Excerpt from UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back by Jackie Speier, reprinted under a license arrangement originating with Amazon Publishing. They recovered and with the help of friends managed to reach Italy, later coming to the United States. [37], Lawton is an advocate for prisoners and their rights, and comments on the justice system. [21] Lawton was arrested by the FBI on December 2, 1996, in Florida and charged with the Fairless Hills armed robbery. 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. We compiled similar testimonies from other defectors who corroborated Debbies reports of physical and sexual abuse, forced labor and captivity. As a temple member, Mrs. Layton separated from her husband and was said to have contributed $250,000 in family assets to the cult. Subsequently, he said, she urged him to have an affair. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. I was feet away from Jones, close enough to hear him trying to convince people to change their minds. Friends of Larry Layton recall that Mr. Jones took both Carolyn and Karen from him after having the women watch him force Larry to submit to a homosexual act. [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. Hours later at the Jonestown emcampment, Jones led the death rite of himself and his followers. The robbers drew what police at the time believed were firearms, and restrained the store owner. Layton did so. [10] He was sentenced for racketeering and robbery and spent 11 years in prison before being released in 2007. I was an orphan and my grandfather didn't let me forget it; he wanted me to work hard; he didn't want to ruin me with praise; I was supposed to be humble. Her mother, on discovering that her husband was having an affair with Lisa's English governess, gave Lisa a detailed account of it and threatened to commit suicide. After that trip, I remember telling myself that never again would I witness such violence at such close range. They all swore that Jonestown was the one and only place they could ever consider home. That date was later moved back to April 2004, after the board credited him for his time in the Georgetown jail. 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. Politically, there was nothing to gainand everything to loseby taking on Jones, and there was no telling what hed do if confronted and challenged. He was born in the mountains of West Virginia, between White Sulphur Springs and Charleston, to a. Born in Crete, Indiana, in 1931, Jim Jones grew up an outcast and underdog, and was fixated on being recognized as someone greater. 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. 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. Her father, a wealthy banker in Hamburg, and her mother would be marched off at gunpoint to a train bound for a concentration camp. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Mr. Jones repeatedly sent word to her that he could cure her from Guyana, and she waited for his efforts to work. 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. She mentioned a Bay Area couple, the Stoens, who had defected and were fighting for the return of their young son, John. [25], Law enforcement officials and judges have supported the program. Individually, their insistence would have been hard to question. Mr . ", She blithely ignored the warning signs -- the fake "cancer healings" and the increasingly hostile confrontations, when Jones would scream at members of his flock for faintly perceived faults or have them paddled harshly with the "board of education.". Lawrence Robert Lawton (born October 3, 1961) is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. His father was a research scientist. | AP. [8] In 1983, having earned his GED, he left the Coast Guard and began engaging in criminal activity, mostly loan sharking and bookmaking. 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. Mr. Blakey survived the killings and suicides at Jonestown; he was on a boat owned by the commune at the time of the deaths. I was 28, lying on a dusty airplane runway in the Guyanese jungle, and dying. I was kicked. Mrs. Layton saw Mr. Jones strip Larry of two wives. After Larry and Carolyn Layton joined the cult, Larry stopped writing to his parents and would not accept phone calls from them. 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 [19][20] One bullet narrowly missed Lawton, but struck his brother. I never played; I never learned how. 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. According to trial testimony, as the attack began, Layton pulled a gun inside the plane and wounded two temple defectors. Larry Layton, a former member of the People's Temple, broke into tears today at his trial on charges of conspiring to commit murder as his attorney told jurors not to make him a scapegoat ''for the horror of Jonestown.''. The campaign succeeded in making it to the Oval Office, and seemed to be viable up until 20 January 2001, President Clintons last day in office, but Larrys name did not appear on the final list of pardons and commutations. 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. She got on the plane, leaving her mother behind. Anyone can read what you share. Ryan and I asked one or two Temple members at a time to come talk to us. Layton, Deborah 1953- PERSONAL: Born in 1953, in Tooele, UT; daughter of Laurence Laird and Lisa Layton; married; children: Lauren. As one of his top aides, I accompanied the delegation, venturing out on the ice floes where the clubbing took place. Lisa Layton's youngest son, Larry, is now under arrest in Guyana, accused of murdering Representative Leo J. Ryan and four other persons in the attack that eventually led Mr. Jones to order the mass deaths. One of the defectors wed interviewed claimed that Jones dyed them black. Debbie stood in line to drink the red liquid that she was told would kill her in a matter of minutes. 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. And it wasn't an isolated incident. NBC news correspondent Don Harris was part of our delegation, and was well versed on the accusations against Jones. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. The temple sent Layton to school for training as an X-ray technician. [26] Lawton does not hold a degree in child psychology or criminology. 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. Over the next decade, Jones moved his congregation and changed its name several times before settling on Peoples Temple around 1964. Jim could really get to people, Deborah recalled in an interview. 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. | AP. We worked quickly to locate and speak to the individuals whose families had contacted our office and had been campaigning for their return. I heard screams and the rapid pounding of gunfire. 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. He got a job as a student pastor at the Somerset Methodist Church in a poor, predominantly white neighborhood in Indianapolis. Elin Cederroos: Ocean Resort Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA. Jim Jones, with his omnipresent dark glasses and his sweeping red robe, was the anchor of her newfound life and, like many Temple members, she was mesmerized by him. I did not recover my old self; bullets render that impossible. The suit was later dismissed. None of those red flags made the congressman reconsider. Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? [10] Afterwards, another jewelry store in Lower Bucks County became suspicious of a person they believed was casing the place for a future robbery. "[10], Lawton also founded the Reality Check Foundation, which is a 501(C)(3) charity that includes a mentoring program, and an annual golf outing. His mother and father were cousins who had lived on adjoining estates, and in earlier generations the family's land, worked by slaves, had been prosperous. 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 . TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. 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. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Mike Added: 6 Apr 2021 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. The cover of a Jonestown promotional booklet from 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. Like all of the tracks in the United States, it closed during the World War II years (1941-1945) and re-opened in 1946. I wanted to be part of something that was doing things for other people, and besides, Peoples Temple offered a community of friends. In fact, I would have been on that truck, with a rifle. Increasing numbers of people approached us. 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." Answer (1 of 2): Above: Jonestown Before The Massacre Larry Layton was the only "armed guard" at Jonestown at the time of the massacre to outlive November 18, 1978, when all but a few dozen of the roughly 1,000 residents of Jonestown perished. '', He said that Mr. Layton ''did not kill anybody'' at the airstrip, nor did he ''aid and abet or conspire to kill Leo Ryan.'' Closing the Book on Case. ref: Benjy Esteves Jr Mark Consentino 94-95 Larry Layton 94-95 John McKaie 94-95 [10] While in prison, Lawton earned a paralegal qualification and became a gang mediator. Is the Stanley Quencher tumbler worth its TikTok hype? They joined. In Ukiah, Layton's free will was already beginning to slip away, according to his lawyers. Layton, 35, emerged as the only defendant alive and available for prosecution in the government's attempt to exact justice from the Jonestown horrors. Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones (left) shakes hands with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone (right) after being sworn in to serve on the San Francisco Housing Authority, Nov. 24, 1977. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. He treasured it. It looked staged. 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. At the airport, Temple members who found out she was fleeing implored her not to leave. It was a mass murder. 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. We saw an impressive community with dozens of pathways, cabins, a medical center, a little school, and a large pavilion where the members congregated regularly. It did not sit well with me. 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. Layton was brought to trial in Guyana on charges of attempted murder and was acquitted. Among them were Sams teenaged granddaughters. By Katherine Bishop, Special To the New York Times. By the following year, Jones was making a reputation for himself in. But ladies and gentlemen, it is notLarry Layton. Larry's parole came two years earlier than his previously-scheduled release date of April 2004. Larry shot and wounded two people at the Port Kaituma airstrip on 18 November 1978, and he attempted to shoot a third. There is abundant evidence that Mr. Jones used such tactics to divide families and break up marriages. [8][12] At one point, he purchased an Italian pizza restaurant in North Lauderdale, Florida, which he later burned down as part of an insurance fraud. Larrys parole came two years earlier than his previously-scheduled release date of April 2004. Oh my God: Its true. 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. Layton grew up in an affluent Berkeley family. Mr. Jones, Deborah said, callously gave Mrs. Layton that news. A bone shot out of my right arm, and a huge hunk of flesh had been blown off my thigh. From eyewitness and survivor accounts, the program recreates the last week before the mass murder-suicide on November 18, 1978. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, about a dozen men leapt from the tractor, leveled their automatic weapons, and fast approached. 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 Jonestown, nobody could have any family attachments. But by the time I showed em, they were all dead.. [8][9] The 367-page book covers his early life, his string of crimes, and his post-release career. We landed in Georgetown, Guyanas capital, on November 14, 1978. There were piles of used syringes at the scene. 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. See also [ edit] Jim Jones In 1973, when Larry and Deborah Layton and their spouses were living at the Ukiah temple, an acquaintance of Mrs. Layton thought he had cancer, and her children urged Mrs. Layton to bring him to Ukiah. [2] The book is published in Italy, France, Australia, Germany, Thailand and United Kingdom. [28] Often he appears discussing crimes in the media as an expert on robberies. Members of the press and the Concerned Relatives waited behind on the airstrip until the truck could come back for a second load. To the tarmac. Youll see what a wonderful place it is. He took us on a tour highlighting the most favorable aspects of the commune. He. 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. The book describes the events that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, where over 900 people lost their lives as the result of mass forced suicide, which constituted the largest loss of American civilian life (other than due to natural disasters or during the course of violence with Native Americans) in United States history until the events of As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. In Jonestown Only one man, Temple member Larry Layton, was tried in the United States for his involvement in the November 18 events. All I could think was I am not going to make Grandma live through my funeral. I dont have any money to donate, but Id like to volunteer. Secretly, she offered her mother a glass of the wine. Later that night, Jones had another suicide exercise. Mr. Layton's first trial ended in a mistrial on Sept. 26, 1981, when the jury was unable to reach a verdict on any of the counts. A man followed him and slipped a folded piece of paper into his hand, then disappeared back into the crowd. But this particular morning, Jones told his followers that they had to kill themselves to keep from being tortured by mercenaries who were preparing an ambush. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/17/us/cult-member-cries-over-plea-to-jury.html. [28] In 2013, Lawton was made an honorary police officer by the Lake St. Louis, Missouri Police Department due to his work after prison. Lisa Layton was the next member of the family to join the cult. An uncle, Dr. James Franck, won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1935. Then, as a group of men dug the truck out of the mud, we heard a loud commotion from the pavilion. To the stretchers. Ten years later the road came to a dead end in the jungles of Guyana. After her operation, Mrs. Layton moved to Guyana. 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." Ryan did not look or behave like your typical politician. Her brother, Larry, later became the only person ever charged in connection with the airstrip massacre and, after two . In a brief and halting speech to the court today, Mr. Layton expressed his regrets to the families of Mr. Ryan and the others who were killed. Initially she was allowed to recuperate in a cabin of her own, but later she was moved into a crowded dormitorystyle cabin with other elderly women. The tumult of the late 60s and early 70s had left masses of people searching for a greater sense of security and purpose. 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. The U.S. trial was confined to the question of whether he plotted to kill Ryan and U.S. diplomat Richard Dwyer. Mrs. Layton was convinced the man had been cured by Mr. Jones, who is known to have faked such cures by presenting chicken and cattle entrails as cancerous tissue he claimed to have removed. Mr. Tamburello accused prosecutors of going too far in describing the ambush on the Ryan party, which went to Guyana to investigate assertions that some members of the cult were being mistreated and were being held in Guyana against their wills. Ryan was gunned down by a band of temple members intent on stopping the visitors from leaving and reporting the doings of the cult to the outside world. It was nothing of the kind. Breathing heavily, I pulled myself to my feet, stumbled to the planes baggage compartment and took shelter. See also Other Works | Publicity Listings | Official Sites View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro It was an implausible ending for the fiery preacher, who had curried favor among the fashionable elite of the Democratic Party. 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. Mr. Layton was also convicted of conspiracy in the attempted murder of Richard C. Dwyer, the deputy chief of the United States mission to Guyana, who was among those wounded at the airstrip. [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. John Ford. Larry Layton wiki ionformation include family relationships: spouse or partner (wife or husband); siblings; childen/kids; parents life. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide. 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. [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. Lawton gained notoriety for committing a string of jewelry store robberies along the Atlantic Seaboard prior to his arrest in 1996. Should they have any doubt of his intentions, they could look to the vibrant community of believers who echoed his sentiments and treated his words as gospel. Jackie Speier manages a smile as she is wheeled on a stretcher at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Nov. 20, 1978. Sure enough, I could tell he had. 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. Judge Peckham imposed the same five-year parole date on those counts. After she left, he discovered that she had given a number of family valuables to the People's Temple. My mother had cared a lot for my father, but Jim broke it up.. [30][33] He was the first ex-con to ever become an honorary police officer. '', See the article in its original context from. In 1969, to get her away from the drugs and other attractions in Berkeley, Dr. Layton and his wife decided to send Deborah to a Quaker school, Ackworth, in the countryside of Yorkshire, England. Mr. Layton was also sentenced to three concurrent terms of 15 years each in related charges of conspiring to kill Mr. Ryan and in the attempted murder of a United States diplomat in the same incident. But finally her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung. I was almost one of them. He had engineered complete authoritycollecting members Social Security and disability checks, and determining when and how his disciples could communicate with their families. Mrs. Layton's daughter, Deborah, joined the cult five years ago. ', "O.J. Before going to print, the editor of the magazine, who held some esteem for Jones, felt compelled to call him and read aloud the article before it went to press. Deborah and Larry Layton were still with Mr. Jones at that point, having remained as key lieutenants even after his doctrine of good works and selflessness had begun to become an increasingly paranoid selfadulation. Five bullets had ripped through me, devastating the right side of my body. 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. 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. His father, an electrical engineer, died when Larry was 8 and the boy had to move in with his grandfather, a stern Methodist preacher.
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