Page 2 - Defecting Temple News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

All the papers i signed and all the blank papers i signed, he couldn't believe it. i mean, he screamed at me, "how could you do something so stupid?" i said, "you want to tell me you'd be in a room with 120 peers around you, and you were told everybody is going to sign a piece of paper, that you're not going to sign it? would you do that? that you would know you would not leave that room beaten and/or dead?" >> i would like to kill grace stoen and tim stoen. i'd go back and do it right now. >> grace and tim stoen topped the temple's enemy list. >> what'd he say? >> tie a rope around grace's ti...

In the states you didn't get that kind of food, necessarily. well, unbeknownst to me, they had to buy all that fruit. and i found out later there would be pictures of jim with his hand up holding, supposedly, like these are bananas. he was literally holding those bananas up there. they weren't growing on that tree. >> if jonestown was not yet a tropical paradise, jones was determined to one day make it the socialist utopia he dreamed and preached about. but for now home was san francisco. and by 1976, jones had made peoples temple a major player in local politics. >> if any movement in san fra...

>> of the five people killed on the airstrip, patricia parks is the only defecting temple member. the rest of her family had escaped into the bush. >> do you still have your family? did everybody make it out okay? >> no. they shot my mom's brains out. she's the only one in the family that didn't make it. >> you didn't see that? >> i didn't see her get shot, but i saw her brains in the plane and i saw her laying out on the ground. 

>> with the secret revelations he gathered in the summer of 1977, reporter marshall kilduth had the makings of a full blown expose. >> here i am with a new look at the church. ex-members had rough things to say about how the church treated its finances, how they recruited members. i went back and said i got a whole new story here. here's the deal. guy said, nope, i'm not interested. jones is doing good work. he doesn't need this kind of attacking. >> the truth of the matter is that the leadership of san francisco at the time wasn't going to touch it with a ten-foot pole because jim jones had b...

Also becoming examples in their community, and it spread. >> as the numbers of faithful grew, jones and the temple became a potent and untouchable force in california politics. >> everybody was afraid to come out against him because they felt he had more power and more clout, and he did.