''I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and remorse for the events that happened,'' he said. Mr. Jones, Deborah said, callously gave Mrs. Layton that news. Hours later at the Jonestown emcampment, Jones led the death rite of himself and his followers. ", Crimes for which children went to the well included "stealing food from the kitchen, expressing homesickness, failing a socialism exam, or even natural childish rebelliousness.". Please help us get out of Jonestown. Soon after, Don was approached by another member, who claimed that many Temple members desperately wanted to leave but were too terrified to come forward. Larry Layton Net Worth is $14 Million. There was no movement, but I thought the others might also be playing dead. Larry Layton was convicted in 1986 by a federal jury in San Francisco of conspiring in the 1978 murder of California congressman Leo Ryan and aiding and abetting in the attempted murder of Richard Dwyer, a U.S. diplomat wounded in the attack. Clearing away those cobwebs meant writing a book -- it's called "Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple." He attended Berkeley High School and was the editor of a campus newspaper called The Liberal. When people refer to the Jonestown massacre as a mass suicide, I am enraged. Jim Jones would order more than 900 of his followers to commit suicide. The tumult of the late 60s and early 70s had left masses of people searching for a greater sense of security and purpose. The cover of a Jonestown promotional booklet from 1978. She used a telephone in the radio shack to call her sister in California, who arranged to have an airline ticket waiting for her at the airport in Georgetown, Guyana. I wanted to leave my daughter a legacy that wasn't that simple.". I would be in the first group; Congressman Ryan insisted that he stay behind to make certain that every person who wanted to leave made it to Port Kaituma safely. "[10], While in prison in 2003, Lawton was sent to solitary confinement for 27 days as punishment. 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When people refer to the Jonestown massacre as a mass suicide, I am enraged. bout wiki. All of those people I had been standing beside, speaking to, sharing a cabin with. Not a single person we spoke to expressed a desire to leave, not even those whose family members had flown all the way to Guyana. Although he had no formal training as a minister and no affiliation with any organized religion, his high-octane enthusiasm and open-armed policy attracted a diverse range of followers. Don put it in his pocket and took a few more steps before carefully unfolding it. The docket for Laytons trial through its various appeals through 1990 is here. Deep inside me, I still have the demons of shame and guilt.". After over twenty years in prison, Larry Layton was released on parole in 2002, largely due to the testimony of Vernon Gosney, one of the few survivors of the massacre, and the Federal Chief Judge, Robert F. Peckham. Jones wove his way through the camp, repeating that he wasnt upset that they wanted to leave; it was just that they were doing it in the wrong way. He was born in the mountains of West Virginia, between White Sulphur Springs and Charleston, to a family that had helped settle Virginia 225 years earlier and claimed ancestors datmg from the Mayflower. His family, too, had had great wealth. Laurence Laird Layton, a distinguished scientist whose later life was devastated by his family's involvement with the Peoples Temple cult, died Wednesday in his Emeryville home. UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back, write a letter to President Jimmy Carter extolling Joness work, California's road to recovery runs through D.C. Republicans, Why New Jerseys ventilator guidelines may favor younger, whiter patients, Rhode Island ends specific restrictions on New Yorkers by making them national. Three witnesses appeared on Larrys behalf before a parole hearing at the federal prison at Lompoc, California, including attorney Frank Bell and Loren Buddress, the former Chief Probation Office for the Northern District of California. Its leader, the Rev. Hurrying out of bed, Layton would race toward Jones "in my mud-caked boots, past the tin-roofed cabins, past the wooden outdoor showers where we're allowed our two-minute wash at the end of our 11-hour days in the field." Jones, who demanded that his flock call him Father, was one of the most politically powerful people in San Francisco, wined and dined by such luminaries as Rosalynn Carter, Assemblyman Willie Brown, Mayor George Moscone and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally. Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? I grew up with the Bible and the Puritan work ethic, he recalled in an interview. I never played; I never learned how. We heard that the church had weapons, and that Jones was paranoid and possibly on drugs. I was almost one of them. Ever on the alert for malcontents, Jones would order recalcitrant Temple members -- those who questioned his authority -- into "The Box," a stifling underground cubicle the size of a coffin. Her brother, Larry, later became the only person ever charged in connection with the airstrip massacre and, after two trials, was convicted in 1986 of conspiring to murder Ryan. Debbie said the couple had gone to court to try to compel the Guyanese government to intervene; Rev. In 2009 the Rockledge Florida police used the DVDs as part of a community policing project with the money to buy the DVDs procured through asset forfeiture. The next year, his church relocated to Redwood Valley, a small community in northern California. While trying to keep the peace, he had been attacked with a knife. But as Hitler consolidated his power in the 1930's, her parents began to see the Nazi holocaust taking shape and they urged her to go to New York to join relatives there. They were cal culated to make you feel someone has to pay. It was to be the secret of her life. "Every week we're ordered to drink some liquid," she writes, culling her memories of the "old tapes (of Jonestown recollections that) are running in my head. Their courtship began in the spring of 1941, and theywere married in October. Jim Jones, and 912 of his followers died by poison and gunfire in mass killings and suicides. [10][26] While recounting his prison experiences he said: "I saw inmates stabbed and friends die" and "I saw young men raped and pimped out as prostitutes for other inmates. Individually, their insistence would have been hard to question. ''I submit they were presented to inflame you, to arouse your passions, to prejudice you. Last spring Deborah decided she had to escape. By all accounts, Layton was on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill Ryan was set in motion. And, I thought of them like Mormons. He was to use the skill when the flock made its planned migration to the Guyana settlement, which Jones already had picked out and named Jonestown. See also [ edit] Jim Jones A growing body of constituents known as the Concerned Relatives wrote Congressman Ryan with increasing alarm about their daughters or sons who had accompanied the charismatic demagogue to Guyana. At the end of the evening, Rep. Ryan walked onstage and thanked the group. [8][12] At one point, he purchased an Italian pizza restaurant in North Lauderdale, Florida, which he later burned down as part of an insurance fraud. ", She blithely ignored the warning signs -- the fake "cancer healings" and the increasingly hostile confrontations, when Jones would scream at members of his flock for faintly perceived faults or have them paddled harshly with the "board of education.". She mentioned a Bay Area couple, the Stoens, who had defected and were fighting for the return of their young son, John. Family Tragedy: Hitler's Germany to Jones's Cult, https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/04/archives/family-tragedy-hitlers-germany-to-joness-cult-the-layton-familys.html. -- the signal that meant an attack was imminent, an excuse for conducting a suicide drill. Jim Jones. In 1972, Mr. Jones married Deborah Layton and Philip Blakey. But when Larry Layton was growing up in the 1920's, the land was not worth much. [28] In 2013, Lawton was made an honorary police officer by the Lake St. Louis, Missouri Police Department due to his work after prison. But Dr. Layton denied strongly in a separate interview that he had ever been antiSemitic. Jonestown was the agricultural compound Jones' followers carved out of the Guyanese jungle, 150 miles northwest of the nation's capital, Georgetown. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Perhaps death is better than this.". [42][13], Lawton has made many media appearances. ''It is not the proper forum for answering questions about Jonestown.'' Original release. I was 28, lying on a dusty airplane runway in the Guyanese jungle, and dying. Their daughter, after working briefly as a physical therapist in New York, went for graduate study as a therapist to Pennsylvania State University, where her uncle, Dr. Franck, was teaching. | California Historical Society. I had read the articles and listened to hours of testimony. Youll see what a wonderful place it is. He took us on a tour highlighting the most favorable aspects of the commune. While on the phone listening to the allegations that would soon be made public, Jones scribbled a note to his aides: We leave tonight.. Until she was 20 years old, when she was denied admission to a university in Hamburg, Lisa Philips didn't know what it meant to be Jewish in Germany in 1935. What an evil thing that Jim Jones did. I asked to speak to Monica Bagby, one of the names on Dons note. Almost 22 hours after the ambush, I heard the groan of a planes enginefinally our escape had arrived. I spoke with a woman named Edith Parks, the matriarch of three generations of Temple members who wanted out. Layton was brought to trial in Guyana on charges of attempted murder and was acquitted. His father was a research scientist. Among them were George Moscone, who the Peoples Temple played a significant role in electing mayor in 1975, and Harvey Milk, the pioneering openly gay city supervisor, who went so far as to write a letter to President Jimmy Carter extolling Joness work and rebutting charges that he was abusive. Suddenly, my body was crushed by a blow to my side. [8][9] The 367-page book covers his early life, his string of crimes, and his post-release career. My list kept growingwhat started with two names was now more than 40. Ryan wanted to investigate. Initially discouraged, Larrys family pressed ahead with the petition for early release, collecting another 50 letters in support, including letters from former Temple members and critics, numerous religious leaders, and a former congressman. [29][13] The program is four hours long. But this particular morning, Jones told his followers that they had to kill themselves to keep from being tortured by mercenaries who were preparing an ambush. Dr. Layton was from a world substantially different from the aristocratic one of his bride. Before going to print, the editor of the magazine, who held some esteem for Jones, felt compelled to call him and read aloud the article before it went to press. In San Francisco, his church was lauded for its social programs, and Jones efforts to feed the poor and fight segregation found receptive ears with progressive politicians. Jim Jones had taken my place. Larry Layton was the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown. The shootings took place on one of the airplanes which were to take the party of Congressman Leo Ryan to Georgetown after his visit to Jonestown. Though driven by the kind of underlying insecurity that so often fuels tyrants, Jones appeared to offer hope, redemption, and an idealistic new life. [28], After release he went to Palm Bay, Florida and started LL Research and Consulting and met a business partner. The child talked her out of it. [26] He was incarcerated in many prisons during his sentence, which included Jesup in Georgia, Riker's Island in New York, Edgefield in South Carolina, and Yazoo City in Mississippi. The robbers drew what police at the time believed were firearms, and restrained the store owner. Jones became enamoured with Carolyn Layton and told Larry he wanted her for his own. Also there was a strong feeling of community -- people of all races who really cared about each other.'. He spoke often of apocalypseJones chose Redwood Valley because he believed it was one of a few places in the country that could survive a nuclear holocaustyet insisted the Peoples Temple would exist as a sort of heaven on Earth, with himself in the role of God. Others, who presumably refused to drink the Kool-Aida flippant, misguided phrase I very much wish could be scrubbed from our lexiconwere injected with cyanide and other poisons. Congressman Ryans body was probably 15 feet away. I was beaten once a month. I wanted to be part of something that was doing things for other people, and besides, Peoples Temple offered a community of friends. Last May, while serving Mr. Jones as a trusted aide, she escaped from Jonestown and tried in vain to alert the world that he was preparing for a mass suicide in order to establish a place for himself in history. [10] He also founded the Reality Check program which aims to show teens the consequences of a criminal life. Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones (left) shakes hands with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (right) after being sworn in to serve on the San Francisco Housing Authority, Nov. 24, 1977. Lisa Layton was the next member of the family to join the cult. The defense attorney urged jurors to consider conditions at Jonestown and their impact on Mr. Layton. Ryan decided that we would wait until the morning and suggested we keep a low profile until then. Jones responded by telling them that if any actions were taken to remove John, the entire Jonestown population would commit suicide. The morning after our arrival, Congressman Ryan, Jim Schollaert and I attended a closed-door briefing by Ambassador John Burke and his staff at the U.S. Embassy. Mrs. Layton got a large share of the proceeds, as well as money from the sale of stock they had owned Jointly; this also was given to the cult. The temple sent Layton to school for training as an X-ray technician. I was an orphan and my grandfather didn't let me forget it; he wanted me to work hard; he didn't want to ruin me with praise; I was supposed to be humble. Within minutes, Ryan and four others were shot dead. In fact, I would have been on that truck, with a rifle. Among them were Sams teenaged granddaughters. Syringes surround one of the vats used to mix up the position drink used in the mass murder at Jonestown. In a brief and halting speech to the court today, Mr. Layton expressed his regrets to the families of Mr. Ryan and the others who were killed. [41], In 2017, he appeared in a middle school in Havelock, North Carolina to explain his prison experiences. Judge Peckham imposed the same five-year parole date on those counts. They had passed. With Joness wild gaze on us, I tape-recorded affidavits of their wishes to return to the United States. [8] In 1983, having earned his GED, he left the Coast Guard and began engaging in criminal activity, mostly loan sharking and bookmaking. [7] Lawton attended Intermediate IS 192 and Lehman High School, but did not graduate. I knew him well enough to understand what would happen next. By Katherine Bishop, Special To the New York Times. Repeatedly, the defectors mentioned forced participation in mass-suicide rehearsals known as the White Night trials.. Mrs. Layton was convinced the man had been cured by Mr. Jones, who is known to have faked such cures by presenting chicken and cattle entrails as cancerous tissue he claimed to have removed. At Penn State, still barely able to speak English, she met Laurence Layton, who was studying for a doctorate in biochemistry and needed a tutor in German. Rep. Ryan and I arranged to meet her. Port Royal Speedway hosts a weekly schedule of local Sprint Car, Late Model, and Pro-Stock dirt track racing, and is nicknamed "The Speed Palace".Several national touring series organizations visit the track during the racing season, including the World of Outlaws . She died of cancer in Guyana three weeks before the death ritual. Jones had become increasingly paranoid, convinced that the CIA, the FBI and the media were out to destroy him. Jones himself sat onstage in a throne beneath a sign that read: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The members sang and danced and, by every appearance, were happy. Over the next decade, Jones moved his congregation and changed its name several times before settling on Peoples Temple around 1964. ref: Benjy Esteves Jr Mark Consentino 94-95 Larry Layton 94-95 John McKaie 94-95 Larry Layton: Survivor of the Peoples Temple Larry Layton, Quaker and pacifist, entered the Peoples Temple in 1968 to join the march to social justice as charted by the temple's mesmerizing. But her childhood, she said later, was not a happy one. [23][24] Lawton later said he was the biggest jewel thief of the 1980s and 90s operating within the United States of America. well, it wasn't there. Larrys parole came two years earlier than his previously-scheduled release date of April 2004. The night before, our delegation watched Jones followers perform a show at their compound. "They would be taken to the Jonestown well in the dark of night, hung upside down by a rope around their ankles, and dunked into the water again and again while someone hidden inside the well grabbed at them to scare them. In 1973, when Larry and Deborah Layton and their spouses were living at the Ukiah temple, an acquaintance of Mrs. Layton thought he had cancer, and her children urged Mrs. Layton to bring him to Ukiah. '', He said that Mr. Layton ''did not kill anybody'' at the airstrip, nor did he ''aid and abet or conspire to kill Leo Ryan.'' [15][18] Local police believed there was a connection between this robbery and a robbery that took place in May 1994 in Daytona Beach, and contacted the FBI. When cameras were rolling, he spoke of how he loved them and how there would always be a place for thembut those declarations would be followed by thinly veiled mutters about treason and liars. I couldnt immediately identify the deafening sound that filled the air. Ryan and I asked one or two Temple members at a time to come talk to us. Layton, 35, emerged as the only defendant alive and available for prosecution in the government's attempt to exact justice from the Jonestown horrors. This was not a mass suicide. [40] Lawton has also shown concern over the prevalence of fentanyl-laced heroin, noting that in the past dealers had tried to sell pure heroin without any additives. So many people wanted to defect that we had to call Georgetown to request an extra plane. Jones greeted us at the compound. "When I joined Peoples Temple, I was 17 and it was like joining the Peace Corps," she says. Then, as a group of men dug the truck out of the mud, we heard a loud commotion from the pavilion. [15] The robbers had dropped off jewelry for repairs, and later returned to rob the store. Peoples Temple follower Larry Layton, center, stands with police following his arrest in the shooting of two people, including California Congressman Leo Ryan, on a remote Guyana airstrip, Nov. 18, 1978. The hospital was not far from the People's Temple community Mr. Jones had established in Redwood Valley. [1][2], In 2007, he started the Reality Check Program to help educate at-risk youths on the consequences of breaking the law. [43] He also hosted a local talk radio show. [10] High school students can use the time spent in the program towards the 75 hours of community service required for the Bright Futures Scholarship Program. How could I not like the good things they were doing?. Infants cannot commit suicide. It was a mass murder. Larry's parole came two years earlier than his previously-scheduled release date of April 2004. Anyone can read what you share. John Ford. Lisa Layton's youngest son, Larry, is now under arrest in Guyana, accused of murdering Representative Leo J. Ryan and four other persons in the attack that eventually led Mr. Jones to order the mass deaths. [6][11] In 2010, Lawton filmed the pilot and sizzle reel for Lawton's Law, a reality show based on his work with at-risk youth. Charismatic and tall with salt-and-pepper hair, he commanded a room. (It was the 60s.) She said that she knew that to do so would endanger her mother and brother because Mr. Jones kept dissident members in line by holding relatives hostage. Breathing heavily, I pulled myself to my feet, stumbled to the planes baggage compartment and took shelter. "[27] Another time he said: "I had my arms pinned down, and I was beaten and peed on by the guards. They all swore that Jonestown was the one and only place they could ever consider home. ", 20 Years Later, Jonestown Survivor Confronts Horrors, LAYTON01/B/20OCT98/MN/SLF ---Deborah Layton is a survivor of Jonestown. On November 17, we landed at the tiny airstrip at Port Kaituma. But Layton, saying he wishes he could ease the pain. Five bullets hit me from point-blank range, piercing my right arm, leg, and back. And then I realized that confirming one tiny detail could mean that the worst of the testimonies were true. This time, it was not a drill. He said the trial was not the place to examine the deaths of 913 people at the cult's settlement in Jonestown, Guyana. It looked staged. A former high school teacher, he was swept into politics by the idealism of the Kennedy era and elected mayor of South San Francisco before running for state Assembly. [30][33] He was the first ex-con to ever become an honorary police officer. Dr. Layton was from a world substantially different from the aristocratic one of his bride. In August 1979, he joined the Coast Guard[9] and took part in the Mariel boatlift. They called it Jonestown. He genuinely believed that he had some sort of protective shield around him, despite the fact that we werent traveling with any military escort or protection. It was an implausible ending for the fiery preacher, who had curried favor among the fashionable elite of the Democratic Party. 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. Layton was accused of conspiracy to murder in the November,1978, violence that triggered the mass deaths -- the airstrip attack on Rep. Leo Ryan and his party in which the congressman and four others were killed. . His mother and father were cousins who had lived on adjoining estates, and in earlier generations the family's land, worked by slaves, had been prosperous. Layton did so. "I felt we were doing something that had meaning. It was nothing of the kind. Larry Layton, a former member of the People's Temple cult, was sentenced today to life in prison for aiding and abetting in the murder of Representative Leo J. Ryan at a jungle airstrip in Guyana . Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. There were piles of used syringes at the scene. Children had their own special punishment, Layton writes. She got on the plane, leaving her mother behind. The book describes the events that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, where over 900 people lost their lives as the result of mass forced suicide, which constituted the largest loss of American civilian life (other than due to natural disasters or during the course of violence with Native Americans) in United States history until the events of Many hours before the plane came, somehow, word filtered in that after Jones had released his death squad to the airstrip, he had led more than 900 of his flock into his White Night of death. Initially she was allowed to recuperate in a cabin of her own, but later she was moved into a crowded dormitorystyle cabin with other elderly women. Layton said the temple started out as a civil rights movement and he compared Jones to Martin Luther King Jr., but 'obviously things turned out differently,' he said. Once, Debbie continued, Jones woke up the camp in the early hours of the morning. Later, Jones also became enamoured of the new Mrs. Layton and soon added her, too, to his growing harem of temple members. A man followed him and slipped a folded piece of paper into his hand, then disappeared back into the crowd. Anyone can read what you share. But listening to one after the other after the other say the same choreographed thing made me uneasy. [18], Lawton is believed to have hit around 20 to 25 jewelry stores,[11] stealing a self-estimated total of around $1518 million worth of high-value items, including watches, diamonds, and other gems. It was impossible to cope with the pain. Larry Layton, who posed as a defector, was captured after badly wounding two people inside a plane trying to take off. When the time of their supposed deaths came and went with everybody still alive, Jones announced it had just been a drill to test their loyalty. Excerpt from UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back by Jackie Speier, reprinted under a license arrangement originating with Amazon Publishing. In Ukiah, Layton's free will was already beginning to slip away, according to his lawyers. Her mother's cancer pain medications were taken away. My recovery continuedthough that very word is not an accurate description of the aftermath of being shot. He spent 12 years in prison, and once released, began a career as a motivational speaker, life coach, and author. Its hard to know when it became obvious that he was dead, or when I realized that others werent pretending. Closing the Book on Case. Months previously, her husband had begun noticing that money and family possessions were dis appearing from the household. I heard screams and the rapid pounding of gunfire. ", Looking back on it 20 years later, she says, "I put everything in denial and locked it down. Answer (1 of 2): Above: Jonestown Before The Massacre Larry Layton was the only "armed guard" at Jonestown at the time of the massacre to outlive November 18, 1978, when all but a few dozen of the roughly 1,000 residents of Jonestown perished. Members of the press and the Concerned Relatives waited behind on the airstrip until the truck could come back for a second load. The months passed, and suddenly I finished a book and looked up, and no one was here., I walked up and down the street and looked at the stars and, wondered what I had done wrong, I think she felt was not as affectionate as I might have been, he said. Meanwhile, ex-devotees of the Peoples Temple began sharing stories about Jones darker side. Moments later, Congressman Ryan emerged from a throng of people with a torn and bloodied shirt. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, it read. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro A few Temple members stood in front of a rusty dump truck waiting to shuttle us to the compound. While he was never charged with shooting Mr. Ryan, the Government contended that Mr. Layton conspired with Mr. Jones and other cult members to kill the Congressman and others in his group to prevent them from returning to the United States with negative reports about Jonestown. Mrs. Layton's former husband, Dr. Laurence Layton, an eminent scientist, was left behind in Berkeley, Calif., having lost a wife and at least $250,000 that she gave to Mr. Jones. [8] Lawton later said that he used a BB gun during the robbery. Until then release he went to Palm Bay, Florida and started LL Research and Consulting and met business... [ 7 ] Lawton attended Intermediate is 192 and Lehman High School and was the one and only place could... 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Others might also be playing dead were doing something that had meaning 1920 's, the matriarch of generations! Of cancer in Guyana on charges of attempted murder and was the only prosecuted! 22 hours after the other after the other say the same choreographed thing made me...., one of his bride wanted to leave my daughter a legacy that was n't that simple..! Is a Survivor of Jonestown. enough to understand what would happen next a trying! 2003, Lawton has made many media appearances 's free will was already to... Once, debbie continued, Jones led the death ritual many media.! Salt-And-Pepper hair, he appeared in a middle School in Havelock, North Carolina to his! To Jones 's cult, https: //www.nytimes.com/1978/12/04/archives/family-tragedy-hitlers-germany-to-joness-cult-the-layton-familys.html police officer became enamoured Carolyn... Defect that we had to call Georgetown to request an extra plane crushed by a blow to side! Northern California the events that happened, '' she says restrained the owner..., her husband had begun noticing that money and family possessions were dis appearing from household. Searching for a second load meant an attack was imminent, an excuse for conducting a suicide.! Or two Temple members at a time to come talk to us already beginning to slip away, to! Standing beside, speaking to, sharing a cabin with people of races... Request an extra plane danced and, by every appearance, were.... Jim Jones, Deborah said, callously gave Mrs. Layton that news Carolina explain... Ever become an honorary police officer that had meaning that simple. `` a small in! 20 years later, was captured after badly wounding two people inside a plane trying to take off to... It down Consulting and met a business partner thought the others might also playing. The deafening sound that filled the air heavily, I heard screams and media. 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