, In.

"Church Filled To See 'Cures' By Self-Proclaimed 'Prophet of God'" was the first Jim Jones exposé ever published. Indianapolis Star reporter Bryon C. Wells had attended afternoon and evening "miracle healing services" at People's Temple in downtown Indianapolis. There he heard Jones proclaim, "With over 4,000 members of our California church, we haven't had a death yet!...I am a prophet of God and I can cure both the illness of your body, as well as the illness of your mind."

Wells noted that "people who were called upon in the evening to be cured had a striking resemblance to some who were called earlier in the day." Wells's second account, "State Psychology Board to Eye 'Prophet' Jones" reported that, for the first time, Jones would be investigated.

The State Board of Psychology Examiners would decide whether they could prosecute Jones for practicing psychiatry without a license, since he claimed he could cure psychosomatic diseases. After careful scrutiny they concluded that Jones was protected under the First Amendment, and state law forbid prosecuting "faith healers."

Wells's first exposé provoked a deluge of furious letters and phone calls to the Star from Temple members. Jones, meanwhile, claimed during services that he received 23 phone calls from Indianapolis "hatemongers." Nine months later, Wells received an alarming letter from Indianapolis resident Georgia Johnson. Once one of Jones's earliest followers, she was now a concerned mother trying to get her two young daughters to return home from the Temple's other base in Redwood Valley, California. Wells passed it onto the city editor, who in turn handed it to Carolyn Pickering, the Star's leading investigative reporter.

Although Pickering was a bit apprehensive when reading Georgia Johnson's long-winded letter, she nevertheless set up an interview. Her month-long full-time investigation into People's Temple had begun.

August, 1972.

"Dear Tom", wrote Pickering to Executive Editor Tom Eastham of the San Francisco Examiner. "The Star is contemplating sending me out to your grand and glorious state to probe into a religious cult operation in Redwood Valley, near Ukiah...called People's Temple...

"...The fraud who conducts this holy organization is the Rev. James W. Jones who once had a small church here...If there is someone on your staff who might have some knowledge of this bunch, or could provide some entrees to state officials who might be interested, I'd appreciate it."

Eastham told Pickering that he already had a reporter, the Rev. Lester Kinsolving, investigating Jones. Kinsolving, who wrote a weekly column entitled "Inside Religion", had contacted Ukiah Daily Journal editor George Hunter on February 7th of that year after hearing reports that the People's Temple charismatic pastor was attracting thousands to his Sunday services. Four days later, Examiner editor Ed Dooley received a letter from Timothy Stoen, whose letterhead identified him only as "Attorney at Law". Stoen, Jones's point man, sang the Temple praises.

It was obvious Hunter dutifully reported Kinsolving's phone call to Stoen. Stoen elaborated on a long list of achievements, such as Jones's past appointments to various positions of public trust, "including Foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury...and that Jones was "the most compassionate, fearless, and honest person I know of..."

After being briefed by Eastham, Kinsolving contacted Pickering and the two reporters began collaborating.

---"Madman In Our Midst"
by Tom and
Kathleen Kinsolving

Giving Nelson's fraudulent film a thumbs up is not just a disgraceful disregard of your own newpaper's work (which, unlike the cowardly Examiner, stood up to Jim Jones in the early 70's).

No, it just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE. So will the Star's current publisher and editors explain this to their readers? Or do they think they deserve to keep getting that old mushroom treatment of being kept in the dark and fed manure?

And their response, ladies and gentlemen?

According to "Head Honcho" Dennis Ryerson: "....the chapter of the Jones story that was Indianapolis was so many years ago that the people involved on the staff are no longer here, and with them, went institutional memory."

As did, obviously, the last vestiges of Star integrity.

STAY TUNED FOR EXPOSE #4, CONCERNING THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF TEMPLE MEMBER MAXINE HARPE, WHO WAS BILKED OUT OF HER LIFE SAVINGS.

Jim Jones 1972 "God Almighty!" Spectacle--and a Monday Morning Quarterback Reporter's Desperate Derision

"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns..."
--Rev. Jim Jones, addressing his ushers at S.F. church service
(from Les Kinsolving's second Examiner expose)

In the really competitive professions, such as journalism, humanity's most revealing foibles frequently emerge in ruthlessly large doses. In the high stakes pay-off of exclusively owning the "Big Story", some reporters will do almost anything, even steal and manufacture information--as we've seen in recent scandals.

Mr. Tim Reiterman, famed author of the seminal People's Temple book "Raven", was an Examiner reporter who nearly lost his life down at Jonestown--and no doubt scores kudos for his courage there.

There's just one little problem with our intrepid Mister R: Like Field Marshall Kilduff (who STILL has visions of grandeur concerning the "first expose" of Jones)--he got a permanent case of Glory Hunger. And with this unfortunate disorder, Reiterman created his own very, very dishonest versions about the actual first exposes that would have obliterated Jones, had his own gutless excuse for a newspaper just stood up to the plate and STAYED THERE.

Reiterman's "Raven" is definitely a good read. Most of it actually sticks to the facts, too--except, however, when you arrive at around page 211. That's when the manure hits the turbo jets. Reiterman makes an incredible claim about my father, alleging that his "investigation" (Reiterman's quotes) was partially based on a personal grievance against the by-now clearly fraudulent and dangerous cult leader, Jim Jones.

Keep holding your nose. He's got a few shovel loads more.

Reiterman further maintains the exposes, that featured eyewitness and sworn testimony, "were not well substantiated."

Yes, some reporters will do anything to own the Big Story, it seems. But he is not alone, as we'll see.

Presented here is part two of more of the "unsubstantiated" story that would have brought down Jim Jones six years before the slaughter, had it only not been for journalistic cowardice.

And journalistic dishonesty.



'HEALING' PROPHET HAILED AS GOD AT S.F. REVIVAL
By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

[Monday, Sept. 18, 1972]

"I know that Pastor Jim Jones is God Almighty himself!" cried one of the more than 1000 people who overflowed the auditorium of Benjamin Franklin Junior High School on Geary Boulevard yesterday morning and Saturday night.

"You say I am God Almighty?" asked the Rev. Mr. Jones, the charismatic pastor-prophet of the People's Temple Christian (Disciples) Church near Ukiah, who was holding special services in San Francisco this weekend.

"Yes, you are!" shrieked the unidentified but obviously ecstatic woman, as the audience clapped or waved their arms and shouted approval at Sunday services.

Busing

The Rev. Mr. Jones has been consistently attracting congregations of more than 1000 people - who travel by the fleet of ex-Greyhound buses from as far away as Los Angeles and Seattle to his home in Redwood Valley, seven miles north of Ukiah, and to services such as those this weekend in San Francisco.

Among those attracted is the assistant district attorney of Mendocino County, Timothy O. Stoen, who has affirmed in writing that the Rev. Mr. Jones has raised 40 people from the dead.

Jones arrived in California in 1965, accompanied by 165 of his parishioners from the People's Temple of Indianapolis, where he served as pastor.

He is a darkly handsome, 41 year old, part-Cherokee who is an ordained minister of 1.9 million member the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church.

Yesterday as he conducted services, he was clad in a white turtleneck sweater, a pulpit gown, and dark glasses. He was seated on a cushion-covered stool behind the podium - which is an apparent necessity given the five and six-hour length of his services.

Reply

He reflected only momentarily upon the lady's enthusiastic affirmation of his divinity before replying:

"What do you mean by that? If you believe I am a son of God in that I am filled with love, I can accept that. I won't knock what works for you - but I don't want to be interpreted as the creator of the universe."

Then he added, gently:

"If you say 'He is God,' some people will think you are nuts. They can't relate. I'm glad you were healed, but I'm really only a messenger of God....I have a paranormal ability in healing."

The Rev. Mr. Jones had just completed what were said to be two resuscitations of parishioners who had either fainted or gone into catatonic stiffenings in the general excitement.

In each case, he stopped in the middle of a sentence, raced from the stage to the audience and laid hands upon the stiffened congregant.

Acclaim

After some 30 seconds, the audible tension of the multitude broke as the Prophet lifted up each prostrate figure - to thunderous applause.

Another unidentified woman began leaping wildly and screeching hallelujahs - while an even more elderly woman commenced a frenzied hopping in a corner down stage right.

Utilizing the full force of the microphone to project his generally soothing voice above this ecstatic din, the Rev. Mr. Jones smilingly explained:

43rd Time

"You'll have to understand - she was given up to die; they said she'd never be able to move again....Such experiences are not at all uncommon to us. That's the 43rd time this has happened. I just said: 'I love you, God loves you, come back to us.' The registered nurses around her said it was so."

These R.N.s were neither introduced nor even identified, however. They were hardly even apparent, given the number of large men who surrounded the reported resurrection.

None of these security guards ("ushers") was spotted carrying firearms, however - in contrast to last Sunday's service in Redwood Valley, where an Examiner photographer spotted three holstered pistols (one a .357 magnum) and a shotgun.

"You all complied with my wishes and didn't bring guns, even though you are afraid for me," congratulated the Rev. Mr. Jones.

Yesterday morning's services opened with two hymns, followed by glowing testimonials from 3 men who recalled how The Prophet had either healed them or in one case saved them from air crash and false arrest for transporting narcotics.

Healing

Then Mrs. Jones, a trim blonde, sang a song entitled "My Black Baby," with the Jones' adopted black son, a handsome boy of 14, standing at his mother's feet at stage edge while the audience loudly applauded. (The boy had been extensively featured in last week's sermon by his father in Redwood Valley, as well.)

Then The Prophet made everyone hold hands (after an initial embrace). With the organ providing a tremolo background, he began a series of trance-like revelations about various people's names, relatives, addresses, and maladies. These assorted ills were all pronounced cured by both healed and healer - to further applause.

Among a vast number of subjects discussed by the Rev. Mr. Jones in his two-hour extemporaneous sermon was the desirability of cooperation and fellowship with other denominations.

He did note in this connection that this is sometimes difficult, however.

"We tried to fellowship with one pastor in this area - who actually propositioned two of our young choirgirls! And when I confronted him about this, he replied: "Wasn't David a man after God's heart?"

(King David, in the second Book of Samuel, seduced Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah the Hittite, whom David ordered killed after Bathsheba became pregnant.)

Vagueness

But this San Francisco pastor was not identified by the Rev. Mr. Jones. Nor were several assistants and parishioners able to identify the man.

The prophet's offertory calls are (comparatively) low key. He told the mammoth congregation that the elders had informed him that Saturday evening's collection was "light."

Later in yesterday's service he applied this very same (unspecific) description to the Sunday's collection - while one week ago, the Rev. Mr. Jones described the current financial condition of the People's temple as "bleak."

(Receipts for the fiscal year ending this June 30 are listed by attorney Stoen at $396,000.)


END--PEOPLE'S TEMPLE EXPOSE #2

[Our next expose, which will return to the subject of another familiar "Tim"--Stoen, the Cult enforcer who carried out illegal marriages and oversaw Jones's welfare fraud operations. More than enough to put that cult out of business--NEVER MENTIONED IN STANLEY NELSON'S APOLOGIST FILM. Stay tuned.]

Postscript: To Reiterman's credit, the "truth" section of his book was refreshing, citing the fact that after my father's exposes, "....the Examiner quit the story. A nobody named Jim Jones had worn down a big San Francisco daily......Meanwhile, the Temple set sights on Kinsolving as a declared enemy. At one strategy session, an overzealous church leader suggested that he be kidnapped, stuffed in a bag, then beaten or 'eliminated'."

Though never eliminated, his house--my house--was burglarized by Temple members.

"Raising The Dead"?....Gun-toting "Guardians"? Ignored Warnings of a Murderous Cult--6 Years Before Jonestown

[caption] "REV. JIM JONES, THE PROPHET--ONE WOMAN SAID HE IS GOD ALMIGHTY"
Disciples Church pastor here from Ukiah to conduct special services

Say hello to our little friend.

This is the photograph of the cult monstrosity that greeted the world on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner in September, 1972, on the second day of my father's series of exposés which lit up a bonfire of dire warnings, all ignored then, with tragic results. The establishment has dismissed or outright erased the record--up until today.

At the close of this first expose, hold your breath--and nose--for one of the
most glaring examples of this syndrome of self-serving media misinformation. Now, for the first time in almost 35 years, read what the people of California found out that Sunday morning about a crazed wolf in clerical garb.

Read through with this thought: Six long years lay ahead to rescue those people from the slaughter in the jungle. Think of the foster children illegally taken, tortured, and murdered, while officials such as San Francisco politician Willie Brown praised, cheered, and supported -- all the way to the massacre -- the Stalinist beast Jones.

The other seven exposes will make your hair static electric with outrage, enough that you should pick up your cell phone, call the local PBS station, and demand to know why they are broadcasting Stanley Nelson's cult apologist propaganda film, "Jonestown: Life and Death of People's Temple."

May these once "buried" exposes by a courageous reporter--who Jim Jones and his Temple Enforcer Tim Stoen plotted to murder--finally provide the complete, genuine history of the People's Temple cult, at long last.

And now, Part One....


THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD

By Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

[September 17, 1972 Page 1]

REDWOOD VALLEY ---- A man they call The Prophet is attracting extraordinary crowds from extraordinary distances to his People’s Temple Christian (Disciples) Church in this Mendocino County hamlet.

His followers say he can raise the dead.

The PTC (D) Church’s mimeographed newsletter recently described the resurrection of a Los Angeles man.

And one director of the Temple claims that The Prophet has returned life to “more than 40 persons…..people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying, and all vital signs absent.”

His congregations, mostly black, believe The Prophet possesses other, equally amazing powers. They come from all over the West—from as far away as San Francisco, Seattle and Los Angeles — to the Temple, 7 miles north of Ukiah.

The weekend flock is gathered by the Temple’s fleet of 11 ex-Greyhound buses for services that often run from 11 in the morning until 11 at night, broken only for communal meals prepared by Temple cooks. Congregations number over a thousand and attendance at weekly services is similarly impressive.

The Prophet (or Prophet of God, as he prefers to call himself) is the Rev. Jim Jones, 41, the part-Cherokee former pastor of the People’s Temple Christian Church in Indianapolis.

Utopian Community

So powerful was the appeal of The Prophet’s ministry reportedly designed to create a Utopian community along the lines of the early Christian church that when he decided to move west seven years ago, a goodly number of his Indianapolis congregation came along.

No less than 165 Indianapolis Temple-ites—including several teenagers—moved to Redwood Valley with the Rev. Mr. Jones in 1965. The Temple’s total participating memberships today is 4,711, according to one of its directors.

“Grand total income” is said to have been $396,000 for the year ending June 30, 1972, while “grand total paid out” is put at $343,000. Permanent funds: $260,000.

The resurrection cited in the Temple newsletter transpired inside an ex-Christian Science Church building in Los Angeles—-the latest in a series of PTC (D) Church real estate transactions. And the Temple is presently in final stages of acquiring an auditorium to house the proposed San Francisco People’s Temple—just across Geary Boulevard from the Japanese Trade Center.

Other holdings: A 40-acre children’s home, 3 convalescent centers, and 3 college dormitories. Other operations: A heroin rehabilitation center and, in the words of one of the Temple’s three attorneys, “our own welfare system.”

The Rev. Mr. Jones’s influence in the Ukiah area is apparently just as strong as his impact on the congregations who jam his temple (with its 41-foot indoor swimming pool) to overflowing. Not only is The Prophet a part-time teacher in the local school system, he has also served as foreman of the Mendocino County Grand Jury.

He has stated to his flock:

“We have won over the sheriff’s office and the police department.”

He has certainly won over the assistant prosecuting attorney of Mendocino County, Timothy O. Stoen-—who is one of the Rev. Mr. Jones’s five assistants, a member of the Temple’s board of directors—-the man who claims “over 40” resurrections for The Prophet.

But the Rev. Mr. Jones has not won the hearts of all the locals. Four years ago, the Ukiah Daily Journal carried a story bannered, “Local Group Suffers Terror in the Night.”

It described menacing phone calls to The Prophet in the middle of the night—sometimes featuring the sound of heavy breathing, sometimes outright threats: “Get out of town if you don’t want to get blown out of your classroom window.”

Highly Respected

A large newspaper ad (8 columns, nearly full page) appeared in the Journal a month later as “an open letter to Rev. Jones, his family and his church members,” deploring “the unseemly words and actions of a small segment of this community.”

It pledged that “you are not only welcome in this valley but are highly respected"—and was signed by nearly 200 residents. But the harassment did not abate.

For this reason, The Prophet travels with impressively armed body guards. Attendants at services wear pistols in their gun belts.

These guardians are necessary, explains one of the church’s attorneys, Eugene B. Chaikin, because, “We have suffered threats and vandalism. Our local law enforcement agency has requested that we have trained persons carry firearms, and we have reluctantly acquiesced to the Sheriff’s instructions on this matter.”

There is little question of The Prophet’s influence on the Ukiah Daily Journal—for when The Examiner inquired about the People’s Temple and its charismatic pastor some months ago, Journal editor George Hunter immediately reported the inquiry to the office of prosecuting attorney.

‘Jim, The Prophet’

Thus relaying the news to the precincts of Timothy O. Stoen, assistant prosecuting attorney and assistant to The Prophet. Stoen promptly wrote to The Examiner to say, among other things, the Rev. Mr. Jones “goes by the self-effacing title of ‘Jim Jones.’”

Subsequently, Stoen explained that “our church bulletin writers are somewhat zealous”—but that’s the way they see it.”Stoen seems enthusiastic himself, though he prefers to call The Prophet just plain “Jim.” Here is an excerpt from a Stoen letter to The Examiner received five days ago:

“Jim has been the means by which more than 40 persons have literally been brought back from the dead this year. When I first came into the church, I was the conventional skeptic about such things. But I must be honest:

“I have seen Jim revive people stiff as a board, tongues hanging out, eyes set, skin graying, and all vital signs absent. Don’t ask me how it happens. It just does.

“Jim will go up to such a person and say something like, ‘I love you’ or ‘I need you’ and immediately the vital signs reappear. He feels such a person can feel love in his subconscious even after dying.

“Jim is very humble about his gift and does not preach it.” As a matter of fact, Stoen writes, “The Prophet eschews publicity.”

Additional Powers

[Stoen continued] “Whenever there is publicity, the extremists seem to show themselves. Jim has simply been hurt enough….Jim Jones is NOT concerned for his own safety. His real concern is to prevent harm to his children and others in his church family who might be hurt for what he himself has stood for…” The Temple’s newsletter, however, is not the least bit shy about publicizing either his power to bring back the dead or his “additional powers.”

In exhibiting these powers to an unnamed woman in Los Angeles, the Prophet reportedly identified all the names of her relatives, the brands in her refrigerator, the cost of her insurance policy, and the exact price—“TO THE PENNY”—of all the books she had purchased “years ago!”

Stoen’s written affirmation of the self-effacement of The Prophet did not include any explanation for the three tables just outside the main entrance of the People’s Temple.

‘Credibility’

These tables are loaded with either photographs, or neck pieces and lockets—all bearing the image of the Rev. Mr. Jones, and on sale at prices running from $1.50 to $6.00.

Attorneys Stoen and Chaikin have repeatedly contacted The Examiner, by phone calls, letters, and even via messenger—Sharon Bradshaw of the Mendocino County Probation Department—because, as Stoen puts it:

“People’s Temple does, frankly, have a remarkable human service ministry and is devotedly supported by extensive numbers of people. It is extremely important to us to keep our credibility.”

The Prophet, as Stoen describes him, is "supremely and totally dedicated to building an ideal society where mankind is united, life (human and animal and plant) is cherished, and the joys of nature and simplicity are esteemed."

Furthermore, he adds, the Rev. Mr. Jones “receives 400 letters a day” and has adopted 6 children of assorted races. He “wears only used clothing and takes in abandoned animals.”

Meanwhile, his sturdy sentries lend the temporal assurance that the Temple of The Prophet is the best-armed house of God in the land.
###
END OF PART ONE

As promised, Jonestown Media Manure Meal #1 comes from the San Francisco Chronicle's Michael Taylor in a special 20th Anniversary "retrospective," on Nov. 12, 1998.

Taylor chips in just this one paragraph, which actually is generous compared to the usual wholesale censoring by the rest of the sheep. It doesn't take much imagination to see how this newspaper, another quivering coward that crawled away from "Father" Jones as he ran amok in the early '70's, would be granted a cover story:

"In 1972, the first warning signals about Jones went up when the San Francisco
Examiner profiled him in unflattering terms as an influential rural preacher who
called himself the Prophet and claimed to be raising the dead," writes Taylor.

Then comes proof that Taylor got his gold star in school for creative writing:

"But ensuing official investigations of Jones went nowhere."

Certainly.

By the time we get to the end of this series, let's hope Taylor and his fellow fourth estate knaves will still have at least one nostril above the suds in the Sewer of Lying By Omission.

On your mark....Get set.....

Check these two dates on your calendar, everyone—this is one of those “good news/bad news” announcements.

The Good: Tuesday, March 20.

The Bad: Monday, April 9.

If you’re like me, getting the bad news first is always first choice:

Three weeks from tomorrow night, millions of PBS television viewers will be lured into Director Stan Nelson’s Cult Apologist Theatre. And that Orwellian telescreen will bombard them with his weapon of mass deception: “Jonestown: Life and Death of People’s Temple.”

It gets worse. Yes.

A second wave of toxic fallout will be Nelson’s hawking the DVD to anyone that wants “to arrange for an educational screening in your community…” One can only imagine how much more snake oil he and writer/wife Marcia Smith have packed into their perverse meal-on-wheels for every community, everywhere, anytime.

Something of a scourge, modern-day Biblical proportions perhaps? Lord Nelson's revisionist ooze is about to flood family rooms across the nation.

The good news: There’s still time to inoculate your brain—from the radioactive wash.

Alluring it may be, Nelson’s Swiss-cheese version of People’s Temple doesn’t require anything more than a basic historic reality check. This thing is a triumph of style over substance, ridiculously riddled with holes of credibility, continuity, and candor.

That’s why it’s important to be ready two days from now, on Tuesday. Appearing here will be a series of 1972 San Francisco Examiner exposes by my father — this one called “The Prophet Who Raises The Dead”.


One by one, you will finally see how Jim Jones’s criminal enterprise was being uncovered. It started, actually, with a story in the Indianapolis Star, the year earlier. So much time before the 1977 New West expose.

So much time to have been able to rescue all those men, women, children, the toddlers, and the babies, from their years of cult captivity. And from being shipped off to a Guyana Gulag to be slaughtered like cattle.

The massive, collective denial about this must stop, once and for all.

How much longer can virtually all the media, politicians, clergy (especially the Rev. John V. Moore), or anyone else connected with this story continue with the charade? For “documentarian” Nelson, however, it's not enough just to participate in this grand delusion; he takes it up a notch with bizarre notions of a destructive cult's "fulfilled promises." Telling a story in this fashion, with much “assistance” from Becky Moore and Mac McGhee's “Jonestown Institute,” is lying by omission.

According to Nelson and his “New Religious Movement” mentors, the People’s Temple cult, which subjected its members to extortion, beatings, cattle prods, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and other tortures, actually were “sharing a lot of love” and “equality” in those times. These exposes showed otherwise, all the way back in 1972.

If our then-media editors, and the so-called crusading reporters like Marshall "Pursued 'Em Early & Often" Kilduff, Tim Reiterman, and others had just had the wits and the guts in 1972 to join forces with my father and Indianapolis Star reporter Carolyn Pickering in their fight to stop Jones in 1972, THERE WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN A JONESTOWN.

But the Boys on the Bus just reclined and snoozed through 1972, and '73, and '74, and the other years, peaking out their windows as the Temple Train rolled towards the jungle cliff.

Their rewrite, however, rocked.

That, along with our news pundits' catchy little "....drink the Kool-Aide" phrase, seems to keep our current Fourth Estate elites unbothered about such trifling little past boo-boos.


This Tuesday, the light switches back on. Follow it, in spite of that thick fog billowing all around you in this once sacred, self-serving Jonestown Fable Forest.

Jonestown: Perfectly Preventable Tragedy -- If Not For The Craven California Power Elite That Loved The Beast....

If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved

Eureka Times Standard
March 4, 2005

This is the final preface to the series of eight shocking San Francisco Examiner exposes by my father that, had they been allowed to run in their entirety, would have blasted charlatan Jim Jones out of business. But those miserable Examiner editors, and the rest of the pathetic regional media, didn't have the backbone, so frightened by law suits from Peoples Temple enforcer Tim Stoen (who today they JUST don't care to mention, you'll notice). And so, THEY DID NOTHING. After running only four articles in September 17-20, 1972, and getting picketed by Temple cultists, the Examiner went into a fetal position and surrendered, for almost the next five years.

Tim Stoen
The sordid details of that scandal have been efficiently covered up until now, by the Examiner and the usual suspects, Tim Reiterman and Marshal Kilduff, who shamelessly attempt little fairy tale rewrites of this into a minor footnote.

If, on the other hand, you'll be watching for the first--or perhaps the second time--the History Channel's "Jonestown: Paradise Lost" docudrama tomorrow night, abandon any hope of having the record set straight there. The same goes for it's accompanying documentary on cults, in "Decoding the Past," which while a superb expose as a whole that puts cult apologists (NRM) on the run, still inexcusably neglects Top Jones Aide Stoen, who was the Co-Engineer of this cult nightmare until finally defecting close to the end. The "Decoding" producers decide instead to allow Kilduff run his twisted little spin on it throughout.

One of the other questions that people should ask directors Nelson and Wolochatiuk is WHY they squelched the story of the crisis over John Stoen, the little boy claimed to be fathered by both Jones and Stoen? What made this so compelling is that it nearly precipitated the mass killing over a year earlier-- "The September, 1977 Crisis."

All this, clearly explained in Debbie Layton's famous affidavit given to the U.S. State Department, now part of the historical record, now a part of the history that is standard to anyone versed in Jonestown history. I understand Nelson censoring it, because he has an apologist agenda to follow. It's easy for him to delude a universe of theatre goers and bloggers with his cinematic sleight of hand.

But Tim Wolochatiuk? The Producers of "Decoding History?"

Why did you do it?

That fun couple, Becky Moore and Mac McGhee, who serve up the grandest fish tales on earth at the "Jonestown Institute," did succeed wonderfully in working over their visitor, "Paradise" director Tim Wolochatiuk. In the end, they made sure he got all the "proper fact balance" he needed. And then there was that curious name--did Becky think that one up, per chance?! As one viewer comments in a Guyana-based blog, "I wonder why the 'Paradise Lost' portion of the title....What about it was 'Paradise'?" though not nearly to the brain-numbing level they achieved with Stanley Nelson. As Mac McGhee proudly boasted to me (with his usual panache):

“…..Would it interest you to know that your main punching bag these days cooperated as much with ‘Paradise Lost’ as we did with Stanley’s film? Check the closing credits, next time it comes round on your TV.

Your whipping boy, Mac."

Fielding M. McGhee III
The Jonestown Institute

At least, however, "Paradise Lost" didn't offer up some grotesque apologist tripe about Jonestown, like the kind you see on these "NRM" websites. Lamentably, however, it did miss the mark, like all the others. But no mind. Now you'll have a chance to "read all about it,"

In this editorial by the Times Standard, they focus on Tim Stoen and his published apology to my father, which first ran in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat (to be posted.) Interesting thing: The Examiner just didn't have any room for such a story!

And, like Orwell's Big Brother hard at work on "fixing history," our "Jonestown" director, Stanley Nelson, too, just didn't have any room for such a story.... Coincidence?? Somebody needs to call Stan, or Mrs. Nelson (his writer, Marcia Smith) and ask them why, don't you think?

The editorial is called:

LESSONS LEARNED?

"After three decades, Assistant District Attorney Tim Stoen wrote a letter of apology to the reporter whose life he helped make miserable in the early 1970s for stories written on the strangely violent and pseudo-messianic happenings at the People's Temple under Jim Jones.

Stoen, as is well known, was a top aide to Jones until about a year before the cult's infamous mass suicide. Before his break with the temple, he and other Jones supporters publicly flayed the reporter and protested the offices of the San Francisco Examiner for his unpopular accounts of the goings-on at the People's Temple.

While perhaps startling, the letter was a thoughtful gesture from Stoen to reporter Les Kinsolving, who had recently suffered a heart attack; Kinsolving released the letter to the press. Meant as a private communication, it seemed heartfelt and expressed a level of regret that Stoen hadn't said publicly over his involvement with the People's Temple.

That made it newsworthy to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, and to this newspaper as well.

But Stoen said he felt the Press Democrat reporter who wrote the story made too much out of something that Stoen said has been consistent all along: he has repented and apologized for his actions with the People's Temple and Jim Jones.

Stoen may not realize that in the letter he admits more wrongdoing than he has in the past; for the second-highest-ranking law enforcement officer in Humboldt County, that by itself makes it a big deal.

Remembering that more than 900 people died as the end result of Jones' ministry makes the letter's importance even more clear.

Since he became right-hand man to DA Paul Gallegos, Stoen has blazed a maverick and sometimes unusual trail of his own, including an odd three-day Senate campaign run and a personal style that has put him at odds with some in the local legal community.

Be that as it may: We applaud Stoen for writing the letter and for making the admissions he did -- it seems to show a mature man making a thoughtful amends for past bad judgments.

We hope the lessons expressed in the letter will not go unlearned: The media can still function as a safeguard for society. If Bay Area powers-that-be and other journalists at the time had listened to Les Kinsolving's reports about Jones and his temple, maybe those 900-plus lives could have been saved."

Surely could have. But weren't. The politicians, clergy, journalists, and others that aided and abetted Jones aren't yet ready to admit to this, or their role. The public needs to confront them. Call Cecil Williams. Send e-mails to Willie AND Jerry Brown and all the rest. Ask them WHY??

Moreover, even worse, are the cult apologists. These people suffer dangerous delusions regarding the parameters of freedom of religion. From flying saucer worshipers to child abusers, it seems everybody's welcome to come on over and join the fruitcake express train, "New Religious Movements"(NRM). Charter members include Becky Moore, Catherine Wessinger, Eileen Barker, Douglas Cowan, John Hall, and, easily the two most bizarre, J. Gordon Melton & Massimo Introvigne--who have a very strong affinity for vampires (Melton described one of their vampire society conventions as "a bunch of silly people dressing up and biting each other on the neck.")

Drop in on the next annual "CESNUR" (Center for Studies of New Religions) conference--last year's was held in San Diego--but you might want to take a couple of garlic cloves to ward off the attending vampires. (Some of the attendees went on "field trips" to pay their respects to the flying saucer worshipers and the 12 Tribes cult, a "family-oriented" bunch that preaches the benefits of child abuse.)

And San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Sandi Dolbee, who is assigned to cover the "religion and ethics" beat, just missed all that. She did, however, do a splendid job of whitewashing the 25th Anniversary of Jonestown, when she provided Becky Moore a Cult Apologist Sermon in her story. Moreover, at this CESNUR conference, Dolbee gave all these "scholars" free reign to cheer on the extravaganza's opening film, which was, but of course: Nelson's "Jonestown."

With this kind of "ethical" coverage, it makes one wonder if perhaps its time to move Dolbee to a different beat. Has she become "one of them"??

It's astounding the ease in which these so-called "scholars" make fabrications about the People's Temple. Interestingly enough, again, Nelson's choice of a "scholar" for his film, besides featuring Moore (sister of two of Jones's enforcers), was John Hall, of U.C. Davis, who publishes outrageous papers condoning the Temple's excesses and abuses (this is the cult that also tortured children as young as five, recall.)

Uncanny how Nelson was so hardpressed to find ANYONE with a contrasting view, say, that had experience with the cult in its "glory days" in Redwood valley, when they were happily picking crops, and singing, hugging, laughing, and "sharing lots of love," according to our director.

He could have interviewed Norman Clow, now living in Houston, who lived in Redwood Valley at the time and attended school with some of these cult captives. Norman wrote to me, shortly after reading the Stoen apology story over the Associated Press wire (made the AP, so the story went as far as Australia, ladies and gentlemen--yet, still NO ROOM FOR IT IN EITHER OF THOSE SPINELESS SAN FRANCISCO NEWSPAPERS....).

"Jim Jones taught in our schools in Anderson Valley in the 60's (Boonville, west of Ukiah/Redwood Valley) and in fall 1967 he brought a dozen or so Temple students to our high school. Three were in my senior class and two of them died (Anita Ijames and Judy Stahl-Ijames). One, Faith Worley-Kice, left before the move.

Dale Parks, who was one of the defectors during Ryan's visit and whose mother was killed at the airstrip was a friend for that year. We were good friends, as much as possible under the circumstances. I saw Dale in Ukiah a year later and he was "recovering". I met his dad, who I don't believe ever would. Ava Cobb was another great friend. Her brother Jim, who I knew, was one of the ones pushing for the investigation.

I always understood that she had left the movement with her brother but recently saw her name and a picture - could have been here - in a list of those who died. I know many of her family members did die there. I hope she didn't. They were all good kids, fun to be around even given their unhappiness over the Temple, and none of them deserved any of it.

I believe Jones was a madman practically from the day he was born. Many of us kids at the school thought the guy was a little wierd and maybe even dangerous in the 60's, but no one would listen, certainly not the school authorities.

You could tell the students he brought to the school were very uneasy, just always intimating some fear or regrets about their situation. But you couldn't get past a certain point with them - they still deferred to that loyalty he had built in them, called him Father, and there was an invisible wall that kept you always a certain unassailable length away.

Of course you realize Tim Stoen went back to Mendocino County as an assistant DA and is now in that capacity in Eureka, Humboldt County. He has publicly apologized several times for his involvement, recently admitting it was a terrible mistake and asking forgiveness. Fine, but I'd still just as soon not have him as the local DA.

As a lay pastor of the rare conservative stripe in the United Methodist Church, I often wonder what on earth was going on in the eyes of the various churches back then.

Your dad was a very brave man to do what he did. Many of us knew he was right all along and we all owe him a debt of gratitude for the part he played in getting all of this out. Thank him for me."

--Norm Clow
Houston

Now let's say we climb into that time machine and travel back to a misty Sunday morning. .....We've....arrived. There's still time. It's September 17th, 1972...San Francisco. A foghorn softly booms. There's a headline up ahead, in that Sunday edition newspaper:

"THE PROPHET WHO RAISES THE DEAD"
by Rev. Lester Kinsolving
Examiner Religion Writer

(TO BE CONTINUED...)