Under the Federal parole system, a person sentenced to life in prison is not normally considered for parole until 10 years have been served. I spoke with a woman named Edith Parks, the matriarch of three generations of Temple members who wanted out. But he ordered them separated before they had consummated the marriage, and Mr. Blakey eventually left California to join the party establishing the cult's Guyana settlement. I was even unaffected by the rice weevils and other strange bugs we ingested daily.". '', See the article in its original context from. The hundreds of elderly were told that if they attempted escape, they would be left to die prolonged deaths alone in the depths of the jungle. After her operation, Mrs. Layton moved to Guyana. Sure enough, I could tell he had. [16] Then in October 1994, four individuals robbed a jewelry store in Palm Bay, Florida. After a few weeks, Layton grew "accustomed to the unusual smells in the food and drink. Layton grew up in an affluent Berkeley family. Its hard to know when it became obvious that he was dead, or when I realized that others werent pretending. As he grew older, Dr. Layton gravitated from Methodism to Quakerism, a faith with roots in the Reformation whose tenets included nonviolence, racial and religious toleration, rigorous selfdiscipline, and love and good works for the needy. A second jury convicted Larry, although four jurors took what the trial judge called an unprecedented step of asking for leniency in Larrys sentencing. While asserting that Mr. Jones was ''primarily responsible'' for the killings at the airstrip, Federal District Judge Robert F. Peckham said Mr. Layton would be eligible for parole after five years. Mr. Jones also apparently widened the rift between Larry Layton and his father. The petition for commutation filed with the Pardon Attorney in 1997 included 87 letters of support from former members of Peoples Temple, relatives of people who died in Jonestown, former prisoners and prison officials who knew Larry, scholars of religious studies and new religious movements, and members of the clergy. But, she said, I had to tell somebody what was happening in Jonestown. ref: Sparkle Lee Larry Layton 40-36 Tony Lundy 40-36 Lindsey Page 40-35 2020-01-10: Alicia Napoleon Espinosa: L-UD. 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. Lawrence Robert Lawton (born October 3, 1961) is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. To go back to the gunshots. ''It is not the proper forum for answering questions about Jonestown.'' Besides, when had a congressman ever been assassinated on foreign soil while on a congressional delegation trip? We listened as she offered a detailed and disturbing account of her experience. I was almost one of them. In May 1978, she was sent by Jones to Georgetown to chaperone some Temple children on a cultural exchange. They joined. After she left, he discovered that she had given a number of family valuables to the People's Temple. All I could think was I am not going to make Grandma live through my funeral. March 5, 1999. 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 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. Last May, while serving Mr. Jones as a trusted aide, she escaped from Jonestown and tried in vain to alert the world that he was preparing for a mass suicide in order to establish a place for himself in history. I felt my stomach knot. 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. With the camp surrounded by his armed guards, he told his followers to give the medicinegrape FlavorAid and Kool-Aid laced with cyanide and tranquilizersto the children and the elderly first. Mr. Jones, they said, could cure cancer. He genuinely believed that he had some sort of protective shield around him, despite the fact that we werent traveling with any military escort or protection. I hope tonight is the last one. Larrys parole came two years earlier than his previously-scheduled release date of April 2004. I dont have any money to donate, but Id like to volunteer. ADDRESSES: Home Berkeley, CA. [30][33] He was the first ex-con to ever become an honorary police officer. Five bullets had ripped through me, devastating the right side of my body. Mr. Layton, who was arrested at the airstrip, was initially tried in Guyana, a small country on the northern coast of South America, on charges of attempted murder against two cult defectors in the airport ambush. 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. I couldnt bear the vision of her sitting in front of my casket. But I refused to spend the rest of my life as a victim of Guyanathere were too many of them. Born in Crete, Indiana, in 1931, Jim Jones grew up an outcast and underdog, and was fixated on being recognized as someone greater. [10] He also founded the Reality Check program which aims to show teens the consequences of a criminal life. Officers & convicted felon give 'real talk' to Havelock Middle School students", "Real-Life Jewel Thief Breaks Down Inaccuracies of GTA 5's Jewelry Heist Mission", "Was ein Ex-Hftling zu "Prison Architect" zu sagen hat", Former Jewel Thief Reviews Famous Heist Movies, From Oceans Eleven to Heat, Posey Presents Reality Check Community Champion Award to Thomas Reed of Rockledge, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Lawton&oldid=1140595137, Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government, Short description is different from Wikidata, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 20 February 2023, at 20:41. They recovered and with the help of friends managed to reach Italy, later coming to the United States. 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. Almost immediately, Jones ordered Layton to Jonestown. Her father, a talented violinist hated his father for making him go into banking rather than music. ''This is a criminal case against Larry Layton,'' he said. In Jonestown Only one man, Temple member Larry Layton, was tried in the United States for his involvement in the November 18 events. History. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. [32] By 2010, Lawton had shipped 10,000 DVDs across the country. But finally her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung. The docket for Laytons trial through its various appeals through 1990 is here. The approach continued even after hed moved from Sacramento to Washington, D.C. By the following year, Jones was making a reputation for himself in. 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. I was kicked. The other, Carolyn, became one of Mr. Jones's mistresses and also his principal fnancial adviser; it is not known whether she is alive. Larry Layton Biography It looks like we don't have any Biography for Larry Layton yet. My ribs were broken. He was not paroled from an American prison until 2002. They were issued four T-shirts, four pairs of socks, a toothbrush and toothpaste, four pairs of underwear and a bar of soap. And then I realized that confirming one tiny detail could mean that the worst of the testimonies were true. (CHRONICLE PHOTO BY SUSANNA FROHMAN), Restaurant chain slated to close site at Bay Area mall, One of the largest movie theaters in SF to close permanently, Grapevine closed indefinitely due to heavy snow and ice, Plan to bring bullet train from LA to Vegas is underway, 'Zero visibility' conditions: All roads to Tahoe are closed, What it looks like inside Coit Towers former apartment, Graupel falls on Disneyland, shocks guests, Avalanche slams into Tahoe apartment building amid blizzard, Hundreds of thousands of workers have abandoned downtown SF, Tahoe's snowfall totals are on track to break records, Report: Matthew McConaughey has a massive Salesforce paycheck, Popular yet divisive fast food chain coming to this Bay Area town. I never played; I never learned how. 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. [25] He received an additional sentence in 2002 for giving false witness. 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 There is a sickening recording of Jones coercing his followers that day. I barely got a wink of sleep. 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. Infants cannot commit suicide. We heard that the church had weapons, and that Jones was paranoid and possibly on drugs. At Port Kaituma, while I ushered the defectors onto a plane, a large red tractor-trailer rumbled onto the airstrip. Religion: "Raised as a Quaker." Hobbies and other interests: Theater, music, painting, gardening. Lisa Layton was the next member of the family to join the cult. 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. How could I not like the good things they were doing?. Copyright 2023 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mr. Blakey survived the killings and suicides at Jonestown; he was on a boat owned by the commune at the time of the deaths. Jonestown: 13 Things You Should Know About Cult Mas. He was born June 30, 1940 in Long Branch NJ to William and Edna (Keller) Layton. But Lisa escaped from Hamburg, and in 1938, stunned by the antiSemitism she had seen, she arrived in New York with a determination never to reveal to anyone that she was Jewish. The bodies of Jones and 912 cult followers lay sprawled under the tropical trees of the commune, victims of an incredible murder-suicide rite. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. 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. 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. Join me, he assured his followers, and youll get health care, education and a family that would never mistreat you. 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. Larry, after graduating from Berkeley High School, enrolled at the University of California at Davis and soon was living with Carolyn Moore, a student whose father was a Protestant minister in Davis. [15] The robbers had dropped off jewelry for repairs, and later returned to rob the store. ''Look at whether their feelings against Jones were spilling over toward Larry Layton. Her father, a wealthy banker in Hamburg, and her mother would be marched off at gunpoint to a train bound for a concentration camp. Ten years later the road came to a dead end in the jungles of Guyana. She managed to contact her sister in Davis, who wired a ticket to Georgetown, where Layton and other Temple members were staying in a house the Temple owned. Leo Ryan wanted answers. There was no movement, but I thought the others might also be playing dead. In the weeks leading up to the White House decision on the petition, a number of former congressmen and religious leaders including Rev. 'I was a fool to leave California, but then I was a fool long before that,' he said. His father was a research scientist. My list kept growingwhat started with two names was now more than 40. 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. 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 November 1978. 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. Layton, 35, emerged as the only defendant alive and available for prosecution in the government's attempt to exact justice from the Jonestown horrors. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. In some way, I think he was a substitute husband and father figure who filled all the needs that I failed to give.. View Source Suggest Edits Memorial Photos Flowers Created by: Mike Added: 6 Apr 2021 Sam was far from the only person concerned about Jones malicious influence over a loved one. Layton did so. 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'A Tremendous Amount of Guilt'. Youll see what a wonderful place it is. He took us on a tour highlighting the most favorable aspects of the commune. The first trial ended in a hung jury. UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back, write a letter to President Jimmy Carter extolling Joness work, California's road to recovery runs through D.C. Republicans, Why New Jerseys ventilator guidelines may favor younger, whiter patients, Rhode Island ends specific restrictions on New Yorkers by making them national. Jim Jones would order more than 900 of his followers to commit suicide. Her cancer became so advanced that It was necessary for surgeons to remove a lung the of... Family valuables to the unusual smells in the jungles of Guyana: Theater, music, painting, gardening three. October 3, 1961 ) is an American ex-convict, author,,... On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the family to join the cult not! 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