Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the People's Temple
Deborah Layton
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0385489846
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple and Jonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "truly unforgettable" (Kirkus Review) story of how one woman was seduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and how she found her way back to sanity.
From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share of cult tragedies. But none has been quite so dramatic or compelling as the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which the Reverend Jim Jones and 913 of his disciples perished. Deborah Layton had been a member of the Peoples Temple for seven years when she departed for Jonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the South American jungle. When she arrived, however, Layton saw that something was seriously wrong. Jones constantly spoke of a revolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that he had enough control over the minds of the Jonestown residents to carry it out. But her pleas for help--and her sworn affidavit to the U.S. government--fell on skeptical ears. In this very personal account, Layton opens up the shadowy world of cults and shows how anyone can fall under their spell. Seductive Poison is both an unflinching historical document and a riveting story of intrigue, power, and murder.
I was six years old, brought home the realization that I was excluded from my mother’s world. My sixteen-year-old brother, Tommy, and Mama were sitting together on the front porch. They were talking, but I saw a thin trail of smoke rising over my mother’s shoulder. I knew that couldn’t be, as Papa had forbidden anyone from smoking—it was trashy and only uneducated people did it. I also knew that what I had seen was a secret, which I faithfully kept to protect Mama. I longed to join Mama and Tom
this closed society, a community inhabited by kids who had been boarders since they were eleven years old. I found it hard to break through the tight bonds and cliques and find a comfortable niche. To make matters worse, my first experience as a Jew came the second day of school, in the dining room. One of the girls joked with another boarder that she was a “Jew” for not sharing her dessert. Everyone snickered when someone else whispered, “Kike!” Like my mother, I was an alien in an enemy
Guyana, their sister country, to provide a year of medical-humanitarian service work before going into practice back home. “The Guyanese government is very appreciative,” she said. “They try to entice the doctors to stay and settle down. There are often functions, dances, and dinners hosted by the Ministry of Health for their benefit.” I was enchanted. As we continued our tour of Georgetown, I peeked into a department store window. The display windows were empty and dust was collecting on the
I didn’t know how I would survive the Box. The Box was a small underground cubicle to which even children would be sentenced if they had thought or done something Father thought punishable. It was six by four feet, dark, hot, and claustrophobic. Poor Jeff had been kept inside for ten days. People kept there were given nothing but mush to eat and drink. There was also the Well, a punishment used especially for children. They would be taken to the Well in the dark of night, hung upside down by a
foraging for edible shrubs along the jungle’s extremity. I always concentrated on finding a special green leaf, the one Mary, the magical chef, and her kitchen staff used for our Sunday-only vegetables, my favorite treat. There was also an extraordinary purple root, which we used to season other rare dishes. Mary’s special leaves, the long, mossy, green one with blood-red spines, were always hidden under a faint emerald mother shrub with bright saffron flecks. I moved forward, squatting, my knees