One final, weird note: A memo that allegedly passed between Jones and People's Temple lawyer Mark Lane (who escaped the massacre) showed the two pondering the relocation of Grace Walden to Jonestown. Walden was a key witness to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Lane represented King's accused assassin, James Earl Ray. When the memo turned up, Lane denied that he had discussed moving Walden.
(He claims that the memo was part of an "army intelligence coverup" of the King assassination, ostensibly an attempt to discredit him and, through him, Walden.) Most of the People's Temple rank-and-file were black. Most of the leadership was white. Joyce Shaw, a former member, once mused that the mass suicide story was a coverup for "some kind of horrible government experiments, or some sort of sick, racist thing. . . a plan like the Germans' to exterminate blacks."
In 1980, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence announced that there was "no [more]evidence" of CIA involvement at Jonestown.
MAJOR SOURCES
Kerns, Phil. People's Temple, People's Tomb. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1979.
Kilduff, Marshall, and Ron Javers. The Suicide Cult. New York: Bantam Books, 1978.
Krause, Charles. Guyana Massacre: The Eyewitness Account. New York: Berkley Books, 1978.
Moore, Rebecca. A Sympathetic History of Jonestown. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon Press, 1985.
Reiterman, Tim. Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and His People. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1982.
This chapter owes a debt to research assembled by John Judge.
We are here: conspire@conspire.com
4/4