Love Them to Death: At War with the Devil at Jonestown

Synopsis

"Love Them to Death" is a memoir of my experiences as the attorney, enemy, and postmortem target of James Warren Jones who, on November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, unleashed—in the name of "love"—terror and death. It tells how this ordinary man, Jim Jones, having captured the souls of kind and decent people, got them to assassinate a US congressman and, incredibly, got them—by the hundreds—to kill themselves and their children. "The mass suicides and murders in Jonestown, Guyana," said pollster George Gallup, "was the most widely followed event of 1978." By then Jim Jones had become a "Molotov cocktail." The container was Jones's absolute power. The flammable liquid was Jones's malignant narcissism. The wick was Jones's genius for mind control. In the end Jim Jones was nothing but evil. "The CIA would have had to acknowledge," said Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, "that Jones succeeded where their MK-Ultra program failed in the ultimate control of the human mind." On January 1, 1970, I joined a utopian movement called Peoples Temple, in order to pursue "Biblical socialism" (Acts 2). I became the pro bono lawyer for Jones for 7 years. Jim Jones eventually became what the "Washington Post" called a "West Coast Power," with a remarkable gift for wining over the most sophisticated people in politics. On November 18, 1977, I testified in court and went to war against Jones. By then, he had moved to Jonestown. I turned on Jones because I'd learned he was denigrating to a five-year-old child, John Victor Stoen then in Jonestown, his mother, Grace. During that one-year war for John Victor, I made two trips to the then “wired” country of Guyana, and in California I braced, every time the doorbell rang, for a shot to the chest. Finally, on that November 18th, the journey took a petrifying turn. Jim Jones killed 907 of his people by cyanide, and orchestrated the deaths, by gunfire at the nearby airstrip, of US congressman Leo Ryan and four others. Among those he took out by the poison was six-year-old John Victor Stoen. Structurally, this book traces the “development” of Jim Jones, as I experienced it from 1967 through 1979, through fourteen stages. On the day he died, Jim Jones exhorted his followers to "see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy." I was accused--falsely, I might add--of manipulating the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election, won by George Moscone over John Barbagelata, and then arranging to become special voter fraud prosecutor to cover up my crime. On that same day Jones made a prophecy: "We win when we go down. Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate... Then he'll destroy himself." It took nine years to undermine that curse. I have three reasons for writing this book. The first is to encourage healthy suspicion of authoritarian power. I want to show how leaders are corrupted by absolute power, and how they use charisma and demagogic oratory to acquire that power. The second reason is to encourage realistic approaches to fighting evil. I want to give evidence for psychiatrist Scott Peck’s position that evil people can be dealt with only by “raw power." My third reason is to give hope to people who, like me, have made huge mistakes in their lives. Recovery is possible. After all of my unbelievable mistakes, it is a miracle that I should now find myself alive, sane, and vital. It is truly due to something outside my control.

Copyright:

2016

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

360 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781537478777

Publisher:

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

Date of Addition:

02/03/20

Copyrighted By:

Timothy Oliver Stoen

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

Yes

Categories:

History, Nonfiction, Biographies and Memoirs

Submitted By:

Amanda Landavazo

Proofread By:

Tomoko Miles

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.

Foreword by:

Giselle Fernandez