STEPHAN Gandhi Jones is - in the eyes of the world - the son of a mass murderer. With those people surrounding him, constantly doing the right thing, and doing what he says, and you're surrounded by a combination of them and those people who don't neccessarily agree, but are acting like they agree . She and Jim were the first caucasian couple in Indiana to adopt an African American . I mean, I saw things and was privy to things . The bottom layer consisted of about 300 babies and small children whose bodies had been ravished by the humidity and jungle insects. In Indianapolis, he served as a student pastor in the Methodist Church in 1952 but. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of Jim Jones, the controversial religious cult leader. In a 2007 interview with Religion News Service published by Dallas News, Stephan said that he struggled with drug addiction after Jonestown, but that he's sober now. To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz, 'My father was ill from when he was very young and was using fear to control me when I was barely more than a toddler. In this March 5, 2018 photo released by Kevin Kunishi, Jordan Vilchez sits at memorial for mass murder and suicide victims at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana. I think that we all know that in his final days he was certainly a villain, but there are people who just reach out to me because theyve come upon something Ive written and theyre able, through me, to see the humanity of it all. We used curtains for bandages. The only surviving child of Jim Jones,Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. According to former members, Jones would not tolerate defections from the mission project and many of the church members considered those who leave to be traitors. 'So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong,' he said, including his father's sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. I'll kill you! I noticed them in real time. I dont think he went from being an altruistic, selfless, humble man to what he became. When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temples wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. We didnt see that coming. I did. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons. She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco, where Eugene ran a temple construction crew. He is able to weep, but worries about letting himself begin; he says it feels a little like pulling his finger from a crack in the dam. The temple was the only life he knew but says he always had his doubts. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. Life became more tolerable after the couple's baby, Martin Luther Smith, was born. Going by the first body count, the media reported 383 dead. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. Stephan may be reached at moreheart1@comcast.net. Its not that I had better sight than others; I had a better view of it and it really broke for me when he was unfaithful to my mother and told her about it in detail.. When he wakes, at dawn or in the middle of the night, it takes him some time to come back. (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information and details on how to adjust your email settings. They are Agnes Pauline Jones, Timothy Glen Jones, Jim Jon Prokes, Jim W. Jones Jr, Lew Eric Jones, John Moss Jones, Suzanne O. Jones, and Stephanie Jones. Manipulative tendencies. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oakland's Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. The minister was famous for his faith healings, which expelled bloody growths from the bodies of the ailing; it was not for many years that Stephan Jones learned about the sleight of hand with raw chicken giblets. I think most people would have welcomed some kind of action that took Dad out of the picture but I didnt feel like we had enough people to back us up, or I didnt know those people.. Where they were lying. That way no one else would want to live. 'I said there must be another way.'. He plucked my ego strings, making me feel like he needed me to help him on this mission, but I refused. They have altogether three daughters. He was a genius, and he was unique. The reason I ended up in Jonestown is that I left. "I mellowed out." He is married to his wifeKristi Jones since 1991. Altogether, 909 people died at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, by swallowing a grape-flavored beverage mixed with potassium cyanide, or from injections of poison. The Joneses adopted a black baby in Indiana in 1960, and Jim gave the 10-week-old infant his own name. Joining him was an older black man who fingered something in his right pocket. They had nothing to go back to." Stephan Gandhi Jones was 19. To just be somewhere with a machete, in khakis, and just decide I wanted to go somewhere and cut myself a trail." 'The reality was we were folks who could be counted on to stand up,' he said. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. America was a genuinely unfriendly place for a boy from an interracial family and community, and Jim Jones knew how to fan that into a fear of everything that lay beyond the temple walls. So in my view, even the good works and things he championed were in some way not as pure as folks want to think. Then, with heart-stopping suddenness, the first shot was fired. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. With their lives, the story of Jonestown continues, even now. he said. In minutes, the back of the truck was piled high with crates, suitcases, backpacks and people. "Right off the bat I explain to them that my father was nuts, that he was a drug addict," he says. Eugene Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones' dream after they attended a service in Fresno. How could that be suicide? Four decades later, Americans often use this phrase in political and business contexts without knowing its origin. In this Nov. 13, 2008 file photo, Stephan Jones, son of Rev. 1931. Yeah often people do. Peoples Temple lost the game, but only by 10 points, which seemed worth celebrating. By the fall of that year, almost 1,000 Temple members emigrated to Jonestown, but for Stephan Jones, the pleasure crumbled when his father arrived. I dropped to my belly. Fear of an external threat was a major component of your fathers philosophy. Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. The years are slowly weaning Stephan Jones from Jonestown; he reads, goes to movies, wants now to have a child of his own. His biggest regrets revolve around the teams refusal to return to Jonestown. We were trying to build a new world, a progressive socialist organization.. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He was taking pain pills, and he said he was dying. All these lives were wasted and I don't know why. The church provided free drug rehabilitation, medical care, food. Jones wasn't the same man. Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion and encourage all readers to share their views on our articles. 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. . NBC reporter Don Harris said coolly: 'I think we're in for some trouble.'. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. I stopped and listened. And it was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. An In-Depth Look at Naomi Girmas Salary in Professional Soccer. He promised that he wouldnt. When he brushed away the mist below him he saw that it was a lifeless human limb. 'Hit the deck!' At first it was spanking of children. 'He hit Monica and Vern. . Guyanese civilians set up a guard station for us, standing watch all night armed with only a shotgun, a machete and a long-bladed knife. Photo by Eric Risberg / AP Copy. The phrase drinking the Kool-Aid, meaning to follow someone blindly, was born that day in Guyana. Be aware of this message that was prevalent in the temple: The end justifies the means. And I see that throughout society. 'I focused my rage on Dad and his circle, rather than deal with me,' he said. How do you explain the renewed interest in the Peoples Temple? He has read most of "Raven," which he believes to be the best of the books about his father, but he has never been able to bring himself to read the chapter about the suicides and murders. Of course, even if he wanted to forget Jonestown, his name was an ever-present reminder. NBC reported that Stephan Jones was the vice president for an office installation company in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. 'Let's go!' More than 300 Jonestown victims were children. Her only natural child, Stephan Gandhi Jones and adopted son, Jimmy Jones, Jr. aka James Warren Jones, Jr. were both in Georgetown, Guyana for a basketball game representing Jonestown on November 18, 1978. He was summoned to the temple radio room. And I just flew out of bed, grabbed my ax, walked out to the post that was supporting the speaker and raised the ax like I was going to cut it down. Stephanie was one of six victims in the car accident coming back from Cincinatti.Birth name: . As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. For moreEntertainment,Celebrity BabiesfolloweCelebrityMirror. Now, Stephan Jones is the father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. I know Ive reached a better place and I dont fear lapsing back into the darkest times, but its a daily process and one that Im grateful to have.. Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. He contacted the people at the San Francisco branch of the Peoples Temple and instructed them not to take action. He made a promise once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, Smith said. 'It looks like trouble,' I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. The closest thing to a law enforcement official - a pleasant young policeman with a pink shirt and a 16-gauge shotgun - was disarmed by temple members. Ryan, his thick gray hair bloodied, was near the front of the plane. I also didnt really know what Id be dealing with if I did, but sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action. Toward Nov. 18 they crowd up faster and closer, but even in the spring and summer, when the anniversary is tucked safely off on the other side of the year, even then he cannot keep the dreams away. She died in a tragic car accident only weeks before her mother, Marceline Mae Baldwin Jones, gave birth to her brother, Stephan Gandhi Jones. . "This was when he started bragging about taking 16 people on in one day, and all that crap. And I had good reason to be enraged with him I was enraged long before he died, and openly so. Dozens of Peoples Temple members in Guyana survived the mass suicides and murders of more than 900 because they had slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away Nov. 18, 1978. I want out of this.' "I usually try to tell people when we're in a good time to talk about it, because my God, it takes two hours just to scratch the surface," Stephan Jones says. Jim Jr. would go on to lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow, In the aftermath, Jim Jr. built a new life. He says the congregation was full of elderly people, many of them hard-working black men and women who had given this minister everything they possessed. One day, when she was in high school, she came home and told her parents that her religion class had discussed Peoples Temple; only then did her father share the story of how his family was nearly wiped out. Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. 2023 Canoe.com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. no one could ever relate to it unless they were in the same situation, or they were in the atmosphere my father created . You don't tell God, "You're not going out of the house. The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that. Don't take my baby!'. 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Official Sites. He climbed aboard the truck and we took off. So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye on what was wrong, he said, including his fathers sexual excesses, drug abuse and rants. 'We built a community out of nothing in four years,' recalled Touchette, now a 65-year-old grandfather who has worked for a Miami hydraulics company for nearly 30 years. 'The temple really became my family,' she said. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says hes now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. Jim Jones set off one of these panics every few weeks, sometimes keeping people awake all night as he shouted his warnings. The only sounds they heard came from the jungle animals going about their business. Well, he was using these words, I dont know if hed actually do that, hes a good and gentle man in so many ways, but he wanted to take dad out, and I was the one to convince him that dad would do that himself and we were going to have chaos on our hands. The shooting triggered the mass murders and suicides in Jonestown of more than 900 people orchestrated by the Rev. He does not know. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat. Only two days later did the picture became clear. He imagines the guards with guns, and the sky clouding over, and the air suddenly wild with fear, and the sight of the children. We're talking 30 people, but that's a lot of people to be looking over your shoulder.". Jim Jones. 'She gives us the order that were supposed to kill ourselves,' Vilchez recalled. Then it was boxing matches for adults. The expression was born of the perception that Jim Jones disciples were gullible people who gladly drank the poison because their leader told them it would do them good. Do you think people can ever see your father not just as a villain but as a complex figure? He did what was expected of him. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. He was right, of course. But some lived. He too was a member of the basketball team. Ollie worked in the nursery, and Eugene felled trees. ", The thought of killing Jim Jones had occurred to his son, but Stephan never tried to do it. 'People ask, 'How can you ever be proud of your father?'' I try not to speak in terms of what I couldve done because I see no value in that.. Write by: . And Smiths wife, son and mother died. People ask, How can you ever be proud of your father? he said. 1978. James Warren Jones and his wife, Marceline. I would have been doing more than just leaving a family. There were many photographs of the bodies, taken from various angles, in color and black and white, and in each photograph, as though defying the viewer even to believe the report of the camera, row upon row of clothed human backs lay swelling in the jungle damp. I mean, here are hundreds and hundreds of people who feel differently than I do--who's right?". " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. "He was a gentle man in a lot of ways," Jones says, stretched now over the sofa in his small apartment. Then-San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman was wounded in the airstrip shooting and flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he wrote the following eyewitness account. "But there's a sadness . Everyone was waiting for him to take himself out. But after temple gunmen killed the congressman, three newsmen and a church defector on the Port Kaituma airstrip, Jones ordered a poisoned grape-flavored drink administered to children first. My mother, trying to appease him, made him promise that he wouldnt leave me down there. The mass murders and suicides of hundreds ofPeoples Temple membersin the distant jungle of Guyana, South Americaon November 18, 1978 is a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. Gandhi is an Indian word meaning Pharmacist. The reunion with Jones was not as joyous. He appeared in movies like Written in Blood (2018), The Peoples Advocate: The Life and Times of Charles R.Gary (2007) and The True Story (2003). 'Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did,' she said. I dove headlong into the three-foot-tall grass. Former Peoples Temple member Jim Jones Jr. carries a bucket of bleached rocks to place around the edges of the Jonestown victim memorial in the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, Jim Jones Jr. was adopted by the Joneses in Indiana in 1960. 'To me the ends justified the means,' he said. Family (3) Trivia (4) Only natural son of Rev. "I don't know what was happening . The slaughter at Jonestown was the worst civilian tragedy in U.S. history before September 11, 2001. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. More than a few bottles of rum were consumed or poured on wounds. I would argue that the means justify the end, but not the other way around.. A large poncho covered his belt area so no one knew for sure and no one challenged him. The reports were wrong, they say. Reporters were hearing disturbing allegations about Jim Jones' church--there were stories of beatings, armed guards, extensive sexual activity. My best guess is that Jones felt the press people weren't fooled by the staged setup at the mission. The bodies of followers that drank the poison are strewn around the commune, The Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, is shown above in November 1978 after the dead bodies were removed. He was the son of Jim Jones, who established Jonestown. What we were calling the cause really was Jim, she said. After the incident, Stephan was put into jail for three months and that led him to drug addiction. It was he who willed it into being and he who also brought it down with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds. "I would have had to, especially if I saw other people doing it, and I right off the bat wasn't on top of things, and somehow wasn't right there starting some kind of--it's so hard--", Stephan Jones covers his face for a moment, fingers kneading his forehead. 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Reviews. They were under siege, Jim Jones would cry; the snipers were after him; the Guyanese army was about to descend; the children would be taken away and probably tortured. He used this kind of threat to control his people. Did you notice a point or phase where your fathers behavior shifted and he lost touch with the just causes that he once championed? What would you say the biggest lesson is from Jonestown? We ask you to keep your comments relevant and respectful. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. People were forced. "It's like you went to a vacation in Europe and found out the United States had sunk," he says. "I just felt like this was all they had," he says. And the temple was his life - first in Indiana, later in California. Is this surge in public interest in Jonestown an exhausting experience for you? "I think I'd probably be pretty messed up if I hadn't lost everybody I had and hadn't gone through the prison experience," Stephan told The Washington Post in 1983. Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. And she could only sense the site of the pavilion, the once-vibrant center of Jonestown life where so many died - including her two sisters and two nephews. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. Instead, The Washington Post reported that Stephan escaped death with the Jonestown basketball team. It makes him a little crazy sometimes. Then they could identify and allow themselves to step into the story and understand how such a thing could happen. present) (3 children). container: 'taboola-below-article-thumbnails-2nd', A lot more conversation about the outside threat that was anyone that wasnt in the temple. We'd also just seen the warm, cheerful embraces between some of those leaving and some who were staying. He converted to Catholicism and registered Republican. Ryan clearly was in good spirits. 'There were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time. That way no one else would want to live. Well, once we got to California and we were going to public school, there it was very evident to me that my life was very different from the lives of most of the other kids. They divorced when Jordan was 6. When the order from the colony came over the speaker in Guyanas capital Georgetown, Stephan Jones knew he wouldnt obey it. And when her 23-year-old sister joined, Jordan went to live with her at age 12. Stephan Jones Seeks Forgiveness For Jonestown Massacre, Late Jim Jones Son Stephan Jones Is An Actor. 'I was going back to retrieve that young person and also to say goodbye.'. Jim was the Rev. He has nine siblings, most of whom are now dead. We were turned back by Johnny Jones, Jim Jones' stern-faced adopted black son. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as Stephan Gandhi Jones. Stephan was around 17 years old when he moved to Jonestown in February 1977 to help build the compound. He is an actor, known for Written in Blood (2018), The People's. Im not trying to defend him. File photo: Stephan Jones, son of Rev. One of the female subjects of the documentary is Marceline Jones, who was Jim's wife. I didn't see who fired the shot but the sound came from the tractor and trailer. It was easy to see and feel what was attractive about my father. "My experience in Jonestown was this: when I first got there I was happy and I was really enjoying myself. He did.. 'He started firing at the front and missed the pilot,' said Dale Parks, who left the temple Saturday. It marched for four jailed Fresno newsmen. 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Would let him run out on that toward the very end, '' he says fathers shifted., mourning and shame this mission, but that 's a lot of people to be enraged with I.

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