It did not sit well with me. 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. Hurrying out of bed, Layton would race toward Jones "in my mud-caked boots, past the tin-roofed cabins, past the wooden outdoor showers where we're allowed our two-minute wash at the end of our 11-hour days in the field." His father, an electrical engineer, died when Larry was 8 and the boy had to move in with his grandfather, a stern Methodist preacher. [15] The robbers had dropped off jewelry for repairs, and later returned to rob the store. 1978 CULT FIGURE GETS LIFE TERM IN CONGRESSMAN'S JUNGLE SLAYING, https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/04/us/1978-cult-figure-gets-life-term-in-congressman-s-jungle-slaying.html. "[33] Lawton and the police chief later appeared before United States Congress in recognition of the program. Also there was a strong feeling of community -- people of all races who really cared about each other.'. In 1965, after riots shook Watts, an African-American neighborhood in Los Angeles, Ryan briefly took a job there as a substitute teacher while serving in the state Assembly, and used the experience to shape education policy. Ryan wanted to investigate. | AP. ", "Every week we're promised death, a relief from this miserable life. Twenty years ago this month, Jones and 912 of his followers committed mass suicide at the jungle compound. Hours after Mr. Ryan and four others were shot to death at the airstrip near Jonestown, which was the headquarters of the cult, the cult's leader, the Rev. [10][26] While recounting his prison experiences he said: "I saw inmates stabbed and friends die" and "I saw young men raped and pimped out as prostitutes for other inmates. bout wiki. I wanted to leave my daughter a legacy that wasn't that simple.". I was one of Larry's lead lawyers in his first U.S. trial in 1981, which resulted in an 11 to 1 vote for acquittal on faulty charges of conspiracy to kill the congressman. History. [42][13], Lawton has made many media appearances. Five bullets hit me from point-blank range, piercing my right arm, leg, and back. Larry Layton Biography It looks like we don't have any Biography for Larry Layton yet. 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. After that trip, I remember telling myself that never again would I witness such violence at such close range. Subsequently, she arranged to leave the settlement on an errand for Mr. Jones and left Guyana on May 13. Clearing away those cobwebs meant writing a book -- it's called "Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple." I dove beneath the plane, hiding behind the wheel as bullets thumped against the metal above me. Layton grew up in an affluent Berkeley family. Once, Debbie continued, Jones woke up the camp in the early hours of the morning. Politically, there was nothing to gainand everything to loseby taking on Jones, and there was no telling what hed do if confronted and challenged. 2023 Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple, Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple is a, The Campaign to Release Larry Layton from Federal Prison, to petition then-President Clinton to commute Larrys sentence. [38][5][9] In 2013, the Brevard County Jail re-introduced chain gangs as a pilot project with the goal of deterring crime. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. I was feet away from Jones, close enough to hear him trying to convince people to change their minds. He was cracking. He is the son of Lawrence L. Layton, a prominent biolgist at the University of California, and was raised in a cultural, intellectual atmosphere. Layton complied, and Jones took Carolyn as his mistress. The U.S. trial was confined to the question of whether he plotted to kill Ryan and U.S. diplomat Richard Dwyer. Onboard, every bump we hit shot an arrow of pain through my body. 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. ( 2007-01-15) [1] Jonestown: Paradise Lost is a 2007 documentary television film on the History Channel about the final days of Jonestown, the Peoples Temple, and Jim Jones. But by the time I showed em, they were all dead.. Her childhood playmates included cousins and friends from some of the bestknown families of Germany's Jewish aristocracy, such as the Berensons and Rothschilds. I spoke with a woman named Edith Parks, the matriarch of three generations of Temple members who wanted out. When people refer to the Jonestown massacre as a mass suicide, I am enraged. His family, too, had had great wealth. As a temple member, Mrs. Layton separated from her husband and was said to have contributed $250,000 in family assets to the cult. He preached a social gospel, attracting devotees while promoting a community that did not discriminate or take into account race, background, or previous circumstances. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, it read. Within minutes, Ryan and four others were shot dead. Five bullets had ripped through me, devastating the right side of my body. Children had their own special punishment, Layton writes. Of the more than 900 members of Joness congregation who had moved there, nearly a third were children. But finally her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung. And, I thought of them like Mormons. A few Temple members stood in front of a rusty dump truck waiting to shuttle us to the compound. Mr. Jones, Deborah said, callously gave Mrs. Layton that news. [10], Lawton executed his first robbery when he was 28, an inside job to collect insurance money. Before the New West issue hit the stands, Jones and hundreds of his followers had left San Francisco for Jonestown, their promised land in Guyana. Instead he proposed a better use of law enforcement resources would be to "help inmates with drug addiction. I had read the articles and listened to hours of testimony. Tony Tamburello, the defense attorney, told jurors in his closing arguments that the prosecutors had sensationalized the case against Mr. Layton in the three-week trial in Federal District Court. She was entrusted with flights to Europe and Panama to open Temple bank accounts, where Jones stashed the millions he was taking from Temple members who freely gave him their life savings, their homes and just about everything else. Larry shot and wounded two people at the Port Kaituma airstrip on 18 November 1978, and he attempted to shoot a third. Hours later at the Jonestown emcampment, Jones led the death rite of himself and his followers. Sam was certain Jones had something to do with his sons death. But Layton, saying he wishes he could ease the pain. This site houses a variety of PDF documents. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Mike Added: 6 Apr 2021 I dont have any money to donate, but Id like to volunteer. 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. They were married in 1966 and a year later Larry, who as a Quaker had obtained a draft deferment as a consciencious objector, moved with his new wife to Ukiah in northern California to serve in lieu of military duty as a medical technician at the Mendocino State Hospital. He was born June 30, 1940 in Long Branch NJ to William and Edna (Keller) Layton. Mrs. Layton saw Mr. Jones strip Larry of two wives. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. To access these PDF files you must have the free Adobe Reader installed. My ribs were broken. [3], Lawton was offered a three-year sentence in exchange for disclosing his accomplices but did not take the deal. The next year, his church relocated to Redwood Valley, a small community in northern California. He said that some of the recipients could be innocent. Perhaps death is better than this.". Hours after the incident, the Rev. Ryan and I asked one or two Temple members at a time to come talk to us. He'd work you so hard you didn't have time to complain, and he'd blackmail you; he destroyed marriages and humiliated you.. Jim could really get to people, Deborah recalled in an interview. Family Tragedy: Hitler's Germany to Jones's Cult, https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/04/archives/family-tragedy-hitlers-germany-to-joness-cult-the-layton-familys.html. Layton was brought to trial in Guyana on charges of attempted murder and was acquitted. After her operation, Mrs. Layton moved to Guyana. Larry Layton was the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown. Dr. Layton was perplexed by his wife's behavior but began sleeping beside her on the floor. In a book written by his brother, Thomas, after Ryan's death, Larry is quoted as saying he believed in the goals of the community, even though life was not always Utopian. One of the defectors wed interviewed claimed that Jones dyed them black. "I felt we were doing something that had meaning. But, she said, I had to tell somebody what was happening in Jonestown. In Jonestown, nobody could have any family attachments. While trying to keep the peace, he had been attacked with a knife. Is the Stanley Quencher tumbler worth its TikTok hype? According to trial testimony, as the attack began, Layton pulled a gun inside the plane and wounded two temple defectors. Mr . Though driven by the kind of underlying insecurity that so often fuels tyrants, Jones appeared to offer hope, redemption, and an idealistic new life. [32] By 2010, Lawton had shipped 10,000 DVDs across the country. Elin Cederroos: Ocean Resort Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA. The cover of a Jonestown promotional booklet from 1978. After his campaign received my note, I started volunteering as a Ryan Girl, part of a troop of young women clad in houndstooth bobby hats, miniskirts, black tights, black turtlenecks and bright-white boots. Ryan did not look or behave like your typical politician. Port Royal Speedway hosts a weekly schedule of local Sprint Car, Late Model, and Pro-Stock dirt track racing, and is nicknamed "The Speed Palace".Several national touring series organizations visit the track during the racing season, including the World of Outlaws . Larry Layton was the only person prosecuted for any of the events in and around Jonestown. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. ref: Sparkle Lee Larry Layton 40-36 Tony Lundy 40-36 Lindsey Page 40-35 2020-01-10: Alicia Napoleon Espinosa: L-UD. Larry, sister Debbie and their mother, Lisa, all joined the temple while it was located in California. My list kept growingwhat started with two names was now more than 40. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. That date was later moved back to April 2004, after the board credited him for his time in the Georgetown jail. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. '', He said that Mr. Layton ''did not kill anybody'' at the airstrip, nor did he ''aid and abet or conspire to kill Leo Ryan.'' Anyone can read what you share. "And I thought, if I get hit by a truck, my epitaph will be, 'Jonestown survivor dies on Bay Bridge.' They all swore that Jonestown was the one and only place they could ever consider home. Layton did so. They were issued four T-shirts, four pairs of socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, four pairs of underwear and a bar of soap. It wasnt unusual for Temple members to be awakened at dawn over the loudspeaker and summoned to the pavilion for one of his increasingly unhinged sermons. Id come to Guyana as a congressional aide on a fact-finding mission. [8] Lawton later said that he used a BB gun during the robbery. 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. By that time, darker elements had seeped into Jones sermons. The temple sent Layton to school for training as an X-ray technician. Meanwhile, Dr. Layton said, A difficult new field of science in molecular biology was opening, and he began to spend more and more time studying it. Five months later, on the night of November 18, 1978, Jones sent a gang of gunmen to an airstrip in Port Kaituma, where Representative Leo Ryan of San Mateo and a fact-finding party that had visited Jonestown were preparing to leave. 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. [30][33] He was the first ex-con to ever become an honorary police officer. Later that night, Jones had another suicide exercise. She died of cancer in Guyana three weeks before the death ritual. '', ''In a sense,'' he said, ''it would be easy to transfer the responsibility of Jones and put it on Larry Layton.'' He is also charged with conspiring to harm Richard Dwyer, a United States diplomat who was wounded in the ambush. He was then returned to the United States and charged under a Federal statute against assassinating members of Congress and internationally protected people. Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? Jonestown was the agricultural compound Jones' followers carved out of the Guyanese jungle, 150 miles northwest of the nation's capital, Georgetown. In May 1978, she was sent by Jones to Georgetown to chaperone some Temple children on a cultural exchange. [10] He was sentenced for racketeering and robbery and spent 11 years in prison before being released in 2007. 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. Lawton was critical of the move, saying that "[c]hain gangs send a bad message about [the US]." The months passed, and suddenly I finished a book and looked up, and no one was here., I walked up and down the street and looked at the stars and, wondered what I had done wrong, I think she felt was not as affectionate as I might have been, he said. On the plane to Guyana, Nov. 18, 1978. As one of his top aides, I accompanied the delegation, venturing out on the ice floes where the clubbing took place. Larry Layton Net Worth is $14 Million. And then I realized that confirming one tiny detail could mean that the worst of the testimonies were true. Mr. Layton was convicted here last Dec. 1 of conspiracy in the murder of Mr. Ryan, a California Democrat who had led a group that was investigating conditions at Jonestown and reports that people were being held there against their will. During my freshman year at UC Davis, when I told him about my major, he offered encouragement: If you really want to learn about political science, you should come and intern in my office. I did, and over the years, worked my way up from volunteer to intern to staffer to senior aide, just as he climbed from the state Assembly to the U.S. Congress. The chaos persisted until, abruptly, a silence fell. I was almost one of them. But it was the testimony of Vern Gosney, one of Larrys shooting victims at the Port Kaituma airstrip, who traveled from Hawaii for the sole purpose of attending the hearing and who delivered the most impassioned plea for Larrys release, that apparently made the difference. "[2] He was critical of Brevard County stopping letters to inmates in 2013. It looked staged. In June, she filed an affidavit with the State Department detailing the horrors in Jonestown, but got no response. [10] In 2012, Lawton self-published Gangster Redemption, an autobiography co-written with Peter Golenbock. Dick Dwyer, an embassy official, showed us a slideshow of his visit to Jonestown the previous Mayimages in which he and Jim Jones looked unnervingly chummy; images of tables filled with food, of joyful children on a swingset, of bountiful crops and an exuberant church session. It made no sense that he would be trying to leave Jonestown. When we touched down in Georgetown, a U.S. Air Force medevac plane was waiting. He knew that Jones had considerable political clout, with close ties to Democratic leaders in San Francisco, Sacramento, and even with the State Department. By Katherine Bishop, Special To the New York Times. I did not feel confident this was a good idea. By all accounts, Layton was on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill Ryan was set in motion. Their accounts led to an expos in New West Magazine planned for publication in summer 1977. After a few weeks, Layton grew "accustomed to the unusual smells in the food and drink. She looks away for a moment, then brightens and starts to talk about a visit she made to Jonestown only a few months ago, accompanied by a crew from the Arts & Entertainment network, which is making a documentary on Peoples Temple. "I was driving across the bridge," she says when asked why, after all these years, she wanted to revisit the horrors of Jonestown. While the tathiiy was unique in its deep involvment with Mr. Jones, the story of the Laytons tells a great deal about why and how hundreds of other families became tangled in his persuasive web of religion mixed with social activism. Jackie Speier manages a smile as she is wheeled on a stretcher at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Nov. 20, 1978. [8] In 1983, having earned his GED, he left the Coast Guard and began engaging in criminal activity, mostly loan sharking and bookmaking. [28] Often he appears discussing crimes in the media as an expert on robberies. At the compound, Don wandered off to smoke a cigarette. The parole examiner said he was deeply troubled that Larry had remained in prison for so long well in excess of the five years recommended by the sentencing judge and noted Larrys exemplary behavior while in federal custody. He was not paroled from an American prison until 2002. Congressman Ryan and I were among the first shift of the delegation to climb in for the excruciatingly slow six-mile drive to the commune. 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 the summer of 1977, after an expose of Peoples Temple in New West magazine, Jones and his followers fled to Guyana. 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 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. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, the matriarch of three generations of Temple members wanted! 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