Guyana is as remote a place as any you can find
in the Western Hemisphere. Overlooked by
multinational corporations, foreign governments, and tourists alike, Guyana would prove an ideal refuge for an embattled Jim Jones and his followers.
Jones had made a brief visit to the
then-British Guiana in the early 1960s during his search for a doomsday-safe
refuge for Peoples Temple. Jones had
spoken of undertaking a mission in an undeveloped country. Around 1973, he tasked his advisers to form a
contingency plan in case the Temple had to leave the United States. Guyana was chosen as the destination.
Guyana, which gained independence in 1966,
fulfilled a number of criteria for such a refuge. The limited accessibility of much of its
interior was one. An Anglophone population
was another. The political leanings of
the country’s leader, Forbes Burnham, jibed with Jones’ “Apostolic
Socialism.” Guyana was willing to relax
its immigration and customs laws to attract settlers. Finally, Burnham’s government saw Jonestown
as a deterrent to Venezuelan claims to western Guyana.
Peoples Temple and Burnham’s government agreed
on a long-term lease for a five square mile tract near Port Kaituma. The cost was $37,000, or about $10 per acre. The first Temple members arrived in
1974. The first years of the Peoples
Temple Agricultural Project, as Jonestown was officially known, yielded mixed
results. Clearing the dense jungle took
time. The soil was poor. But they made a go of it and within a year
the small group of settlers had cobbled together a tidy, mostly self-sufficient
home for themselves.
Jonestown must have been a paradise on earth to
the Temple members in California. Jim
Jones took periodic breaks from his very full schedule to visit Guyana, making
films hyping the settlement for his flock.
(Among the smiling testimonials from the settlers, one film shows Jones
showing off the settlement’s food cache including, among the staple items, Kool
Aid.) However pleasant life in Jonestown
may have appeared at the time, there was much else to keep everyone occupied;
Edith Roller’s early journal entries in 1975 mention the project only in
passing. Their pastor, on the other
hand, had good reason to think about a new life in the tropics.
As it happened, Jones’ delusions of persecution
were not totally unfounded. A few of his followers as early as Ukiah had become
alarmed at the pastor’s abusive streak and left. But defecting from Peoples Temple was no
small feat, even in California. Eight
young members, dubbed the “Gang of Eight” by an enraged Jones, left in 1973
ratcheting suspicions of potential future betrayers of the cause. Members were expected to monitor each other’s
words and deeds for the slightest hint of weakness.
Among the defectors the case of the Mertle
family is the most noted, since it accompanied early journalistic inquiries
into the Temple. Elmer and Deanna Mertle,
perhaps unsurprisingly, were part of the Temple’s public relations
machine. Elmer was the Temple’s
photographer, while Deanna was its publisher.
As with so many of the Temple’s adherents, the Mertles had signed over
their house, business, and savings to the church. Their faith in Jim Jones would have its
limits, however.
After a particularly vicious paddling of 70
strokes in front of the congregation, the Mertles’ daughter Linda revealed the seriousness
of her injuries to her classmates when she dressed down for gym the following
day. (No mention is made of this being
brought to the attention of Linda’s teachers.)
Elmer and Deanna had seen enough and left Peoples Temple with their
children. Because they had granted power
of attorney to Jim Jones, Elmer and Deanna legally changed their names. As Al and Jeannie Mills, they would figure
prominently in the Temple controversy before and after Jonestown.
The first reporter to expose the inner workings
of Peoples Temple, even before the Mertle defection, was Lester Kinsolving. Kinsolving was hardly one to criticize
organized religion itself; he was an ordained Episcopal priest and remains a
darling of the Religious Right. But the
rumors surrounding the Temple tended to be ignored given Rev. Jim’s stature in
local politics. Kinsolving sensed the provocativeness
of the story should the rumors prove true.
In 1972, well before Jones would descend upon San Francisco, he
published an eight-part series of articles in the San Francisco Examiner. Kinsolving
questioned the more out-there aspects of the Temple’s peculiar theology, such
as Jones’ claims to divinity and his faith healings. His financial
dealings and unusual closeness to Mendocino County officials were also given a
closer look.
The Temple’s response was swift and
furious. A flood of angry letters and
phone calls inundated the Examiner and
Kinsolving’s final four articles were never run. One detailed the suspicious death of Maxine
Harpe in 1970. Harpe was discovered
hanging in the garage of a Temple communal home in Ukiah. A county social worker and Peoples Temple
member named Jim Randolph had been staying with Harpe and had recently accepted
a $2400 check endorsed by her from the sale of her house. Harpe’s heirs tried to recover the money, but
were stymied by Mendocino County ADA Tim Stoen (more about whom later) and the
county sheriff. Another unrun installment concerned
allegations Jones made against an African-American pastor that he had
propositioned underaged girls. Still
another detailed the violence meted to Temple members.
The furor over Kinsolving’s articles was
short-lived. Jones moved to the big city
and made it big. But the cloud over
Peoples Temple never dissipated completely.
As Jones’ star burned brightest in 1976 and
1977, the forces which would lead to his destruction, and that of 909 others,
were gathering swiftly. The talk surrounding
Temple practices and the increasingly vocal Concerned Relatives group, which
claimed it was a malevolent cult, begged media coverage. Marshall Kilduff of the San Francisco Chronicle and Phil Tracy of the Village Voice began researching the Temple. The Chronicle,
nervous after the backlash against Lester Kinsolving’s aborted series in
the Examiner, declined to publish the
article Kilduff and Tracy submitted.
New
West magazine would print what the Chron would
not. The night before the issue featuring
the Kilduff and Tracy piece came out, New
West editor Rosalie Wright phoned Jones and read him the article. The following day, August 1, 1977, the new edition
hit the newsstands and went out to the subscribers.
Jim Jones would not be available for comment.
© 2018 The Unassuming Scholar
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