Rev. 11D Meow
2005-11-26 11:05:33 UTC
Religious Right Cons Drink Dickless Cheney's Cyanide Pee
Radio National
with Rachael Kohn
on Sunday 08/08/1999
Drinking Poison: Inside Jonestown
Summary:
On November 18, 1978, 913 men, women and children died in a mass
murder-suicide (most drinking cyanide-laced punch) orchestrated by the
Reverend Jim Jones in his compound in Guyana, South America. We hear from a
survivor of the Jonestown suicide. A full transcript is now available.
Details or Transcript:
Deborah Layton was a devotee, trusted confidante and high level member of
The People's Temple, the church Jim Jones founded. She tells her "up close
and personal" account of life in a poisonous cult where theft, fraud,
sexual, physical and psychological abuse, and finally death were required of
its members. A full transcript follows.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah Layton, welcome to The Spirit of Things.
Deborah Layton: Thank you very much for inviting me.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, most people would remember Jonestown as a place where
a lot of people died, forced to commit suicide by a deranged cult leader. It
would come as something of a surprise to know that Jim Jones enjoyed a great
deal of support and even patronage by local government leaders in San
Francisco and even in Guyana, where the Jonestown debacle took place.
Deborah Layton: Correct.
Rachael Kohn: How did he manage to garner that support?
Deborah Layton: Well it was the end of the civil rights era here in the
United States and Jim Jones was a well known and respected minister. As a
young man he had been an Assistant Pastor of the Methodist Church. And by
the time he moved to San Francisco (and that's when I met him) he was the
Director of the Human Rights Commission. Mayor Moscone of San Francisco had
been very impressed with him; the newspapers wrote about him; Jane Fonda
spoke from the pulpit; and even Rosalyn Carter, the former President's wife,
was seen dining with him at a conference, and wrote to him thereafter. He
was charismatic, he was well spoken, and People's Temple at that time was a
humanitarian service group that people like myself at the age of, well I was
very young when I met him, I was only 17.
But it was also towards the end of the Vietnam War, and people were looking
for some purpose in their life, a meaning, something larger than themselves
to get involved with, and joining People's Temple was like joining the Peace
Corps.
Rachael Kohn: Well he certainly had a radical vision of inter-racial
harmony, as well as a very strong commitment to socialism. In fact one might
even say it was communistic.
Deborah Layton: Yes. Those of us that joined thought we were joining a
regular church and it was over time that we learned that religion was the
opiate of the people, and you had to use religion to get them out, to
understand socialism, and it made sense that Jim was trying to bring all
races together; he was trying to house the homeless here in the Bay area,
and we had free medical advice for people and we travelled throughout the
United States leafleting. And I believed in everything he said, I wanted so
much to be involved in something to help others. And it was over time, and
isolation from families, being pulled away from society, that things began
to change. And by that time, most of us had been so removed that we became
sort of blind followers.
Rachael Kohn: Well he actually had people living together didn't he?
Deborah Layton: Yes, we had communes. It started that we tithed 20% to the
church, and then over time, because there were so many humanitarian
services, community work projects that he had going, that he suggested that
maybe some people move in together. So people my age moved in together,
college kids lived together in dormitories, and as he became more powerful
in the community and in politics in San Francisco and became well known
actually, across the United States, he said that we needed more money, and
he suggested that people sell their homes and live communally together,
since we were one huge family. And that's exactly what many people did. And
Jim used that money for what we believed was good use, and actually a lot of
that money was taken out of the country, secretly housed in bank accounts in
Switzerland and Panama.
Rachael Kohn: A lot of that money was actually Social Security cheques of
the poor.
Deborah Layton: Absolutely. People from all walks of life joined People's
Temple, rich and poor. Many were uneducated, many were poor, and many were
college graduates. And the Social Security cheques did come from many of the
black families that joined, the older women and men, and they lived
communally and the money was again taken out of the country. And what Jim
promised would happen with that money is that he was creating a promised
land, sort of a retirement colony for all of us, that we'd leave the racism
of the United States and go to a wonderful paradise. And that's what people
thought they were going to when they left the United States for Jonestown.
We saw beautiful films from there; they were, I found out later, propaganda.
It was all facade and lies, but at the time it seemed so wonderful, and it's
not unlike what you find coming out of Cuba or Russia. You know, wonderful
pictures of things, and beautiful children, and Jim used those exact tactics
to have more people give more money. My mother gave, when she divorced my
father, over a quarter of a million dollars to the church.
Rachael Kohn: That's a lot of money. Well Jim Jones used his power within
the group as well, especially round kind of controlling relations between
people. Now you had a mother as well as a brother in the movement, and your
brother Larry was married to someone. It would become clear to him that Jim
Jones had certain designs on his wife, or fiancee.
Deborah Layton: It did become very clear to my brother that Jim had designs,
but it wasn't that obvious. Jim was so clever, he was so deceitful and so
manipulative that Larry worked many hours as did all the members of the
church. He had two and three jobs so that he can give the proceeds to the
church, and during that time he wasn't home much. And Jim Jones was very
enamoured by my brother's wife, who was a young schoolteacher. My brother
and she had graduated from UC Berkeley Davis, California, and moved up to
Yukiah this area where she did teach school, and they met this young
minister who spoke and acted much like Martin Luther King, and they felt
that it was something important to be involved with. And while my brother
worked long, long hours, Jim and my brother's wife, Carolyn, became
comrades, and it was arranged behind my brother's back, for a confrontation
that Carolyn would say that she was unhappy with my brother, and he
acquiesced. He didn't know that Jim was going to take her as his mistress,
which he did, and continued to do that sort of thing throughout the Temple
years.
Rachael Kohn: Yes, well it seems that he would use sexual relations with
himself and others, as a way of both forging links, but also shaming them
publicly. He forced his affections on you, and then made you pay for it
publicly.
Deborah Layton: Correct. People think, and one of the reasons I kept quiet
for 20 years about this is just the immense shame, having been duped, having
been involved in an organisation that turned wicked. And it took me a long
time to realise that I had to come forward with my story for the sake of my
daughter, who at the time was very young, she'd just turned 13, but I
realise I had to tell the truth and explain how something like this could
happen. And I was molested by Jim, and at the time I was very frightened,
and I trusted him, as does a child with their father, or a child with their
minister, or priest. And to me he was closer to God, he was Godlike, and
that he touched my leg and he said that he cared about me, it didn't feel
right, I felt it was wrong, and yet he was a good man, and I was afraid to
do anything otherwise. And then again, what he did with everybody that he
did this to, weeks later he'd have you brought forward and punished and
harassed because you had begged for it, you had promised you would commit
suicide if he didn't spend time with you. And I used to hate all the women
in the church who admitted to this thing, and then I was one of them and I
realised that none of them had asked for his unholy touch.
Rachael Kohn: Well one of the prevailing themes in your account is your
sense of shock and upset and doubt at the things that you witnessed, and
also were ordered to do. In contrast to your overwhelming need to please and
to be good and to prove yourself as a loyal servant, what motivated you to
keep silencing the doubt within you?
Deborah Layton: That's a great question. I think early on in People's Temple
what Jim did and what a lot of groups do now, and one of the reasons I wrote
Seductive Poison is so that parents and kids could see what the warning
signs are, but when you go into certain organisations they tell you that
first voice that you have, of questioning, that it's actually selfishness,
and you need to turn that down because of course it is hard to be involved
in an organisation that's doing important things, and it is hard to give of
yourself, and you have to be less selfish. And over time as you've turned
down that voice, it's your voice of reason, it's your ability to have
dissent within yourself and figure things out, and having that muted, makes
you a sort of blind follower.
Rachael Kohn: Well you became a high level operative in the People's Temple,
trusted with moving large sums of money to different bank accounts and that
involved even going to Switzerland at one point, and to Panama, and then to
Guyana, in South America. Did you know at the time where the money was
coming from? Because it was a lot of money.
Deborah Layton: Oh yes, we had offerings on weekends where thousands and
thousands on weekends came in.We pulled $60,000 on a weekend, with all
these - you know, we were in San Francisco and we travelled across the
United States and we had meetings in Los Angeles, and we pamphleted areas
and we got hundreds of people to come to these meetings, and they gave
money. The other money came from the Social Securities cheques of the
seniors, and young, well-to-do college kids, their trust funds and money
from my parents who were giving me money that I funnelled right back into
the church. And that money was taken out of the United States and what Jim
made us understand is that there was a conspiracy against us in the United
States.
And this is what these organisations will do. They'll isolate you, there's a
conspiracy so now you're afraid and you have to protect yourself, and it
made sense that we had to get the money quickly out of the United States.
Here, if you're a church in the United States, you have no taxes, and that
was a very important aspect for Jim, that People's Temple was a church.
Rachael Kohn: So it was actually a tax dodge?
Deborah Layton: Well in case it came into question if People's Temple was
truly a church or not, because at that point he was espousing socialism, and
the money was taken out of the country, and a lot of it illegally.
Rachael Kohn: Well that sense of America against People's Temple would have
been confirmed when defectors started to tell their stories, or tried to, at
any rate, in the newspaper. When defectors went public, were they
threatened, were their lives threatened? How dangerous was it to actually
leave the group and tell others publicly, what was going on inside?
Deborah Layton: Well there's a twofold answer to that, so don't let me
forget the second part. It was very dangerous to leave People's Temple.
People that wanted to leave and Jim had an inkling that they were about to
leave, would be caught, they'd be brought forward and punished. There was a
young man who had decided he was going to take his entire family out, and he
died suspiciously. Even if it had nothing to do with Jim, he would take
responsibility for somebody's death. If it was an innocent death, somebody
we believed was a good member and he died in a car accident, Jim would say
'They were having selfish spots; they were thinking of leaving, and that's
why they died.' So it was stuff like that that would frighten people into
staying. And those few that did escape here in the United States, and they
stayed under cover for a long time because they were so afraid, because we
were looking for them, and they were going to be hurt if they were found.
And within People's Temple Jim had every single one of us blackmailed. We'd
signed hundreds of documents saying we'd done terrible things, that we'd
molested children, that we'd stolen from banks, that we were planning to
kill somebody, and at the time...
Rachael Kohn: These were not true.
Deborah Layton: They weren't true, but we signed them, and they were not
dated. But Jim had them filed, every single person had files. And he could
use that, because he was high in politics in San Francisco, he knew the head
of the police, and what he would say is, 'The Mayor is my friend; the head
of the police is my friend. Now you leave this organisation and we will find
you, and these things that you've signed' - this was much later in the game,
there wasn't this much fear involved. But once those people had left, Jim
said awful things about them, and I believed it, that they'd stolen money
from the church coffers, again, that they'd molested kids and so when they
went public and all of us within People's Temple, these wonderful disciples,
these young followers who the best of intentions, the innocence and naivete
and the goodness in these kids' hearts joining this organisation, we
believed that these people who had left had done terrible things, so if you
didn't believe anything they said, they were liars. So we took no heed of
what they said.
Rachael Kohn: Well Deborah things got really hot for Jim Jones, and he
decided to flee to this paradise in Guyana, which was a compound that he
called Jonestown. And you convinced your mother to go along with you as
well, later on. But it was quite a shock when you actually saw the compound.
Deborah Layton: Yes, this is the tough part for me, that my mum was sick,
and Jim had left the country several months before, and we had just found
out she had cancer, and she was afraid, and Jim said there were all sorts of
medical facilities, and we had two of our own doctors in Jonestown, and she
was afraid. She wanted to say goodbye to my father whom she'd divorced, she
wanted to say goodbye to my brother and sister, who were not members of the
church, and I convinced her she couldn't, that we couldn't tell anybody
because then maybe my father who I believed was part of the CIA because Jim
had created these memories for me, which he did, he was one of the first to
give us these created memories of childhood disasters. And I had her leave
without telling anyone goodbye.
We got into Jonestown after 30 hours on the ocean and up a long river, 250
miles away from civilisation in Guyana in South America, the only English
speaking country there.
As we pulled in to Jonestown, this place I'd seen so many wonderful movies
about, I was so hoping it was the promised land he'd told us about, and as
our flat-bed truck drew into this compound, we got there at about one in the
morning, it was like coming into the set of 'M.A.S.H.' There were no
beautiful cabins with verandahs, there was no lawn, there were no children,
of course it was one in the morning, but the people, the vibrant people that
I had known here in the United States, wonderful people, they'd heard that
another group was coming in from the United States, and they came to see us,
and it was like looking into the faces of people in a leper colony, that
they were looking at us, at what they had been. And looking at them, I
realised "Oh my God, we have been deceived." And it was that moment that I
knew if I could that I would escape if ever given the chance.
Rachael Kohn: Right from the beginning, right from your arrival.
Deborah Layton: The minute of my arrival inside Jonestown. And actually
there was an inkling just before that that I write about in Seductive
Poison, and that's when my mother and I were on this tugboat. Now it's the
last nine hours of this again 30-hour, horrific journey, and as we were
coming deeper, deeper and deeper into this forest, and it's getting thicker,
and the river's getting more narrow, the captain of our boat who was a
member of the Temple, comes out, and he says, 'Anybody bringing in letters
from the United States for family members, hand them over now.' And all the
hair on the back of my neck and my arms went up. I had spent hours running
around in San Francisco getting letters from loved ones, being so excited
about going in that they'd get these little treasures from people here in
the United States, and that they were considered dangerous, that they were
going to be taken from us and maybe given to the family members inside
Jonestown, I realised that a love of a family member, that that could be
dangerous, that a memory of a life before was dangerous, that something was
terribly wrong.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, even when you got there, you were stripped of your
belongings, your mother stripped of her medicine, that would have been quite
alarming to you as well, a woman who obviously needed help.
Deborah Layton: Yes, it was unbelievably frightening, and yet when you're
going into a concentration camp, whether it be Auschwitz, or Belsen, when
you're going into a prison and you know it's a new environment, you're not
going to stand up and scream 'By God, don't you do that!' You're trying to
figure out what are the rules here, who can I trust. You're going to follow
along as your survival instinct tries to figure out how do you live within
this new system, and can you figure a way back out. And it was unbelievably
frightening.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, at the peak, there were about 1100 people in
Jonestown. Now that would have meant that Jim Jones would have needed to
exert a great deal of control, and indeed quell any attempts at escape. How
did he do that?
Deborah Layton: He was clever. Within Jonestown, my first night I realised
that there were loudspeakers everywhere, and Jim's voice spoke over them 24
hours a day. And during the daytime when he was awake and he spoke about the
awful conspiracy in the United States, and the mercenaries who were coming
down to hurt us, he would tape himself, and then when he was asleep or when
he was doing something else, these tapes made over days and days and months
and months, would play on and on and on, and on those tapes, or live in one
of our pavilion meetings, Jim would say, 'Well, I'm sending out some people,
people you trust, people you know, to say they want to leave. It's a loyalty
test. Report them.' Well I knew I wanted to leave and I definitely wasn't
going to tell anybody I knew, because at that point they knew I was trusted.
So for me to tell even my mother, 'Mom, I think I've figured a way out' to
tell a friend, 'Listen, there must be a way out', they could only believe
that they were being tested, and the safest thing would have been to report
me. So the safest thing within Jonestown was to keep to yourself, abide by
the rules and within yourself pray that you could figure a way out, or that
you wouldn't change your mind. My first week there I slept with a pillow
over my head, I was so afraid that I'd be reindoctrinated into believing
that I wanted to stay.
Rachael Kohn: When did Jim Jones start to hold the famous White Nights,
where all of you would be preparing for mass suicide?
Deborah Layton: They started well before I came down, and I didn't know
about them. My second week in Jonestown was my first White Night, and they
were called White Nights because it was white people that were evil. I'm
white, but Jim made us believe white people were bad and they were trying to
hurt the blacks and there was racism, and it made sense. It was the end of
the '60s and there was racism and we'd learn all about those civil rights,
and how people had been hurt. And in Jonestown, there was no news. I mean we
were an isolated little encampment in the middle of a rainforest. It was 250
miles away from civilisation. Jim had cleared a tiny little spot of land,
and in a rainforest it's not plush, it's thick, it's dangerous, and if you
run 20 feet into this thick forest, you cannot find your way back out. And
so those were our bars, and I've actually just forgotten what you asked me.
Rachael Kohn: When he began the White Nights, what was the motivation for
it? Well you've said it was racism.
Deborah Layton: No, no, it wasn't actually. I mean I was just trying to
explain that he used the term White Night, it could have been Black Night,
which is probably more appropriate since it was in the black of night that
these things were called. But he used them to break our spirit, and you'd
work in the field from 6am in the morning until 6 at night. We had no
protein, it was an agricultural community that was failing. We couldn't get
in this thick clay of this rainforest, things to grow. And in this
isolation, Jim was becoming more and more insane, and at night, at 2 in the
morning, sirens would blare over the loudspeaker and Jim would say,
'Quickly, quickly children, quick, come to the pavilion to safety', and we'd
run there, and for days we could hear gunfire in the jungle. Now we were
told that there were mercenaries trying to come in and kill us, but what we
didn't know was that he had different young kids, different to the armed
guards that watched us day and night in the fields, and watched our cabins
as we slept, he'd have different ones out there shooting off the guns. And
so we believed that these people were coming in to hurt us, that they were
coming in to kill the children, that they were coming in to torture us.
They became more and more frequent, but on one of the nights, I had just
turned 25, I'd been in the organisation since I was 18, I wanted desperately
to get out, and it seemed that there was no way. And on this one night when
we were made to get in lines to take this poison before these people came in
to torture us, you could say, 'My God, well I'd never do that', and it's
true. Many people didn't. Many people said 'I'm not going to take that
poison. We have reason to live.' And they'd be the first. Jim would have
them, grab them, brought forward, they'd be punished. People would be put in
a medical unit where they were kept comatose until their death at the very
end. And I watched that, and I knew I wasn't going to speak up. I didn't
want to be in that position because I wanted if ever a chance came, to be
able to run. But on that night, after working the fields for months and
being sick and being afraid and wanting to get out, I did drink what I
thought was poison. And after 40 minutes of standing there and waiting and
realising it was another test, my heart sunk.
Rachael Kohn: When you were finally at your wits' end and exhausted and
malnourished, you did have an opportunity to escape. You went to the capital
of Guyana, Georgetown. But even then, it was quite difficult to get, say the
American Embassy, the Consul, to understand what you had been through and
what was going on in Jonestown, because Jim Jones wielded so much power. How
did he?
Deborah Layton: Let me say firstly that many people wanted out of Jonestown.
Of the thousand people there, many wanted out, they were so afraid, but they
couldn't get out. That I was able to escape was only by luck that Jim
assigned me to go to the capital, which is again 250 miles away, and the
only way there is by boat, our own boat. I knew when I was leaving Jonestown
that I would do anything not to come back, and I knew that I would never see
my mother again. When I went to say goodbye, I went to say goodbye knowing,
and she knowing I was only going for a week to the capital, and I couldn't
tell her because it was too dangerous if she were to cry and Jim would see
her face and he'd ask what was wrong.
When I did get to the capital I was assigned to go to the capital with a
group of young people, I was their chaperone. I was to make sure I stayed
with them at all times so that they couldn't escape, and their assignment
was, they had to go to the American Embassy because there were concerned
relatives in the United States that were very worried about their children.
They went on vacations, they went on trips and left the United States, and
these families never heard from them again. These letters that I'd spent so
much time getting, never got to these kids inside Jonestown. And I was
assigned to go to the American Embassy with them when they were being
questioned as to why they were there, were they happy, and of course they
were saying they were very happy and they wanted to get married, and all
these various things, and I was there to make sure they said that. And it
was during that time that I tried to make eye contact with the men asking
the questions of these young people. It was at the end of this first meeting
that I tried to speak to the person, the Consulate, and he just didn't
understand, and I realised that in so many ways the people assigned in the
American Embassy in Guyana, they didn't know what they were up against, they
didn't know they were dealing with somebody as brilliant and as deceitful
and dangerous as Hitler. And that Jim was able to garner information from
the American Embassy whenever they came in to Jonestown to check on the
people.
When I was actually there at the American Embassy meeting with these young
kids I was to be monitoring, the Consulate said 'I'm going into Jonestown in
another two weeks. Jim wants the names of the people I want to meet with.
I'm going to give them to him now because he said they might be off fishing
in a village on a trip.' There is no fishing in Jonestown, there is no
village nearby we could go on a trip to. Jim wanted the names of those
people so he could he could prep them ahead of time, and that they'd be so
frightened ahead of time as in Russia at the height of its fanaticism, that
every single person was watched and when the Consulate took them aside
inside Jonestown to talk to them, there was a senior sweeping nearby. She
was assigned there, they knew that, they knew that she was reporting on what
they were saying.
Rachael Kohn: So there were Jonestown operatives within the Embassy keeping
an eye on things?
Deborah Layton: Well yes, I mean I was talking about Jonestown, but yes, we
didn't even need operatives inside the American Embassy because we were able
to get information from them all the time. After being assigned into the
capital to stay with these kids, I made myself indispensable there. I worked
hard, I reorganised things, I made sure that when people went to various
ministries to talk that I immediately got them on the radio to speak to Jim
into Jonestown, and Jim decided he had to keep me in the capital. He wasn't
going to bring me back into Jonestown with the kids that I had to be with.
And that was my purpose, that I would be indispensable in the capital, and
that when all these people went back into Jonestown, that I would remain
along with about 20 other people who were operatives in the capital who were
the PR people for Jim, who went into the ministries, who blackmailed people.
And it took me, once I was assigned into the capital, it took me almost two
months to figure a way back out without telling the American Embassy ahead
of time, because I knew if I were to go into the American Embassy before
their trip back into Jonestown which was in six weeks at that time. If I
were to go in and say, 'Listen, I need out, I have a way, I've contacted my
sister, help me' they would have gone into Jonestown and said, 'Jim, things
aren't that great here; we've had somebody from your headquarters approach
us.'
Rachael Kohn: Right. That would have been a trap. Well when you finally did
get out, in harrowing circumstances, you made an affidavit to the American
government, and it was published in the newspapers where you predicted that
there would be a mass suicide, and that I imagine activated Congressman Ryan
to take a trip down to Guyana and investigate the circumstances. But even he
was incredibly naive about what awaited him, and what kind of a man Jim
Jones really was.
Deborah Layton: Absolutely. Actually when I escaped, the night of my escape
from Guyana I signed an affidavit at the American Embassy in Guyana, telling
them that Jim Jones had guns and cyanide poisoning and was planning to kill
everybody in Jonestown. They told me not to tell anybody. When I got back to
the United States, I called the American Embassy here and I said, 'I think I
need to go public with this.' They said, 'Do not tell anybody, it's too
dangerous.' And I waited for two weeks and then I met with an Attorney. And
between the two of us, I put together an 11-page, 39-point affidavit
spelling out what Jim was planning to do, that we had suicide drills, that
people wanted out, that families were being kept there against their will,
and it did go public. It went into newspapers through the AP wire, it went
around the world, but if it happened now, people would listen. Then, the
headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle was 'Grim Report from the Jungle',
and yet it was just my voice, there was nobody, no-one who had left to
corroborate what I was saying.
And Leo Ryan did read about me, and he flew to California from Washington
and asked me to come to Washington D.C. and speak before the State
Department, that he wanted to go down and investigate what was going on. But
you are absolutely right, he was naive. Nobody took seriously my affidavit,
which spelt out that we had guns there. Had I been in Jonestown when Leo
Ryan came, I probably would have been one of the people to shoot at him,
because we had been so well indoctrinated and so afraid of outsiders, that I
would never have tried to escape with him because I was too afraid. The only
way I was ever willing to escape was if it was just me alone, and only me
that I had to depend on.
Rachael Kohn: And of course Senator Ryan was shot dead, and your prediction
would come true, that a mass suicide was staged, and you had a double
tragedy there: your mother died, and your brother was arrested for murder.
Deborah Layton: That's correct. My brother Larry Layton, is serving a life
sentence here in the United States and he's been in prison for 20 years;he
actually killed nobody. But because he did shoot at two people, but he was
not one of the people on the flat bed truck that came in and shot and killed
Congressman Leo Ryan and the cameraman and a reporter. And yet I think if
you read Seductive Poison and you understand what these kids believed, these
young people, although what they did was wrong, they believed they were
coming in to stop people like myself, with Leo Ryan, there were four or five
people that were leaving Jonestown, people who could corroborate now what I
was saying in the United States, and Jim couldn't let that happen. And he
set these young boys out there and said, 'Stop them, stop them. Kill them,
and we'll get ourselves to Cuba. I'll get your parents, I'll get your
children, I'll get our family to Cuba.' And that's what these people did.
They went there, believing that they were giving their own families inside
Jonestown a chance not be killed. And then they went back in and found that
their own families were being made to take the poison. And within this
story, these people did not commit suicide.
The first people to die were children, hundreds of children were killed.
Children do not commit suicide. And as those parents, as you sit here or
stand, and you think, 'Well by God I would have grabbed my child and run',
that's right, you would have grabbed your child and you would have looked at
there's maybe a mile, probably a mile to the jungle, and you would hold on
to your child and you'd question: 'Should I hold on to them and run? Should
I try to run to the jungle and possibly be shot in the back? And have my
child pulled from my arms? Or should I stay with them and hold them for
their last moments of their lives?'
Rachael Kohn: Your mother actually did not die at that mass suicide. She
mercifully died before that all happened.
Deborah Layton: Yes, she did. She died ten days ahead of this tragedy. But
part of that story is that she died of lung cancer without any pain
medication, and my brother Larry who when I escaped, I was never allowed to
get a hold of him. He was still here in the United States, and when I was
flying back here, Jonestown called him and flew him down there. He never
knew that I'd left, and he was the one that took care of my mother until the
very end. And when you're afraid and you've lost everything, it's hard to be
part of a conspiracy. It's hard to be held responsible for the insanity of a
mad man, and the unwilling participation of a thousand people who were
captives.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah at this point it's 21 years after that terrible event.
And I wonder how someone normalises? I wonder how you come out of a
situation in which you were so heavily indoctrinated, in which the CIA and
conspiracies were just around the corner, everywhere. How did you normalise
and function as a normal American citizen with her feet on the ground, with
a job, even at a Stock Exchange, of all things, ironically for someone who
was part of a socialist, even communist movement?
Deborah Layton: Well it's interesting actually that it was because I think I
worked on the trading floor of an investment banking firm, in the hub of
these evil capitalists that I'd been taught were so bad, and they were
white, and they took me under their wing. And it was here that the
indoctrination that I'd had for seven years, slowly crumbled away, and that
I moulded myself. Truly, I came from an educated, well-to-do family. My
father was a renowned scientist around the world; my mother was a very
cultivated woman from Germany and actually part of the story is the secrets
and shadows that I think sent my mother and me and my brother into People's
Temple, that she actually escaped Nazi Germany, and came to the United
States and kept her heritage a secret so her children wouldn't know
anti-Semitism, and safeguard our ascent into American society.
And I had a strong core from my parents, and then coming back, my life
having been on ice for seven years, I did do well for myself, and yet there
are vestiges that have stayed with me, of distrust and shame and the reason
I wrote this book was I was trying to stop the legacy in my own family, that
I was actually following in my own mother's footsteps. Here I was, I was in
this investment banking firm, I was doing incredibly well and I was keeping
from my daughter, as my mother had kept from here children, who I was, and
where I had been, to safeguard her ascent into American society. And then I
realised that my keeping who I was a secret was setting her up possibly to
follow in my footsteps and look for answers in an organisation that gave
easy, simple, black and white answers, and that for the sake of my daughter
and to break the legacy of secrets and shadows in my own family that I
needed to tell the truth, and to explain it to her that I had to go back in
to the darkness and explain it to myself.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah thank you for explaining it to us as well. You've done
a great service. It's a courageous and harrowing and also very, very
revealing story. I thank you for being on The Spirit of Things.
Deborah Layton: Thank you very much for having me.
(She says to the Cannibals right before they lunched her, also.)
Radio National
with Rachael Kohn
on Sunday 08/08/1999
Drinking Poison: Inside Jonestown
Summary:
On November 18, 1978, 913 men, women and children died in a mass
murder-suicide (most drinking cyanide-laced punch) orchestrated by the
Reverend Jim Jones in his compound in Guyana, South America. We hear from a
survivor of the Jonestown suicide. A full transcript is now available.
Details or Transcript:
Deborah Layton was a devotee, trusted confidante and high level member of
The People's Temple, the church Jim Jones founded. She tells her "up close
and personal" account of life in a poisonous cult where theft, fraud,
sexual, physical and psychological abuse, and finally death were required of
its members. A full transcript follows.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah Layton, welcome to The Spirit of Things.
Deborah Layton: Thank you very much for inviting me.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, most people would remember Jonestown as a place where
a lot of people died, forced to commit suicide by a deranged cult leader. It
would come as something of a surprise to know that Jim Jones enjoyed a great
deal of support and even patronage by local government leaders in San
Francisco and even in Guyana, where the Jonestown debacle took place.
Deborah Layton: Correct.
Rachael Kohn: How did he manage to garner that support?
Deborah Layton: Well it was the end of the civil rights era here in the
United States and Jim Jones was a well known and respected minister. As a
young man he had been an Assistant Pastor of the Methodist Church. And by
the time he moved to San Francisco (and that's when I met him) he was the
Director of the Human Rights Commission. Mayor Moscone of San Francisco had
been very impressed with him; the newspapers wrote about him; Jane Fonda
spoke from the pulpit; and even Rosalyn Carter, the former President's wife,
was seen dining with him at a conference, and wrote to him thereafter. He
was charismatic, he was well spoken, and People's Temple at that time was a
humanitarian service group that people like myself at the age of, well I was
very young when I met him, I was only 17.
But it was also towards the end of the Vietnam War, and people were looking
for some purpose in their life, a meaning, something larger than themselves
to get involved with, and joining People's Temple was like joining the Peace
Corps.
Rachael Kohn: Well he certainly had a radical vision of inter-racial
harmony, as well as a very strong commitment to socialism. In fact one might
even say it was communistic.
Deborah Layton: Yes. Those of us that joined thought we were joining a
regular church and it was over time that we learned that religion was the
opiate of the people, and you had to use religion to get them out, to
understand socialism, and it made sense that Jim was trying to bring all
races together; he was trying to house the homeless here in the Bay area,
and we had free medical advice for people and we travelled throughout the
United States leafleting. And I believed in everything he said, I wanted so
much to be involved in something to help others. And it was over time, and
isolation from families, being pulled away from society, that things began
to change. And by that time, most of us had been so removed that we became
sort of blind followers.
Rachael Kohn: Well he actually had people living together didn't he?
Deborah Layton: Yes, we had communes. It started that we tithed 20% to the
church, and then over time, because there were so many humanitarian
services, community work projects that he had going, that he suggested that
maybe some people move in together. So people my age moved in together,
college kids lived together in dormitories, and as he became more powerful
in the community and in politics in San Francisco and became well known
actually, across the United States, he said that we needed more money, and
he suggested that people sell their homes and live communally together,
since we were one huge family. And that's exactly what many people did. And
Jim used that money for what we believed was good use, and actually a lot of
that money was taken out of the country, secretly housed in bank accounts in
Switzerland and Panama.
Rachael Kohn: A lot of that money was actually Social Security cheques of
the poor.
Deborah Layton: Absolutely. People from all walks of life joined People's
Temple, rich and poor. Many were uneducated, many were poor, and many were
college graduates. And the Social Security cheques did come from many of the
black families that joined, the older women and men, and they lived
communally and the money was again taken out of the country. And what Jim
promised would happen with that money is that he was creating a promised
land, sort of a retirement colony for all of us, that we'd leave the racism
of the United States and go to a wonderful paradise. And that's what people
thought they were going to when they left the United States for Jonestown.
We saw beautiful films from there; they were, I found out later, propaganda.
It was all facade and lies, but at the time it seemed so wonderful, and it's
not unlike what you find coming out of Cuba or Russia. You know, wonderful
pictures of things, and beautiful children, and Jim used those exact tactics
to have more people give more money. My mother gave, when she divorced my
father, over a quarter of a million dollars to the church.
Rachael Kohn: That's a lot of money. Well Jim Jones used his power within
the group as well, especially round kind of controlling relations between
people. Now you had a mother as well as a brother in the movement, and your
brother Larry was married to someone. It would become clear to him that Jim
Jones had certain designs on his wife, or fiancee.
Deborah Layton: It did become very clear to my brother that Jim had designs,
but it wasn't that obvious. Jim was so clever, he was so deceitful and so
manipulative that Larry worked many hours as did all the members of the
church. He had two and three jobs so that he can give the proceeds to the
church, and during that time he wasn't home much. And Jim Jones was very
enamoured by my brother's wife, who was a young schoolteacher. My brother
and she had graduated from UC Berkeley Davis, California, and moved up to
Yukiah this area where she did teach school, and they met this young
minister who spoke and acted much like Martin Luther King, and they felt
that it was something important to be involved with. And while my brother
worked long, long hours, Jim and my brother's wife, Carolyn, became
comrades, and it was arranged behind my brother's back, for a confrontation
that Carolyn would say that she was unhappy with my brother, and he
acquiesced. He didn't know that Jim was going to take her as his mistress,
which he did, and continued to do that sort of thing throughout the Temple
years.
Rachael Kohn: Yes, well it seems that he would use sexual relations with
himself and others, as a way of both forging links, but also shaming them
publicly. He forced his affections on you, and then made you pay for it
publicly.
Deborah Layton: Correct. People think, and one of the reasons I kept quiet
for 20 years about this is just the immense shame, having been duped, having
been involved in an organisation that turned wicked. And it took me a long
time to realise that I had to come forward with my story for the sake of my
daughter, who at the time was very young, she'd just turned 13, but I
realise I had to tell the truth and explain how something like this could
happen. And I was molested by Jim, and at the time I was very frightened,
and I trusted him, as does a child with their father, or a child with their
minister, or priest. And to me he was closer to God, he was Godlike, and
that he touched my leg and he said that he cared about me, it didn't feel
right, I felt it was wrong, and yet he was a good man, and I was afraid to
do anything otherwise. And then again, what he did with everybody that he
did this to, weeks later he'd have you brought forward and punished and
harassed because you had begged for it, you had promised you would commit
suicide if he didn't spend time with you. And I used to hate all the women
in the church who admitted to this thing, and then I was one of them and I
realised that none of them had asked for his unholy touch.
Rachael Kohn: Well one of the prevailing themes in your account is your
sense of shock and upset and doubt at the things that you witnessed, and
also were ordered to do. In contrast to your overwhelming need to please and
to be good and to prove yourself as a loyal servant, what motivated you to
keep silencing the doubt within you?
Deborah Layton: That's a great question. I think early on in People's Temple
what Jim did and what a lot of groups do now, and one of the reasons I wrote
Seductive Poison is so that parents and kids could see what the warning
signs are, but when you go into certain organisations they tell you that
first voice that you have, of questioning, that it's actually selfishness,
and you need to turn that down because of course it is hard to be involved
in an organisation that's doing important things, and it is hard to give of
yourself, and you have to be less selfish. And over time as you've turned
down that voice, it's your voice of reason, it's your ability to have
dissent within yourself and figure things out, and having that muted, makes
you a sort of blind follower.
Rachael Kohn: Well you became a high level operative in the People's Temple,
trusted with moving large sums of money to different bank accounts and that
involved even going to Switzerland at one point, and to Panama, and then to
Guyana, in South America. Did you know at the time where the money was
coming from? Because it was a lot of money.
Deborah Layton: Oh yes, we had offerings on weekends where thousands and
thousands on weekends came in.We pulled $60,000 on a weekend, with all
these - you know, we were in San Francisco and we travelled across the
United States and we had meetings in Los Angeles, and we pamphleted areas
and we got hundreds of people to come to these meetings, and they gave
money. The other money came from the Social Securities cheques of the
seniors, and young, well-to-do college kids, their trust funds and money
from my parents who were giving me money that I funnelled right back into
the church. And that money was taken out of the United States and what Jim
made us understand is that there was a conspiracy against us in the United
States.
And this is what these organisations will do. They'll isolate you, there's a
conspiracy so now you're afraid and you have to protect yourself, and it
made sense that we had to get the money quickly out of the United States.
Here, if you're a church in the United States, you have no taxes, and that
was a very important aspect for Jim, that People's Temple was a church.
Rachael Kohn: So it was actually a tax dodge?
Deborah Layton: Well in case it came into question if People's Temple was
truly a church or not, because at that point he was espousing socialism, and
the money was taken out of the country, and a lot of it illegally.
Rachael Kohn: Well that sense of America against People's Temple would have
been confirmed when defectors started to tell their stories, or tried to, at
any rate, in the newspaper. When defectors went public, were they
threatened, were their lives threatened? How dangerous was it to actually
leave the group and tell others publicly, what was going on inside?
Deborah Layton: Well there's a twofold answer to that, so don't let me
forget the second part. It was very dangerous to leave People's Temple.
People that wanted to leave and Jim had an inkling that they were about to
leave, would be caught, they'd be brought forward and punished. There was a
young man who had decided he was going to take his entire family out, and he
died suspiciously. Even if it had nothing to do with Jim, he would take
responsibility for somebody's death. If it was an innocent death, somebody
we believed was a good member and he died in a car accident, Jim would say
'They were having selfish spots; they were thinking of leaving, and that's
why they died.' So it was stuff like that that would frighten people into
staying. And those few that did escape here in the United States, and they
stayed under cover for a long time because they were so afraid, because we
were looking for them, and they were going to be hurt if they were found.
And within People's Temple Jim had every single one of us blackmailed. We'd
signed hundreds of documents saying we'd done terrible things, that we'd
molested children, that we'd stolen from banks, that we were planning to
kill somebody, and at the time...
Rachael Kohn: These were not true.
Deborah Layton: They weren't true, but we signed them, and they were not
dated. But Jim had them filed, every single person had files. And he could
use that, because he was high in politics in San Francisco, he knew the head
of the police, and what he would say is, 'The Mayor is my friend; the head
of the police is my friend. Now you leave this organisation and we will find
you, and these things that you've signed' - this was much later in the game,
there wasn't this much fear involved. But once those people had left, Jim
said awful things about them, and I believed it, that they'd stolen money
from the church coffers, again, that they'd molested kids and so when they
went public and all of us within People's Temple, these wonderful disciples,
these young followers who the best of intentions, the innocence and naivete
and the goodness in these kids' hearts joining this organisation, we
believed that these people who had left had done terrible things, so if you
didn't believe anything they said, they were liars. So we took no heed of
what they said.
Rachael Kohn: Well Deborah things got really hot for Jim Jones, and he
decided to flee to this paradise in Guyana, which was a compound that he
called Jonestown. And you convinced your mother to go along with you as
well, later on. But it was quite a shock when you actually saw the compound.
Deborah Layton: Yes, this is the tough part for me, that my mum was sick,
and Jim had left the country several months before, and we had just found
out she had cancer, and she was afraid, and Jim said there were all sorts of
medical facilities, and we had two of our own doctors in Jonestown, and she
was afraid. She wanted to say goodbye to my father whom she'd divorced, she
wanted to say goodbye to my brother and sister, who were not members of the
church, and I convinced her she couldn't, that we couldn't tell anybody
because then maybe my father who I believed was part of the CIA because Jim
had created these memories for me, which he did, he was one of the first to
give us these created memories of childhood disasters. And I had her leave
without telling anyone goodbye.
We got into Jonestown after 30 hours on the ocean and up a long river, 250
miles away from civilisation in Guyana in South America, the only English
speaking country there.
As we pulled in to Jonestown, this place I'd seen so many wonderful movies
about, I was so hoping it was the promised land he'd told us about, and as
our flat-bed truck drew into this compound, we got there at about one in the
morning, it was like coming into the set of 'M.A.S.H.' There were no
beautiful cabins with verandahs, there was no lawn, there were no children,
of course it was one in the morning, but the people, the vibrant people that
I had known here in the United States, wonderful people, they'd heard that
another group was coming in from the United States, and they came to see us,
and it was like looking into the faces of people in a leper colony, that
they were looking at us, at what they had been. And looking at them, I
realised "Oh my God, we have been deceived." And it was that moment that I
knew if I could that I would escape if ever given the chance.
Rachael Kohn: Right from the beginning, right from your arrival.
Deborah Layton: The minute of my arrival inside Jonestown. And actually
there was an inkling just before that that I write about in Seductive
Poison, and that's when my mother and I were on this tugboat. Now it's the
last nine hours of this again 30-hour, horrific journey, and as we were
coming deeper, deeper and deeper into this forest, and it's getting thicker,
and the river's getting more narrow, the captain of our boat who was a
member of the Temple, comes out, and he says, 'Anybody bringing in letters
from the United States for family members, hand them over now.' And all the
hair on the back of my neck and my arms went up. I had spent hours running
around in San Francisco getting letters from loved ones, being so excited
about going in that they'd get these little treasures from people here in
the United States, and that they were considered dangerous, that they were
going to be taken from us and maybe given to the family members inside
Jonestown, I realised that a love of a family member, that that could be
dangerous, that a memory of a life before was dangerous, that something was
terribly wrong.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, even when you got there, you were stripped of your
belongings, your mother stripped of her medicine, that would have been quite
alarming to you as well, a woman who obviously needed help.
Deborah Layton: Yes, it was unbelievably frightening, and yet when you're
going into a concentration camp, whether it be Auschwitz, or Belsen, when
you're going into a prison and you know it's a new environment, you're not
going to stand up and scream 'By God, don't you do that!' You're trying to
figure out what are the rules here, who can I trust. You're going to follow
along as your survival instinct tries to figure out how do you live within
this new system, and can you figure a way back out. And it was unbelievably
frightening.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah, at the peak, there were about 1100 people in
Jonestown. Now that would have meant that Jim Jones would have needed to
exert a great deal of control, and indeed quell any attempts at escape. How
did he do that?
Deborah Layton: He was clever. Within Jonestown, my first night I realised
that there were loudspeakers everywhere, and Jim's voice spoke over them 24
hours a day. And during the daytime when he was awake and he spoke about the
awful conspiracy in the United States, and the mercenaries who were coming
down to hurt us, he would tape himself, and then when he was asleep or when
he was doing something else, these tapes made over days and days and months
and months, would play on and on and on, and on those tapes, or live in one
of our pavilion meetings, Jim would say, 'Well, I'm sending out some people,
people you trust, people you know, to say they want to leave. It's a loyalty
test. Report them.' Well I knew I wanted to leave and I definitely wasn't
going to tell anybody I knew, because at that point they knew I was trusted.
So for me to tell even my mother, 'Mom, I think I've figured a way out' to
tell a friend, 'Listen, there must be a way out', they could only believe
that they were being tested, and the safest thing would have been to report
me. So the safest thing within Jonestown was to keep to yourself, abide by
the rules and within yourself pray that you could figure a way out, or that
you wouldn't change your mind. My first week there I slept with a pillow
over my head, I was so afraid that I'd be reindoctrinated into believing
that I wanted to stay.
Rachael Kohn: When did Jim Jones start to hold the famous White Nights,
where all of you would be preparing for mass suicide?
Deborah Layton: They started well before I came down, and I didn't know
about them. My second week in Jonestown was my first White Night, and they
were called White Nights because it was white people that were evil. I'm
white, but Jim made us believe white people were bad and they were trying to
hurt the blacks and there was racism, and it made sense. It was the end of
the '60s and there was racism and we'd learn all about those civil rights,
and how people had been hurt. And in Jonestown, there was no news. I mean we
were an isolated little encampment in the middle of a rainforest. It was 250
miles away from civilisation. Jim had cleared a tiny little spot of land,
and in a rainforest it's not plush, it's thick, it's dangerous, and if you
run 20 feet into this thick forest, you cannot find your way back out. And
so those were our bars, and I've actually just forgotten what you asked me.
Rachael Kohn: When he began the White Nights, what was the motivation for
it? Well you've said it was racism.
Deborah Layton: No, no, it wasn't actually. I mean I was just trying to
explain that he used the term White Night, it could have been Black Night,
which is probably more appropriate since it was in the black of night that
these things were called. But he used them to break our spirit, and you'd
work in the field from 6am in the morning until 6 at night. We had no
protein, it was an agricultural community that was failing. We couldn't get
in this thick clay of this rainforest, things to grow. And in this
isolation, Jim was becoming more and more insane, and at night, at 2 in the
morning, sirens would blare over the loudspeaker and Jim would say,
'Quickly, quickly children, quick, come to the pavilion to safety', and we'd
run there, and for days we could hear gunfire in the jungle. Now we were
told that there were mercenaries trying to come in and kill us, but what we
didn't know was that he had different young kids, different to the armed
guards that watched us day and night in the fields, and watched our cabins
as we slept, he'd have different ones out there shooting off the guns. And
so we believed that these people were coming in to hurt us, that they were
coming in to kill the children, that they were coming in to torture us.
They became more and more frequent, but on one of the nights, I had just
turned 25, I'd been in the organisation since I was 18, I wanted desperately
to get out, and it seemed that there was no way. And on this one night when
we were made to get in lines to take this poison before these people came in
to torture us, you could say, 'My God, well I'd never do that', and it's
true. Many people didn't. Many people said 'I'm not going to take that
poison. We have reason to live.' And they'd be the first. Jim would have
them, grab them, brought forward, they'd be punished. People would be put in
a medical unit where they were kept comatose until their death at the very
end. And I watched that, and I knew I wasn't going to speak up. I didn't
want to be in that position because I wanted if ever a chance came, to be
able to run. But on that night, after working the fields for months and
being sick and being afraid and wanting to get out, I did drink what I
thought was poison. And after 40 minutes of standing there and waiting and
realising it was another test, my heart sunk.
Rachael Kohn: When you were finally at your wits' end and exhausted and
malnourished, you did have an opportunity to escape. You went to the capital
of Guyana, Georgetown. But even then, it was quite difficult to get, say the
American Embassy, the Consul, to understand what you had been through and
what was going on in Jonestown, because Jim Jones wielded so much power. How
did he?
Deborah Layton: Let me say firstly that many people wanted out of Jonestown.
Of the thousand people there, many wanted out, they were so afraid, but they
couldn't get out. That I was able to escape was only by luck that Jim
assigned me to go to the capital, which is again 250 miles away, and the
only way there is by boat, our own boat. I knew when I was leaving Jonestown
that I would do anything not to come back, and I knew that I would never see
my mother again. When I went to say goodbye, I went to say goodbye knowing,
and she knowing I was only going for a week to the capital, and I couldn't
tell her because it was too dangerous if she were to cry and Jim would see
her face and he'd ask what was wrong.
When I did get to the capital I was assigned to go to the capital with a
group of young people, I was their chaperone. I was to make sure I stayed
with them at all times so that they couldn't escape, and their assignment
was, they had to go to the American Embassy because there were concerned
relatives in the United States that were very worried about their children.
They went on vacations, they went on trips and left the United States, and
these families never heard from them again. These letters that I'd spent so
much time getting, never got to these kids inside Jonestown. And I was
assigned to go to the American Embassy with them when they were being
questioned as to why they were there, were they happy, and of course they
were saying they were very happy and they wanted to get married, and all
these various things, and I was there to make sure they said that. And it
was during that time that I tried to make eye contact with the men asking
the questions of these young people. It was at the end of this first meeting
that I tried to speak to the person, the Consulate, and he just didn't
understand, and I realised that in so many ways the people assigned in the
American Embassy in Guyana, they didn't know what they were up against, they
didn't know they were dealing with somebody as brilliant and as deceitful
and dangerous as Hitler. And that Jim was able to garner information from
the American Embassy whenever they came in to Jonestown to check on the
people.
When I was actually there at the American Embassy meeting with these young
kids I was to be monitoring, the Consulate said 'I'm going into Jonestown in
another two weeks. Jim wants the names of the people I want to meet with.
I'm going to give them to him now because he said they might be off fishing
in a village on a trip.' There is no fishing in Jonestown, there is no
village nearby we could go on a trip to. Jim wanted the names of those
people so he could he could prep them ahead of time, and that they'd be so
frightened ahead of time as in Russia at the height of its fanaticism, that
every single person was watched and when the Consulate took them aside
inside Jonestown to talk to them, there was a senior sweeping nearby. She
was assigned there, they knew that, they knew that she was reporting on what
they were saying.
Rachael Kohn: So there were Jonestown operatives within the Embassy keeping
an eye on things?
Deborah Layton: Well yes, I mean I was talking about Jonestown, but yes, we
didn't even need operatives inside the American Embassy because we were able
to get information from them all the time. After being assigned into the
capital to stay with these kids, I made myself indispensable there. I worked
hard, I reorganised things, I made sure that when people went to various
ministries to talk that I immediately got them on the radio to speak to Jim
into Jonestown, and Jim decided he had to keep me in the capital. He wasn't
going to bring me back into Jonestown with the kids that I had to be with.
And that was my purpose, that I would be indispensable in the capital, and
that when all these people went back into Jonestown, that I would remain
along with about 20 other people who were operatives in the capital who were
the PR people for Jim, who went into the ministries, who blackmailed people.
And it took me, once I was assigned into the capital, it took me almost two
months to figure a way back out without telling the American Embassy ahead
of time, because I knew if I were to go into the American Embassy before
their trip back into Jonestown which was in six weeks at that time. If I
were to go in and say, 'Listen, I need out, I have a way, I've contacted my
sister, help me' they would have gone into Jonestown and said, 'Jim, things
aren't that great here; we've had somebody from your headquarters approach
us.'
Rachael Kohn: Right. That would have been a trap. Well when you finally did
get out, in harrowing circumstances, you made an affidavit to the American
government, and it was published in the newspapers where you predicted that
there would be a mass suicide, and that I imagine activated Congressman Ryan
to take a trip down to Guyana and investigate the circumstances. But even he
was incredibly naive about what awaited him, and what kind of a man Jim
Jones really was.
Deborah Layton: Absolutely. Actually when I escaped, the night of my escape
from Guyana I signed an affidavit at the American Embassy in Guyana, telling
them that Jim Jones had guns and cyanide poisoning and was planning to kill
everybody in Jonestown. They told me not to tell anybody. When I got back to
the United States, I called the American Embassy here and I said, 'I think I
need to go public with this.' They said, 'Do not tell anybody, it's too
dangerous.' And I waited for two weeks and then I met with an Attorney. And
between the two of us, I put together an 11-page, 39-point affidavit
spelling out what Jim was planning to do, that we had suicide drills, that
people wanted out, that families were being kept there against their will,
and it did go public. It went into newspapers through the AP wire, it went
around the world, but if it happened now, people would listen. Then, the
headlines in the San Francisco Chronicle was 'Grim Report from the Jungle',
and yet it was just my voice, there was nobody, no-one who had left to
corroborate what I was saying.
And Leo Ryan did read about me, and he flew to California from Washington
and asked me to come to Washington D.C. and speak before the State
Department, that he wanted to go down and investigate what was going on. But
you are absolutely right, he was naive. Nobody took seriously my affidavit,
which spelt out that we had guns there. Had I been in Jonestown when Leo
Ryan came, I probably would have been one of the people to shoot at him,
because we had been so well indoctrinated and so afraid of outsiders, that I
would never have tried to escape with him because I was too afraid. The only
way I was ever willing to escape was if it was just me alone, and only me
that I had to depend on.
Rachael Kohn: And of course Senator Ryan was shot dead, and your prediction
would come true, that a mass suicide was staged, and you had a double
tragedy there: your mother died, and your brother was arrested for murder.
Deborah Layton: That's correct. My brother Larry Layton, is serving a life
sentence here in the United States and he's been in prison for 20 years;he
actually killed nobody. But because he did shoot at two people, but he was
not one of the people on the flat bed truck that came in and shot and killed
Congressman Leo Ryan and the cameraman and a reporter. And yet I think if
you read Seductive Poison and you understand what these kids believed, these
young people, although what they did was wrong, they believed they were
coming in to stop people like myself, with Leo Ryan, there were four or five
people that were leaving Jonestown, people who could corroborate now what I
was saying in the United States, and Jim couldn't let that happen. And he
set these young boys out there and said, 'Stop them, stop them. Kill them,
and we'll get ourselves to Cuba. I'll get your parents, I'll get your
children, I'll get our family to Cuba.' And that's what these people did.
They went there, believing that they were giving their own families inside
Jonestown a chance not be killed. And then they went back in and found that
their own families were being made to take the poison. And within this
story, these people did not commit suicide.
The first people to die were children, hundreds of children were killed.
Children do not commit suicide. And as those parents, as you sit here or
stand, and you think, 'Well by God I would have grabbed my child and run',
that's right, you would have grabbed your child and you would have looked at
there's maybe a mile, probably a mile to the jungle, and you would hold on
to your child and you'd question: 'Should I hold on to them and run? Should
I try to run to the jungle and possibly be shot in the back? And have my
child pulled from my arms? Or should I stay with them and hold them for
their last moments of their lives?'
Rachael Kohn: Your mother actually did not die at that mass suicide. She
mercifully died before that all happened.
Deborah Layton: Yes, she did. She died ten days ahead of this tragedy. But
part of that story is that she died of lung cancer without any pain
medication, and my brother Larry who when I escaped, I was never allowed to
get a hold of him. He was still here in the United States, and when I was
flying back here, Jonestown called him and flew him down there. He never
knew that I'd left, and he was the one that took care of my mother until the
very end. And when you're afraid and you've lost everything, it's hard to be
part of a conspiracy. It's hard to be held responsible for the insanity of a
mad man, and the unwilling participation of a thousand people who were
captives.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah at this point it's 21 years after that terrible event.
And I wonder how someone normalises? I wonder how you come out of a
situation in which you were so heavily indoctrinated, in which the CIA and
conspiracies were just around the corner, everywhere. How did you normalise
and function as a normal American citizen with her feet on the ground, with
a job, even at a Stock Exchange, of all things, ironically for someone who
was part of a socialist, even communist movement?
Deborah Layton: Well it's interesting actually that it was because I think I
worked on the trading floor of an investment banking firm, in the hub of
these evil capitalists that I'd been taught were so bad, and they were
white, and they took me under their wing. And it was here that the
indoctrination that I'd had for seven years, slowly crumbled away, and that
I moulded myself. Truly, I came from an educated, well-to-do family. My
father was a renowned scientist around the world; my mother was a very
cultivated woman from Germany and actually part of the story is the secrets
and shadows that I think sent my mother and me and my brother into People's
Temple, that she actually escaped Nazi Germany, and came to the United
States and kept her heritage a secret so her children wouldn't know
anti-Semitism, and safeguard our ascent into American society.
And I had a strong core from my parents, and then coming back, my life
having been on ice for seven years, I did do well for myself, and yet there
are vestiges that have stayed with me, of distrust and shame and the reason
I wrote this book was I was trying to stop the legacy in my own family, that
I was actually following in my own mother's footsteps. Here I was, I was in
this investment banking firm, I was doing incredibly well and I was keeping
from my daughter, as my mother had kept from here children, who I was, and
where I had been, to safeguard her ascent into American society. And then I
realised that my keeping who I was a secret was setting her up possibly to
follow in my footsteps and look for answers in an organisation that gave
easy, simple, black and white answers, and that for the sake of my daughter
and to break the legacy of secrets and shadows in my own family that I
needed to tell the truth, and to explain it to her that I had to go back in
to the darkness and explain it to myself.
Rachael Kohn: Deborah thank you for explaining it to us as well. You've done
a great service. It's a courageous and harrowing and also very, very
revealing story. I thank you for being on The Spirit of Things.
Deborah Layton: Thank you very much for having me.
(She says to the Cannibals right before they lunched her, also.)
Well?
You boys really need to "suck it up" and move on....
:o)
--
AW
<small but dangerous>
You boys really need to "suck it up" and move on....
:o)
--
AW
<small but dangerous>