Parent Directory -
01.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 46K
02.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 155K
03.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 47K
04.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 77K
05.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 53K
06.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 159K
07.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 111K
08.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 37K
09.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 22K
10.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 40K
11.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 42K
12.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 13K
13.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 97K
14.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 122K
15.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 37K
16.Chap.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 21K
Acknowledgement.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 15K
Bibliography.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 14K
Epilogue.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03
Index.txt 24-Mar-2009 17:03 23K
Table of Contents.txt 24-Mar-2009
Chapter II DEEP COVER
This the story of Lisa Philip Layton, a German Nazi who, along with her family, gave the world the atomic bomb, ICBM missiles, killer satellites, the modern concept of chemical, germ and gas warfare as well as a macabre experiment in ethnic weaponry known as Jonestown. Lisa's family provided the basic outline for the experiment as well as the technology and most of the finances to complete it. One family member was in charge of the Peoples Temple trail blazers, the advance party that carved Jonestown from the dense Guyanese jungle. Others, both men and women, were Jones' top aides and lovers. One was an agent provocateur who feigned a defection from Jonestown in order to entice Congressman Leo Ryan to investigate the community while her brother waited with the assassination team that would murder him. No one, not even Jim Jones himself, contributed more to the Jonestown experiment than did the family of Lisa Philip Layton.
Hugo Philip was a wealthy German banker and stockbroker who represented such noteworthy chemical companies as Siemens and Halske that eventually provided the cyanide used by the Nazis to exterminate millions, and I.G. Farben , whose research labs developed a deadly nerve gas that killed over 6,000 prisoners just in tests and demonstrations of their new weapon. Though his work was in finances, Hugo's love was music and he had earned a reputation as the most accomplished amateur violinist in Hamburg. In June of 1914, he married Anita Lea Heilbut, a wealthy stockbroker's daughter who had been educated in private institutions, including two years at an English boarding school. For four years following her graduation from Hamburg College, Anita worked as a volunteer for, what the family later described as, "an agency helping young girls to find positions."
The couple's first child, Lisa, was born in Hamburg on July 14, 1915, to provide Hugo with a deferment from World War I. A second child, Eva, was born soon after. World War I and the resulting Treaty of Versailles totally devastated the German economy. The currency was devalued to the point where the average family's net worth would not even buy a loaf of bread. The poor were so desperate that they stripped the wallpaper from their homes in order to eat the paste that had been made with a mixture of flour and water. As Germany starved, Lisa and her younger sister Eva were raised in lavish luxury. They attended Lichtwarckschule, an expensive private school that taught sociology to their students in perpetual field trips throughout Europe. When not in school, Lisa and Eva traveled with their mother to various health spas in Southern Germany where they resided for extended periods of time. The family also vacationed regularly in the Austrian Alps and in resorts on the Baltic Coast.
In 1927, Hugo commissioned the noted architectural firm of Block and Hochfeld to design and build the most ultra-modern house in Hamburg. The new home was a showplace that boasted then-unheard-of luxuries like a sunken bathtub, shower stalls and built-in closets, cabinets and furniture. Hugo helped to design the music room, the humidity controlled vaults for his tobacco and the special cabinets to store his art collection. He possessed sufficient wealth to be the patron of several aspiring German artists. The family moved into their new residence along with several live-in servants and an English governess for the children. They were definitely the elite of German society as Adolf Hitler assumed power.
By 1931, Lisa and Eva had left Lichtwarckschule. Eva went on to Austria to complete her training as a pediatric nurse in Himmler's Lebensborn Program. Very little has been recorded of Lisa's activities between 1931 and April 23, 1938, when the American consulate in Hamburg issued her a visa to the United States, but like her sister, Lisa was in the service of Hitler's Germany.
Hitler was preparing for World War II and it was determined that the Philip family could best serve the Third Reich under deep cover in the United States. The first family member to feign expatriation to the U.S. was Hugo's cousin, the eminent physician, Dr. James Franck. Dr. Franck was well known as the foremost authority on the yet undeveloped science of nuclear weapons. His early work in defining the laws of physics governing the impact of electrons on the atom earned him a world-wide reputation and the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1925. Dr. Franck had continued his research but without much success. If he was to develop the nuclear bomb, he required the resources and technology of the United States and this meant deceiving the U.S. government, but they needed a reason to justify his defection from Germany, so Franck provided one. In 1933, Heinrich Himmler outlawed the hiring of all non-Aryans in government-funded organizations. Rather than discharge the non-Aryans on his staff at Gottingen, Dr. Franck resigned his position to publish one of the few objections to the new German law. Despite the fact that Franck was Aryan (he was not dismissed from his post, only ordered to dismiss the non-Aryans on his staff) and despite the fact that nothing in the book-burning mentality of Nazi Germany was published without the approval of the Nazi Party, a few weeks after his rebuttal, the U.S. government welcomed him with full citizenship and a top secret classification for his continued work on the atomic bomb.
Expatriating the other members of the Philip family would be more difficult as they could offer only wealth to the United States and none of the scientific expertise of Dr. Franck. Their best chance of being accepted was a two level cover. A fake family history was developed to convince U.S. officials that the Philips were Jewish and would be persecuted if they remained in Germany. They claimed to be descendants of Jewish shepherds who immigrated from Northern Africa to Spain in the Middle Ages only to be forced to flee to Germany several centuries later by the Spanish Inquisition. Their claim to a Jewish heritage was quite flimsy as the family had never attended a synagogue or even celebrated Jewish holidays, which even by by Nazi standards, would be the criteria that determined who lived and who died. On the contrary, the Philips were famous for entertaining their Aryan friends during the Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter. In order to deceive the U.S. officials, Hugo Joined a Jewish organization, but in fact he only paid the dues, never attended the meetings and allowed his membership to expire as soon as the American Consulate read his name on the list of Jewish members. The family's Jewish defense was very flimsy, as stated, and perhaps deliberately so, as the Americans saw through the sham to what they thought was the true reason for the defection as planted evidence on a second lower level indicated that the entire family was homosexual. Homosexuals were second only to Jews in the numbers killed in the Holocaust and Washington officials believed that the Philips had developed a false Jewish identity in order to conceal the shameful truth. The naive bureaucrats were apparently oblivious to the fact that homosexuality is not a matter of heredity nor did their investigation probe any further than the secret they thought they had discovered. The Philips were granted asylum.
Lisa Philip sailed for New York aboard the S.S. Manhattan on May 6, 1938. In her possession was a passport stamped "Juden," a change of clothes and what the family later described as "many documents from her youth in Germany." She was met in New York by her sponsor, later identified as Bernhardt Berlin, and a group of German friends who had preceded her, including her old boyfriend, Franz Werner. Lisa went to Philadelphia to live in the home Berlin operated as a safe house where she would be introduced to life in America. Little is known of the Berlin family except that they were extremely bigoted as evidenced by a letter Lisa wrote to her parents shortly after her arrival in the U.S. in which she said, "By the way, they (the Berlins) have named me Li or Lis because Lisa they say is like a Negro named Liza. You have to address your letters to Li, Lis, or Liesel."[6]
Lisa remained in Philadelphia until late 1939 when she accepted a position as governess in the home of Reverend Galen Russell, a minister in the Congregational Church in Chappaqua, New York. Her family would later recount the time that Lisa spent with the Russells.
She and the minister's wife, Buddy Russell, shared an interest in gymnastics and massage. Continuing the same bent that she had developed in Germany, Lisa exercised in the privacy of the Russell's garden joined by Mrs. Russell.[7]
Once safely in the United States, there was no further need for Lisa to continue her masquerade as a Jew. In the land of total religious freedom, she worshiped in the Russell's Congregational Church and later joined the Quakers. Judaism would not be an issue in Lisa's life for the next thirty years until the Reverend Jim Jones announced, much to the shock of her husband, children and close friends, that Lisa was Jewish. Apparently, she had never given them a reason for her immigration from Nazi Germany. But now, thirty years later, her work in the Peoples Temple would bring public attention, and her association with the Nazi Party might be uncovered so it was necessary to revive her old Jewish cover. Jim Jones claimed to know all about Lisa's life in Germany and her feigned expatriation to the United States. He teased her about admitting that she was a "Jewish Nigger," as he phrased it. For years, it would be their little private joke.
_________________________________________
[6] Min S. Yee and Thomas N. Layton, In My Father's House: The Story of The Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1981), p. 27. Note that page numbers were taken from paperback edition).
[7] Ibid. P. 36.
Lisa's sister, Eva, soon followed her to the U.S., where she reportedly lived with sponsors in Houston, Texas. Nothing has been recorded of Eva's subsequent life nor is there any indication that Lisa even corresponded with her sister. Eva Philip disappeared from this story or, more precisely, set out to live one of her own.
Despite the relative ease in which Lisa and Eva were able to secure passports, sponsors, and visas Hugo and Anita Philip remained in Germany because, according to family reports, they were denied an entry visa to the United States. Actually, with their children safe in the U.S., Hugo and Anita had the freedom of mobility to complete their assignment in Europe. Before they were allowed to leave Europe for America, the Philips were obliged to help other Nazis escape. They sold their futuristic home in Hamburg and moved into a large house in Merano, Italy, just over the Austrian border where, according to a family report, "they intended to take in boarders." The Philip boarding house in the Italian Alps was a way station in a series of safe houses known as the "Rat Run," which ran from Germany, through Austria and Italy, and on to America. A day's journey north of them was the adjacent link in the Rat Run chain; a Catholic hospital in Lienz, Austria. Hugo would rendezvous with a group of Nazis who had spent the night in the hospital and guide them through the unpatrolled mountain trails surrounding the Brenner Pass and into Italy where they would hide in his boarding house. Hugo was well suited for this work as, among his other talents, he was an accomplished mountain climber. He would return to climb those mountains in Northern Italy every year until 1967 when, at age 85, his health prohibited it. South of Merano were the ports of Genoa and Rome where the Vatican helped the Nazis to secure false documents for their steamship voyage to America.
The Catholic Church helped Nazi war criminals and spies to escape to America. As incredible as that statement might first appear, it is true. Even today, some forty years later, the Vatican is still trying to justify their actions.
Recently, a former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, John Loftus, announced that his investigation had disclosed that "the Vatican was unwillingly duped by U.S. intelligence agencies" who hid the Nazis' true identities from the Church because they needed their knowledge and contacts in Eastern Europe. Though this theory is based in fact, the truth is much more basic and simple. It has been said that the Catholic Church would help any Catholic in trouble. In the fundamental conflict between the predominantly Catholic Germans and the European Jews, it is obvious which side the Vatican would favor.
Any doubts as to whether Hugo and Anita were working for the Nazis are certainly dispelled when one considers what happened next. At a time when Germany's borders were closed, Hugo and Anita returned to Hamburg to retrieve their furniture and other possessions. Not only were they permitted to enter and depart Germany but they were allowed to remove a considerable amount of wealth from Hitler's control. The Nazis made no [8]
Original page 33 Jonestown
attempt to impede the Philips from taking a small fortune in art, antiques and first editions; even the Family's Steinway piano was shipped to Italy. The Philips remained in Northern Italy for well over a year while they worked on the Rat Run and liquidated their assets in preparation for their own exodus.
In September of 1938, the Italian government ordered all aliens to leave the country within six months. With their powerful connections, the Philips were allowed to remain in Italy for over a year after the decree when, in September of 1939, they appeared at a check point on the Italian-Austrian border to begin their feigned defection to the United States.
According to their cover story, the Philips were denied not only entry into Austria but also reentry into Italy. Since they carried German passports, they were ordered onto an Austrian train bound for Germany and presumably the death camps. Thirty miles into the trip, a conductor discovered the Philips supposedly unconscious next to an empty bottle of poison. It was good theater. The train stopped at Lienz and the Philips were taken to the Catholic hospital there. They were traveling back up the Rat Run. They remained at the hospital for several weeks and, according to their cover, were befriended by a supervising physician who made excuses to the SS officers who inquired daily about the Philips' ability to continue their journey to the death camps. Actually, it was a pleasant reunion of old colleagues. Hugo and the doctor reportedly shared an interest in music and played duets together. Hugo had retained a priceless violin, hand crafted by Stradivari' s student, Guadagnini. The only business of their days in Lienz was the daily briefings and debriefings by the SS.
Original page 34 Jonestown
The Philips continued on their way back up the Rat Run to Vienna where, according to family reports, they were helped by "Aryan friends," Leo and Asta Duke and Walter and Helen Kalcher. The Dukes were another link in the Rat Run and had delivered a group of Nazis to the Philip's boarding house in Italy only a few months earlier. The Kalchers, described as friends of Anita 's sister, were experts in protecting the property transfers of the Germans they helped to secure false passports and even housed in their home. Part of their cover story was that the Philips had lost the family fortune and relied on charity from the Dukes, the Kalchers, the Vienna Gildemeister Committee and the American Society of Friends' refugee committee, but in truth the family's wealth was intact, much of it having been buried in the Italian Alps.
During their four month stay in Vienna, Nazi officials continued to visit the Philips on a regular basis, reportedly to inquire as to why it was taking them so long to get American Visas. Despite the fact that immigration quotas had long been filled by numbers of Austrians fleeing the Holocaust, the Philips were issued the necessary exit and entry visas for their voyage to America. It helped that their daughters already in the U.S. and their cousin was a top secret government scientist but, in all probability, the Philips paid for their papers by bribing the Austrian officials and enticing the Americans either with their gross wealth or perhaps with the secret formula for nerve gas that Hugo had carried with him ever since he had pirated it from I.G. Farben. In any event, they telegrammed Lisa, "Leave Genova by Contesavoia 20 March (1940). Inform everybody. Hurray. Hugo and Anita Philip.
Original page 35 Jonestown
The Philips split up on the docks. Hugo is said to have gone to Cambridge, Massachusetts to explore a possible position, while Anita followed Lisa back to Philadelphia to work at the Kingsley Settlement House that, in all probability, was an "end-of-the-line" safe house in the Rat Run. By mid 1940, the family's efforts were concentrated on the campus of Pennsylvania State College. Continuing her interest in massage, Lisa had accepted a position as physical therapist in the University's hospital. Her uncle, Dr. James Franck, was a physics professor there and her former German boyfriend, Franz Werner, was one of his students. Together, Dr. Franck and Werner recognized the potential of a promising young scientist, Laurence Layton, and Werner befriended the young man. Layton was the president of the Graduate Club of Pennsylvania State College and, in the pursuit of his doctoral degree, Professor Franck required that he be proficient in German. Franz Werner, who was still dating Lisa Philip at the time, suggested that she would be an excellent German tutor. Lisa agreed and, to everyone's surprise, Franz Werner encouraged Laurence to date Lisa and thus began the romance. Laurence Laird Layton was born on March 8, 1914 in the coal mining town of Boomer, West Virginia, the first child of John Wister Layton and Eva Huddleston Nutter Layton. Laurence's father, John, was a self- taught electrical engineer who reportedly patterned his life after Thomas Edison. John was employed by the largest coal mining company in West Virginia and had several patented inventions to his credit; most notably the electric circuit breaker that seventy years later is still the industry standard. Between his salary from the coal company and the products he developed in his home laboratory, John was able to provide his family with a standard of living higher than most in West Virginia. The Laytons were the first family in Boomer to have electrical appliances like ceiling fans and automatic clothes washers. This was a far cry from the luxuries of Lisa's early life in Germany, but Laurence and the other Layton children grew up amid all the wealth that part of the world had to offer.
Laurence's mother, Eva, was descended from the Huddleston family, who had the dubious distinction of being the aristocracy of West Virginia. Her family had owned Southern plantations with thousands of cultivated acres and hundreds of Black slaves to provide for them. The Civil War changed all that and the family lost everything but their pride. Eva Layton was overly preoccupied with family heritage, ancestry and, what she called, "blood lines." Even the family's own description of Eva leaves the impression that she was self- righteous, sanctimonious and extremely prejudiced. So concerned was she about blood lines that she married into her own family; her husband John was a cousin. Laurence grew up with his mother's bigoted attitudes and his father's interest in science; a deadly combination that would dictate the balance of his life.
When Laurence was about eight years old, his father was killed in a mining accident and Eva moved the children into her father's house. Sheldon Thomas Nutter would have a lasting influence on young Laurence. Nutter had married the niece of John Boomer Huddleston, the town's namesake, whose family had owned the surrounding land since 1765. During the Civil War, the family estate house was used as a headquarters by General Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia. When the Mark A. Hanna Coal Company began operations in Boomer in 1902, Sheldon "Tom" Nutter was the logical choice to head the organization. He proceeded to build a company town with eight hundred company owned houses, a company store, a company school a company municipal government and even a company church that he headed as a part-time Methodist minister.
Young Laurence, who had been born a Quaker, was raised a Methodist by his strong-willed grandfather. About six years later, Eva remarried and moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania with her new husband, Charles Chandler, and three of her children. Laurence was left to care for his ailing grandfather. In 1932, Laurence enrolled at New River State College where he majored in mathematics, chemistry and physics. He was so brilliant that he completed a yearlong course in differential calculus in only two weeks. For some unexplained reason, Laurence left college in his sophomore year to live with his mother and stepfather in Scranton where he remained for a year and a half. His only activity in Scranton was his work in the local Young People's Socialist League, a group of Jewish immigrants, who elected Laurence, a gentile, as President of their organization.
It is conceivable that Laurence had been sent to spy on the socialist's activities by the federal government that eventually would employ him for life. Laurence returned to New River State College as a sophomore with a paid teaching position and a grant. It was then he met the first woman in his life, a young poet, Constance Jeffries, but the two soon went their separate ways. Laurence graduated with honors in mathematics and pursued a masters degree at West Virginia University where he invented a molecular still. Two weeks after Laurence's photo appeared in the newspapers along with an article about the brilliant young scientist, Constance Jeffries committed suicide. Laurence later recalled,
Laurence was one of only three in his class of forty to pass the examination for a masters degree in chemistry. Several universities offered him a full scholarship but he chose to continue his studies at Pennsylvania State as the school had a reputation as the leader in the field of chemistry. But it was Laurence's reputation as a brilliant scientist and inventor that preceded his arrival at Penn State and targeted him by Dr. Franck and Lisa Philip. Laurence was never really interested in Lisa. According to family reports he was never really interested in any women, but that did not deter Lisa, who set out to marry him. Lisa's beauty has been compared to that of the Austrian actress, Heddy Lamarr. She was intelligent and popular and she could have
I had the guilty feeling that she had read this article and then committed suicide. We had separated. We both had gone away to school, and she had become a nurse, while I was still a graduate student. When I got this newspaper clipping that she was dead I went into mourning. I always had the feeling that whenever I was involved with women there were personal disasters.[9]
_________________
[9]Ibid., pp.14-15.
Original page 39 Jonestown
dated any man on campus but she chose to pursue one who was not the least bit interested in her. She courted him for a few months. She said they should get married. Franz Werner and Dr. Franck said they should get married, but still Laurence was not interested. Several things about Lisa bothered him. She was too aggressive, domineering and arrogant. He would later recall,
We would take walks, and I noticed that she would step on the ants. 'My God, what do you do that for?' I asked. She said, 'It's strange but in Germany I learned to hate weak things. I can't help myself.' Things like this shocked me. [10]
When all else had failed, Lisa resorted to her secret weapon or rather Laurence's secret weakness. She threatened to commit suicide if Laurence would not marry her, knowing full well that this would stir his guilt feelings about the death of Constance Jeffries. Laurence was not about to have yet another woman's death on his conscience so he succumbed to Lisa's ultimatum. The two had been attending Quaker meetings together but the Quakers required a six month engagement before sanctioning a marriage. Lisa refused to wait that long so they were married by the campus Methodist minister on October 18, 1941. They had known each other only six months. Seven weeks after their wedding, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States was thrust into World War II and Laurence was likely to be drafted.
____________________
[10] Ibid. p. 300.
Original page 40 Jonestown
Lisa arranged a deferment for her husband when her uncle, Dr. Franck, offered Laurence a top secret appointment on the Manhattan Project. Dr. Franck had since accepted a professorship in physics at the University of Chicago where he was secretly developing the atomic bomb. Laurence joined the project, was issued a student deferment to complete his studies at Penn State, and was assigned his first full-time job working for Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York. He remained at Kodak for about a year during which time he perfected his molecular still technology that utilized thermal diffusion to purify uranium isotopes for Kodak's Manhattan Project laboratory in Kingsport, Tennessee.
On December 2, 1942, the nuclear age was born when Dr. Franck and his colleagues, using Dr. Layton's purified uranium, set off the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction under the grandstands of the University of Chicago's football stadium. The world would never be the same.
Without the combined efforts of Lisa's uncle and husband, the Manhattan Project might have failed or at least its success would have been severely delayed. It was Adolf Hitler who first conceived the atomic bomb and it was his German scientists, like Dr. Franck, who made his dream a reality. It was no coincidence that those scientists announced they were ready to explode the first atomic bomb only days after Germany surrendered in May of 1945; they were ensuring that the ultimate weapon would not be used against their fatherland. The first atomic explosion occurred in June. In August, the Japanese sub-humans were the first atomic victims. Such was the control that the Nazis exerted in the U.S. After the war, Dr. Franck led a contingent of nuclear scientists to petition the
Original page 41 Jonestown
government to consider the atomic bomb, not as just a larger explosive, but as a political tool; a threat to maintain world control. On the surface the Franck Report published in 1946, appears to be a plea not to explode another bomb from the scientists who felt guilty for having invented it, but actually it was the beginning of the Cold War. German scientists not only made the first atomic bomb for the U.S., they also made the atomic policy.
The Layton's first child was born in Rochester on November 13, 1942. Thomas Nutter Layton was named for Laurence's recently deceased grandfather and had been conceived on the eightieth anniversary of the patriarch's birth. Dr. Layton satisfied the requirements of his national security deferment, completed his work with Kodak and moved the family to the Washington, D.C. suburb of College Park, where he sat out the remainder of the war as a chemistry professor at the University of Maryland.
The couple's second child, Annalisa Laird Layton, was born in Maryland on September 9, 1944. According to family reports, Annalisa was named for Lisa's old German Aryan friend, Annalisa Schmidt, who had been killed in a British bombing raid while walking in the woods outside Hamburg. Ever since she had left Germany, Lisa corresponded regularly with Annalisa. Later, the family went so far as to publish some of their letters, but no one seems to be conscious of how terribly suspicious their correspondence was. Annalisa was a good German, who enjoyed all the freedoms afforded a Nazi, including freedom to correspond but there was no postal service between the two warring countries; absolutely no communications were permitted so it follows that Lisa and Annalisa corresponded covertly. Overall, it was a breach of U.S. national security for the wife and niece of two of the most important top secret nuclear scientists to correspond with the enemy.
The Layton's third child was born on January 11, 1946 in Maryland. Laurence John or Laurency or Larry, as the family nicknamed him, was named for his father. Larry was an unwanted child. He was ignored, estranged, and maladjusted, which accounted for the psychosomatic illnesses that plagued him as a youth. It is really no surprise that Larry would be the first Layton sacrificed to Jim Jones but it is rather ironic that he also be the last for, as of this writing (1986), he stands alone as the only person ever to be tried in U.S. courts for the conspiracy to murder Congressman Leo Ryan.
In 1946, following the end of World War II, the Laytons moved to Baltimore where Laurence had accepted a position at Johns Hopkins University as a researcher and professor of biochemistry. He had been hired by the department head, Reginald Archibald of the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, to develop a procedure for diagnosing cartilaginous cancer. Dr. Layton's findings were considered to be major medical discoveries and his subsequent report, published in the medical journals in 1951, brought him a professional prestige he had not known since his invention of the molecular still. He was invited to lecture at universities in England, Switzerland, and Germany. Lisa stayed home with the children while Dr. Layton toured Europe. While in Germany, he received a letter from the U.S. Army offering him a position as Chief of Chemical Warfare at double the salary he was then earning. Dr. Layton accepted the Arm's offer.
Original page 43 Jonestown
In the fall of 1951, Dr. Layton arrived at the U.S. Army's Chemical Warfare Division at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. His first four months at Dugway were a transition period in which he headed the Biochemistry Department after which he was appointed chief of the entire Chemical Warfare Division. His duties included directing the research and development of chemical weapons and deployment systems conducted by the five departments in his charge.
The Dugway Proving Grounds are as desolate a place as any on earth. For miles in all directions there is nothing but the hard packed salt of a prehistoric lake bed. Under the direction of Dr. Layton, scientists in the analytical, biological, organic, and physical chemistry departments developed chemical and germ weapons that were then tested on the Lake Bonneville salt flats. The chemical agents were dropped from airplanes or observation towers onto a grid patterned target area containing chemical monitoring devices and tethered farm animals. Following the tests, autopsies were performed on the animals and their bodies were buried in mass graves. Dr. Layton personally developed new techniques to evaluate the extent to which an animal had been killed. "Dead" was not sufficient for the doctor. He needed to know "how dead."
Many of the experiments performed at Dugway under Dr. Layton's direction had to do with nerve gas; the same deadly weapon that his father-in-law's company had developed in Nazi Germany. Of his work at Dugway, Dr. Layton would later write,
You can blow people to bits with bombs, you can shoot them with shells, you can atomize them with atomic bombs, that's considered moral, but the same people think there's something terrible about poisoning the air and letting people breathe it. Anything having to do with gas warfare, chemical warfare, has this taint of horror on it, even if you only make people vomit. It's all right to kill somebody in war, but it's not all right to make him vomit, or make him silly. Actually, it's one of the most humane types of warfare, if you want to compare it to other types. I'm not apologizing for chemical warfare. I'm just saying that the prejudice against chemical weapons in favor of conventional and atomic weapons is absurd."[11]
Dr. Layton's defense of chemical warfare was itself "absurd," as the intention is not to make people "vomit" or "silly" but to kill them. On May 10, 1952, two months after Dr. Layton accepted the position of Chief of Chemical Warfare, his mother-in-law, Anita Philip, died from injuries suffered in a fall from a window of a New York City apartment house. The police determined that Anita's death was a suicide when they discovered the following note written in German:
____________________
[11] Ibid. pp. 60-61.
Orignal page 45 Jonetown
My friends, know that I, free and proper, am a good American. But I was a gossip and have been entangled in a network of intrigue. I no longer have the strength to free myself from it. Forget me not my beloved children and family. And you, Hugo, forgive me. Live well. All of you loved mankind so well.[12]
According to the family, Anita's suicide note is roughly translated from German, but the essence of the message remains. Reportedly, she killed herself because someone suspected her of not being a "good American" which, in the context of her life, meant a Nazi. She admitted to being "entangled in a network of intrigue" which concisely depicts her involvement in the organization of expatriated Nazi spies. According to the Layton family, Anita's suicide was a result of an increasing paranoia she suffered since her Quaker friends in New York informed her that she was being investigated by U.S. intelligence agents. She reportedly did not know that the reason for the investigation was Dr. Layton's top secret appointment as Chief of Chemical Warfare. She rationalized the probe as a personal attack, reminiscent of the alleged persecution she suffered in Europe and, in her resulting despondency, she killed herself rather than suffer the ordeal a second time. Through this rationale is plausible, it does not take into account two very important facts. Certainly, Dr. Layton would have forewarned his family of the standard security check required in such a case. Also, this was not the
____________________
[12] Ibid. pp. 61-62.
Orignal page 46 Jonetown
first time that Anita had been investigated by the federal government. The first time was when she applied to enter the country, the second when her cousin and son-in-law were appointed to the Manhattan project. So, not only should Anita have been acquainted with such standard procedures, but the federal government should have been well acquainted with Anita.Throughout this story there are several deaths termed suicide that were, in fact, murder and Anita's demise may well be another example. It is possible that in their investigation, the federal government discovered that Anita was a Nazi spy and killed her because of it, staging a fake suicide. It is also possible that the Nazis killed her as she had served her purpose. Because of her obvious involvement with the Nazis, she was a threat to the cover of her daughter, whose assignment with the Chief of Chemical Warfare became far more important than any service Anita might have provided them. There is a third possibility that also permeates this story. Someone could have been killed and falsely identified as Anita giving her the freedom to continue her work under deep cover. There remains an ironic postscript to the reports of Anita's death. Though she had been educated in an English boarding school and was well versed in the English language, Anita wrote her last words -- a defense that she was a "good American" -- in German. first time that Anita had been investigated by the federal government. The first time was when she applied to enter the country, the second when her cousin and son-in-law were appointed to the Manhattan project. So, not only should Anita have been acquainted with such standard procedures, but the federal government should have been well acquainted with Anita. Following Anita's death, her husband, Hugo returned to Germany where he resided for the rest of his life in luxury. He could even afford to send Lisa considerable amounts of money that, according to the family, she deposited in secret bank accounts and eventually contributed to Jim Jones and the Jonestown experiment. Orignal page 47 Jonetown Within a week of Anita's death, Laurence and Lisa Layton conceived their fourth and last child. Deborah June Huddleston Layton was born in February of 1953. Such accurate records of conception were easily maintained by the Laytons as they did not sleep together and viewed sex only as a means to produce children. Not only did they believe in reincarnation, but they attempted to engineer it in the creation of children in the likeness of deceased relatives and friends. With the exception of Larry, each of the Layton children were identified with a past life.
Dr. Layton's contributions to chemical warfare remain top secret but, according to one published government report, he "was responsible for the publication of ten classified reports on research aspects of chemical warfare agents, and more than 100 reports on chemical weapons systems." [13] This ten to one ratio is important to understand as it accurately reflects the essence of his work at Dugway. Th chemical toxins that had been developed by the Army were state-of-the-art, requiring little need for improvement, but the chemical deployment systems were so ineffective as to jeopardize the entire concept of chemical warfare.
Basically, no matter how lethal the agent was, the wind just blew it away. Dr. Layton and his staff joked that their work was actually meteorological warfare, but this was no joking matter to the Army. Within a month of Dr. Layton's arrival at Dugway, the Army exploded a chemical bomb in the Presidio and tracked the presumably harmless gas as the ocean breeze carried it through downtown San Francisco. The gas failed to enetrate the buildings and the wind simply blew it away. The Army then exploded a similar bomb in the New York City subway hoping to avoid the
__________________
[13] Ibid. p. 60.
Jonetown wind effect. Again, the test failed. The gas did not evenly disperse in the tunnels and besides, an actual chemical war would not provide such large concentrations of people underground. The unpredictable effect of weather on chemical weapon deployment was an overwhelming problem that would take Dr. Layton two years to solve with a very simple answer; chemical weapons were good but air-borne deployment was bad. He recommended that the Army concentrate on developing new systems to introduce chemical agents into a society. There were many alternatives. One could poison the water supply, the food source or even the glue on the back of a country's postage stamps. He had solved the Army's long-standing problems with the deployment of chemical weapons and his work at Dugway was complete. According to the family, Dr. Layton was then approached by "a friend from Washington, D.C." who arranged for his appointment as associate director of research and development at the Naval Powder Factory (later renamed the Propellant Facility) in Indian Head, Maryland. It was the Navy's turn to utilize his genius. After two years in the desolation of Dugway, the family was happy to return to Maryland where, for the next four years, Dr. Layton worked at arming the Navy's Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Vanguard Satellites. As in Dugway, his work was classified top secret. In July of 1957, the Laytons moved to Berkeley, California where, after two years with the Army and four years with the Navy, Dr. Layton accepted a position as research scientist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Laboratory. Even at the Department of Agriculture, Dr. Layton's Orignal page 49 Jonetown work was military in nature as his first assignment was to ascertain whether chickens and other farm animals could be safely eaten after being exposed to nuclear radiation; a study in post-nuclear war survival. According to an article in the New York Times,
In 1961, he (Dr. Layton) published a paper that outlined, for the first time, an effective way to use laboratory monkeys to test human food allergies; previously such research could be done only on humans.[14]
Dr. Layton's process of substituting laboratory monkeys for human test subjects would be his last published contribution to science as, ironically, his next project would be a top secret, unpublished experiment that utilized human test subjects in place of lab animals - an experiment in ethnic weaponry known as Jonestown. Dr. Layton's warfare work had been very profitable, permitting him to purchase a luxurious home in the Berkeley hills that the family called "the mansion." He enjoyed referring to himself as the only non-millionaire on millionaire's row. The neighborhood, the elite of Berkeley, included a number of Nobel laureates, intellectuals, university professors, and even the retired Navy Admiral, Chester Nimitz. Admiral Nimitz was well aware of Dr. Layton's contributions to the Navy and befriended his new neighbor and especially his young daughter, Deborah, who looked to the Admiral as a surrogate grandfather. The two were often seen walking hand-in-hand on the Admiral's afternoon constitutional. Berkeley was good to the Laytons who
____________________
[14] "The Layton Family's Tragedy: From Hitler's Germany to Jim Jones's Commune," New York Times, December 4, 1978, p. A1, col. 2.
Orignal page 50 Jonetown
lived comfortably nested between money and social prestige. Reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Layton lived in constant fear of the nuclear monster he had helped to create. Reacting to an article in the January 196 Esquire Magazine, entitled "Nine Places to Hide," he proposed to move his family to Christchurch, New Zealand, one of the locations cited in the study as being safe from the effects of a nuclear war. On October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, he wrote to Tom and Annalisa who were then attending school in Davis, California,
With the world situation in such a critical (explosive) phase, I am most uneasy about my children. I think you and Tom are probably safer from direct blast effects than are Laurence and Debbie, however the fallout effects should certainly affect Davis and Points East and up the main valleys of the rivers. I prefer that you both stay out of the cities until the crisis has passed.Do not come to Berkeley until we all agree that you should. I suppose the only relatively safe area of California is north and west.[15]
According to the article in Esquire, the safe area north and west in California was the city of Eureka; one of the "Nine Places to Hide." The safe zone
____________________
[15] Yee and Layton, p. 124.
Orignal page 51 Jonetown
extended from Eureka southeast to Ukiah. Even in the early 1960's, the lives of Dr. Layton and the Reverend Jim Jones were congruous as Jones' reactions to that same magazine article prompted him to move his family to Belo Horizonte, Brazil, one of the other nine safe places. Upon his return to the U.S., Jones moved his congregation to Ukiah to begin the odyssey. The 1960's saw the Layton children grow up and, one at a time, leave their Berkeley home. Tom and Annalisa enrolled at the University of California at Davis where, following in the family tradition, they would become prominent scientists in their chosen fields of study. Larry also attended Davis but his performance was regarded as below the standards set by the other Layton scientists. By 1966, all but Deborah had left home and with her new-found freedom, Lisa decided to take her first job since her marriage to Laurence. Though she had little work experience, Lisa offered one qualification that set her apart from other middle-aged housewives seeking employment. She had passed at least three separate investigations and was cleared by the federal government for top secret work. She was assigned to the library of the University of California at Berkeley where she was placed in charge of the radical leftists and Third World newspapers and periodicals. In the 1960's, the U.C. Berkeley campus was the center of revolutionary activity in the United States and the university's library possessed the most comprehensive collection of leftist literature in the country. Lisa's job was to discern the published information and pass anything she considered important on to the Central Intelligence Agency. Not only did she provide the CIA with current publications that were Orignal page 52 Jonetown primarily a protest against the CIA and the military- industrial complex but she also provided lists of those Berkeley radicals who requested such publications. Sometime between 1963 and 1965, the CIA presented Dr. Layton with a very serious problem that threatened the internal security of the United States. In every major city in the country, Black citizens were demonstrating and rioting for their civil rights and there was also a strong possibility of a modern day Indian uprising. The racial unrest in the Black and Native American communities was by no means under control and the CIA was compelled to explore any and all possible solutions. The agency hoped that their most distinguished chemical scientist might provide a pharmaceutical solution to the violence. The CIA had developed several ethnic behavior modification drugs in their MK ULTRA project but none had been adequately tested outside the laboratory. Dr. Layton was assigned the task of designing a large scale field test to evaluate the two most promising drugs to alter the behavior of Blacks and Native Americans. Of course, Dr. Layton could not be directly involved in the experiment because his career, especially as the Army's Chief of Chemical Warfare, would certainly expose the government's sponsorship of the field test. Very few people in the CIA were privy to the experiment, as it had been classified at the highest security level. Dr. Layton had to know and, as the agency usually deals, not with individuals, but with entire families (for security reasons), it was decided that instead of bringing others into the experiment it would be best to have Dr. Layton's wife and children administer the project with the help of a figurehead scapegoat named Jim Jones. Orignal page 53 Jonetown Dr. Layton had never heard of Jim Jones until the agency introduced him as one of their MK ULTRA experts in the behavior modification of Blacks. Jones had just returned from a successful assignment in South America where he had incited Blacks to riot in British Guiana. The racial violence that ensued eventually toppled the government and the CIA-backed politician, Forbes Burnham, assumed control of the country as Prime Minister. Jones' expertise in coercing Blacks to riot was invaluable in the experiment designed to subjugate of a self-ordained Jones had worked under the cover ordained minister and missionary, but this monumental undertaking required a more orthodox disguise so, a few weeks after his return to the United States, he was officially ordained a minister. The Reverend Jim Jones immediately initiated plans to move his church to Ukiah, California where he would join the Layton family. In an effort to simplify the very complicated involvement of the Layton family in the Jonestown experiment, the balance of this chapter will vary from chronological order and consider the contributions of each of the family members individually.
*******************************************************
Larry Layton
As a student at Berkeley High in the early 1960s, Larry was president of the Young Democrats and editor of their newsletter, The Liberal. Following the lead of his older brother and sister, Larry enrolled at the University of California at Davis, where he majored in sociology and co-habitated with Carolyn Moore, the daughter of John Moore, the Methodist minister on campus. The Reverend Moore was an outspoken proponent of Jim Jones up to and even after the massacre in Jonestown. He was close to both the Laytons and Jim Jones and provided a buffer by which Dr. Layton could remain "once removed" from the experiment.
Larry and Carolyn were married in July of 1967. Both families attended the ceremonies conducted by Reverend Moore. Dr. Layton gave the newlyweds some money and a car and loaned them his Volkswagen bus when they moved into the married student housing complex in Davis. Larry and Carolyn complemented each other. He was quiet and passive while she was aggressive and outspoken with "a slight arrogance." Carolyn made all the decisions and one of the first was that the couple should move to Ukiah and join Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple, which they did immediately after Larry's graduation in 1968.
It was the height of the Vietnam War and without his student deferment, Larry would probably be drafted into the Army. Like his father and his maternal grandfather before him, Larry avoided military service during war time; Jim Jones would help. According to a statement Larry later issued from a jail cell in Guyana,
The draft was on my heels, so I really was looking for a happy existence and this, after graduation, led me and Carolyn, whom I loved very deeply, to head to Ukiah in search of utopia.[16]Larry had been denied several appeals for a conscientious objector status based on his affiliation with the pacifist Quakers. Jim Jones offered to
____________________
[16] Ibid. p. 104,
Orignal page 55
dictate a letter for Larry "guaranteed to result in C.O. status." With his help, Larry received a deferment and was ordered to perform alternative service at the Mendocino State Mental Hospital where Peoples Temple medical technicians trained. Larry worked at his volunteer job, attended Temple services and helped to build the new Redwood Valley Temple building. His financial support came from his father and, like other top Temple aides, Larry donated 25% of his income to Jim Jones. Even at this early stage, Dr. Layton was indirectly supporting the experiment.
There are conflicting reports as to why Larry and Carolyn were divorced but all agree it was because Jim Jones had sex with one of them. According to the family's account, Jones announced the divorce at a Temple meeting, much to Larry's surprise. He arranged the property settlement right then and there, the papers were signed and Larry was ordered to Reno, Nevada to establish residency and file for the divorce. Before he left the meeting, Jones asked him to choose his next wife from those in attendance. Larry chose Karen Tow and a few months later, they were married.
Carolyn became one of Jones' favorite mistresses, eventually bearing his child whom they named Kimo (Hawaiian for Jim). Jones arranged for Carolyn to marry Temple aide, Michael Prokes, so the child would be considered legitimate. According to the Layton family, Carolyn's affair with Jim Jones was known only by the Moores and a few top aides who made excuses for their absence to the others.
Temple members didn't see much of Jones either during that period. They thought he was out working on some revolutionary venture, while he was actually at the Moore home with Carolyn... Carolyn introduced Jones to her parents, John and Barbara Moore, and they all became quite friendly. The Moores moved from Davis to Berkeley, and Jones began spending much of his time at their house. He flattered them by sharing inside information about the socialist goals of his church, and soon they regarded him as a virtual son-in-law.[17]Jones was busy building an empire and must have had a good reason to spend "much of his time" at the Moores' home. True, he did confide "inside information" about his true goals but, by no means, were they socialistic in nature as Jones was a fascist. The Moores had moved to Berkeley to facilitate their communications with the Layton family and much of the information Jones passed to the Moores was in turn passed to Dr. Layton. The Reverend Moore acted as a mediator or messenger which allowed Dr. Layton to remain at a safe distance from Jones and the experiment. It is rather strange that John and Barbara Moore would regard Jones as a "virtual son-in-law" when their daughter was married to Mike Prokes and the Reverend Jones was married to his wife, Marceline. Not only did Reverend Moore accept the father of his illegitimate grandson but he went to great lengths to proclaim his "good works" to the local press. He eventually visited Jonestown and returned
____________________
[17] Ibid. p. 117.
Orignal page 57 Jonetown
with glowing reports of the project. He would remain one of Jones' foremost supporters even after the carnage. Reverend Moore's actions seem absurd.
In time, Larry and Karen Layton were divorced send once again, Jones was blamed for the break-up. According to an article in the New York Times, "friends of Larry Layton recall that Mr. Jones took both Carolyn and Karen from him after having the women watch him force Larry to submit to a homosexual act."[18]
In response to Dr. Layton's prompting, Larry enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College where he studied to become an X-ray technician. The Santa Rosa campus, like Mendocino State Hospital, was a training ground for Temple technicians bound for the experiment in Jonestown. Lary lived in a Temple-operated dormitory and, in addition to his individual studies, he met once a week with the other Temple students for their class in military tactics and guerrilla warfare. Eventually, Larry was sent to Jonestown with the Temple's newly purchased X-ray machine that would be used to plot the escape of his mother, Lisa.
TAR WHY THIS NOW... OUT OF PLACE BUT FROM THE ORIGINAL]
As Congressman Leo Ryan left Jonestown with several "defectors" for the return trip to the U.S., Larry left a huddle with Jones to announce that he, too, wanted to leave the jungle community. The others were skeptical of his intentions as Larry was considered one of Jones' most trusted aides but Ryan consented to the request. When the group arrived at the Port Kaituma airstrip, Larry quickly boarded one of the two planes to either plant his revolver or locate one that had already been planted there. He then disembarked the plane and submitted to a pat-search that the others had convinced Ryan was a good idea for security reasons. Larry again boarded the plane and
____________________
[18] "The The Layton Family's Tragedy"
Orignal page 58 Jonetown
retrieved the gun from its hiding place. Just then a tractor carrying Temple gunmen approached the planes and the assassins opened fire on the crowd of people still milling about the aircraft. Larry shot Temple defectors Monica Bagby and Vernon Gosney, he missed the pilot, then reportedly turned to shoot another defector, Dale Parks -- his .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver misfired and Parks wrestled the weapon from him. Congressman Ryan was killed in the assault. Larry was immediately arrested for attempted murder by the Guyanese authorities. Though there were several members of the airstrip death squad, Larry was singled out to stand trial. He would remain incarcerated until his appearance in a Guyanese court on May 5, 1980, over seventeen months after the incident at the airstrip.
Larry was tried in Guyana for the attempted murder of Bagby and Gosney, but not for the murder of Congressman Ryan, as Ryan was on official Congressional business and his murder fell under U.S. jurisdiction. The defense presented little or no argument. No witnesses were called. Larry took the stand once but only broke down in tears and said nothing in his own defense. The prosecution witness, Vern Gosney, testified that Larry had shot both him and Monica Bagby (who was too frightened to attend the trial). Despite the eyewitness testimony, the jury found Larry not guilty as charged on May 23, 1980. Following his acquittal, Larry remained in Guyanese custody for an additional six months before being extradited to the U.S. to face charges of conspiring to murder Ryan. Bureaucratic red tape was the only reason given for the long delay.
In August of 1981, Larry Layton, charged with conspiring to assassinate Congressman Ryan, went on
Orignal page 59 Jonetown
trial in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. From the very beginning it would appear that the scales of justice were tipped in his favor. Nearly three years had passed since the Jonestown massacre and the incident was only a bad memory that both the public and the public prosecutor would rather just forget. There was little interest in prosecuting Larry, especially since the prosecutor had a past relationship with the Peoples Temple. Following the massacre, the government placed U.S. Attorney William Hunter in charge of investigating the Peoples Temple. Hunter had a close personal relationship with Temple attorney Tim Stoen ever since they both worked as assistant district attorneys in San Francisco to cover-up the 1975 election fraud perpetrated by Jim Jones. When Hunter was promoted to U.S. Attorney, he offered Stoen the position of Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney. When this scandalous conflict of interest was disclosed, Hunter stepped down but appointed one of his employees, Robert Dondero, to prosecute Layton.
Dondero called twenty-one witnesses to the stand, most of whom testified that Larry Layton was a member of the Temple assassination squad that killed Congressman Ryan. An FBI ballistics expert confirmed that the bullets removed from Bagby and Gosney matched those that were test-fired from Layton's revolver. A top Guyanese detective, identified only as "Jugmohan" presented a confession that Layton had signed in Guyana just four days after the incident in which he said,
I Larry Layton, take full responsibility for all deaths and injuries that took place at the Port Kaituma airstrip...I felt that these people were working in conjunction with the CIA to smear the Peoples Temple.[19]Defense attorney Tony Tamburello countered by admitting that his client probably did attempt to murder Bagby and Gosney but that he had nothing to do with the murder of Congressman Ryan. Tamburello added, "Mr. Layton is not on trial in this country for shooting anybody. Our presentation to the jury will be he is not on trial for anything other than "[20] conspiracy. Since Layton had already been acquitted of shooting Bagby and Gosney in Guyanese court, he could not be retried on the same charges so his confession in U.S. court was a safe statement. According to newspaper reports of the court proceedings,
Defense Attorney Tony Tamburello said Layton is a government "scapegoat." "The State Department is responsible for a monumental tragedy, and what they are trying to do now is blame one individual and divert attention from their own responsibility," he said.[21]Tamburello contended that his client had been drugged into participating, that he looked "spaced out and was mumbling of a CIA conspiracy" during the attack at the airstrip.
Dick Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Guyana who witnessed the attack at the
____________________
[19] 19 "U.S. Rests in Layton Trial," San Francisco Chronicle, Sil;p ebr 4, 1981.
[20] "Layton Attorneys Stick by Decision to Rest Their Case," San Jose Mercury News, September 10, 1981.
21] "Layton-Trial Testimony Torments Families of J' Town Victims," San Jose Mercury News, August 23, 1981.
Orignal page 61 Jonetown
airstrip testified for the prosecution. According to the newspaper accounts of the trial,
Out of the presence of the jury, defense lawyer, Tony Tamburello said he wanted to find out whether Dwyer was actually a CIA operative in Guyana. Chief U.S. District Judge Robert F. Peckham asked what the relevance of such an inquiry would be to Layton's trial, and Tamburello said he wanted to show that Dwyer's testimony was "tainted by bias --he wants Larry Layton convicted to take the responsibility of Jonestown off the State Department and the CIA." Citing recent appellate court decisions, the judge refused to allow that line of questioning. Outside the courtroom, Dwyer a foreign service officer since 1957 was asked whether he was indeed a CIA gent. Dwyer replied, "I can a neither confirm nor deny the allegation."[22]
In a prepared statement read to the press outside the courtroom, Tamburello said, We believe, in fact, Mr. Dwyer is biased and has a motive for saying what he's saying...because
____________________
[22] "Defense Set Back in Layton Trial," San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 1981.
Orignal page 62 Jonetown
it takes the heat away from the State Department, and particularly the CIA.[23] Despite the fact that the judge had disallowed such references, even the prosecution witnesses continued to allude to the agency's involvement in Jonestown. Dale Parks, who had wrestled the revolver from Layton at the airstrip, testified that Layton falsely accused him of shooting Bagby and Gosney and had told Dale's father that Dale was "part of a CIA plot to destroy Jim Jones.[24]
Speaking as a researcher who, at the time of the Layton trial, was already investigating the CIA's secret sponsorship of the Jonestown experiment, I was shocked that the agency would even be a subject in the court proceedings. In retrospect it was Layton's best defense -- a good offense. He was threatening to tell the truth and expose Jonestown as a CIA operation unless the agency came to his aid. Meanwhile, the government prosecutors, unable to deny the hard evidence of CIA involvement, were put on the defensive and forced to cover-up the story by admitting to the CIA's presence in Jonestown but implying that their intention was to investigate or even persecute Jones.
Not only was the threat to the CIA Layton's best defense; it was his only one. Tamburello rested his case without calling a single witness to the stand. Again, not even Larry would testify on his own behalf. From the outside, the outcome of the trial would seem to be a foregone conclusion. The prosecution had presented hard evidence, ballistic reports, eyewitness testimony and even a signed confession while the defense presented no evidence
_________________
[23]August 25, 1981, San Jose Mercury News, p. 6A, col. 1, "Envoy Says He's Known About Cultists' Gripes,"
[24] August 28, 1981, San Francisco Chronicle, page 54, "Testimony on the Guyana Ambush,"
Orignal page 63 Jonetown
actually no case other than vague referrences that implicated the CIA in the murders in Guyana. But, when the jury returned they were deadlocked, 11 to 1 in favor of acquittal on all charges. Judge Peckham declared a mistrial and, according to a local newspaper report,
...released Layton on a personal recognizance bond signed by the defendant's father, a retired germ warfare scientist who lives in the East Bay.[25]In response to the mistrial, the local press reported,
Survivors of the carnage insist the real story has yet to be told. They maintain there must be an epilogue, one that would include an investigation of the government's involvement at Jonestown...[26]Press reports also claimed that "independent investigators" had taken the survivors' theories a step further: "...alleging that the government failed to warn Ryan about Jonestown because the jungle camp was actually part of a CIA mind-control experiment. "[27] Eyewitness for the prosecution, Jim Cobb, summarized the consensus of the ex- Temple members regarding the Layton trial, "there is a coverup involved in Peoples Temple and Jonestown that will make Watergate look innocent. We've got to get to the bottom of this and let the truth be told.[28]
____________________
[25]October 2, 1981, San Francisco Chronicle, page 1, "Larry Layton Released on Bond,"
[26] September 27, 1981, San Francisco Chronicle, State Dept. Role Among Unsolved Guyana Puzzles,
San Francisco Chronicle, page A20, col. 5.,
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
In conclusion, the most important aspect of the Layton trial was not something it was, but something it was not. Larry Layton was the only person the government would prosecute for the attack at the airstrip that killed Congressman Ryan and four others. All the government's efforts and the public's attention were directed to this one case, as if it held the definitive answer to the assassination, but Layton was not on trial for assassinating Ryan, only "conspiring" to do so. By the government's case, it seems to be a one-man-conspiracy as they produced no co-indictments. The Carter brothers are a good example of the prosecution's lack of interest. Tim and Michael Carter were two Jonestown guards who witnesses claim participated in the airstrip assassination. Not only did the government refuse to indict them in the conspiracy, they did not even call them as witnesses in the Layton trial as, according to Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Sanford Svetcov, Tim Carter "chose to use his claim of privilege," refusing to testify unless the government granted him immunity and Michael Carter said he would plead the Fifth Amendment to any questioning under oath. The prosecution's reasons for not bringing charges against the Carters are ridiculous, especially in the context of a conspiracy trial in the murder of a federal politician. The government's showcased court proceedings satisfied the public without ever having had to approach the basic question, "Who actually fired the shot that killed Congressman Ryan?"
Under pressure to resolve the assassination of Congressman Ryan, the prosecution was forced to retry their scapegoat but allowed him to delay the trial for several years during ears during which time Larry lived as a free man. First scheduled for February of 1982, the
Orignal page 65 Jonetown
proceedings were postponed until September of 1984 while the Court of Appeals considered a request to admit a tape recording of the White Night and other evidence that referenced the involvement of the CIA. Just prior to the scheduled date, Larry elected to undergo surgery to remove polyps from his throat. The defense argued that their client would not be able to defend himself verbally. Despite the fact that Larry never spoke a word in his own defense before and regardless of the standard procedures for trying a bonafide mute, the postponement was granted. The trial was re-re-scheduled for January 2, 1986; a date that passed without the court convening. Finally, in late 1986, Larry was tried and convicted. In March of 1987, over eight years after the fact, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The stiff sentence satisfied the prosecution but Judge Peckham also declared that Larry would be eligible for parole after serving only five years because he was not "primarily responsible" for the killings.
It took eight years just to incarcerate this confessed political assassin for a five year term. Larry's new attorney, Bob Bryan, has filed an appeal for a new trial. As of this writing, Larry's fate has not been sealed
&Following her graduation from U.C. Davis, Annalisa accepted a position as a microbiology lab technician in the U.C. Berkeley biochemistry department where she met a professor named Ray Valentine. They dated for six months and, on September 16, 1967, they married. The wedding took place at the Layton family home in Berkeley; the Reverend John Moore presided. The Moores were becoming close friends of the family and divided their leisure time between the Laytons and Jim Jones.
Annalisa joined the Peoples Temple in 1975 and for about six months she made the long drive between Berkeley and Redwood Valley to attend the weekly Temple services and private meetings with Jim Jones. Though Annalisa was considered a top aide to Jones, her husband Ray was never directly involved with the Temple. According to one family report: "Jones had told Karen (Larry's wife) that he thought Ray was working for the CIA; he claimed that his psychic powers had picked up the information from another plane."[29] The family also reported that Annalisa once brought home an unnamed Davis law student who her mother accused of being a CIA agent sent to spy on the family. The CIA was most definitely a subject in the Layton household and in Annalisa's life.
Annalisa left the Temple, claiming she could no longer believe Jones' faith healing powers and miracles. It is difficult to believe that this otherwise intelligent woman could ever have believed in Jones' phony ploys, but this was the reason she gave for severing ties with the Temple. Her reason seems absurd but her timing was perfect as Jones was packing up his Peoples Temple for their move to Guyana when Annalisa defected. Annalisa then disappeared from the story until just six months before the massacre when she sent an airline ticket (Georgetown to Caracas) to her sister Deborah for what Deborah would later claim was her attempted defection from Jonestown. In their original plan, Deborah was to fly to Caracas to rendezvous with
____________________
[29] Ibid.
Original page 67 Jonestown
Annalisa's husband Ray who was scheduled to tour South America as the United Nations' expert on nitrogen fixation. Kurt Waldheim, U.N. Secretary General and former Nazi Army officer, had dispatched Valentine to pick up Deborah and escort her on the U.N. junket of South America in which they would be "meeting high government officials and other important people."[30] As it turned out, Deborah fled to Washington, D.C. with Richard McCoy, the U.S. consul in Guyana.
Annalisa's relationship with Jim Jones was both brief and professional. Her total contribution to the experiment will never be known but, considering that she pursued reflection of her father's career, she may have provided a qualified scientific liaison between Dr. Layton and Jim Jones.
*******************************************************
Deborah, the youngest Layton, was the family's problem child. Her later, more affluent, upbringing bred a spoiled brat with a "holier than thou" attitude. Deborah has been described in print as spiteful, arrogant, devious, sharp-tongued, pissy and bitchy. She was all of these things and more. Deborah's high school years were a total disaster; she simply could not adjust to life outside the Layton home. When she reportedly fell into bad company in her freshman year at Berkeley High School, her mother accepted an offer from John and Barbara Moore who invited Deborah to live with them in Davis, away from the negative influences in Berkeley. Soon after Deborah enrolled at Davis High, the school informed the Moores that she was such a problem student that they would only allow her to remain if she
___________________________
[30] Ibid. p. 218
Jonetown received psychological counseling. She then returned to Berkeley and her parents allowed her to remain at home and miss one semester of school. In the spring 1968, she moved in with her sister, Annalisa, and enrolled at El Cerrito High. El Cerrito is adjacent to Berkeley and the environment was anything but an improvement. In truth, Deborah could not return to Berkeley High, not because of the school's negative influence on her but because of her negative influence on the school. She barely completed the academic year at El Cerrito before she was no longer welcome there either. She was seventeen years old and a mid-term sophomore who had been ousted from three separate schools. If the trend continued it would take Deborah five years and eight different schools to graduate from high school; that is if she maintained passing grades--and she did not. Dr. Layton and Lisa resorted to drastic measures and enrolled Deborah at Ackworth, a spartan Quaker boarding school in Yorkshire, England. The school was famed for its regimental, almost military, discipline and the Laytons hoped it would "straighten her out." It did not. Deborah quickly gained a reputation as a class troublemaker who was a "bad influence on her schoolmates." But Ackworth was well prepared to handle such behavioral problems and after a two year stay in England, she received her high school diploma. Lisa was especially pleased as Deborah's two years at an English boarding school exactly paralleled the experience of her mother, Anita, whom Lisa believed was reincarnated as her daughter.
During her first year at Ackworth, Deborah met and reportedly fell in love with a fellow student, George "Phil" Blakey. She returned to California in 1970, for a summer vacation between school years. She stayed first with Larry and his second wife, Karen, and attended services at the Peoples Temple in Redwood Valley where she had many private, in- depth conversations with Jim Jones, who welcomed another Layton into his fold. Deborah then stayed in the family's Berkeley home and continued to meet with Jones during his weekly visits to the San Francisco Peoples Temple.
After her return to England, Deborah and Jim Jones corresponded regularly. She also spoke of Jim Jones to Phil, who not only accepted him sight unseen, but according to Deborah, had an uncanny knowledge of the preacher and his organization. Following graduation, in the summer of 1971, Deborah returned to California with Phil and both joined the Peoples Temple.
Deborah enrolled at Santa Rosa Junior College where she joined her brother Larry and the other Temple aides who were training there. In 1974, she received an Associate of Arts degree. Then, upon the advice, and with the financial support of Dr. Layton, she studied to be an operating room technician at the San Francisco School for Health Professions.
Meanwhile, Phil was spending all of his time with Jim Jones and Dr. Layton. His American visa was about to expire so, on March 20, 1972, he married Deborah in order to remain in the U.S. Jim Jones signed the marriage certificate at the ungodly hour of 3 A.M. Phil would remain in California for an additional year and a half during which time he studied under Jones and Dr. Layton but never cohabitated with Deborah.
In early 1973, Jones appointed Deborah and Phil to the Temple's newly formed Planning Commission. The PC, as it was called, was the elite of the Temple; the guards, aides and medical technicians who would become the middle management of the experiment. They numbered between sixty and one hundred and could easily be distinguished from the general Temple congregation as the difference was as distinct as black and white --the difference was Black and White. PC members were exclusively Caucasian, while the general congregation was predominantly Black. Only a small contingent of Blacks Quit the Temple in protest of its gross inequity in the distribution of power; the others resigned themselves to live under the control of the Whites.
According to a family report, Deborah had a trusted position in the PC as, among her other responsibilities, her job was...
...to review tapes of PC meetings, particularly of conversations with suspected and outright "traitors" and potential blackmail victims. Her job was to listen to the tapes, jot down what "important" things were said, and return the tapes and notes to Carolyn Layton, the P.C. member in charge of the tape file.[31]
Following the massacre, in a video taped interview broadcast on commercial television, Deborah claimed that every member of the Planning Commission, both men and women, were targets of Jones' sexual advances. She admitted to having been one of his lovers but termed the experience nothing short of rape. Nevertheless, as
____________________
[31] Ibid. p. 161.
Orignal page 71 Jonetown
Jones' hold on Deborah increased, his confidence in her abilities increased and she was entrusted with two extremely critical Temple positions; financial secretary and political liaison. First the finances. As a means for Dr. Layton to account for the expenditures in the experiment, his daughter, Deborah, was given sole responsibility for the Temple's income and its subsequent distribution. According to the family, The Temple had established its own private check-cashing company under the guise of helping out its senior citizens by relieving them of the fear of having to go to a bank and possibly being mugged. After notation on the member's record card, the information was duplicated on a deposit slip to the check cashing company's account at the California Canadian Bank in San Francisco. Hundreds of green and gold SSI and SSA checks, as well as ordinary paychecks, were cashed and deposited each month. The church would then withdraw an identical amount of cash, ostensibly for payments to its members, so the bank would not become suspicious. This cash was then taken back to the church,
Orignal page 72 Jonetown
mingled with various other donations, and redeposited in the church's own savings or checking account at the Bank of Montreal in San Francisco.[32] Deborah was kept quite busy transferring and laundering Temple funds. For the most part, the congregation accepted the loss of their pensions and paychecks in exchange for the security and companionship they found in the Temple's communal and foster care homes, where their needs were provided for collectively. A few years later, the Social Security Administration advocated Jones' system of "direct deposit" of government checks citing the threat of being robbed, just as Jones had used this fear to persuade his pensioners to sign their check over to him. Though the administration's intentions are presumed to be legitimate, their initial idea came from Jones' scam. The money flowed through Deborah's hands at an astonishing rate. The Temple's wealth has been estimated somewhere between twenty and fifty million dollars. Deborah maintained a $100,000 cash fund in her San Francisco Temple office just for "incidental expenses." Jones once instructed her to airlift mothballs to Jonestown as the vast amounts of U.S. currency stored there was being eaten by the local jungle insects. In late 1976, as the experiment was being moved to Guyana, Jones ordered untold millions of U.S. dollars transferred to Swiss bank accounts registered in Deborah's name. Temple attorney Tim Stoen established two offshore Panamanian corporations: Briget, S.A. and Asociacion Evangelica de las Americas,
____________________
[32] Ibid. p. 166.
Orignal page 73 Jonetown
S.A. which then opened accounts with the Swiss Banking Corporation in Panama and the Union Bank of Switzerland in Panama, respectively. Deborah, along with Maria Katsaris, Terri Buford and Tim Stoen, traveled to Panama with several million dollars as initial deposits in the new accounts. Stoen also established a Temple branch in Luxembourg that opened bank accounts in London, West Germany, Switzerland, Romania, and Venezuela. The signatories were not Jim Jones or even Tim Stoen but Deborah, Maria, and Terri. Eight months later, Deborah and Terri returned to Panama on another mission. From there they flew to Paris, rented a car and drove to Zurich, Switzerland, where they opened one or more secret accounts in Deborah's name or, more accurately, in her account number. Tim Stoen and other trusted couriers then traveled to Switzerland to deposit untold millions into Deborah's secret bank account. For all the scheming, subterfuge and stealing that Jim Jones did in order to amass his fortune, it is ludicrous that he would give Deborah legal ownership of the bulk of his wealth that was intended for future use. But that is exactly what he did for that was the agreement. Following the massacre, the known wealth of the Peoples Temple was distributed to the families of the victims and to the federal government to offset their expense in returning the corpses to the U.S. but only a small portion of the Temple's estimated twenty to fifty million dollars was ever recovered. Millions were missing; millions that presumably were hoarded in secret Swiss accounts in Deborah's name. Deborah's other responsibility in the Temple was as political liaison in Terri Buford's Department of Diversions; the group Jones established to carry out
Orignal page 74 Jonetown
his most sensitive work in government. Deborah gathered data on politicians who might be coerced or blackmailed into cooperating with the Temple, hence the CIA. She also wrote forged and anonymous letters endorsing candidates, commenting on pending legislation and presumably threatening politicians who opposed Jones' politics. Her correspondence was so incriminating that Deborah wore surgical gloves to type the letters on special "D" typewriters that had been purchased second-hand and then destroyed after fulfilling their purpose so as not to be traced to the Temple. Deborah and her mother, Lisa, arrived in Jonestown on December 14, 1977. Deborah would reside in the jungle community for only three months before Jones sent her to the Temple's Georgetown headquarters where her assignment was to interface with the Guyanese government as well as the U.S., Russian, and Cuban Embassies. Her task was far more important than that of the other Temple members in Georgetown who bribed local officials with liquor and sex. As the predetermined destruction of Jonestown drew nearer, Jones wanted to court the communists in an effort to incriminate or at least embarrass them by association. The ultimate goal of Deborah's work in Georgetown was to falsely establish that Jones was in league with the Russians to help hide the fact that he was really working for the CIA. On May 13, 1978, Deborah feigned a defection from the Temple and escaped to Washington, D.C. under the escort of Richard McCoy, the CIA's station chief in Georgetown. Her timing was perfect. Six months remained before the scheduled massacre, which allowed Deborah just enough time to complete what was the most demanding aspect of her work for Jones.
Orignal page 75 Jonetown
Jones helped Deborah's cover by reviling her as "a CIA agent and a traitor" who had stolen money from the Temple. Though his accusations were based in truth, they were never viewed in their proper context by outsiders, like Congressman Ryan, who were left with the impression that Jones opposed Deborah. After a brief stay in Washington, Deborah returned to California where she moved in with Grace Grech Stoen and Grace's fiance', Walter Jones. Prompted by these two former Temple aides and others like Tim Stoen and Mike Cartmell, Deborah issued a statement on June 15, 1978 concerning Jonestown. Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakey, Re: The Threat and Possibility of Mass Suicide by Members of The Peoples Temple was an eleven page, thirty-seven point outline for which the title summarized the contents. Copies were sent to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Congressman Leo Ryan. The intention of the affidavit was to further entice Congressman Ryan into personally investigating Jonestown while providing Deborah with the perfect cover. After the massacre, she would appear to be an innocent victim who had tried in vain to warn the government of the pending tragedy. Deborah then took a highly paid position in the financial district of San Francisco, in what her sister Annalisa later termed "the world of money and finance." She continued to work very closely with Tim Stoen, whose office was in the same neighborhood orhood. In addition to the fact that Deborah's only qualification for such work was her experience as the Temple's financial secretary, the rightful owner of the money that she manages has never been identified. It is highly probable that the money is actually the Temple's secret
Orignal page 76 Jonetown
funds that had been deposited in foreign bank accounts in Deborah's name. Deborah contacted Congressman Ryan and arranged to meet him in the financial district of San Francisco where they spoke of Jonestown for about two hours. Ryan believed her story even after his aid Jackie Speier expressed her suspicion that Deborah was a double agent working for Jones. At Ryan's request, Deborah, Grace Stoen, and Steven Katsaris flew to Washington, D .C. to testify to the State Department. Department officials expressed little interest and did not even attempt the meeting scheduled by Ryan, who was so angered by their lack of concern that he flew to Washington to personally escort the group to the State Department. They were received by a dozen officials seated around a conference table; Deborah sat at the head of the table with Congressman Ryan at her side. Following Deborah's masterfully calculated two hour dissertation on Jonestown, Ryan turned to her and said, "Now that you have spoken to them and they have taken notes, they will never be able to deny that they heard it...[33] Deborah's testimony did not alter the chain of events that led to Ryan's assassination but it did give Ryan a false sense of security that the federal government was now aware of the potential dangers in Jonestown and would back up his investigation even though they thought reports of a planned mass suicide were "nonsense." Ryan, Grace Stoen and Steven Katsaris went on to rendezvous with reporters in New York who completed the Congressional entourage that then flew to Guyana. Stoen and Katsaris would travel only as far as Georgetown as there were not enough seats on the chartered plane that carried Ryan into the Guyanese
__________________
[33] Ibid. p. 273.
Orignal page 77 Jonetown
interior to Jonestown and his death. By the time the group arrived in Georgetown, Deborah was safely back at her desk in the high-rise office building in San Francisco. Following the massacre, Deborah emerged as the most important Peoples Temple survivor; an innocent and credible witness who at least tried to warn the government about Jones' mass suicide plans. She received much media attention. One year later, in the fall of 1979, her marriage to Phil Blakey was annulled on the grounds that it had never been consummated. The seven and a half year marriage was one of convenience that, not only allowed Phil Blakey to remain in the U.S. long enough to complete his training under Jim Jones and Dr. Layton, but also allowed Deborah to operate in the Peoples Temple under the name Blakey and o not Layton. In March of 1980, Deborah married Michael Cartmell. Before his alleged defection, Cartmell had been one of the most trusted Temple aides and its corporate vice president. His mother was in charge of Jones' intelligence department and he had married Jones' adopted daughter, Suzanne. Suzanne was the off-spring of a Korean mother and an American military father who lived in a Korean orphanage until her adoption. She reportedly died in Jonestown. In the end, Jim Jones and Dr. Layton shared the same son-in-law, Michael Cartmell.
Guyana, formerly British Guiana, received its independence from England in 1966 but, as explored later in this work, England maintained some control over the South American country by installing Forbes
Orignal page 78 Jonetown
Burnham as Prime Minister with the help of U.S. Intelligence and particularly Jim Jones. It suffices to say that U.S. Intelligence undertook no projects in Guyana without the full consent and cooperation of British Intelligence and Jonestown was no exception. Englishman Phil Blakey, the only foreign national employed by the Peoples Temple, would represent Britain in Jonestown. Phil Blakey was the son of a wealthy gentleman farming family in Northumberland, England. As a Quaker, he attended Ackworth boarding school where he met Deborah Layton and returned to the United States with her in 1971 to join the Peoples Temple. Blakey's mother also visited the Peoples Temple in California, where she was the guest of Tim and Grace Stoen whose luxurious home outside the barbed wire compound of the Redwood Valley Temple was reserved for visiting dignitaries. On March 20, 1972, Blakey married Deborah Layton so that he could remain in the United States to complete his training with Jim Jones and Dr. Layton. According to the Layton family, "Jones was impressed with Blakey's practical Intelligence and knowledge of farming, both resources needed for the agricultural activities he envisioned."[34] Following the wedding, Blakey saw little of Deborah as he was spending all of his time with Jones in Redwood Valley and Dr. Layton in Berkeley. Dr. Layton instructed him on the agricultural aspects of the experiment. Blakey was an accomplished farmer and sea captain but lacked experience with the heavy earth moving equipment required to clear the Guyanese Jungle. Dr. Layton helped by allowing him to clear a wooded lot on his Berkeley property and dig a swimming pool with a rented
____________________
34] Ibid. p. 130.
Orignal page 79 Jonetown
bulldozer. Jones helped too, by having Blakey operate a back-hoe to dig a new septic tank and leach lines for the the home of Elmer and Deanna Mertle in Redwood Valley. In December of 1973, Jones appointed Blakey the head of his twelve man advance party which immediately left for Guyana to build a road to the outpost from Port Kaituma, clear the jungle for cultivation and construct several rudimentary structures that would be their headquarters and eventually the core of Jonestown. Blakey also purchased the Temple's first ocean-going vessel, a fishing trawler he licensed in Panama as the "Marceline," named for Jones' wife. Though Jones had made arrangements with the Guyanese government in late 1973 to have full access and rights to the 3,852 acre tract in the interior, the land lease was not officially signed until 1975. It is these first two years of Jonestown in which Blakey was in charge that we will explore here. First, some background on Guyana. Guyana's CIA installed Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, used the 1970 Conference on Nonaligned Nations held in Zambia, Africa as a stage to launch his career as an international Black activist. With persuasive oratorical skill, he announced to the Third World nations in attendance that Guyana had a strong bond of empathy with the African freedom fighters. He offered his country as a sanctuary where Blacks could find support facilities for their revolutionary and training activities in Africa. To buttress his pledge of support, Burnham ceremoniously gave President Nyerere of Tanzania a check for $50,000 as Guyana's initial contribution to the freedom fighters. Guyana's National Service was charged with national security and the development of the interior
Orignal page 80 Jonetown
so it is easy to understand why the agency took a militaristic view of the Guyanese frontier, especially since much of the area was claimed by Venezuela that might seize the land at any time. There was a disproportionate number of North Americans in the Guyanese National Service. Among them was Emerson Mitchell who had spent five years in Chicago during World War II. Mitchell was the Guyanese government representative who conducted Jones' initial tour through the jungle to select a site for Jonestown. Another American, whom the New York Times later described as a fugitive from the law in the United States, was appointed senior training officer in the National Service. A Soviet news agency took notice of the man and reported: "This is a position of considerable responsibility. The Government wouldn't give him the job if it didn't have faith in him."[35] And then there was a Black American who claimed to be an Angolan freedom fighter -- Burnham granted him Guyanese citizenship and a position in the National Service. Considering the parameters of Guyanese politics in the early 1970's, what happened next was almost a foregone conclusion. Prime Minister Burnham, with the help of U.S. (and British) nationals in key positions in Guyanese National Service, initiated a program to build military outposts in the country's disputed interior to guard the border and provide secret training bases for mercenaries bound for Africa. There was one location of particular importance. Though isolated, it was only a day's march from an American built airstrip at Port Kaituma, an inland river seaport. It was a day's journey from rail service and the Venezuelan border. Isolated, yet accessible by
____________________
[35] Shiva Naipaul, Journey to Nowhere (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 63. (Originally published in Great Britain in 1980, under the title, Black and White.)
Orignal page 81 Jonetown
trains boats, and planes, the site was ideal. From 1973 to 1975 Blakey was in charge of the encampment that was known as the Shalom Project -- the same encampment that between 1975 and 1978 was known as Jonestown. The Shalom Project was neither Jewish nor peaceful. The CIA supplied the project with two hundred Black ex-Green Beret Special Forces experts. The Green Berets were the elite of the Vietnam conflict, well trained in all aspects of guerrilla warfare. Since the 1960's their number had been reduced by over 10,000 and many found readjusting to civilian life doubly difficult. They returned from Vietnam to find the same discriminatory practices in hiring as had forced them to join the military in the first place; only now they were further shunned by potential employers for their part in a war for which most Americans felt ashamed. To these unemployable veterans, the CIA offered a profitable solution. They could be highly paid mercenaries or advisors who trained other mercenaries. These experts in weapons, demolition, communications, medicine and intelligence major were placed in the overseas security staff of major U.S. corporations and in guerrilla warfare training camps such as the one headed by Phil Blakey in Jonestown. After five centuries of Portuguese rule and fifteen years of bloody guerrilla war, Angola was a fragmented African colony; ripe for a full scale revolution. In April of 1974, the Portuguese Army, demoralized from years of fighting colonial wars, seized the government of Portugal and withdrew from Angola. There were three major indigenous factions left to fight it out in Angola and the largest of these
Orignal page 82 Jonetown
was, at least partially, supported by the Russians. From CIA reports, the National Security Council (dominated by Henry Kissinger) had advance knowledge of the military coup in Portugal, hence the three-sided civil war in its African colony of Angola. In the aftermath of the U.S. defeat in Vietnam, Henry Kissinger (even though he knew that it was another no-win situation) ordered the CIA to aid the two independent factions that opposed the popular communist faction in Angola. The rebels needed advisors, mercenaries, and arms. They were fighting for their lives. Kissinger, within his view of global politics, was fighting to make a statement to the communists that they could not just take what they wanted uncontested. There were some problems. The CIA was subject to new legislation sponsored by Congressman Leo Ryan that required the agency to account for all money spent for covert overseas operations after congressional approval. Because the reporting system was new, it was inefficient and the red tape involved was time-consuming. Eventually, Congress would authorize $14 million for the CIA's Angola Task Force but, in these early stages, the CIA made good use of the congressional lead time by illegally recruiting mercenaries for a project they knew would, in time, be approved. The CIA wanted to use their trained exiled Cubans (survivors of the Bay of Pigs) as project management but the National Security Council denied the request as the Cubans had green cards and could be easily be traced to the U.S. And so it was with a decree to employ only foreign nationals as management and fund the project covertly that Phil Blakey and the Peoples Temple entered the story. The ideal mercenary for the job was a Black man with prior military
Orignal page 83 Jonetown
training who spoke Portuguese. He could blend well into African society and communicate in the official language of Angola. The logical and perhaps only choice was Brazil. When the CIA approached the Brazilian government they agreed to allow recruitment in their country but not training as they had no desire to become associated with a civil war being fought an ocean away. CIA case officers in Brazil transported their recruits to the coast where Phil Blakey would pick them up in the Temple's ship for a two or three day trip up u the coast to the Waini River, Port Kaituma, and on to the Shalom Project (Jonestown). Of course, Blakey evaded customs. Phil Blakey managed the project like a business. Under his command were one or two hundred Forces advisors and the Brazilian mercenaries Special who helped clear the jungle as part of their basic training. Two camps were established. The main camp was Blakey's headquarters where land was cleared, cabins built and radio communication established. Eventually, this would become the core of Jonestown. The secondary camp, located about a thirty minute march away, was a primitive outpost where the actual jungle training took place Blakey's training camp required ultra-sophisticated weapons and explosives not commercially available to the general public. It is widely acknowledged that Deborah Layton Blakey, as the Peoples Temple financial secretary, appropriated the money to purchase arms for her husband's project. There was only one CIA arms dealer with British connections who was involved in the Special Forces training of African mercenaries; the notorious Frank Terpil.
Orignal page 84 Jonetown
The exploits of Frank Terpil and his partner, Edmond Wilson, are intriguing but too complicated to relate in any detail here. It suffices to say that Terpil and Wilson supplied weapons and high technology electronics to African dictators through front companies like "Intercontinental Technology;" a marketing firm Terpil had founded and directed as president. Intercontinental Technology was head-quartered in Washington to facilitate communications with the federal government and particularly the CIA. They operated three branch offices, one in London where most of the weapons were purchased; a second in Sunnyvale, California, the center of high technology in the U.S. and the third in Geneva, Switzerland, the company's banking center. Eventually, Terpil was accused of selling sensitive technology from Sunnyvale and weapons from England to Third World customers generally considered unfriendly to the United States. The day before he would have been arrested, Terpil was allowed to flee the United States and go into exile in Beirut, Lebanon, where he granted an interview to Tony Thomas, a reporter with the British Broadcasting Corporation. The seventeen hours of taped interviews were edited into a ninety minute BBC documentary aired in the U.S. in January of 1982, under the title: Confessions of Frank Terpil: The Most Dangerous Man in the World. In the film, Terpil claimed that all of his activities, including his close personal relationship with Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, were with the full sanction of the CIA. As is standard operating procedure whenever one of their agents is exposed, the CIA disavowed anyknowledge of Terpil's activities, claiming that he had not worked for the agency since they fired him in 1972. Actually, following his
Orignal page 85 Jonetown
alleged dismissal, Terpil purchased a luxurious home less than a mile from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. After the interview, BBC reporter, Tony Thomas declared, "None of the evidence supports the claim that (Terpil) left the CIA and was cut off."[36] The program's associate producer summarized Terpil's reasons for granting the interview, Terpil believed he had information about some exceedingly dirty business related to runaway intelligence operations. I don't want to repeat those allegations without verification.[37] It was generally accepted that Terpil was trying to trade information for immunity from prosecution but the truth lay deep in the BBC documentary -- Terpil did not offer information, he threatened to expose the CIA's sponsorship of Jonestown. Though the producer did not repeat his allegations, he could not resist making reference to them in the film. Narrator Tony Thomas described how Terpil had related some of his other activities "off camera" and the film switched to a photograph of Jonestown with the vat of poison in the foreground and the piles of corpses behind. Terpil had duped the BBC into publishing his threat to the CIA. The agency could no longer ignore him or his legal problems. Their two choices were to relocate him or kill him. Either way, what happened next was only logical. Even before the BBC documentary aired in the U.S., Terpil disappeared. The agency claimed he was kidnapped by three Syrians, one a reputed "free-lance intelligence agent." No one claimed responsibility for
____________________
[36] "Film Explores Most Dangerous Man in World," The Miami Herald, January 11, 1982, p. 5C, col. 1.
[37] Ibid
Orignal page 86 Jonetown
the kidnapping, there were no ransom demands, Terpil has not been seen since. His partner, Edmond Wilson, was captured and convicted as charged amid several untimely deaths of CIA agents scheduled to testify at his trial. Terpil was convicted in absentia. Frank Terpil may well provide yet another piece in the Jim Jones Puzzle. According to the "Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakey" and other sources, Jones often claimed to have connections with Ida Amin. Terpil did have a close relationship with the African dictator and since he supplied arms to both Jones and Amin, he may have been the conduit for their communications. The CIA, through their arms dealer, Frank Terpil, supplied Blakey with a large quantity of weapons and explosives smuggled into Jonestown in the early stages amid the personal possessions and farm machinery of the Peoples Temple pioneers. The mercenaries were shipped to Jonestown, trained, instructed and armed and then flown from the airstrip in Port Kaituma to Angola. What little air traffic control there is in Guyana is managed by the National Service that either ignored the unscheduled flights or assumed they were the comings and goings of the airport in Caracas, Venezuela. Though the mercenaries were kept in seclusion, the Guyanese residents do remember the two hundred khaki-clad Black Americans as they frequented Georgetown's bars and whorehouses while on leave from their assignment in the interior. By 1975, it was time for Blakey to disband his group and turn the encampment over to Jones for the second phase of the project. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham circulated rumors that the members of the Shalom Project were all criminals wanted by the
Orignal page 87 Jonetown
authorities in the United States. He claimed their agricultural project was a failure and a front for growing marijuana that was then smuggled into the U.S. by boat. The Shalom Project may have grown marijuana for whom the CIA's head of the Angolan Task Force would later describe as the "hemp-smoking" rebels they were supporting. It could also have been grown for profit. It would not have been the first time the CIA resorted to illegal activities to finance their covert operations. Coincidentally, the state-of-the-art technology in growing marijuana centers in Mendocino County, where Blakey did his internship California, before taking charge of the project. In any event, Prime Minister Burnham deported the members of the Shalom Project who, along with Blakey, left Guyana, not for America, but for Angola. The Civil War in Angola escalated soon after Blakey and his troops arrived in Africa. It was widely reported that American Special Forces veterans had trained some of the mercenaries in secret camps in South America but only one account named Jonestown as one such training center. New Solidarity reported in their December 5, 1978 issue,...Reverend Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple were involved in illegal channelling of mercenaries into Angola to fight against the Angolan government in 1975 and 76. The overall command was a mercenary deployment set-up and coordinated by Henry Kissinger and British Intelligence; the same forces behind the
Orignal page 88 Jonetown
creation of Peoples Temple and its eventual establishment in Guyana.[38] Attempts to contact the reporter who wrote the article have produced nothing but late night, threatening phone calls. It is strongly advised that anyone looking into this aspect of the story exercise extreme caution as, in some circles, Blakey's work in Jonestown is apparently a very touchy subject. Blakey left Angola and returned to Jonestown in 1977 or 1978. Jones had since moved his congregation there to further develop the community that Blakey had rough hewn from Guyana's jungle interior. Blakey resumed his duties as the Peoples Temple sea captain and admiral of their fleet of ocean going ships. Most of the new Jonestown residents were civilians but Jones did retain several dozen Special Forces veterans as his security staff. Among them was Odell Rhodes who, like the other Jonestown guards, was allowed to escape the massacre. Phil Blakey played one last role in the final hours of Jonestown. He had anchored one of the Temple's ships at the Port of Spain in Trinidad where he remained during the murder-suicide rite. When it was over, Jim Jones radioed Blakey to pick up both him and his guards at the mouth of the Waini Rivers about thirty miles north of Jonestown. The uncoded radio message was a diversion. The ship was impounded by the authorities who briefly detained Blakey for questioning while they searched for Jones at the mouth of the Waini River not realizing that was exactly what Jones wanted them to do as he escaped westward overland to Venezuela. Phil Blakey was released since he had apparently not committed any crimes. His present whereabouts are unknown.
____________________
[38] Did People's Temple Run Mercenaries To Angola?", September 27, 1981, San Francisco Chronicle,
December 5, 1978. (New Solidarity also known as Solidarity, was a paper of the National Caucus of Labor Committees and the U.S. Labor Party. The particular particle by Jeffrey Steinberg was transcript from a World Watchers International broadcast date December 2 1978. Tape #3
Orignal page 89 Jonetown
Thomas Nutter Layton As the eldest, Thomas was the first of the Layton children to leave home, departing in the Spring of 1962 to study archeology at the University of California in Davis. After four years in Davis, he graduated and enrolled at Harvard in a graduate program in anthropology. What with school and field studies after, Thomas was removed from the family and their involvement with Jim Jones. He was being held in reserve for, like the other Layton children, Thomas had also been given an assignment with the Peoples Temple. According to his own report, At that point in Tom's career, he was considering moving from archeology to cultural anthropology. One way to establish himself as a cultural anthropologist would be to write an ethnography. 'And what better candidate for the ethnography,' as Tom recalls the idea, 'than the strange, utopian, *inter-racial, and apparently vital Peoples Temple.'[39] In early 1970, soon after Thomas left Harvard, he visited Jim Jones in Redwood Valley to pursue his interest in writing an ethnography of the Peoples Temple. According to Thomas, in this one and only
____________________
[39] Yee and Layton, p. 118.
Orignal page 90 Jonetown
meeting, Jones was polite but stand-offish making him feel unwelcome at the Temple, but he left the meeting still wanting to write about the group. For the next eleven years, Thomas gathered data for his research. What, if anything, happened to his ethnography is not known. Certainly, if it was finished, it would have been given to the CIA, classified top secret and never published. What Thomas did publish was a by-product of his research he co-authored with Min Yee entitled In My Father's House: The Story of The Layton Family and the Reverend Jim Jones. The book was a defense of his family's involvement and, by his own admission, was intended to pay some of his brother Larry's legal bills. In My Father's House is sufficiently accurate in relating the who, what, when, and where of the story to provide many useful references in this chapter. But like other books on Jonestown, the how and why of the story had to be discounted for reasons that vary from subjective viewpoints to family bias to deliberate cover-up. Even Thomas admits to falsifying information by changing the names of several characters for "considerations of privacy." In this case, privacy is protection. There is one very odd thread that runs through Thomas' entire book. In dozens of instances he implies or outright reports that every member of the Layton family is a homosexual. His references are not restricted to general descriptions of the meek, passive men or the aggressive, arrogant women in the family. Thomas wrote far out of the basic story to give specific accounts of his accusations. He described his father as a man who was raised as a girl, complete with girl's clothes and bobbed hair, who matured with little or no interest in women. Of his mother, Lisa, he wrote, Everyone was homosexual, she learned, so she admitted to Annalisa that she had probably been homosexual all her life. She asked Annalisa if she thought Tom was homosexual, adding,"Some of my best friends are, you know."[40] He even published a letter Deborah had written to Phil Blakey but apparently saved, in that was never mailed, which she wrote, Does homosexuality bother you and make you feel incapable? I love you Phil. I am sorry if I sound crazy, but I must know for the sake of our relationship. My life depends on your honesty with me. God forgive me if I am a bitch.[41] Though the concept of an entire family of homosexuals is contrary to the accepted theory that sexual preference is not a matter of heredity, the basic question is not whether the Layton family is homosexual but why Thomas would go so far to imply that they are. His treatment of the subject, though strange, is obviously deliberate and since his work was a defense of the Laytons' involvement in the Peoples Temple, his references to homosexuality might well be part of that defense. If the underlying conspiracy was uncovered,
____________________
[40] Ibid., p. 149.
[41] Ibid., pp. 123-124.
Orignal page 92 Jonetown
the fault might be directed, not to the CIA, but to some secret homosexual society. Also, Lisa's Jewish cover was rather flimsy and if exposed as a fake, homosexuality would provide a second logical reason her need to escape Nazi Germany. And then again , Thomas' repeated references may be based in fact. Thomas' contribution was that of a once-removed chronicler and unblemished champion of the Layton family. He was last reported to be a professor of archeology at San Jose State University. He never married; heeding the advice of his father, who once told him, "He who takes a wife and raises a family gives hostages to fate."[42]
Dr. Layton enjoyed an international reputation as an accomplished scientist whose expertise was sought by such prestigious institutions as Oxford and Cambridge but his fame was based largely on his achievement prior to 1957 in the first half of his career. From 1957 until 1978, his work at the Department of Agriculture's Western Regional Research Laboratory produced few published results, as Dr. Layton was concentrating on the top secret Jonestown experiment that would be the culmination of his life's work in devising new ways to kill people. The Jonestown experiment was conceived by Dr. Layton, staffed by Dr. Layton and financed by Dr. Layton. It was as much his project as it was Jim Jones'. Though it was essential for him to remain in the background for security reasons, Dr. Layton maintained contact with and even control of the experiment through his wife and children. Communi-
____________________
[42] 42 Ibid. P. 329.
Orignal page 93 Jonetown
cations were sometimes quite unorthodox as was the case of Joe Ajax. Ajax, described by the family as an old friend and colleague from Dr. Layton's days as the Chief of Chemical Warfare, monitored Jonestown's radio communications throughout 1977 and 1978. On at least one occasion he reportedly linked two radio transmitters together for a high-poweredillegal broadcast to Jonestown in order to speak with Lisa. Lisa asked Ajax if he remembered how she had once helped him recover from an illness by prescribing "an old German remedy." This and other such cryptic messages were forwarded on to Dr. Layton. In the aftermath of Jonestown, the CIA produced a vast amount of media propaganda to mask Dr. Layton's role in the experiment. In the eastern press, the New York Times carried an in-depth, front page article entitled, "The Layton Family Tragedy: From Hitler's Germany to Jim Jones' commune" in which Dr. Layton was portrayed as an innocent victim of the crazed Jim Jones. The Laytons were described as having "a proud family tradition of Quaker nonviolence". Considering Dr. Layton's contributions to warfare and mass destruction, it is ludicrous to refer to his family as nonviolent, but such was the extreme effort necessary to conceal the extreme truth. On the West Coast, a similar article entitled, "How the Temple Shattered a Family", appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which was written, "It is the story of a pacific Quaker family, reared in the scientific tradition of father Laurence, a noted molecular biologist and chemist." Dr. Layton was characterized as a broken man, bewildered by what had befallen his family. Of particular interest is his opening remarks to the Chronicle's reporter, in which he said, "I cry easily.
Orignal page 94 Jonetown
I wept every time I read about Patty Hearst. I thought, 'There but for the grace of God go I' and then it all happened to me."[43] quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle are interesting as Dr. Layton was neither sensitive nor religious; he was a hardened, godless man who earned his living inventing new techniques to kill people en masse. His reference to Patty Hearst is significant when one considers evidence presented elsewhere in this work that strongly indicates that Jim Jones was instrumental in her kidnapping. It is possible that this was a threat to expose the CIA's kidnapping of Hearst in case the agency was contemplating terminating Dr. Layton as the ultimate means of covering up their sponsorship of Jonestown. What motivated Dr. Layton to subject his wife and children to such a dangerous project that he obviously knew would end in disaster? There are several possible explanations. First, the Peoples Temple was good to the Laytons who lived a more affluent life under Jim Jones than they had known before. So it was not as if they had to sacrifice to participate. During Larry's ten year involvement, he never held a paying job because his father and the Temple supported him financially. Likewise Deborah never worked. Whereas Larry may have to serve a few years in jail for his part, Deborah emerged from her experience undaunted and presumably very wealthy. Also, the CIA often blackmails their operatives to force them to do things that they would not ordinarily do on their own. Whether sanctioned by CIA headquarters or not, the Laytons were blackmailed; at least by Jones. Finally, any attempt to justify Dr. Layton's actions must consider an affliction he shares with most scientific specialists-tunnel vision. Dr. Layton was blinded by his straight-forward, head-strong pursuit of science.
____________________
[43] "How the Temple Shattered a Family," San Francisco Chronicle, November 27, 1978, p. 4, col. 1.
*******************************************************
Lisa was first introduced to Jim Jones in the late 1960's through her son Larry and her close friends, the Moores and later, through her daughter, Deborah. But, according to family reports, she did not join the Peoples Temple until early in 1973. Jim Jones claimed to know all about her life in Germany and her life with Dr. Layton and reportedly encouraged her to leave her husband, which she did on September 3rd , 1974. She moved into the posh Watergate Apartment complex on the Berkeley waterfront that was furnished and financed by her husband. Two months later she asked for a divorce. Jones provided her with a good lawyer who set out to strip as much wealth from Dr. Layton as legally possible. He had to sell the family's home in Berkeley and liquidate the bulk of his assets which he gave to Lisa who, in turn, gave them to Jim Jones. Following the Jonestown massacre, Dr. Layton said of his financial support of the project,
Counting the automobiles, the stock, and the art, it must be $250,000 worth of things gone. I didn't give it to him (Jim Jones). I gave it to my children. Even my stethoscope disappeared with that crowd around here.
Lisa gave everything to Jones, even an etching signed by Albert Einstein; a memento from her ex-husband's days in the Manhattan Project. Her total financial contribution to the Jonestown project will never be known but it was more than a quarter of a million dollars as, even according to Dr. Layton, "...she had 'some secret accounts of her own' that apparently contained money from her father."[44] For years Hugo Philip had been sending Lisa money from Germany, which supports the theory that the Philips' family fortune was not lost during World War II. Not only was Hugo financially well off in Germany but he was able to send money to Lisa who by U.S. standards was herself wealthy.
Lisa arrived in Jonestown with her daughter, Deborah, on December 14, 1977, just eleven months before the massacre. She was well received and comfortably accommodated in the cabin of Jones' wife Marceline. Jones, himself, lived with his mistresses in a cabin on the other side of the community. Lisa then moved into what would become the guest house where visiting dignitaries, like Congressman Ryan, were lodged. At first she lived there alone but then invited an elderly Black woman to move in with her. The woman was dying of lung cancer and, as we will see, provided Lisa the means to escape.
Lisa's stay in Jonestown was at worst an adventuresome safari. Jones was well aware that Lisa was a Nazi who had left Germany under a fake Jewish cover. It was their ongoing private joke. Jones would encourage her to admit to being, what he termed, "A Jewish Nigger" and the two would share a laugh that no one ever quite understood. Lisa had few duties in Jonestown. She oversaw the experiment through the
____________________
[44] "The The Layton Family Tragedy".
Orignal page 97 Jonetown
medical center but all had been predetermined and there was little for her to do. She tutored Jones and a select group in the German language as was the premise of her initial introduction to Dr. Layton years earlier. She also helped Jones with his propaganda by writing a story about being a Jew in Nazi Germany. She read it to the Black congregation on several occasions, after which Jones would reinforce his prediction that the next group to suffer Nazi persecution would be the Black Americans and the only place on earth where they could avoid the second holocaust was in Jonestown, under his protection. It was wonderful theater. Lisa spent most of 1978 writing farewell letters to her family; letters that survived, some to be published. The general Jonestown population was not permitted to correspond with family members in the States, which attests to Lisa's privileged position in the organization. In March, she wrote to Dr. Layton, I am working in our medical department part time. Having plenty of time to rest. We are expecting our X-ray equipment to arrive shortly. One of our older members here is an X-ray technician.[45]
Lisa's letters were very cryptic, the "older member" she referred to was actually their son Larry, the older of their two children in the Temple. Certainly Dr. Layton was well aware that Larry had just graduated from his training as an X-ray technician, after all, he had paid his son's tuition. Larry had just purchased a portable X-ray machine and was busy packing his bags
____________________
[45] Yee and Layton, p. 196.
Orignal page 98 Jonetown
for Guyana. Both Lisa and Dr. Layton knew it was Larry who was bringing the equipment to Jonestown, yet Lisa would not mention his name and for good reason. The sole purpose of Larry's training and the machine was to help in Lisa's ultimate escape. In May, Deborah left Jonestown, for the first leg of her feigned defection from the Peoples Temple. As they parted Lisa said tearfully to her daughter , "I'll probably never see you again.[46]
After Deborah fled Guyana on a flight to Washington, Lisa radioed a formal statement to the press in California in which she accused Deborah of stealing money from the Temple to support her drug addiction. She also said her ex-husband was anti-Semitic. More good theater. In one motion she helped Dr. Layton and Deborah to disassociate themselves from the Peoples Temple while reaffirming her old Jewish cover in preparation for the second great escape of her life.
The CIA kept in close communication with the Laytons during their stay in Jonestown through their legal agent Richard McCoy, a U.S. Embassy official in Guyana. It was McCoy who escorted Deborah to Washington, it was McCoy whom the State Department instructed to visit Lisa in Jonestown, ascertain her welfare and offer her a plane ticket back to the United States, if she so desired. Lisa's escape plan began in San Francisco in August of 1977, one month after Jones had left for Guyana. She started to complain of chest pains and a chronic cough. Deborah took her to Kaiser Hospital where X-rays were taken and a bronchoscopy was performed. The tests for cancer were reportedly positive and Lisa was scheduled for surgery to have a
____________________
[46] Ibid. p. 214.
Orignal page 99 Jonetown
portion of her left lung removed. As an operating room technician, Deborah remained with her mother throughout her operation. It was not chance that brought Lisa to Kaiser Hospital but the CIA's health insurance plan. In the past, the agency had security problems with the standard Blue Cross insurance as every time their agents filed a claim, the hospital personnel were alerted to the fact that this person was in the employ of the CIA. To tighten security, the agency changed their health plan from Blue Cross to Kaiser employee's with whom they arranged a system by which their agents could utilize the benefit without divulging their association with the CIA. There were tens of thousands of operatives covered by the plan so, considering the financial windfall Kaiser received under the agreement, it is not surprising that they would want to cooperate with the agency in any way possible.
Immediately upon her release from the hospital, Lisa moved in with Deborah at the Temple's headquarters in San Francisco, where she prepared to depart for Jonestown.
On March 28, Lisa wrote from Jonestown to her daughter, Annalisa, "A few weeks ago I caught on to the fact that my cancer has metastasized into the hyler lymph nodes, which also were removed (it said so in the report from Kaiser which I carried with me to give to Larry Schacht[47] She wrote again on June 4, "It surely was good to see Larry. He and our portable X-ray equipment arrived just about the same time and he has been taking a lot of X- rays since his arrival. He surely knows what he is doing."[48] Larry surely did know what he was doing. He took X-rays of both Lisa and her terminally ill roommate and put Lisa's
____________________
[47] Ibid. pp. 196-197. (Parentheses appear in the original).
[48] 48 Ibid., p. 256.
Orignal page 100 Jonetown
name on her roommate's film. In early July, Lisa left Jonestown, carrying a phony report from Jonestown's Dr. Schacht and the misidentified X-rays from Larry to the hospital in Georgetown where she rested for one month, accompanied by her daughter-in-law, Larry's wife, Karen. It was widely accepted that the Jonestown medical clinic was far superior to the hospital in Georgetown that had little else to offer Lisa except, perhaps, to incorporate her false medical record into their files. While in the hospital Lisa received no medication, no treatment, no surgery, only rest. It was a pleasant one month vacation in which Karen read to Lisa and wrote memos to Jim Jones about her alleged deteriorating condition that conveniently survived the carnage.
Lisa returned to Jonestown in August and immediately initiated the next phase of her escape. Jones ordered his wife, Marceline, to secure a sputum specimen from Lisa's roommate which he labelled "Henderson" and sent to Jean Brown in San Francisco via Temple attorney Charles Garry. Brown forwarded the specimen to Jones' long time friend and business partner, Dr. Carlton Goodett, for analysis. Jones' radio code name was Henderson Hill, Mr. Hill or just Henderson. Dr. Goodett reported that Henderson suffered from "a fungus infection of the lungs." According to Temple Attorney Mark Lane,
Jean Brown, Garry and others knew that the code name "Henderson" meant Jim Jones. Now they had proof that Jones was very ill and that he had taken steps, including the use of a code names so that his followers would not be burdened with the news of his illness. In reality, he had planned the charade to give both of these impressions. He was satisfied with the effectiveness of his little scheme but angered by inability of the doctor to the diagnose terminal cancer correctly.[49]
Jones deliberately told Mark Lane that the specimen was falsely identified as his when it was really from Lisa Layton whom he claimed was dying of cancer. His true motives for this little charade are not important, but his confession to helping to falsify Lisa's medical records is important. Other Temple members helped in the charade by informing Dr. Layton and others in California that Lisa suffered from terminal cancer. Annalisa helped by giving Congressman Ryan a letter he was to hand-deliver to Lisa, giving him the impression that the Laytons believed she was still living in Jonestown. When Ryan arrived, Lisa was not to be found. Eventually, Grace Stoen announced that Lisa had died on October 30, just eighteen days before the massacre. Presumably, she was buried in Jonestown. No attempt was made to identify or retrieve her body. No one had been informed of her death. Larry would later defend his participation in the assault team that killed Congressman Ryan as being a result of the drugs he was given to counteract the depression he felt ever since the death of his mother. Reportedly, Dr. Layton has never accepted that his ex-wife is dead, and rightfully so as she escaped.
____________________
[49] Mark Lane, The Strongest Poison (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1980), p. 51.
Orignal page 102 Jonetown
As of this writing, Lisa Layton is alive. She may have escaped the carnage with Phil Blakey who departed Jonestown for Trinidad within a few days of her alleged death. Her present whereabouts are not known. She may be with Jim Jones who also escaped or perhaps with her father who, on last report, was still alive in Germany. If there is a retirement home for former Nazi spies, Lisa has certainly earned a place and a pension. The life of this matriarch of the Layton family is important as it bridges the gap between the Crystal Night and the White Night. END 02
______________________________________________
October 2, 1981, San Francisco Chronicle, New Trial for Murder Possible in December
No comments:
Post a Comment