What an evil thing that Jim Jones did. Original release. Dr. Layton was from a world substantially different from the aristocratic one of his bride. "The reason I did well," Layton says now, "is that I'm a little soldier and I follow orders so well.". After over twenty years in prison, Larry Layton was released on parole in 2002, largely due to the testimony of Vernon Gosney, one of the few survivors of the massacre, and the Federal Chief Judge, Robert F. Peckham. I felt my stomach knot. 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. Children had their own special punishment, Layton writes. Jim Jones, and 912 of his followers died by poison and gunfire in mass killings and suicides. Subsequently, she arranged to leave the settlement on an errand for Mr. Jones and left Guyana on May 13. 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.. They swallowed poison capsules in a suicide attempt and were removed, unconscious, from the train. I asked to speak to Monica Bagby, one of the names on Dons note. | AP/San Francisco Examiner. He. Dr. Layton had learned of his wife's religious background after they were married, but the couple had agreed not to tell anyone, especially their children. We accompanied Assemblyman Ryan to shopping centers and campaign events to pass out pamphlets and speak with voters. He attended Berkeley High School and was the editor of a campus newspaper called The Liberal. Hours after the incident, the Rev. According to trial testimony, as the attack began, Layton pulled a gun inside the plane and wounded two temple defectors. He has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Christian Broadcasting Network, and Fox News. Her book "Seductive Poison" will be in bookstores in November. Jackie Speier is a congresswoman representing Californias 14th congressional district, which includes San Francisco and the peninsula.Excerpt from UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back by Jackie Speier, reprinted under a license arrangement originating with Amazon Publishing. [37], Lawton is an advocate for prisoners and their rights, and comments on the justice system. 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. Jim Jones. The "Greeting Committee" promptly confiscated all their clothes and belongings and, most important, their passports. Larry Layton, who posed as a defector, was captured after badly wounding two people inside a plane trying to take off. Congressman Ryan assured me that there was nothing to worry about. 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. Also there was a strong feeling of community -- people of all races who really cared about each other.'. 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. Twelve hours had passed as I lay, teetering on deaths precipice when a light turned on inside me: The simple fact that I knew I was dying was proof that I was, indeed, still alive. [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]. I dont have any money to donate, but Id like to volunteer. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Perhaps death is better than this.". My mother had cared a lot for my father, but Jim broke it up.. In 1972, Mr. Jones married Deborah Layton and Philip Blakey. Behind the wheel of an airplane, I waited for the shooting to stop and said my Act of Contrition, praying for forgiveness and waiting for the lights to go out. They called it Jonestown. On the plane to Guyana, Nov. 18, 1978. "[33] Lawton and the police chief later appeared before United States Congress in recognition of the program. In Congress, he joined a March 1978 Greenpeace mission to investigate the slaughter of baby seals in Newfoundland, Canada. So many people wanted to defect that we had to call Georgetown to request an extra plane. [25] He received an additional sentence in 2002 for giving false witness. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, it read. [10] Afterwards, another jewelry store in Lower Bucks County became suspicious of a person they believed was casing the place for a future robbery. Layton's mother, Lisa, had died of cancer 10 days before the mass suicide. History. 'A Tremendous Amount of Guilt'. Jim Jones with a group of children living at Jonestown, circa 1978. 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. His family, too, had had great wealth. ", "I thought, what a waste. Dr. Layton was from a world substantially different from the aristocratic one of his bride. The defense attorney urged jurors to consider conditions at Jonestown and their impact on Mr. Layton. Layton did so. There is a sickening recording of Jones coercing his followers that day. Over the next decade, Jones moved his congregation and changed its name several times before settling on Peoples Temple around 1964. In 2009 the Rockledge Florida police used the DVDs as part of a community policing project with the money to buy the DVDs procured through asset forfeiture. 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. A former high school teacher, he was swept into politics by the idealism of the Kennedy era and elected mayor of South San Francisco before running for state Assembly. Later, after being barred from the university as a Jew, Lisa took training as physical therapist, which was permitted by the Nazis. Born in Crete, Indiana, in 1931, Jim Jones grew up an outcast and underdog, and was fixated on being recognized as someone greater. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, about a dozen men leapt from the tractor, leveled their automatic weapons, and fast approached. By that time, it was obvious that some of his disciples intended to leave. Join me, he assured his followers, and youll get health care, education and a family that would never mistreat you. In the summer of 1977, after an expose of Peoples Temple in New West magazine, Jones and his followers fled to Guyana. "I was ready to be overwhelmed by emotion," she says, "but when we got into the area, it just wasn't there. The morning after our arrival, Congressman Ryan, Jim Schollaert and I attended a closed-door briefing by Ambassador John Burke and his staff at the U.S. Embassy. The U.S. trial was confined to the question of whether he plotted to kill Ryan and U.S. diplomat Richard Dwyer. Sure enough, I could tell he had. 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. Her father, a wealthy banker in Hamburg, and her mother would be marched off at gunpoint to a train bound for a concentration camp. [21] Lawton was arrested by the FBI on December 2, 1996, in Florida and charged with the Fairless Hills armed robbery. Don hung back for a moment before approaching Congressman Ryan and me at the picnic table and surreptitiously passing along the note. The temple sent Layton to school for training as an X-ray technician. A second jury convicted Larry, although four jurors took what the trial judge called an unprecedented step of asking for leniency in Larrys sentencing. 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." It felt like a Mack truck had just sped over me. Asserting that the Government wanted to make Mr. Layton a scapegoat for the Jonestown massacre, he said, ''From the State Department point of view, from the U.S. Embassy point of view, the whole matter would be easily resolved if you blamed Larry Layton.'' Deborah watched at close hand her brother's mental deterioration under Mr. Jones's oppressiveness: Larry had been very hung upon Carolyn, he loved her, and Jim took her away from him and gave him Karen, but then he took Karen away, too. Her life appears to be light-years from Peoples Temple. Their accounts led to an expos in New West Magazine planned for publication in summer 1977. '', See the article in its original context from. Oh my God: Its true. [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. He is also charged with conspiring to harm Richard Dwyer, a United States diplomat who was wounded in the ambush. "And I thought, if I get hit by a truck, my epitaph will be, 'Jonestown survivor dies on Bay Bridge.' She said that she knew that to do so would endanger her mother and brother because Mr. Jones kept dissident members in line by holding relatives hostage. All of those people I had been standing beside, speaking to, sharing a cabin with. ''I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and remorse for the events that happened,'' he said. [8][9] The 367-page book covers his early life, his string of crimes, and his post-release career. [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. '', ''In a sense,'' he said, ''it would be easy to transfer the responsibility of Jones and put it on Larry Layton.'' Among them were George Moscone, who the Peoples Temple played a significant role in electing mayor in 1975, and Harvey Milk, the pioneering openly gay city supervisor, who went so far as to write a letter to President Jimmy Carter extolling Joness work and rebutting charges that he was abusive. Among them were Sams teenaged granddaughters. In the two years since, Jones and most of his followers had left the Bay Area and moved to Jones commune deep in the jungle of Guyana. 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. Under the Federal parole system, a person sentenced to life in prison is not normally considered for parole until 10 years have been served. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. But, as interviews last week with family members and friends revealed, the Laytons slowly disintegrated under the pressures of family conflict, the disillusionment that gripped much of America during the 1960's, drug use, and the soothing, simplistic appeal of Mr. Jones. But Dr. Layton denied strongly in a separate interview that he had ever been antiSemitic. 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. Larry Layton was convicted in 1986 by a federal jury in San Francisco of conspiring in the 1978 murder of California congressman Leo Ryan and aiding and abetting in the attempted murder of. ref: Sparkle Lee Larry Layton 40-36 Tony Lundy 40-36 Lindsey Page 40-35 2020-01-10: Alicia Napoleon Espinosa: L-UD. Mr. Ryan, three journalists and a cult defector were killed and 11 others were wounded. [32] By 2010, Lawton had shipped 10,000 DVDs across the country. From eyewitness and survivor accounts, the program recreates the last week before the mass murder-suicide on November 18, 1978. I couldnt bear the vision of her sitting in front of my casket. Leo Ryan wanted answers. He said the accusation probably been inspired by Mr. Jones as part of a systematic effort to break up families in the church. It was an implausible ending for the fiery preacher, who had curried favor among the fashionable elite of the Democratic Party. It was utter pandemonium. But ladies and gentlemen, it is notLarry Layton. 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. Returning to the pavilion area, I sought out other anxious-looking members. Jim could really get to people, Deborah recalled in an interview. She used a telephone in the radio shack to call her sister in California, who arranged to have an airline ticket waiting for her at the airport in Georgetown, Guyana. Deborah nursed her mother and tried to conceal that a physician had told her the cancer was fatal. Mr. Blakey survived the killings and suicides at Jonestown; he was on a boat owned by the commune at the time of the deaths. Bodies lay crumpled on the tarmac around me. 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. My list kept growingwhat started with two names was now more than 40. Not a single person we spoke to expressed a desire to leave, not even those whose family members had flown all the way to Guyana. 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. Lawton gained notoriety for committing a string of jewelry store robberies along the Atlantic Seaboard prior to his arrest in 1996. 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. They recovered and with the help of friends managed to reach Italy, later coming to the United States. It was imminently clear Jonestown was a hierarchical community, with the power structure resembling some sort of plantation: the majority of the Temple members were black, while the leadership was almost exclusively white. Jones himself sat onstage in a throne beneath a sign that read: Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The members sang and danced and, by every appearance, were happy. Sam was certain Jones had something to do with his sons death. The 35-year-old defendant is charged with conspiring to murder Representative Leo J. Ryan, the California Democrat who died Nov. 18, 1978, with three journalists and a temple defector in an ambush at an airstrip near Jonestown. It made no sense that he would be trying to leave Jonestown. After that, she never stopped going back, Dr. Layton said. I wanted to be part of something that was doing things for other people, and besides, Peoples Temple offered a community of friends. [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. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. Later on, I decided I had to show them. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Subsequently, he said, she urged him to have an affair. At the compound, Don wandered off to smoke a cigarette. None of the Temple members showed any interest in receiving correspondence from home. [2] The book is published in Italy, France, Australia, Germany, Thailand and United Kingdom. Others, who presumably refused to drink the Kool-Aida flippant, misguided phrase I very much wish could be scrubbed from our lexiconwere injected with cyanide and other poisons. [1][2], In 2007, he started the Reality Check Program to help educate at-risk youths on the consequences of breaking the law. The night before, our delegation watched Jones followers perform a show at their compound. Layton complied, and Jones took Carolyn as his mistress. He was born in the mountains of West Virginia, between White Sulphur Springs and Charleston, to a family that had helped settle Virginia 225 years earlier and claimed ancestors datmg from the Mayflower. He was acquitted after presenting a defense of brainwashing. Ive shared my Guyana story countless times, but its still a challenge to go back and relive those days. Politically, there was nothing to gainand everything to loseby taking on Jones, and there was no telling what hed do if confronted and challenged. the attorney said. As a temple member, Mrs. Layton separated from her husband and was said to have contributed $250,000 in family assets to the cult. John Ford. Breathing heavily, I pulled myself to my feet, stumbled to the planes baggage compartment and took shelter. [10], Lawton executed his first robbery when he was 28, an inside job to collect insurance money. Indescribable pain consumed me, leaving room only for a fleeting thought that I should pretend to be dead. His appearance was part of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program. NBC news correspondent Don Harris was part of our delegation, and was well versed on the accusations against Jones. Infants cannot commit suicide. Lawrence Robert Lawton (born October 3, 1961) is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. I grew up with the Bible and the Puritan work ethic, he recalled in an interview. The shootings took place on one of the airplanes which were to take the party of Congressman Leo Ryan to Georgetown after his visit to Jonestown. 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. As I was lying seven miles away waiting for medical help, Sam Houstons granddaughters, Patricia and Judy, 14 and 15, were murdered, along with their mother, dozens of other would-be defectors and the rest of the Peoples Temple. After graduating from the University of California campus at Davis in 1968 with a degree in social science, Layton and his wife moved to the Ukiah area and soon met up with the temple. He spoke often of apocalypseJones chose Redwood Valley because he believed it was one of a few places in the country that could survive a nuclear holocaustyet insisted the Peoples Temple would exist as a sort of heaven on Earth, with himself in the role of God. '', He said that Mr. Layton ''did not kill anybody'' at the airstrip, nor did he ''aid and abet or conspire to kill Leo Ryan.'' Five bullets hit me from point-blank range, piercing my right arm, leg, and back. Larry Layton Net Worth is $14 Million. "I was driving across the bridge," she says when asked why, after all these years, she wanted to revisit the horrors of Jonestown. In some way, I think he was a substitute husband and father figure who filled all the needs that I failed to give.. | Amazon. The robbers drew what police at the time believed were firearms, and restrained the store owner. By his own admission, Layton came of age in Berkeley, Calif., during the turmoil of student protests and the Vietnam war. [28] Often he appears discussing crimes in the media as an expert on robberies. well, it wasn't there. [26] Lawton does not hold a degree in child psychology or criminology. He treasured it. In June, she filed an affidavit with the State Department detailing the horrors in Jonestown, but got no response. -- the signal that meant an attack was imminent, an excuse for conducting a suicide drill. Although some of Joness most zealous followers may have consumed the poison voluntarily, the vast majority were murdered outright and against their will. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. When people refer to the Jonestown massacre as a mass suicide, I am enraged. [18], Lawton is believed to have hit around 20 to 25 jewelry stores,[11] stealing a self-estimated total of around $1518 million worth of high-value items, including watches, diamonds, and other gems. It paints a convincing picture of what it was like to spend seven years in the notorious cult, only to escape a few months before the tragedy that gave Jonestown its infamous place in history as the site of the largest mass suicide in modern times. [7] Lawton attended Intermediate IS 192 and Lehman High School, but did not graduate. Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? The other, Carolyn, became one of Mr. Jones's mistresses and also his principal fnancial adviser; it is not known whether she is alive. "[10], While in prison in 2003, Lawton was sent to solitary confinement for 27 days as punishment. His father was a research scientist. 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. As I took down their names, I looked over at Don Harris, who was interviewing Jones. Secretly, she offered her mother a glass of the wine. He was then returned to the United States and charged under a Federal statute against assassinating members of Congress and internationally protected people. 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. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro Getting Started | Contributor Zone Contribute to This Page Edit page Larry Layton Personal Details Contact Info I would be in the first group; Congressman Ryan insisted that he stay behind to make certain that every person who wanted to leave made it to Port Kaituma safely. From her childhood, friends said, Mrs. Layton had carried a deep fear of cancer. Dr. Layton was perplexed by his wife's behavior but began sleeping beside her on the floor. 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. Her brother, Larry, later became the only person ever charged in connection with the airstrip massacre and, after two . The spellbinding preacher had a message that attracted many disaffected people of the 1960's, and soon Carolyn had stirred her husband's sense of social activism and brought him into the group. 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.". He got a job as a student pastor at the Somerset Methodist Church in a poor, predominantly white neighborhood in Indianapolis. I did not recover my old self; bullets render that impossible. We worked quickly to locate and speak to the individuals whose families had contacted our office and had been campaigning for their return. Biography Mini Bio (1) Larry Layton is known for Viva (2007) and Escape to Grizzly Mountain (2000). When we touched down in Georgetown, a U.S. Air Force medevac plane was waiting. A short time later, Larry married his second wife, Karen,whom Dr. Layton would come to know as a loving, sweet person.. Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? Don put it in his pocket and took a few more steps before carefully unfolding it. While trying to keep the peace, he had been attacked with a knife. Larry Layton had gotten onto the truck with us, which struck me as a glaring red flaghe was an entrenched member of the hierarchy, one of the true believers. [16] Then in October 1994, four individuals robbed a jewelry store in Palm Bay, Florida. But at the time, none of that occurred to me; I was thrilled to be working for a candidate I believed inone who always treated me with respect. 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. ''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. Monica confirmed that she wanted to leave. bout wiki. 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. He said the trial was not the place to examine the deaths of 913 people at the cult's settlement in Jonestown, Guyana. Her brother, Larry, later became the only person ever charged in connection with the airstrip massacre and, after two trials, was convicted in 1986 of conspiring to murder Ryan. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Mike Added: 6 Apr 2021 Larry Layton: Survivor of the Peoples Temple 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. [30] In 2009, the Brevard County Sheriff's Office spent $4500 on 500 DVDs from the Reality Check program. While he was never charged with shooting Mr. Ryan, the Government contended that Mr. Layton conspired with Mr. Jones and other cult members to kill the Congressman and others in his group to prevent them from returning to the United States with negative reports about Jonestown. At Penn State, still barely able to speak English, she met Laurence Layton, who was studying for a doctorate in biochemistry and needed a tutor in German. It was a mass murder. 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. They were cal culated to make you feel someone has to pay. I did not feel confident this was a good idea. I had read the articles and listened to hours of testimony. 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. 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. After a year or so Dr. Layton and his wife heard from Carolyn's father that the couple had been divorced. To the stretchers. Lisa Layton was the next member of the family to join the cult. Judge Peckham imposed the same five-year parole date on those counts. 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. 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 she left, he discovered that she had given a number of family valuables to the People's Temple. Leo Ryan assured me that there was nothing to worry about. Mr. Jones repeatedly sent word to her that he could cure her from Guyana, and she waited for his efforts to work. Philip Wogaman, President and Mrs. Clintons pastor in Washington, D.C. made additional pleas for commutation of Larrys sentence. Be the first to contribute! Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Larry Layton can be an professional, known for Get away to Grizzly Hill (2000) and Viva . She had an extremely anxious demeanor, and we moved quickly as we went to her cabin to pack.

Archie Miller Family, Balje Til Vandsten Bauhaus, Meghan Admiralty House Tea, Best Custody Schedule For Infants, Articles L