Love Them to Death: At War with the Devil at Jonestown - Paperback

by Timothy Oliver Stoen (Author)

"Love Them to Death" is the same book as "Marked for Death," published in 2015, but with a new title, new cover, amplifications, new photographs, and back-cover endorsements: "Stoen's deeply moving memoir."--Publishers Weekly; "Buy the Book: The Man Jim Jones Hated Most Speaks. . . . The fascinating book reads, like accounts of the demise of Jonestown itself, as unbelievable but true."--Daniel J. Flynn, The American Spectator; & "A true heartfelt confession that reads like a John Grisham thriller."--Brian McDonough, Writer News. "Love Them to Death" is a memoir of my experiences as the attorney, enemy, and postmortem target of James Warren Jones who, on November 18, 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, unleashed-in the name of "love"-terror and death. It tells how this ordinary man, Jim Jones, having captured the souls of kind and decent people, got them to assassinate a US congressman and, incredibly, got them-by the hundreds-to kill themselves and their children. "The mass suicides and murders in Jonestown, Guyana," said pollster George Gallup, "was the most widely followed event of 1978." By then Jim Jones had become a "Molotov cocktail." The container was Jones's absolute power. The flammable liquid was Jones's malignant narcissism. The wick was Jones's genius for mind control. In the end Jim Jones was nothing but evil. "The CIA would have had to acknowledge," said Stanford psychology professor Philip Zimbardo, "that Jones succeeded where their MK-Ultra program failed in the ultimate control of the human mind." On January 1, 1970, I joined a utopian movement called Peoples Temple, in order to pursue "Biblical socialism" (Acts 2). I became the pro bono lawyer for Jones for 7 years. Jim Jones eventually became what the "Washington Post" called a "West Coast Power," with a remarkable gift for wining over the most sophisticated people in politics. On November 18, 1977, I testified in court and went to war against Jones. By then, he had moved to Jonestown. I turned on Jones because I'd learned he was denigrating to a five-year-old child, John Victor Stoen then in Jonestown, his mother, Grace. During that one-year war for John Victor, I made two trips to the then "wired" country of Guyana, and in California I braced, every time the doorbell rang, for a shot to the chest. Finally, on that November 18th, the journey took a petrifying turn. Jim Jones killed 907 of his people by cyanide, and orchestrated the deaths, by gunfire at the nearby airstrip, of US congressman Leo Ryan and four others. Among those he took out by the poison was six-year-old John Victor Stoen. Structurally, this book traces the "development" of Jim Jones, as I experienced it from 1967 through 1979, through fourteen stages. On the day he died, Jim Jones exhorted his followers to "see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy." I was accused--falsely, I might add--of manipulating the 1975 San Francisco mayoral election, won by George Moscone over John Barbagelata, and then arranging to become special voter fraud prosecutor to cover up my crime. On that same day Jones made a prophecy: "We win when we go down. Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate... Then he'll destroy himself." It took nine years to undermine that curse. I have three reasons for writing this book. The first is to encourage healthy suspicion of authoritarian power. I want to show how leaders are corrupted by absolute power, and how they use charisma and demagogic oratory to acquire that power. The second reason is to encourage realistic approaches to fighting evil. I want to give evidence for psychiatrist Scott Peck's position that evil people can be dealt with only by "raw power." My third reason is to give hope to people who, like me, have made huge mistakes in their lives. Recovery is possible. After all of my unbelievable mistakes, it is a miracle that I should now find myself alive, sane, and vital. It is truly due to something outside my control.

Author Biography

On January 16, 1938, Timothy Oliver Stoen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, followed by two brothers. In 1956 he graduated from Littleton High School in Colorado. In 1960 he graduated from Wheaton College in Illinois. In 1961 while on a Rotary Foundation Fellowship, he took photos of border guards in East Berlin, and got arrested. In 1964, he graduated from Stanford Law School. In 1965, Tim became a deputy DA for Mendocino County in Ukiah, California. On August 8, 1967, at a hiring interview for a new poverty law program, he met Jim Jones. On April 1, 1969, Tim took a poverty law job in a black section of Oakland, California. He defended, in a criminal case, a member of the Black Panther party. On January 1, 1970, Tim joined Peoples Temple. On March 2, 1970, he became the "county counsel" for Mendocino County, and also became the "pro bono" attorney for Jim Jones. On June 27, 1970, Tim married 20-year-old Grace Lucy Grech. On May 17, 1976, he became "special voter fraud prosecutor" for the San Francisco DA's office, and thereafter Head of Special Prosecutions. During 1976 and 1977, Tim defended Jones as he was becoming a "power broker" in San Francisco, winning over Mayor George Moscone, Assemblyman Willie Brown, and columnist Herb Caen. On February 16, 1977, Tim left to go live with his son, John Victor, in Jonestown. On November 18, 1978, Jim Jones exhorted action on Tim: "Somebody-can they talk to...San Francisco-see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy... He has done the thing he wanted to do: have us destroyed." Jones's loyalists then instigated an Attorney General by falsely charging Tim had manipulated the 1975 mayoral election. Although he was cleared, the public stigma remained. On his day of death, Jones rendered a curse: "We win when we go down. Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate... Then he'll destroy himself... I'm speaking as a prophet today." For nine years after Jonestown, Tim experienced profound grief and guilt. On April 1, 1988, he found relief due, he says, "to something totally outside my control." On March 9, 1997, he married a Swedish widow, Kersti ("Shesti"). It became the happiest of marriages. On June 26, 2000, he resumed his career as a California prosecuting attorney. In 2010, Tim was nominated to the California District Attorneys Association as Prosecutor of the Year. In 2014, he was honored as one of the five top wildlife prosecutors in the state, at a presentation attended by the governor.