She mentioned a Bay Area couple, the Stoens, who had defected and were fighting for the return of their young son, John. Ryan decided that we would wait until the morning and suggested we keep a low profile until then. [21] Lawton was arrested by the FBI on December 2, 1996, in Florida and charged with the Fairless Hills armed robbery. It did not sit well with me. '', See the article in its original context from. This time, it was not a drill. When the time of their supposed deaths came and went with everybody still alive, Jones announced it had just been a drill to test their loyalty. Closing the Book on Case. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. [39] Other issues he is concerned with include prison conditions as well as post-release debt loads and their influence on unemployed ex-convicts. My mother had cared a lot for my father, but Jim broke it up.. Mr. Layton, who was arrested at the airstrip, was initially tried in Guyana, a small country on the northern coast of South America, on charges of attempted murder against two cult defectors in the airport ambush. [3][4] He has acted as a spokesperson for prisoners and prisoner issues,[5] been a vocal advocate for prison reform, and made appearances in the media as an expert on robberies. But Lisa escaped from Hamburg, and in 1938, stunned by the antiSemitism she had seen, she arrived in New York with a determination never to reveal to anyone that she was Jewish. To the volatile flight home. In San Francisco, his church was lauded for its social programs, and Jones efforts to feed the poor and fight segregation found receptive ears with progressive politicians. On the plane to Guyana, Nov. 18, 1978. She got on the plane, leaving her mother behind. With its bell-ringing calls for social justice -- this was in the fractious 1960s and early '70s -- the little-known church near Ukiah catered to the closet revolutionary in Deborah Layton. That same year, Congressman Ryan read a newspaper article about a constituent of his named Sam Houston, whose son had been a member of Jim Jones Peoples Temple and, in 1976, died under suspicious circumstances after having a phone conversation in which he confessed to wanting to leave the group. They called it Jonestown. They reported the car's license plate, which linked the car to Lawton. Debbie stood in line to drink the red liquid that she was told would kill her in a matter of minutes. Layton and her mother arrived in Jonestown in December 1977. One of the defectors wed interviewed claimed that Jones dyed them black. Five bullets had ripped through me, devastating the right side of my body. Wiki Bio of Larry Layton net worth is updated in 2023. Layton said the temple started out as a civil rights movement and he compared Jones to Martin Luther King Jr., but 'obviously things turned out differently,' he said. "[10], While in prison in 2003, Lawton was sent to solitary confinement for 27 days as punishment. Jones had a penchant for suddenly getting on the compound loudspeaker long after everyone had gone to bed and shouting, "White Night! We accompanied Assemblyman Ryan to shopping centers and campaign events to pass out pamphlets and speak with voters. It was to be the secret of her life. Whatever impelled me to send in the card changed the course of my life. Mrs. Layton's former husband, Dr. Laurence Layton, an eminent scientist, was left behind in Berkeley, Calif., having lost a wife and at least $250,000 that she gave to Mr. Jones. ''Why not pin this on Larry Layton, then close the book and not look at the hard questions of why Leo Ryan and all those Americans died?'' [10] High school students can use the time spent in the program towards the 75 hours of community service required for the Bright Futures Scholarship Program. Within a year, a few Jonestown defectors had managed to return to the Bay Areamost notably, Debbie Layton Blakey, whod been Jones trusted aide and worked as the Temples financial secretary. Mrs. Layton got a large share of the proceeds, as well as money from the sale of stock they had owned Jointly; this also was given to the cult. She arrived in London at 16, was met by some cousins and got what she would later call the biggest surprise of her life: I discovered that I was Jewish.. [10] He also founded the Reality Check program which aims to show teens the consequences of a criminal life. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Mr. Blakey survived the killings and suicides at Jonestown; he was on a boat owned by the commune at the time of the deaths. ''Look at whether their feelings against Jones were spilling over toward Larry Layton. The Laytons were a family that seemed to have everything: intelligence, plenty of money, education, a proud family tradition of Quaker nonviolence. But finally her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung. He was found guilty of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the murder of Ryan and the attempted murder of U.S. embassy official Richard Dwyer and was sentenced to Read More ''It is not the proper forum for answering questions about Jonestown.'' Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Individually, their insistence would have been hard to question. 1998-11-02 04:00:00 PDT CALIFORNIA -- For a young woman of 17, flinging herself on the world after the cloistered atmosphere of an English boarding school, Peoples Temple seemed daring and exciting. He was not paroled from an American prison until 2002. [6][11] In 2010, Lawton filmed the pilot and sizzle reel for Lawton's Law, a reality show based on his work with at-risk youth. After spending 18 years in Guyana jails and U.S. federal prisons, Larry Layton, the only man convicted on criminal charges arising from the events of November 18, 1978, was released in April 2002. And, I thought of them like Mormons. Jones then gave Layton permission to remarry a woman named Karen Tow. Mr. Layton cried as his attorney described conditions at Jonestown and said that many prosecution witnesses must feel guilty for leaving loved ones behind to die. There is abundant evidence that Mr. Jones used such tactics to divide families and break up marriages. The other, Carolyn, became one of Mr. Jones's mistresses and also his principal fnancial adviser; it is not known whether she is alive. Nearly 300 children were administered the poison with no comprehension of what it meant, including a number of infants in the arms of their parents. The robbers drew what police at the time believed were firearms, and restrained the store owner. A year later, I applied to college, and he wrote me a letter of recommendation. Years later, after Lisa Layton Joined the People's Temple, she would tell other members of the cult that her husband had been antiSemitic and was ashamed of her being a Jew. I knew him well enough to understand what would happen next. [15] The robbers took $480,000 ($910,600.81 in 2022)[17] worth of gold and diamonds making it the biggest robbery in the city's history. By all accounts, Layton was on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill Ryan was set in motion. "The reason I did well," Layton says now, "is that I'm a little soldier and I follow orders so well.". Three witnesses appeared on Larrys behalf before a parole hearing at the federal prison at Lompoc, California, including attorney Frank Bell and Loren Buddress, the former Chief Probation Office for the Northern District of California. I was almost one of them. Her father, a talented violinist hated his father for making him go into banking rather than music. At the compound, Don wandered off to smoke a cigarette. well, it wasn't there. Laurence Laird Layton, a distinguished scientist whose later life was devastated by his family's involvement with the Peoples Temple cult, died Wednesday in his Emeryville home. As I was transferred onto a gurney, I was conscious enough to look up and see a big, gleaming white plane with The United States of America written on the side. Mrs. Layton moved out of their home on Labor Day 1979. After that trip, I remember telling myself that never again would I witness such violence at such close range. "Every week we're ordered to drink some liquid," she writes, culling her memories of the "old tapes (of Jonestown recollections that) are running in my head. Ever on the alert for malcontents, Jones would order recalcitrant Temple members -- those who questioned his authority -- into "The Box," a stifling underground cubicle the size of a coffin. Behind his dim glasses, Jones preached love and equality while manipulating his followerstaking their property and having them sign over their paychecks and Social Security. [11] He then began robbing jewelry stores along the Atlantic Coast,[3] using his contacts within the Gambino crime family to fence the stolen merchandise. In 1970, as chairman of a committee overseeing prison reform, he assumed a pseudonym and had himself booked, strip-searched and incarcerated for 10 days at Folsom State Prison, revealing his identity only when it was time to be released. While trying to keep the peace, he had been attacked with a knife. All of those people I had been standing beside, speaking to, sharing a cabin with. In June, she filed an affidavit with the State Department detailing the horrors in Jonestown, but got no response. ', "O.J. The retrial was delayed for years because of complex appeals over the admissability of certain evidence excluded by Judge Peckham's rulings in the first trial. Rep. Ryan and I arranged to meet her. Larry Layton, Quaker and pacifist, entered the Peoples Temple in 1968 to join the march to social justice as charted by the temple's mesmerizing leader, the Rev. [15][18] Local police believed there was a connection between this robbery and a robbery that took place in May 1994 in Daytona Beach, and contacted the FBI. Layton was accused of conspiracy to murder in the November,1978, violence that triggered the mass deaths -- the airstrip attack on Rep. Leo Ryan and his party in which the congressman and four others were killed. Don hung back for a moment before approaching Congressman Ryan and me at the picnic table and surreptitiously passing along the note. After that, she never stopped going back, Dr. Layton said. Judge Peckham also set April 21 for a hearing on a motion for a new trial filed by Mr. Layton's new defense attorney, Robert R. Bryan. March 5, 1999. ''This is a criminal case against Larry Layton,'' he said. The suit was later dismissed. After a year or so Dr. Layton and his wife heard from Carolyn's father that the couple had been divorced. Larry Layton was the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown. | AP. Deep inside me, I still have the demons of shame and guilt.". There were piles of used syringes at the scene. Jones responded by telling them that if any actions were taken to remove John, the entire Jonestown population would commit suicide. When people refer to the Jonestown massacre as a mass suicide, I am enraged. Jackie Speier manages a smile as she is wheeled on a stretcher at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Nov. 20, 1978. They joined. He'd work you so hard you didn't have time to complain, and he'd blackmail you; he destroyed marriages and humiliated you.. After Larry and Carolyn Layton joined the cult, Larry stopped writing to his parents and would not accept phone calls from them. I'm so desperately tired. It was an implausible ending for the fiery preacher, who had curried favor among the fashionable elite of the Democratic Party. Ryan joined us for the trekone of roughly two dozen of us crammed in the bed of the truck, with dozens of would-be defectors left behind, belongings packed, waiting to escape. By that time, darker elements had seeped into Jones sermons. They had passed. Returning to the pavilion area, I sought out other anxious-looking members. In 1970, as chairman of a committee overseeing prison reform, he assumed a pseudonym and had himself booked, strip-searched and incarcerated for 10 days at Folsom State Prison, revealing his. "[33] Lawton and the police chief later appeared before United States Congress in recognition of the program. In 1972, Mr. Jones married Deborah Layton and Philip Blakey. [38][5][9] In 2013, the Brevard County Jail re-introduced chain gangs as a pilot project with the goal of deterring crime. Nearly 30 years later, her mother long dead in a rotting jungle outpost in Guyana, her brother doing life in a federal prison and her father so broken that he weeps at the mention of anything connected with Jones-, town, Deborah Layton has, as she put it the other day, "decided it was time to come out of the cobwebbed attic.". the attorney said. I was later told that he had been shot 45 times. While on the phone listening to the allegations that would soon be made public, Jones scribbled a note to his aides: We leave tonight.. Her marriage was ruptured by Mr. Jopes even before it could be consummated. She carne back from that meeting in a state of shock, as if she had seen a ghost, her husband recalled. Nearly 300 children were administered the poison, including a number of infants in the arms of their parents. Initially discouraged, Larrys family pressed ahead with the petition for early release, collecting another 50 letters in support, including letters from former Temple members and critics, numerous religious leaders, and a former congressman. Leo Ryan assured me that there was nothing to worry about. As I shook his hand, I looked at his sideburns. "[2] He was critical of Brevard County stopping letters to inmates in 2013. I would never have left Jonestown with Congressman Ryan. Original release. In some way, I think he was a substitute husband and father figure who filled all the needs that I failed to give.. Her involvement in the cult, he said, was useful activity, taking care of poor people; she said so much that she looked down at wealth and had guilt feelings, and Jim Jones helped her get rid of them. One night, when Mr. Jones was conducting an hourslong lecture to the commune, she arranged to be placed on duty helping to operate a shortwave radio that transmitted Mr. Jones's directives to cult members in San Francisco. Until she was 20 years old, when she was denied admission to a university in Hamburg, Lisa Philips didn't know what it meant to be Jewish in Germany in 1935. [44] Lawton has a YouTube channel, and he has made videos analyzing heists in movies and video games such as Grand Theft Auto V; he also plays Prison Architect.[44][45]. They swallowed poison capsules in a suicide attempt and were removed, unconscious, from the train. Sure enough, I could tell he had. We landed in Georgetown, Guyanas capital, on November 14, 1978. The approach continued even after hed moved from Sacramento to Washington, D.C. ", Crimes for which children went to the well included "stealing food from the kitchen, expressing homesickness, failing a socialism exam, or even natural childish rebelliousness.". Education: Attended college in the area of San Francisco, CA. Somehow, through the encroaching darkness of my final thoughts, I saw my 87-year-old Grandma Emma. It was a message that appealed to the dispossessed, which is why it made sense for the Peoples Temple to relocate to San Francisco around 1972. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. [16] Then in October 1994, four individuals robbed a jewelry store in Palm Bay, Florida. Jones became active in local politics, giving money, running food programs and busing Temple members to attend rallies and get out the vote for his favored candidates. In addition, Mr. Layton was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of Mr. Ryan and the attempted murder of Mr. Dwyer. The chaos persisted until, abruptly, a silence fell. I couldnt bear the vision of her sitting in front of my casket. ''Look at the poor diet, the loss of weight, the physical exhaustion, the desperation, the lingering illness and death of his mother and the fear of punishment and humiliation,'' he said. Many hours before the plane came, somehow, word filtered in that after Jones had released his death squad to the airstrip, he had led more than 900 of his flock into his White Night of death. He attended Berkeley High School and was the editor of a campus newspaper called The Liberal. Her book "Seductive Poison" will be in bookstores in November. Onboard, every bump we hit shot an arrow of pain through my body. But as Hitler consolidated his power in the 1930's, her parents began to see the Nazi holocaust taking shape and they urged her to go to New York to join relatives there. I felt my stomach knot. I have no idea how much time passed until I turned my head and opened my eyes. (It was the 60s.) "I felt we were doing something that had meaning. From what Ive seen, he said, there are a lot of people here who think this is the best thing that happened in their whole life. He was interrupted by manically enthusiastic cheering. Indescribable pain consumed me, leaving room only for a fleeting thought that I should pretend to be dead. After she left, he discovered that she had given a number of family valuables to the People's Temple. '', ''In a sense,'' he said, ''it would be easy to transfer the responsibility of Jones and put it on Larry Layton.'' Larry Layton, a former member of the People's Temple cult, was sentenced today to life in prison for aiding and abetting in the murder of Representative Leo J. Ryan at a jungle airstrip in Guyana in November 1978. Philip Wogaman, President and Mrs. Clintons pastor in Washington, D.C. made additional pleas for commutation of Larrys sentence. If there is such a thing as a spirit or essence of people . [7] In grades one through six, Lawton served as an altar boy at St. Francis de Chantal in The Bronx,[8] where he was sexually abused by a Catholic priest. Her mother's cancer pain medications were taken away. The daughter of Hugo and Anita Philips, Lisa Philips Layton was born in Germany in 1915 into a family that had engaged in banking for at least 200 years. [42][13], Lawton has made many media appearances. Much time passed until I turned my head and opened my eyes to send in the arms of home. After everyone had gone to bed and shouting, `` White Night after everyone had to... 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