Paranoia And Delusions

The survivors describe the dementia of Jim Jones

He would force a child to eat his own vomit. He banned sexual activity between Peoples Temple members but was voraciously bisexual himself and obsessed with bragging about the size of his penis. He was addicted to drugs and had nurses bleed him and provide him with oxygen for imagined illnesses.

These examples of the Rev. Jim Jones' paranoia and delusions surfaced last week in a 215-page manuscript that was made public by former temple member Jeannie Mills in San Francisco and in further interviews in Guyana with stunned survivors of the mass suicide at Jonestown.

After he moved his church from Indiana to California in 1965, Jones' mental condition seemed to deteriorate rapidly. In 1973, eight members fled the commune because of his ban against sex between cult members. Calling 30 associates to his home, Jones declared: "Something terrible has happened. Eight people have defected. In order to keep our apostolic socialism, we should all kill ourselves and leave a note saying that because of harassment, a socialist group cannot exist at this time." He did not go ahead with the plan, but from that time on, Jones periodically conducted fake suicide rituals.

The ban on sex did not apply to Jones; he would brag about his own conquests, male and female. He once boasted that he had sex with 14 women and two men on the same day. He claimed that he detested homosexual activity and was only doing it for the male temple adherents' own good--to connect them symbolically with himself. Some indeed shared his view: the cult's doctor in Guyana, Larry Schacht, used to brag about having intercourse with Jones. Jones took pleasure in forcing female followers to ridicule their husbands' sexual ability.

Temple Attorney Charles Garry says Jones was obsessed with a custody fight for a boy he claimed was his own. The child, John, was born in 1972 to Grace Stoen, who with her husband Timothy was one of Jones' top associates. At Jones' behest, Timothy Stoen signed an affidavit declaring that he had personally requested that the child be sired by "the most compassionate, honest and courageous human being the world contains." The Stoens now deny that Jones was the father and won legal custody of the child last year after a court fight. But Jones refused to let him leave Guyana. Just before Jones' death he told a newsman that the fear of losing the child prevented him from returning home. After the suicides, the child was found dead next to Jones' body.

Jones first visited Guyana in 1962 on his way to Brazil, where he lived for two years. When his paranoia, fueled by unfavorable press reports, led him to move his community from San Francisco in 1977, Guyana was a logical choice. Its socialism matched what he conceived to be his own communal-agrarian ideals. Prime Minister Forbes Burnham told TIME last week: "I feel what may have attracted him was that we had said we wanted to use cooperatives as the basis for the establishment of socialism, and maybe his idea of setting up a commune meshed with that." Guyana had its own motives in making the commune welcome: it wanted immigrants to develop its hinterland and fortify its border with Venezuela. For the Americans, Guyana offered the additional advantage of being an English-speaking country.

One of the temple's strong advocates within the Guyanese government was Viola Burnham, the Prime Minister's wife. According to diplomats in Georgetown, Guyanese officials seemed to find it was in their best interest politically to offer assistance to the cult and even contribute financially. Medicine, building materials, U.S. currency and guns were imported for the commune with little interference from local customs officials.

Jones increasingly claimed that he was physically ill, and he stressed his health problems in a document prepared for Prime Minister Burnham. Attorney Garry was told by Jones' personal doctor that the cult leader suffered from recurrent temperatures of 105DEG and a fungus in his lungs. But several survivors, including Tim Carter, a Jones lieutenant, say his complaints were lies. The result of the autopsy conducted by Guyanese officials on Jones has not been released. But Guyanese-born Dr. Hardat A. Sukhdeo, deputy chairman of clinical psychiatric services at New Jersey Medical School, who flew to Jonestown to help counsel survivors, says the report shows no evidence of disease. Says Dr. Sukhdeo: "The complaints were all part of Jones' progressively suicidal depression." According to survivors, Jones regularly dosed himself with tranquilizers and painkillers, including Valium and morphine sulphate. Tim Carter told Dr. Sukhdeo that the night before the massacres and suicides, Jones was babbling incoherently.

One of Jones' final delusions was that he would move his cult to the Soviet Union. A delegation from the commune talked twice with Feodor Timofeyev, the Soviet press attache in Georgetown, about a possible move, but a memo of that meeting shows the Russians offered little encouragement. Russian consular officials and a Russian doctor also visited Jonestown, which was the object of a favorable report by Tass. In the past few months, Russian language classes were held at the commune. Members had to recite Russian phrases, like "good morning," before receiving their rice-and-gravy meals.

On the day of the suicides, Jones' secretary ordered Carter and two other close aides to take a suitcase containing $500,000 in small bills and a letter to the Russian embassy. Because the case was too heavy, Carter says they buried it in the jungle. They later gave themselves up to Guyanese police, who now have possession of the money and letter.

Jones' dream of moving the commune to Russia may have stemmed from his delusion that he was the reincarnation of Lenin. Indeed, he once told Jeannie Mills in California: "Lenin died with a bullet in his body and so will I."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.