Sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action'. As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. At 16, she was put on the Planning Commission where the meetings were a strange mix of church business, sex talk - and adulation for Jones. He was within a few minutes and a few yards of accomplishing his goal: to get out temple members who were afraid to leave or possibly held against their will. He converted to Catholicism and registered Republican. He is still elated by it. 'There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. Have your feelings toward your father and his role in your life evolved over the years? He too was a member of the basketball team. A second plane, a Guyana Airways 24-seater, was coming in for a landing. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown. After more than 22 years at Californias transportation department, Smith retired in 2015. His biggest regrets revolve around the team's refusal to return to Jonestown. Mud made the truck bed slick, so everyone clung to the sideboards. You'd have to deal with this elite that just revolved their lives around him' . Rev. Many of his previous interviews echo what he discusses in Jonestown: The Women Behind The Massacre, but he has an intimate perspective to give when it comes to his father and mother, who both died during the event. He cries out, "My God, you're not dead!" _taboola.push({ In Indianapolis, he served as a student pastor in the Methodist Church in 1952 but. Best Answer. He has taken a lead role in a 40th Jonestown anniversary memorial to be held Sunday at Oaklands Evergreen Cemetery, where remains of unclaimed and unidentified victims are buried. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Stephan Jones was born on 1 June 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. Hes 61 now. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. And then he went to my mother. "It was not bad people who did it," he says. 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. File photo: Stephan Jones, son of Rev. 'Little Jimmy' became part of their 'Rainbow Family' of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. Partner : Ava Phenice Jones, aka Ava Phenice Brown, Ava Phenice Cobb. "I don't care what you think of my father," Jones wrote in 2015. A bit later the number was revised upward to 408. " He smiles, imitates the sudden mask of disbelief. " But the boy was still a child of the Temple. They have three children. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened revolutionary suicide.. He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons with two now coaching basketball at the high school and college level. 'This is really crazy,' he recalls thinking. 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. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. It was he who dreamed up Jonestown, he who willed it into being, and he who brought it down: first, with the assassination of U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan and four others by temple members on a nearby airstrip on Nov. 18, 1978, then with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds, a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. 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. Or lost touch with reality? He is now a 65-year-old grandfather who has worked for a Miami hydraulics company for nearly 30 years, Jordan Vilchez, pictured sitting at a memorial for mass murder and suicide victims at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana, moved to Jonestown to 1977. When Jim Sr., a local Democratic Party darling, met with future first lady Rosalynn Carter, Jim Jr. proudly went along. I dropped to my belly. In addition to writing the articles below, Stephan appeared as a speaker during the Griot Institute of African Studies lecture series entitled Jonestown: 35 Years Later at Bucknell University; his presentation appears on this page (scroll down the videos). He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. Save record . And the temple was his life first in Indiana, later in California. They don't normally believe it at first. OAKLAND, Calif. Jonestown was the highlight of Mike Touchettes life for a time. Heres How To Watch The Alex Murdaugh Trial Live, Morgan Doughty Filed A Lawsuit Against The Murdaugh Family, Sophie Turners Joan Charts The Rise Of A Famous British Jewel Thief, Alex Murdaugh Faces Life In Prison For Allegedly Killing His Wife & Son, Get Even More From Bustle Sign Up For The Newsletter. Five others were wounded seriously. The only surviving child of Jim Jones, Stephan was born on June 1, 1959, in Indiana, USA. window._taboola = window._taboola || []; Most people were away at the time. Jones wasn't the same man. Stephan Jones' mother was one of those found dead from cyanide poisoning. "I got sick of the same speeches, the insisting people stay awake, the constantly testing people." Four decades later, Americans often use this phrase in political and business contexts without knowing its origin. In what he called "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. ), 'It was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. His son was not among the boosters. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown to raise money. Seating assignments were chosen after Ryan briefed the press on the knife attack and credited Mark Lane with saving his life. Were you aware that you had a very different childhood than most? He too was a member of the basketball team. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Then they start to ask questions right away.". When the rains approached, he would stand and watch the water come, pushing solid and steady toward him like some enormous stage set being wheeled across the hills. Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. Relatives & Associates. Some scowling faces appeared in the windows that rainy afternoon, watching the defectors leave, some with trunks and others with little more than the clothes on their backs. . someone hollered as we scrambled over the gravel to the far side of the plane. They have a total of three daughters. But mention "Jim Jones" and "Jonestown" and many people would make the connection. Im not trying to defend him. He has nine siblings, most of whom are now dead. To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. 'I believe that it was always a personal agenda for my father, and yes, there was a gradual shift in the balance. But even Stephan Jones never imagined that death would come the way it did, so redolent of madness and evil, so savage that a kind of panic still crawls into his voice when he talks about it. Stephan Jones believes his father must have killed himself: that he could not leave his own shooting to someone else. There had been underground boxes to punish the lazy; public beatings; drills where guns and bows and arrows were hauled out on call of 'white knight,' and plans for mass suicides. 'I'm not saying he didn't cause it, create it. "This was when he started bragging about taking 16 people on in one day, and all that crap. I wouldn't have run.". She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco. Only two days later did the picture became clear. stephan gandhi jones. As for those people in his life, NBC reported in a 2008 article that Stephan has three daughters and there's a photo of Stephan presumably with one of his daughters on the Alternative Considerations website. The people are elderly and he knows he must stop it, but he cannot make contact with them; they look at him as though from great distances. Save this record and choose the information you want to add to your family tree. Ryan clearly was in good spirits. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. We couldn't know then that the grim little world of this sick man would shatter within hours, taking hundreds of his followers to their deaths. "I say, 'Mom,' " Stephan Jones says, recalling a desperate mother-son huddle toward the end, " 'We're talking about a man who think's he's God. ", Jim Jones had warned them over and over that invading soldiers would torture their children; maybe that is what they feared most, Stephan Jones says. After Ollie became pregnant, she was sent to Jonestown; Eugene remained behind. In the aftermath, he built a new life. Then there were just a few. Patricia Parks had had her head shattered before her husband's eyes. I mean, I saw things and was privy to things . And he would have arrived too late, anyway. They were playing in a tournament in Georgetown, Guyana about 150 miles from Jonestown and were still in Guyana's capital when the murder-suicide occurred. "There was always that guilt fed to you by my father that kept you in check, kept you thinking, 'Maybe I'm wrong'--the guilt for being selfish and questioning this.". (1991 - (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). I would either have had to fight, or I would have taken it. ". What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about the Peoples Temple or your father? Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. . 29. They have altogether three daughters. And I had good reason to be enraged with him'. Recent interviews with Stephan include: "Son of Anarchist: My Father, Jim Jones, and What the . And I dont know that he could actually have done that. He grew, and discovered basketball. 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