Mrs. Layton divorced her husband in 1975 and their home on the Berkeley hilltop was sold. 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. 'A Tremendous Amount of Guilt'. The night before, our delegation watched Jones followers perform a show at their compound. After that trip, I remember telling myself that never again would I witness such violence at such close range. 'Being in Peoples Temple wasn't always pleasant, but one had the feeling he was really doing something to advance society. 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. Layton became a senior insider in Jones' entourage. He preached a social gospel, attracting devotees while promoting a community that did not discriminate or take into account race, background, or previous circumstances. In the summer of 1978, Lisa Philips Layton died of cancer in Jonestown, Guyana, three months before the Rev. "The reason I did well," Layton says now, "is that I'm a little soldier and I follow orders so well.". 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. In addition, Mr. Layton was convicted of aiding and abetting the murder of Mr. Ryan and the attempted murder of Mr. Dwyer. 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. Mr. Layton believes that his wife gave Mr. Jones at least $250,000 and possibly more; he said she had some secret accounts of her own that apparently contained money from her father. Children had their own special punishment, Layton writes. Larry Layton Biography It looks like we don't have any Biography for Larry Layton yet. 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. Her life appears to be light-years from Peoples Temple. 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. Left-right: Jim Schollaert, Jackie Speier and Congressman Leo Ryan. 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. 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. I knew him well enough to understand what would happen next. ', "O.J. She died of cancer in Guyana three weeks before the death ritual. Layton and her mother arrived in Jonestown in December 1977. We listened as she offered a detailed and disturbing account of her experience. 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.". Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Also there was a strong feeling of community -- people of all races who really cared about each other.'. 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. Your Privacy Choices (Opt Out of Sale/Targeted Ads). To go back to the gunshots. [30] The Lake St. Louis police chief praised Larry's message about the consequences of going to prison and said it is not a scared straight program, noting that Lawton said "fear doesn't have a lasting impact. By all accounts, Layton was on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill Ryan was set in motion. 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 Richard Dwyer, a U.S. diplomat wounded in the attack. 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. "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. 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. Her startling introduction to life there quickly allowed Layton to see the cracks in the facade. Five bullets hit me from point-blank range, piercing my right arm, leg, and back. ''I submit they were presented to inflame you, to arouse your passions, to prejudice you. A growing body of constituents known as the Concerned Relatives wrote Congressman Ryan with increasing alarm about their daughters or sons who had accompanied the charismatic demagogue to Guyana. She is known by many of her relationships - longtime lover of Jim Jones, mother of Jones' child Jim Jon (Kimo) Prokes, sister of Annie Moore, former wife of Larry Layton, former sister-in-law of Debby Layton - as well as the sometimes-mysterious roles she played within the Peoples Temple hierarchy. She had an extremely anxious demeanor, and we moved quickly as we went to her cabin to pack. But ladies and gentlemen, it is notLarry Layton. The cover of a Jonestown promotional booklet from 1978. Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby, it read. -- the signal that meant an attack was imminent, an excuse for conducting a suicide drill. 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. In 1968, Carolyn Layton became the first member of the family to be enticed by Mr. Jones's diatribes against the rich, the Vietnam War, social injustice and racism. January 15, 2007. This site houses a variety of PDF documents. Much later, Layton writes, she would find them "on the bookshelf in Father's house with the many other prescription drugs taken from Temple members.". After a while, Mrs. Layton began sleeping on the floor of their home in Berkeley and made her husband sell a Cadillac they owned. Months previously, her husband had begun noticing that money and family possessions were dis appearing from the household. They were cal culated to make you feel someone has to pay. But finally her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung. 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. In Ukiah, Layton's free will was already beginning to slip away, according to his lawyers. [1][2], In 2007, he started the Reality Check Program to help educate at-risk youths on the consequences of breaking the law. I dove beneath the plane, hiding behind the wheel as bullets thumped against the metal above me. He treasured it. 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. But Layton, saying he wishes he could ease the pain. [10] He was sentenced for racketeering and robbery and spent 11 years in prison before being released in 2007. Although his mother was of German-Jewish descent, his family practiced the Quaker faith, and Larry was the family's firmest believer, according to his brother. Other Peoples Temple. 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. He was then returned to the United States and charged under a Federal statute against assassinating members of Congress and internationally protected people. NBC news correspondent Don Harris was part of our delegation, and was well versed on the accusations against Jones. 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. Then-State Assemblyman Leo J. Ryan behind the bars in a Folsom prison cell in Feb. 1970, where he spent a week living as an inmate to learn needs for reform. 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. "If I hadn't been sent to Georgetown that day (in May)," Deborah Layton says now, "I would have died in Jonestown. Mini Biography. Jones died from a bullet to the brain. He spent 12 years in prison, and once released, began a career as a motivational speaker, life coach, and author. All of those people I had been standing beside, speaking to, sharing a cabin with. Ryan invited members of the press and a few of the Concerned Relatives to join him. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. They called it Jonestown. The two store owners were bound while two individuals robbed the store and a third acted as a lookout and the other as the getaway driver. But Dr. Layton denied strongly in a separate interview that he had ever been antiSemitic. 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. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple. [41], In 2017, he appeared in a middle school in Havelock, North Carolina to explain his prison experiences. [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. Larry Layton, who posed as a defector, was captured after badly wounding two people inside a plane trying to take off. The approach continued even after hed moved from Sacramento to Washington, D.C. This is a digitized version of an article from the household her startling introduction to there! The signal that meant an attack was imminent, an excuse for conducting a drill. 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