Three weeks before the deaths in Jonestown, longtime Temple member and financial secretary (and one of Jones\u2019 lovers) Teri Buford left Peoples Temple. The timing and circumstances of her departure disturbed both sides in the Peoples Temple battle, which was in its final escalation towards the ultimate tragedy: Was Teri a traitor to the cause, as Jim Jones said in the immediate aftermath? Was she a spy for Jim Jones, setting herself up to play both sides, as she presents herself in the note, and as people in the Concerned Relatives who heard about her defection wondered? Was she an opportunist, using Mark Lane\u2019s infatuation with her to help her get set up in whatever future he himself thought he might have with the Temple, as others maintained in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy?<\/p>\n
The questions were not answered, mainly because Teri Buford completely disappeared into Lane\u2019s orbit within days of November 18. The FBI wanted to interview her \u2013 and a grand jury subpoenaed her \u2013 for what she could tell them about Temple finances, but Lane defended her, both as her lawyer and her lover. She eventually gave Lane information for his book The Strongest Poison<\/em><\/a> and bore him a child, before she summoned the strength and courage to leave him, just as she had once left Jim Jones.<\/p>\n The most significant documents known to have survived from Teri\u2019s exit from the Temple are a four-page note to Jim Jones, a cover note to Temple member Jean Brown, and a note to Jean scribbled on an envelope. \u00a0All were written within days before her departure from San Francisco, but the letter to Jones was not written in haste, as evidenced by the fact that there were two drafts. Neither answers the questions people had about her \u2013 is she sincere in her offer to take some heat from the Cause, or is she creating a diversion to give her time to effect her plans for her escape? \u2013 but her expressions of grief over the children she\u2019s given up, both the one she nurtured in Jonestown and the other she aborted at Jones\u2019 request, are heartfelt. These documents also represent one of the strongest acknowledgments of Jones\u2019 own failing health in the community\u2019s final weeks, which she said was a strong factor in her thought processes: \u201cI made it quite clear when I left you that I was going to be making a lot of decisions based on the state of your health.\u201d<\/p>\n Teri Buford Note to Jim Jones (draft)<\/strong> Teri Buford Departure Letters, October 27, 1978<\/strong> Three weeks before the deaths in Jonestown, longtime Temple member and financial secretary (and one of Jones\u2019 lovers) Teri Buford left Peoples Temple. The timing and circumstances of her departure disturbed both sides in the Peoples Temple battle, which was in its final escalation towards the ultimate tragedy: Was Teri a traitor to the cause, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":13225,"menu_order":52,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-94351","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94351"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94351\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127599,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/94351\/revisions\/127599"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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