"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...)