Seductive Poison (20 page)

My stomach felt queasy. Everything seemed to be happening so fast. What was going on? Who could be orchestrating this terrible but steady assault on us? I thought about Teresa’s and my trip to Switzerland, my two trips to Panama. Tim Stoen knew about everything. He knew I was a signatory. I wondered if it was Tim who was behind all of this and if he had joined the conspiratorial forces against us … I was afraid. I wished I had found Tim and paid for his silence. I knew that it wasn’t only Jim they were coming after … Now, it would be me, too.

Jim began to talk again.

“What do we have on Kilduff? Get someone in there to find out what he is writing. We cannot fight a mirage. We need concrete information!”

I silently mouthed to Carolyn, “Why does he hate us?”

“My naïve conscript!” Jim had seen me. “Even after all you’ve done for me, you can ask such a question? White men are afraid of my teachings. They will do anything to sully the word of truth. Kilduff is a racist. He complains about my power in the Housing Authority for one reason alone: he doesn’t like it that I am the leader of so many beautiful, devoted, and intelligent niggers. He’s afraid of us—our numbers—that we have the ability to get legal measures passed. He’s afraid of our voting power. He grew up a part of the elite of San Francisco, with private schools and a wet nurse. He’ll do anything to bring us down. He’s a miserable white boy with too much time on his hands. All of them are joining against us. Grace, Tim. They all have betrayed socialism. …”

For several months now the church had been involved in the transport of our loyal members to Guyana. Father wanted everyone out of the country before Kilduff’s ugly stories went to press. He really cared so much. He was safeguarding our futures by trying to get us to safety before our government attacked us. Already over 600 men and women, children, teenagers, and seniors, had been sent to join my husband, Mark, in the Promised Land. I was jealous of them because they were so close to the man I secretly yearned for.

Jim had brought back enticing movies from his last visit there. Everyone looked happy and they wore colorful tropical attire. They didn’t have to work these miserable hours. They slept more than four hours a night. No one had circles under his eyes. So why had Tim left? Why had he sounded so disappointed? All the letters we received from Jonestown spoke only of happiness and relief that finally everyone could live free and safe from the corruption of capitalism.

In order to speed up the departure, Maria and I now had to close various small bank accounts, as well as make sure the monthly income of $65,000 we accrued from the disciples’ Social Security checks would be transferred to Guyana. We transferred money to our main account at the Bank of Montreal in San Francisco from where we could easily move other miscellaneous funds earned through the sale of church property and members’ homes. We also transferred cash with each member leaving for Jonestown. Everybody
received at least the legal limit of $5,000 in $100 bills. However, if the travelers were older, loyal, and would likely pass through Customs unchallenged, we gave them as much as $20,000 to put in stockings, purses, brassieres, girdles, backpacks, luggage, and waist belts.

Once in Guyana, the money was collected by either Karen Lay-ton, who had already been there for six months, by Sharon Amos, or by Paula Adams, my old college roommate. At Jim’s direction, Paula had become the mistress of the Guyanese ambassador to the United States, Lawrence E. “Bonny” Mann, which helped us navigate through the Guyanese bureaucracy.

Jim began to get anxious about Paula’s excellent relationship with the ambassador because she seemed to care about him and was spending too much time away from Jim’s aura. But he wouldn’t dare jeopardize the relationship because it would ensure that our money, which was now being deposited in the Guyanese bank, was secure. We’d have word ahead of time if there was going to be trouble. Apart from bank deposits, hundreds of thousands of dollars were packed in crates and shipped on our boat to our compound, 250 miles away from civilization.

I, alone, was now doing the banking business outside the Temple because Jim had become frantic that Maria would be kidnapped. The last year had nearly finished Maria off: She had to care for little John-John, who shared her windowless room, while she toiled into the early morning hours on financial ledgers. Jim’s suffocating fear of the conspiracy against us prohibited them from playing games or having any kind of fun because there was “no time for such luxuries anymore.” And now, on top of all that, she had to deal with the threat of being kidnapped. With all the negative publicity the Peoples Temple was getting, Jim was convinced that Maria’s well-connected father would get suspicious and try to get her out.

She was morose and dangerously thin, drowning in her stress and afraid to confide in Father. I had misread her turmoil as resentment and jealousy of my travel privileges with Teresa.

The weeks progressed and despite Jim’s efforts, we were unable to control the press. As I proofed another of Jim’s rebuttals, which Carolyn had authored, I was impressed with all of Father’s appointments.

Where was the harm in all this? I believed in the integrity of all those who supported Jim. They were very powerful people and couldn’t possibly embrace someone or a cause they knew nothing about! They knew why they supported Jim. Only opinionated outsiders who could not open their minds to the strife of people less fortunate than themselves had hateful suspicions. They were selfish and their convictions could not be trusted. This was what Jim had always taught us. Since I’d been eighteen and in the college dorms, he had warned us of those nonbelievers who would try to dissuade us from the truth. But these political benefactors who had come to Jim’s aid over and over again had been different. Jim used to say they had a “little something” that was right.

By the third week of June 1977, Father called another all-night meeting with Maria, Carolyn, Teresa, and me.

“This is our last chance,” he said, pulling off his reading glasses and taking a deep, exhausted breath.

“Teresa, darling. You must expand the effort to impede the attempts
of Kilduff. We must find out what he has against us. And we must put pressure on his magazine,
New West.”
He looked at Carolyn and continued.

“Expand the letter writing campaign and the phone calls to the press about his unfair treatment of us. His cavalier attitude can harm all the projects we have set into motion. He obviously has only disdain for all our social efforts, our senior rest homes, the rehab center where we’ve taken hundreds of kids off heroin. He is typical of the egotistical white men who are afraid and unwilling to accept the importance of discipline. He has never been loyal nor devoted to a cause greater than himself. He is a consummate honky—opinionated, selfish, and filthy white.” He snarled, his upper lip curled back.

“Do you think he ever scrubbed a toilet or pulled a double-shift in a factory while working his way through college? Hell no! He has never worked. His parents have done everything for him. He’s grown up with maid service. Dear God Almighty …” Jim lifted his fist toward the ceiling. “Just because he graduated from Stanford he thinks he is better than the rest of us. Lord, I’m so tired of fighting the oppressor, so tired of trying to save my babies. When will the harassment cease? Can’t they see they’re forcing us into more and more drastic decisions? Why can’t they give us just a little peace?” He slumped back into his chair.

I followed Teresa upstairs, glad to be working with her once more, relieved that my recent order to “separate my allegiances” had seemingly been rescinded. When I entered her room to receive my list of assignments, Teresa put her hand on my shoulder and joked:

“Okay, my naïve conscript …”

I covered my mouth to stifle an enormous laugh, filled with sorrow and relief.

“So, let’s get to work on our next diversion.”

My first phone call was to Rupert Murdoch, the owner of
New West
magazine, in New York. I decided to use my upper-class British accent. It always made me sound older and quite credible, like the head mistress at boarding school.

Mr. Murdoch, I’ve known about the Peoples Temple in San Francisco for many years now and am quite concerned about the public harassment of them. They have done wonders for the old, the homeless, they have adopted children parents have shunned, their rest homes for the elderly are the best in the state and of course the beautiful care facilities for mentally impaired …

I’d have to make notes to ensure that I included everything.

The following few days were consumed with getting rolls of quarters from Maria’s room, then rushing out to make calls from various pay phones in San Francisco, so we couldn’t be traced—at the public library, the Federal Building, and numerous little liquor stores. My list also included Reverend Cecil Williams, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown, and officers of
New West
magazine, where Kilduff’s expose was going to appear. I was supposed to call its president, secretary, vice presidents, Marketing Department, and distributors. In my calls, I was never a member of Peoples Temple, but a concerned citizen who had heard about Marshall Kilduff’s intent to harm the Temple.

At 5
A.M.
on the morning of June 18, Teresa tapped on my door and slid in. I had just come back from Maria’s room and was unrolling my sleeping bag to take a nap.

“Lucinda.” She was calling me by my code name, which she now used only when she was anxious. Her face was ash-white. “Make reservations under fictitious names for tonight. A party of five: Jim, Maria, and three children.”

“What happened?” I asked. She handed me the newspaper.

JUNE 18, 1977
GAINS ORDERS PROBE OF NEW WEST BURGLARY

Police Chief Charles Gains, acting on a request by Peoples Temple leader, Jim Jones, has ordered a full investigation of a reported burglary at offices of New West Magazine.

The Reverend Jones called Gains late yesterday after the New West reporter-writer Phil Tracy reported a break-in, in which Tracy presumed the target was a manuscript of a story about Jones and his Peoples Temple.

Jones angrily denied that anyone connected with his church had anything to do with the break-in or “intimidating” telephone calls received at home by Rosalie Wright, New West’s Northern California editor. Patrolman Michael Duffy, who made a preliminary investigation said a New West office window apparently was jimmied open and a bolt broken.

“As far as I could determine,” Duffy said, “no entrance to the office was made. However, I can’t say any entrance wasn’t made.” Duffy said Tracy told him the office window was partially open when he entered the room yesterday morning.

The officer went on to quote Tracy as saying he did not know if anything had been taken, but said a cabinet filing case seemed to have been “disturbed.”

The filing case according to Tracy contained the unpublished manuscript of a story about Jones and the activities of Peoples Temple written by Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff.

Why the intruder or intruders did not take the manuscript was a puzzling element in the case. Tracy said he thinks the intruders might have photographed it.

Editor Wright left home with her two children Thursday night after receiving another of a series of phone calls from someone who said, “Don’t do it.”

She said she presumed the caller meant New West should not publish the Jones article.

“We won’t be intimidated,” Wright said.

I looked up, astounded. I felt sorry for Teresa. Someone she or Carolyn had used in the Diversions Committee had made an enormous blunder. I wondered who. They’d have to be sent to Guyana immediately.

“Odd, isn’t it, that Rosalie Wright is so afraid of us that she’s gone into hiding with her children, but Kilduff and Tracy won’t stop their pursuit. What fools they are!”

“Debbie, listen … What’s happened is serious. And the inference is that we did it, bungled the job, photocopied the story, and scared the editor underground. Anything could happen now. They could try to trump-up charges against us. Grace’s defection, the Customs agent, Tim’s defection, the Treasury Department, the old detractors of the church, they can come forward with more stories. Remember Lester Kinsolving? The religious editor of the
Examiner?
In 1972, he asked for the Attorney General’s office to investigate us, but Jim was able to squelch the story. Now it’s all too much, Lucinda, it’s all coming down.”

I could feel my pulse racing as I watched her long, delicate fingers shaking uncontrollably.

“Jim must be able to leave at a moment’s notice. They may try to arrest him. From now on, we must be ready every night. If Jim can’t stop the
New West
article, he’ll have to leave. God knows what will happen here. We have to speed up our emigration push and use alternate routes as well.”