Family (3) Trivia (4) Only natural son of Rev. He is married to his wifeKristi Jones since 1991. Jim Jones charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil. An In-Depth Look at Naomi Girmas Salary in Professional Soccer. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. So yes there were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. | 2023 BDG Media, Inc. All rights reserved. After the slaughter, Stephan Jones was arrested on suspicion of abetting the mass murder and spent three months in a Guyanese prison. My mother got me an apartment, I got a job and my father came and tried to talk me into coming back. Stephan, Jim Jones son who was 19 at the time, says the warning signs that went unnoticed at Jonestown can be seen in the world today. This November 1978 file photo shows the bodies of Peoples Temple mass suicide victims led by Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana. A woman named Sharon Amos had slaughtered her three children and committed suicide. Stephan helped erect a basketball court and form a team. It appeared in the Examiner on Nov. 20, 1978, two days after the tragedy: San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman (left)was wounded in the airstrip shooting. No one now living saw Jim Jones die, so there is some dispute about whether he also performed what he had taught his followers to call "revolutionary suicide." The closest thing to a law enforcement official - a pleasant young policeman with a pink shirt and a 16-gauge shotgun - was disarmed by temple members. The church provided free drug rehabilitation, medical care, food. He will read it when he is ready, he says. He loves basketball; he is agile and strong and was tall even before he reached high school. It was easy to see and feel what was attractive about my father. I also didnt really know what Id be dealing with if I did, but sadly we were finally at a point where I felt I had enough support and we decided that we were going to take action. It would become a little town where people of all ages and colours raised food and children. His body was found with a gunshot wound in the head. But in 1973, John's oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about the Peoples Temple or your father? He remarried three decades ago, and he and his wife Erin raised three sons with two now coaching basketball at the high school and college level. Read more about cookies here. Stephan Gandhi Jones was 19. Four decades later, Americans often use this phrase in political and business contexts without knowing its origin. Jim Jr. would lose 15 immediate relatives in Jonestown, including his pregnant wife, Yvette Muldrow. In what he called "revolutionary suicide", Jones and the members of his inner circle orchestrated a mass murder-suicide in his remote jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978. I dont know about the inner circle but many of us, and even my brother Tim, when he turned to my side, he wanted to kill my father, he was so angry. But he also tapped into something very real and showed something very real and was very loving, especially during the early period.. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. _taboola.push({ . present) (3 children). Some scowling faces appeared in the windows that rainy afternoon, watching the defectors leave, some with trunks and others with little more than the clothes on their backs. Vilchez worked as office manager at a private crime lab for 20 years and now, at 61, sells her artwork. Altogether, 909 people died at Jonestown on November 18, 1978, by swallowing a grape-flavored beverage mixed with potassium cyanide, or from injections of poison. He made a promise once we get to Jonestown there is no corporal punishment, Smith said. And he just went unchecked. Then there were just a few. He was a genius, and he was unique. When a friend invited her family to Peoples Temple's wine country church, they were impressed by the integrated community. Do you think people can ever see your father not just as a villain but as a complex figure? Joining him was an older black man who fingered something in his right pocket. Other people were injured. Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism. The reality was we were folks who could be counted on to stand up, he said. It was Harris who had been contacted by the first two groups of temple members expressing a desire to leave. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. 'I'm real happy to be getting out,' Layton volunteered, then lapsed into a stare. Stephan is among one of the Late Jim Jones sons survivors and he is still disturbed by those past events. Jim Jones (1931-1978) and Marceline Jones (1927-1978). When John Cobb was born in 1960 in a black section of Indianapolis, his mother and older siblings already were temple members. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. After years of struggles that included drug addiction, Jones says he's now living a pleasant life in the United States with his wife and three daughters. He said he considered it a failing on his part when he did. He went over the seats in a somersault and I flipped out of the plane with him. I certainly felt there was an outside threat, even when I knew my father was full of it and I was at odds with him in Jonestown. He is married to his wife Kristi Jones since 1991. I would have been doing more than just leaving a family. A few minutes later a pale-looking Leo Ryan slogged through the mud with his briefcase, his powder blue shirt and pants stained with his assailant's blood. "I say, 'Mom,' " Stephan Jones says, recalling a desperate mother-son huddle toward the end, " 'We're talking about a man who think's he's God. However, they have moved on with their life. 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The silence could mean only one thing: An ambush was awaiting them. Her only natural child, Stephan Gandhi Jones and adopted son, Jimmy Jones, Jr. aka James Warren Jones, Jr. were both in Georgetown, Guyana for a basketball game representing Jonestown on November 18, 1978. We demanded to see the locked buildings where some members lived in crowd, uncomfortable conditions. And he would have arrived too late, anyway. They divorced when Jordan was 6. "I'm blessed to have hit enough of a bottom and to have been surrounded by amazing, wonderful, honest, compassionate and challenging people to see me through that," Stephan said. You'd have to deal with this elite that just revolved their lives around him' . There, as part of Jones' personal security detail, Cobb saw the once captivating minister strung out on drugs. Five were dead, five seriously wounded, five suffered relatively minor wounds, nine were unhurt, and six were believed lost or hiding in the dense underbrush along the Kaituma River. "I still get very angry," Stephan Jones says. . First the Cessna was filled, with Ryan frisking each boarder looking for guns and knives. Relatives & Associates. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, California, November 13, 2008. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Some of the defectors told me later that the men in the trailer were members of Peoples Temple. He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. They also killed their dogs. As a San Francisco high school student, he was dispatched to help build Jonestown. He said: "So much was attractive and unique that we turned a blind eye . The reason I ended up in Jonestown is that I left. 'It looks like trouble,' I said to Greg Robinson, but he kept on shooting pictures. "Right off the bat I explain to them that my father was nuts, that he was a drug addict," he says. Then he decides it is time, and he falters, and he tells them they may not believe what he is about to say. It marched for four jailed Fresno newsmen. "By that time, I know, he was way off into drugs, and his perspective was so warped," Stephan Jones says. James Warren Jones and his wife, Marceline. Yet he submitted to a new search, then returned to his seat. Ryan had planned to remain behind at the mission with several members who wished to return to the United States but couldn't get seating on the planes. But the reality is that it was far from a mass suicide. I refused. Then it was boxing matches for adults. Though he waved and smiled at Peoples Temple services, seemingly enraptured like the rest, Stephan Gandhi Jones says he always had his doubts. 2023 Canoe.com, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. All rights reserved. Outside of his career, he has discussed how he is spiritual in his personal life in interviews, like a 2007 one with Canada's The Globe and Mail though his beliefs are different than the fringe Christian ones his father once preached about. It's like my hurt for them, or my missing them, is the only thing I have left of them." I make a point of avoiding pointing fingers and giving specific names. Jonestown was the highlight of his life for a time and he recalls feeling pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana. Stephan Jones is a Jonestown survivor. For years it was largely forgotten along with a number of other insanities in the United States in the 1970s. As a self-taught bulldozer operator, he worked alongside other Peoples Temple members in the humid heat, his blade carving roads and sites for wooden buildings with metal roofs. . Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple, poses for a portrait near San Rafael, Calif. When he brushed away the mist below him he saw that it was a lifeless human limb. "I just say something like, 'You remember Jonestown?' "When it really came down to it, I thought there wasn't any need, because I thought he'd be dead in a couple months anyway," he says. Manipulative tendencies. In the aftermath, he built a new life. Stephan Jones, Jim Jones's sole surviving child, was born in Indiana, United States, on June 1, 1959. 1931. 'Naaah.' He led the Peoples Temple, a new religious movement, between 1955 and 1978. It's unclear if he is currently married or if he retains a relationship with his surviving siblings. And then he went to my mother. Reviews. The murders and suicides were unfolding, 150 miles away. I jumped up and fought for the gun. ", Jim Jones had warned them over and over that invading soldiers would torture their children; maybe that is what they feared most, Stephan Jones says. The bodies surrounded a podium from which Jim Jones, aided by armed men to hold down the unwilling, had cried out in encouragement while men, women, and children drank red Flavor-Aid mixed with potassium cyanide. Official Sites. 'There were often thoughts of taking him out but I know I wasnt capable of that kind of thing. "The minute I stepped out on the street, I felt so uncomfortable," he says. Five others were wounded seriously. Save record . Instead, The Washington Post reported that Stephan escaped death with the Jonestown basketball team. Jim Jones had years earlier conceived his South American settlement as a distant haven where Peoples Temple members could live in communal isolation, protected from unfriendly reporters and all the other enemies Jones denounced through his congregation. It was Stephan Jones who managed security--who carried a gun, watched over temple members and planned group escape routes--when Jim Jones began summoning his community into a frenzied series of meetings to prepare for imminent attacks from outside. The 59-year-old, Jim Jones son Stephan Jones has gone through a lot after the mass massacre in Jonestown led by his father, Late Jim Jones on Nov. 18, 1978. "Because then it would have been like, 'I'm running out on these people. But the boy was still a child of the Temple. Ollie worked in the nursery, and Eugene felled trees. Thats what triggered it.. 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Maybe they saw no hope--because they didn't see themselves leaving, but they didn't want to go on with Jim Jones. The mass murders and suicides of hundreds ofPeoples Temple membersin the distant jungle of Guyana, South Americaon November 18, 1978 is a horror that remains nearly unimaginable 40 years later. Some of them had started out with him in the earliest days in Indiana and moved with him to California. Now, Stephan is a father of three daughters,. . . I found relief in the woods and rivers and creeks, and I got away as often as I could, but there was always a low-level anxiety that I only really can identify now.. The truck spun its wheels until a Caterpillar tractor tugged it into place for a downhill run. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. By 1978, the White Nights included a rehearsal for suicide, something Jim Jones previously had tried only with his small circle of confidants within the church. I thought there were reasons for people to want to get us. Stephans address on November 18, 2018 at the 40th Anniversary Memorial Service at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California is here. Stephan Jones and some other team members believe they might have changed history if they were there. Stephan Jones was born on June 1, 1959 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He did what was expected of him. Because Dad was such a mess . 'Everyone participated in it and because of that, it went as far as it did,' she said. People do things for him. We couldn't know then that the grim little world of this sick man would shatter within hours, taking hundreds of his followers to their deaths. Stephanie was born in 1954 and died at a very early age of five in a car accident in May 1959. I see it in politics, I see it in advertising, I see it in a variety of places, and I feel theres no more pernicious or toxic belief than that. But even Stephan Jones never imagined that death would come the way it did, so redolent of madness and evil, so savage that a kind of panic still crawls into his voice when he talks about it. I would say that there are times when its very enriching to speak with people about it All too often people want to write everyone off as a bunch of crazies. placement: 'Below Article Thumbnails 3rd', He too was a member of the basketball team. After they left, I crept out of the bush and saw five bodies around the plane. But in 1973, Johns oldest brother and a sister, along with six other California college students, quit the church and became its enemies. On Nov. 18 she was at the temple house when a fanatical Jones aide received a dire radio message from Jonestown. Little Jimmy became part of their Rainbow Family of white, black, Korean-American and Native American children. Jim Jones had adopted other children, gathering around him what he liked to call his "rainbow family"--Stephan's brothers and sisters were black and Korean--but Stephan remembers days spent mostly by himself: there was a cleared-out place in the underbrush where he could crouch and become Hercules, or a soldier of war. Jones wasn't the same man. He played at school. They could leave any time they want.'. His wife has learned at those moments to let him be. Where they were lying. To cope, he says he abused drugs and exercised obsessively. I just wish people could understand what was attractive about him. container: 'taboola-right-rail-thumbnails', Stephan is the only living son of Jim Jones and his late wife Marceline Jones. 'She gives us the order that were supposed to kill ourselves,' Vilchez recalled. He promised that he wouldnt. Jonestown: It was the bodies that photographers favored most. And he faked getting shot in Redwood Valley [California] when I was still pretty young, and we felt like we were in danger much of the time. The rest was jungle, damp and hot and so thick with growth that Stephan Jones would stand among the massive trees and feel the 20th century fall away. mode: 'thumbnails-a', The reason that I have agreed to talk to as many people as I have is because of that. You used the word forgiveness, but I find love and compassion for him. And I looked around and there were at least 15 people looking at me. I know Ive reached a better place and I dont fear lapsing back into the darkest times, but its a daily process and one that Im grateful to have.. Stephan Jones was born on 06/01/1959 and is 63 years old. Stephan Gandhi Jones is the son of the notorious religious cult leader Jim Jones. He saw that the jungle would make him a man. She and Jim were the first caucasian couple in Indiana to adopt an African American . 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