Death in the Jungle: Part 4

Suzanne, the Joneses’ adopted daughter, had long rationalized her father’s deceptions and extremism.

The church leader controlled a bloc of thousands of voters in San Francisco, where elections were often decided by slim margins.

Somehow Jones had gotten wind of the proposal and convinced New West’s editor to forget about doing the article, insisting it would jeopardize the church’s good works.

He talked with San Francisco pastors who decried the adulation Jones demanded from his members.

The time for the exodus had come.

When a member’s departure was imminent, special aides submitted a change-of-address form to the post office on the person’s behalf.

Beneath it ran an ominous subheading: “Jim Jones is one [of] the state’s most politically potent leaders. But who is he? And what’s going on behind his church’s locked doors?”

These children had been placed in Temple homes by “federal courts, state courts, probation departments” because they were seen as “disturbed or incorrigible.”

In his terse letter he didn’t mention the allegations.

While some residents, especially elders, continued believing in the leader’s deity, most now regarded Peoples Temple only as a radical political organization, and Jones as one of history’s great socialist leaders.

This, said Stephan, “became a pattern of Dad’s leadership. An order would be given, then rescinded or modified. [We] soon learned to overlook…[Dad’s] more histrionic statements.”

If it included anything that could be construed as anti-Temple, it was filed away, never to be delivered.

They also patrolled the settlement’s perimeter, monitored the front gate, and surveilled residents’ movements from a forty-foot-tall guard tower near the cottages.

It had been an arduous trip, first by plane to Georgetown and then along the coast aboard a rusty shrimp trawler, the Cudjoe, owned by the Temple.

Seeing the truth written on their faces validated his own feelings.