Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. In the past, Stephan has also been known as Stephan Gandhi Jones and Stephan G Jones. After the temple exodus to Guyana, he was given a public relations post in Georgetown and was part of the basketball team. The therapy that has been helpful to me hasnt been by talking with strangers about it. 'I believe 100 percent that not everyone would have been dead,' he said. I keep remembering what Jones had said in the pavilion. File photo: Stephan Jones, son of Rev. He said he considered it a failing on his part when he did. By 1978, the White Nights included a rehearsal for suicide, something Jim Jones previously had tried only with his small circle of confidants within the church. 'Watch him,' those around him were told. Stephan Jones believes his father must have killed himself: that he could not leave his own shooting to someone else. Other people were injured. I wouldn't have run.". He was a genius, and he was unique. Then there were just a few. That's what triggered it.'. 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. 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. Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business. Partner of Terry Carter Jones, aka Mary Theresa Carter, Mary Theresa Jones, Terry Carter Jones (died November 18 . It was he who willed it into being and he who also brought it down with the mass murders and suicides of hundreds. 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. I get it, Im not upset about that. Photo by Eric Risberg / AP Plunged into a new world, those raised in the temple or who joined as teens lost the only life they knew: church, jobs, housing and most of all, family and friends. Four granite slabs are etched with names of the 918 people who died in Guyana including James Warren Jones, which deeply offends some whose relatives perished. And to have any fray in that fabric would cause an unraveling that he couldnt handle.. When he wakes, at dawn or in the middle of the night, it takes him some time to come back. "This is really crazy," he recalls thinking. Or lost touch with reality? He would rise before dawn, pick his way into the bush, and sit without moving as the quiet around him split slowly into bird cries and insect buzzing and the scuffling and calling of creatures he could not see. "It's not--such a bad experience," he says. Jim Jones. But Stephan was the biological son of Jim and Marceline Jones. The phrase drinking the Kool-Aid, meaning to follow someone blindly, was born that day in Guyana. Reporters were hearing disturbing allegations about Jim Jones' church--there were stories of beatings, armed guards, extensive sexual activity. So the second thing is this whole idea of drinking the Kool-Aid thats such a prevalent saying. Stephan ran to the U.S. Embassy and appealed for a helicopter to take him to the colony to try to stop the disaster, but no one listened. They felt there was an outside threat, and that was hammered into them. With their lives, the story of Jonestown continues, even now. Vilchez worked as office manager at a private crime lab for 20 years and now, at 61, sells her artwork. For the young Caucasian, there was more: "The white man was so preached against by my father as a way of winning black people, and here I am a white man, feeling like everybody resents me and I have something to apologize for," he says. ", The thought of killing Jim Jones had occurred to his son, but Stephan never tried to do it. His LinkedIn profile indicates that he still has the position of. There is little his father said or taught him then that stays with him now; his memory is of a man wandering around the house in his underwear or his pajamas, sleeping by day, watching the news or "Hogan's Heroes" on television and announcing that he could tell whether his son was lying simply by staring into his eyes. 'Hit the deck!' Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. Siblings by adoption include Agnes Paulette Jones (1943-1978); Stephan Gandhi Jones(Born 1959); Jimmy Jones, Jr. aka James Warren Jones, Jr.(born 1960); and Timothy Tupper aka Timothy Glenn Tupper Jones, Tim "Day" Jones (1959-1978). Rev. Rebelling, they refused Jones' order to come back. After the temple exodus to Guyana, he was given a public relations post in Georgetown - and was part of the basketball team. 'In an hour, that promise was broken.'. "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 Jones says. Save this record and choose the information you want to add to your family tree. "I knew I didn't want to, but I didn't know quite how to confront him or present my case . Jim Jones. I tried to fire - but nothing happened.'. When Smith reunited with his mother and wife in Jonestown, Ollie was 8 1/2 months pregnant. "I think I have a lot of the same tendencies he had. Other Works Devotion to its ideals bolstered her self-worth. Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. "When it really came down to it, I thought there wasn't any need, because I thought he'd be dead in a couple months anyway," he says. 'There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. The years are slowly weaning Stephan Jones from Jonestown; he reads, goes to movies, wants now to have a child of his own. They must be prepared to die in the defense of socialism. 'I was going back to retrieve that young person and also to say goodbye.'. After more than 22 years at Californias transportation department, Smith retired in 2015. "He used to say we were the only two people of our kind in the universe," Jones says, clasping his hands behind his head and gazing out his apartment window. Stephan helped erect a basketball court and form a team. But he also tapped into something very real and showed something very real and was very loving, especially during the early period.. I try not to speak in terms of what I couldve done because I see no value in that.. Then he waits a while, until they have come to know him--the very tall young man with the kind voice and the black mustache. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. 29. Stephan Jones did not drink. 1998-11-08 04:00:00 PDT JONESTOWN, GUYANA-- "My father was a fraud."- Stephan Gandhi Jones, son of Jim Jones A lone palm tree stands where Jim Jones exhorted his followers to die for him, but the . What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about the Peoples Temple or your father? Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as Stephan Gandhi Jones. Is this surge in public interest in Jonestown an exhausting experience for you? I had been up all night unloading boats and I had to be at work in a couple of hours so I lay down for two hours of sleep after backbreaking and dangerous work, and Dad comes on the speaker in the wee hours of the morning. (As PEOPLE reported a year after the deaths, two of Stephan's adopted siblings also died at Jonestown.). . A number of Jonestown survivors have spoken out about the mass suicides and murders that killed the only life they ever knew and how they have managed to build new ones in the four decades since the tragedy. Despite his unconventional upbringing and the horrific tragedy brought about by his father's religious group, the Peoples Temple, Stephan speaks candidly about his experience in the documentary. He limps this month, still recovering from a broken ankle bone that went undetected for a while, but when he is well he picks up a regular game in San Francisco, sometimes with the young men he played with before--the basketball team from the Peoples Temple settlement at Jonestown, Guyana. "It was the first thing I really worked hard for. Stephan, Jim Jones son who was 19 at the time, says the warning signs that went unnoticed at Jonestown can be seen in the world today. He too was a member of the basketball team. someone shouted, and the driver attempted to turn the truck around. "I mellowed out. Now 58, he owns a modular office furniture business in the East Bay and is married with a daughter. This return to the cult of Jim Jones is part of a re-examination of dangerous cults and movements in Americas past, like the Osho cult, which had a similar murderous potential. How do you explain the renewed interest in the Peoples Temple? For many years, Jones struggled with the guilt of survival, his father's grim legacy, and his own subsequent substance abuse. In a telephone interview he sounds serene, though it cant be easy for him to talk about the tragedy that took his parents, a number of his siblings and many of his friends. Stephan Jones says he can still remember his own terror the first time his father set off a Jonestown White Night. Others had joined in San Francisco and continued with him to the promised land in the South American jungle. They were at a basketball tournament five years ago, in November 1978 when the congressman and the reporters came to Jonestown. He used this kind of threat to control his people. Besides the tragic story behind his ancestors, Stephan Jones has set his great work as an actor in the Hollywood Industry. Its nose wheel had been broken the week before and four soldiers were guarding it with M-I6 rifles. The minister gave the ritual a special name: White Night. 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 . Five others were wounded seriously. He plays forward. One of the female subjects of the documentary is Marceline Jones, who was Jim's wife. He sought treatment, and eventually, the father of three settled into a quiet life in California. He has learned, he says, to understand his own resources and the depths of his emotions. target_type: 'mix' That he was just this crazy zealot this entire time. Have your feelings toward your father and his role in your life evolved over the years? She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco. It would have been like I was a counter-revolutionary, in some sense.". Within minutes, the aide and her three children lay dead in a bloody bathroom, their throats slit. I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. Which probably wasnt true. Some had the distinct impression that the two were close to opening fire on the truck. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. If anything, we felt pity for him, he said, and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.. First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs, afraid to venture anywhere for fear of his legal problems. A bullet ripped through my left forearm. I thought there were reasons for people to want to get us. Stephanie was born in 1954 and died at a very early age of five in a car accident in May 1959. 'Let's go!' 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Neither were the White Nights where everyone stayed up, armed with machetes to fight enemies who never arrived. When the truck was allowed to pass, we all breathed easier. He fired at me, but it misfired. Alongside it was a red tractor and trailer seen earlier at the mission. His father spoke so ardently about his own self-sacrifice; Stephan Jones saw the specially prepared steaks and the color television, and in the temple apartment where they lived, he grew accustomed to glimpses of his father having sex with temple members--sometimes women, sometimes men. 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. Yesterday morning 100 Guyanee troops came by train from Matthews Ridge, walking the last several miles as a precaution against sabotage or attack. There is no way we would be shooting at the airstrip. She returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years in March, Jordan Vilchez poses for a portrait in Richmond, California last week. Ryan had planned to remain behind at the mission with several members who wished to return to the United States but couldn't get seating on the planes. 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. 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. He went through years of nightmares, mourning and shame. 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He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. They have altogether three daughters. ', 'I argued with my Dad,' he said. Im not saying he didnt cause it, create it. Ryan Seacrest, 48, is all smiles with stunning girlfriend Aubrey Paige, 25, as they enjoy Miami shopping trip, a day after it was announced he's being replaced on Live with Kelly and Ryan by Ripa's husband, Who needs Tinder when you've got Duolingo? It's unclear if he is currently married or if he retains a relationship with his surviving siblings. And it was necessary in my own healing for me to find acceptance for him, understanding of him. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. Jim Jones himself did not drink the poison. Where the machine shop once stood, there was only rusty equipment. I noticed them in real time. 'I just have to love him and forgive him.'. Among the hundreds of corpses, only one was different; he had died from a bullet to the head. "Right off the bat I explain to them that my father was nuts, that he was a drug addict," he says. Jim Jones was cultivating his growing celebrity--elected officials visited the San Francisco temple, Mayor George Moscone had used temple members as campaign workers, and much was made of the 1976 photo that showed Jim Jones and Rosalynn Carter together during the Democratic Central Committee meeting in San Francisco. His mother is fine, they say. He plucked my ego strings, making me feel like he needed me to help him on this mission, but I refused. 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). 'I said there must be another way.'. Suddenly there was no money to buy lumber or supplies--"he was such a tightwad," Stephan Jones says--and the homesteading fervor gave way to the minister's incessant meetings and group lectures and warnings about "enemies.". He is still elated by it. Jones wasn't the same man. . stephan gandhi jonesNitro Acoustic. He keeps his voice very soft, as though practice has taught him to hold certain subjects to a whisper in public, but his gaze is direct. Greg's body was near the boarding steps with his camera bag and cameras scattered around him. The dreams have never left him. ", Stephan Jones' lips draw back when he talks about his father; he looks for an instant like a cornered dog. "I always explain to them that it's not what people think--it wasn't a bunch of starry-eyed people in line waiting to take the potion . And thats why its so critical that people be wary of any leader who is held as superior to the people theyre leading. He built a long career in health care, while weathering his own serious health problems. But some lived. He played at school. It was just more controlled. All I can do is tell what I saw and heard. What they said. At first it was spanking of children. He converted to Catholicism and registered Republican. What Are Essential Oils and Do They Work. In the days before Ryans fact-finding mission to the settlement, the players were in Georgetown for a tourney with the Guyana national teams. He was 18 and running a temple construction crew when the church sanctioned his marriage to a talented 16-year-old singer, Ollie Wideman. When people ask about his past, he says he was "overseas," or "in volunteer service." Layton, who was insisting on taking the first plane, slipped to the other side of the plane before he could be frisked. There are no many details about his siblings and some had been adopted. All these lives were wasted and I don't know why. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. Volleys of shotgun, rifle and pistol fire kept coming. Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife. "By that time, I know, he was way off into drugs, and his perspective was so warped," Stephan Jones says. This past year, she returned to long-overgrown Jonestown. Gandhi is an Indian word meaning Pharmacist. Rebelling, they refused Jones order to come back. Only two days later did the picture became clear. Stephan believed he was too cowardly to follow through with the oft-threatened revolutionary suicide.. There, as part of Jones personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs, afraid to venture anywhere for fear of his legal problems. . He is a businessman in Northern California, married, with three daughters. 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. In California, he was steeped in temple life. It was all about survival in his domain. Manipulative tendencies. Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. A black man with a 'corn rows' hairstyle came up to the rear of the truck. Toward the end, as he watched the array of barbiturates, amphetamines and tranquilizers that now slurred his father's speech and sometimes left him physically unable to leave the Jonestown house, Stephan Jones says murder seemed almost redundant. Jim was the Rev. "I don't think his own ego would let him run out on that toward the very end," he says. I certainly felt there was an outside threat, even when I knew my father was full of it and I was at odds with him in Jonestown. NBC reported that Stephan Jones was the vice president for an office installation company in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008. He saw that the jungle would make him a man. NBC reporter Don Harris said coolly: 'I think we're in for some trouble.'. His unplanned departure left them alone. My companion, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, would be murdered in an ambush. Then they could identify and allow themselves to step into the story and understand how such a thing could happen. They have three children. The silence could mean only one thing: An ambush was awaiting them. The woman sang as they coupled, and when Stephan Jones' mother told the boy she knew about it, she also told him--it is this he remembers as the crescendo of the betrayal--that his father had even described the song. Jim Jr., followed that July and was 16 years old at the time. "I see a potential for me to get out of hand," Stephan Jones says, resting his chin on his hand and looking steadily at his visitor. Vilchez was dispatched to the Guyanese capital of Georgetown to raise money. . By nightfall, the seriously wounded, some of them on litters provided by the community, were sheltered in army soldiers' tents. But in 1973, Johns oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. Vilchez returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years. 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. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. The shooting triggered the mass murders and suicides in Jonestown of more than 900 people orchestrated by the Rev. . She was the adoptive daughter of Rev. 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. 'If anything, we felt pity for him,' he said, 'and it grew into a dislike, maybe hate.'. When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temple's wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. But before we could start out, we heard angry shouts. And all of the children died first. 'He hit Monica and Vern. At first it was spanking of children. In an hour, that promise was broken.. But she wasn't in the truck and the men left. 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. The reason I ended up in Jonestown is that I left. Where they were lying. Meanwhile, the tractor, with several men in the trailer, rolled toward the terminal shack and halted a short distance away. He has been married to Kristi Jones since 1991. After the incident, Stephan was put into jail for three months and that led him to drug addiction. 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. This November 1978 file photo shows the Peoples Temple compound, led by Jim Jones, after bodies were removed, in Jonestown, Guyana. "My experience in Jonestown was this: when I first got there I was happy and I was really enjoying myself. Outside of his career, he has discussed how he is spiritual in his personal life in interviews, like a 2007 one with Canada's The Globe and Mail though his beliefs are different than the fringe Christian ones his father once preached about. . ", Jim Jones moved to Guyana in 1977, just as New West magazine was preparing to publish a lengthy account of defectors' allegations about Peoples Temple. he said. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. He dreams he sees the men and women he knew, older now, changed by the years. This June 2016 photo provided by Jim Jones Jr. shows, from left, Ross Jones, 21, Erin Fowler-Jones, Robert Jones, 27, and Ryan Jones, 25, and Jim Jones Jr., in Pacifica, Calif. And frankly, Im much more trusting of the reluctant leader, one who says Lets go and not Go.. He went over the seats in a somersault and I flipped out of the plane with him. He was just 14, Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. Mr. Jones -- his first name is pronounced Stephen; Marceline Jones spelled it Stephan to honour the memory of an adopted daughter, Stephanie, who died in a car accident -- claims to be. He was summoned to the temple radio room. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. 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