Thinking Sideways: The Mills Family

Thinking Sideways: The Mills Family

May 21, 2015 • 1 hr 10 min

Episode Description

Al and Jeannie Mills were devoted members of the People's Temple of San Francisco until 1975, when they "defected". For this they were excoriated by Jim Jones, leader of the Temple, who reportedly called for their deaths not long before his own, in Jonestown, Guyana, in November 1978. In February 1980, the Mills (f/k/a Mertles) and their daughter Daphene were found murdered in their Berkeley home. By a Temple hit squad?

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways stories of things we simply don't know the
answer to. Hie there and welcome to another episode of
Thinking Sideways. I'm Joe, joined as always by Steve and

(00:28):
and we're here to solve another mystery. Are you ready sure?
What are we talking about? This week? We're gonna be
looking into the mystery of the Mills family of Berkeley, California.
Alan Jennie Mills lived at Woolsey Street in Berkeley with
two of their five children, Eddie and Daftning. And in
February nineteen eighty, Al, Jeannie and Daphne were found murdered

(00:49):
at each one shot execution style with the twenty two
caliber bullet in their heads. And they were exploding twenty
two bullets, weren't they. I've seen that somewhere. I did
not see that particular one as possible, and you could
have an exploding one like I'm guessing mostly just a
hollow point, but yeah, yeah, I mean you can. You
can make things like that. You see did you see
David the Jackal or read the book? Yeah, he made

(01:11):
these little exploding once using mercury. That's off the point,
but I was just I've seen it said that they
were shot in the head with exploding twenty two caliber routes. Yeah, uh,
that I did not know. I think just a regular
twenty two round will probably do the trick, though, I
think almost anything point blank. You think probably actually blanks
would kill you a point blank yeah, I think probably

(01:33):
even like a pellet gun point blank would like you
in the right place. Yeah, there's some damage. Yeah, oh,
anyway that But of course Eddie is unencountered for here.
Eddie was not killed. Eddie was seventeen at the time.
He was in his bedroom. He apparently said that he'd
gone into his room, smoked a little pot, was watching TV,
and he lived through the whole thing and didn't hear anything,

(01:55):
was completely unaware. Apparently his grandmother came over for a visit,
and she's the one who discovered the bodies, and then
maybe wasn't knocked on Eddie store and said, hey, Eddie,
you wear that everybody's dead out here. It was. It
was a Genie or Dafty who didn't die that day,
but two days later in the hospital. That's that's why
I'm asking, because I can't remember which one it was,

(02:17):
but one of them survived for a short amount of
time because she locked herself in the bathroom. I think
back to back to our murder. No murder weapon was
found and they never found it, and so are unsolved.
Mystery here is who killed the Mills family. Yeah, yeah,
good question, right, It's a very good question. Yeah. The
police were suspicious of Eddie because, after all, gunshots make

(02:38):
a lot of noise, and it seemed impossible that he
couldn't have heard them. Well, he could have been washing
his hair, just like Chutney. Yeah, it could have been
why I could have had the volume in his TV. Yeah,
the gym got a perm, got in the shower, washed
her hair, and then come found what movie are you

(02:59):
playing off of? Bond? You guys not memorized that movie.
I haven't even seen it. Actually, I've only seen bits
of it. Sorry. Yeah, well I was going to say
about Eddie is I've only I only found one source
for this, but one source said that he was actually
in his room listening to the stereo with headphones on. Yeah.
I've heard that too, so that that could also account

(03:21):
for it. And also nobody explained why he didn't hear
the shots. Yeah, well I don't think that will explain it.
Is there are there's a little thing called the suppressor.
You know. Well, and if he was watching TV loud,
if it was like a violent show or you know,
something like that, something would like Yeah, no, I I
looked up what was on TV that day? What was it?
I don't it was sitcoms because there there was three

(03:43):
major networks that in this is there's not a lot
of TV channels and they were all sitcoms at the time,
So it wasn't anything that would have had violent gun
battles going on. That might have blended in with the shots. Sure,
but like really loud yelling or things like that, that's
a mainstay of sitcoms, and laugh tracks and things like that,

(04:04):
all the laugh tracks. Interestingly enough, laugh tracks didn't exist
in the eighties, but that's another story for another train.
Um No, genuinely they didn't. But this, um, I don't know.
Maybe with the headphones on, he could have been watching
TV with headphones on yea, or like again, they used
to suppressor. You know, it doesn't make them silent, right,
but it does it will make them much quieter. And

(04:27):
if you got loud noises on in the other room,
then you're pretty much golden. Yeah, And I'm not sure
where his bedroom was. I assume it was upstairs. I
got on street view and looked at the look at
the neighborhood. It's all older, two story houses. And another
reason I think they might have used to suppress here
is the houses are really close together. Ye, neighbor hurting anything,
I was gonna say, nobody reported hearing. There are no

(04:50):
shouts or shots reported by anybody. Yeah. The shouts thing
is like the weirder part to me, I guess, And
I'm sure we'll get there, But I think we have
other things to be talking about right now. Right I
wold have been screaming and shouting. I have a serious
to why they didn't do that. Okay, Yeah, we'll get there. Yeah, okay.
Another another police were suspicious of that because of it
because of the gunshot thing. Also, there was no sign

(05:13):
of any forest entry, which again is not necessarily completely damning.
I would say, not even well. I mean, yeah, they
tested his hands. They found a little bit of gunpowder residue.
On the right hand, there was a possible motive for
Eddie to kill them, which is that he eventually did
wind up in heriting some money two seven thousand dollars,
which would be over seven hundred thou dollars in todays money. Okay,

(05:36):
well that's that's an okay motive. I don't know if
I don't know if i'd kill my family over seven
hundred grand I don't think I would. I don't think
I would either, But I like my family. It depends
on the day for me. Yeah. Yeah, that's the whole point,
right is do you like your family? Do you have
a good relationship with your family? Although, in fairness, I
don't think I would kill anyone. I don't I wouldn't

(05:56):
kill three strangers. Now, I wouldn't do it either. But
the local district attorney's office didn't bring any charges against
Eddie in the case was dropped. They started a lack
of evidence. And yeah, and there was another consideration, which
is that Alan Genie Mills had enemies who wanted them dead,
and these people had killed people before, and so possibly

(06:17):
we don't know that for completely ironclad sure, but quite
quite possibly. Yeah, well some of them did actually do
some killing, but we'll talk about that later. Um. And
so in the absence of a really ironclad case, I mean,
Eddie's defense attorneys would have had no trouble at all.
Convincing the jury or at least planning a little doubt
in their heads that was somebody else who did that. Yeah, yeah,

(06:40):
so another great reason not to bring a case, and
I trying to put them on trial. You probably want
to know about those deadly people I was talking about.
I'd like to know about them. Yet you want to
know about them, okay? So Alan Ginnie and their kids
had been involved for several years with the church called
the People's Temple, which had been and probably most of
our listeners have heard of the People's Temple, Jim Jones Jones, Yeah,

(07:01):
Jonestown and all that stuff. Yeah, they were involved with
those guys, and they started in nineteen sixty nine. I
believe they joined the church and uh stayed with it
until nineteen seventy five after they left the church. It
sees me the Temple they set in motion a chain
of events said eventually would result in assassination, lots and

(07:21):
lots of murders, and a whole bunch of suicides as well.
Although almost everybody in the People's Temple died, probably about
a hundred survived. And of those hundreds, some of them
were okay, And they were just regular people who have
been kind of been held prisoner in Jonestown or wherever,
and some of them were actually psychos who participated in
the whole killing school there. There was I'm getting a

(07:43):
little ahead of myself, but you know, everybody thinks that
Jonestown they all they all drank the Koolid and died
committed suicide. But as it happens that it appears that
a substantial number of the people there were actually murdered.
And I yeah, yeah, And I know we're we're going
to dive into this pretty deep or shortly, and I
guess yeah, But I do want to clarify for those

(08:04):
listeners who are unfamiliar, Joe is not just using a term.
It's not a turning a phrase of drinking the kool aid.
In this situation, people literally drank the kool aid and died.
I'm sure we'll get into that a little bit, but
I just wanted to go ahead and point that out.
Fun fact it was actually flavorid. Yeah, not cool aid.

(08:24):
Oh sorry, yeah, you know that's just so Yeah. Again
another mark against Jones. He cheaps out it doesn't drink.
It's one of those things. Uh, I can't think of
the term for it. When a brand name becomes so
recognized with a product that that's what everybody calls it,
regardless of what it is. It's like clean X, I
need a clean X, or a band aid or a

(08:46):
band aid. Yeah, it's it's exactly that. But that's why
it's the kool Aid, because that's what everybody called it,
no matter what it was. Yeah, that's how I would
have gotten out of being forced to drink the kool Aid.
And I said, I'm sorry, I don't drink that cheap crap.
You can get me some cool aid. Then we'll talk. Okay,
where was I I don't know, Oh yeah, okay, So

(09:08):
I was talking about how their actions eventually caused the
whole thing that happened at Jonestown. I mean not obviously,
they didn't deliberately wish for all those people to die,
quite the opposite. But among the survivors were the worst
of the worst, the ones who acted as temple as
guards and who administered beatings to people, and the ones
who forced people to drink the kool aid in the
end and murdered a bunch of people at the airstrip.

(09:30):
And we'll talk about that a little later too, And
you can bet that those people blamed Alan Jennie Mills
for the destruction of their nifty Little cult being the
strum that broke the camel's back. Yeah kind of. I mean,
I mean, Jones was unstable and he'd been talking about
mass suicide the earliest Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll talk about
the White Knights. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, the White Knights

(09:52):
are crazy. The whole thing is actually, this whole episode
is just insane. I read I read quite a quite
a large num road FBI files on this whole thing. Yeah,
and they interviewed all the survivors and stuff, and uh,
although the insanity of this whole thing, it's just and
I'd always known about this, but not in such detail.
This is one of those ones where you start reading

(10:14):
it and then you just get sucked into the documents
and wait, I got to read the next one, and
I got to read the next one, and I know
it's midnight, but I got to read the next one.
I didn't do that with this one, but I did
that with something that's upcoming. So it's easy to do. Yeah,
it's really easy. Do it fairly frequently. Just yeah, I

(10:34):
waste a lot of time on this stuff. Although it's
not a total waste of time. I I leaned some
good information out of there, absolutely, but it was it
was like a lot of reading and then here's a
little nugget, and then here's a little nugget, because well
it's the FBI files. They're all redacted, so it's it's
hard to read that. Yeah, all all these blacked out things,
you know. Yeah, Alan Genie Mills used to be called

(10:54):
Elmer and Deanna Myrtle, and then they changed their name
after they left the People's Temple. So the Myrtles joined
the People's Temple when it was in Yucayak, California. Originally
they started out in Indiana eventually, and then Jones got
a little paranoid about nuclear war, and he'd read an
article in the Atlantic where he heard that, you know,
the whole northern California kind of Redwoods area is a

(11:16):
really good place to survive on nuclear war, which is true.
Is that why you left the Indiana I thought it
was just that he was starting to get a lot
of negative press. I think it was partly that too,
But there was He's he apparently was very concerned about
the possibility of nuclear war, and of course this wasn't,
and it was the sixties one. You know, a lot
of people were kind of concerned about that possibility. Still
slightly concerned about it today. Yeah, me too. Yeah, I'm

(11:40):
more concerned about like asteroid impacts. But we'll talk about
that in another episode. Yeah, so I've already talked about
Jim Jones, James Warren Jones. He preached the gospel at
the Myrtles, kind of like it's all about equality and
people helping each other. And he was opposed to racism,
and he was kind of more and more he got
more stridently sort of socialist. You can blame the rich, Yeah,

(12:02):
I blame the rich for all the ills of the
world and stuff. And in the early days to Temple
really did do some good works. They would take in
drug addicts and straighten them out, you know, And of
course that's kind of like what the scientologists do too,
So I don't know, maybe maybe they had an alter
your motive there. They also encouraged adoption. They encouraged all
their members to adopt kids if they if they could
afford it. Jim Jones and his wife adopted five kids,

(12:23):
So it's a pass all the kids. That's a whole
lot of kids, and they also had one of their own,
Stephen Jones, who turned out to be kind of even
a bigger psycho than his dad. That's so weird. Sorry.
Growing up next to me, there was a family that
moved into this very large house and they were Evangelical Christians,
and they had one child and they adopted five more.

(12:44):
Whether it was their name Jones, no, I'm not gonna
tell you what I'm guessing basically this just hearing that,
reading that kind of Yeah, that's right, that's weird. They were.
They were a little creepy. They were definitely was definitely
Flanders esk creepy, creepy way. Yeah, anyway, sorry, back to

(13:05):
the start. Okay, so the Mills, even though they were
at this time still named Myrtle, the Myrtles, are the
are the Mills? They changed their entire names. Yeah, first
and last names. Okay, got it. Yeah, clarifying, So from
this point forward, are we calling them the Myrtles or
the Mills. I'm just going to call them the Mills.

(13:26):
That's probably a good way to go. Yeah, I think
so too. Jennie Mills eventually became a head of the
temple's publications office and and Al served as the official
church photographer among the things, because I think they still
kept their day jobs, or I'm pretty sure Al did.
And even though the Mills liked the temple and they
liked Jim Jones, he was pretty authoritarian even back then.

(13:47):
And that was the thing that just grew and grew
and grew. It's just time went by. He just slowly,
just slowly, just amped up, papped up the nuttiness. He
also had a lot of strange rules. Everybody was required
to write out and sign a confession to some heinous
crime or another like a murder, rape, robbery or something
to just like whatever, then sign it and then they
had to and then hand to hand a confession over

(14:08):
to Jones for safekeeping. Well that's a good way to
control the crap out of when you have a signed
confession from somebody. They do this or I'm giving this
to the cops. But I also wonder if it was
just if it I'm just trying to figure out how
that was pitched to get people to do it, and
wondering if that was something that he pitched as this
is a form of confession. Maybe you know you're you

(14:30):
didn't do this particular thing, but it's going to free
your soul or wipe the path the slate clean for you.
I mean, just not to draw too many how much
do you How do you get people to do it?
I think you know, not to draw too many parallels.
But you know, we've talked about the Scientolo. The Church
of Scientology gets people to sign contracts for literally all
of the rest of their lives for eternity. So that's

(14:52):
I mean, how do you pitch that without I mean,
there's some stuff that people do for religion or belief
just that is unexplainable to most of us. And I
and again we've had this conversation. I'll probably hold back
on a bunch of that today because I just it
baffles me. Yeah, I agree though, Yeah, he probably did
pitch it somewhere than I I want some black mail material,

(15:14):
But I sure you didn't put it out quite like that.
Not Yeah, but still, you know it would strike me
as a little bit odd. Yeah, I wouldn't do it,
but I don't think it was. You are. Also, every
time you went to church, I don't know what they
called it, they called it mass or whatever they come
you went to the temple. Yeah, every time you went
to the temple um you were required to sign a
blank sheet of paper, sign your name on a blank

(15:35):
sheet of paper. And they said it was for attendance
taking purposes. But couldn't she sign, like just have a
piece of paper that everybody signed their names. Yeah, yeah,
and instead of one sheet of paper per se, and
for clarity's sake, the people's temple. What denomination were they
even strenuously connected to? Were they? They were Christians? Weren't they? Yeah?

(15:58):
I can't remember what branch, but they really kind of
kind of evolved away from Christianity, right, I'm not going
to brand whatever they were, but they started out as
a quote unquote Christian, Yeah, yeah, but then became like
un Christian because towards the end they're saying they didn't
believe in God. Yeah. Well that's yeah, that's that's a
whole another ball of wax. But yeah, but they were,

(16:19):
you know, they moved to San Francisco, and they were
preaching the gospel and they were trying to do good things.
They were doing a few good things at the beginning.
At the beginning, presumably these sheets of paper you could
type of confession in over the signature. Later on, so yeah,
there could be. That's probably whatever. And people said that
they signed just dozens and dozens of these things. Well,

(16:41):
and then why even make them sign a like, why
even tell them that you're writing these confessions? Yeah? Why
not just do it on the downlow? Yeah? Okay, I
don't know. I don't understand a lot of this, so
I guess I should just asking questions. I mean, this
entire episode, as I said, it's just crazy, just so
we're that something crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also the

(17:09):
physical abuse started at one point. If you violated any rule,
and there were lots and lots of rules, then you
were beaten with paddles or with boards or whatever. Yeah, paddles. Yeah,
Jones loved a good padlin. Yeah, I know. And that's
what caused the Mills to leave the People's Temple. In
their daughter, Linda was beaten seventy times seventy smacks with

(17:32):
the paddle I guess, pretty hard. And they were upset
about that, so they left. Do you remember why? No? No,
I never actually heard what the actual offense was. Okay,
The offense was that their daughter had a friend that
Jones didn't like, and she ran up and gave her
a hug and Jones again didn't like her, branded her

(17:56):
as a lesbian and basically was punishing her for hanging
out with a lesbian who could corrupt her. I don't
know if this girl was in fact gay, and it
doesn't matter. It's that Jones decided that she was, and
because he had said, don't hang out with that girl,

(18:17):
and she probably went, oh my god, I haven't seen
anyone forever on over gavel a hug and got spotted
by Jones himself or one of the cronies. She got
thrown over his knee and beaten with a paddle thrown
over his knee. Well, I don't know if she actually
was bent over his knee, but she's seventy or seventy
five times, and that's that's a lot of whooping day,

(18:39):
it really is. Yeah, once is enough to set me right. Oh.
I remember as a kid getting in trouble and getting hit.
You know, I'd earned five whatever I did, earned five
smacks and that was enough. I didn't do anything for days, yes, ma'am, No, ma'am, yes, mama, no, mama. Sorry,
I'm like you. I wasn't as a child. I've got

(19:05):
a belt in the other room. Can you know, Okay,
I got a paddle. Not interested. Let's hear more about
the Mills, the mid family. So they left, and from
the temple's point of view, they defected and Jones. Jones
was not cool with people leaving the temple. Yeah, strangely enough, Yeah,

(19:25):
he said that, and it's got more and more frequent
as time went on. He said that the factors from
the temple should be killed, but most especially the ones
that should be killed are the ones who publicly criticize
the temple, which the Mills did. Yeah, the Mills did. Yeah,
we'll talk a little bit more about that in a
minute here. A few de factors did die are kind
of mysterious circumstances. The most mysterious one of alls, most

(19:49):
of them. Actually, it's kind of hard to say, but
there was one guy named Robert Houston Jr. Who was
a railroad world worker for his day job, and he
was a member from sixty nine to seventy six. Uh specifically,
October two, nineteen seventy six, he called his ex wife
and told her that he was leaving the People's Temple.
Three days later, on October five, his mangled body was

(20:10):
found on the railroad tracks where he worked. It was
listed as a train accident. But that's quite a coincidence.
Is a huge coincidence. And he was in San Francisco
where the temple was, Yeah, because the temple was still
in San Francisco at that time. Yeah, Okay, yeah, they
didn't They didn't leave the States until nineteen seventy seven.
But we'll get and actually it's still maintained a presence

(20:30):
in San Francisco even after they moved to Jonestown. But yeah,
so that's a strange one. There was another one who
was found hung in her garage and that was ruled
a suicide, but her son, Daniel believes that she wanted
to get out of the temple and she and that
she didn't kill herself. That was Maxine Harp. Maxine Harp,
her children were placed in a temple, temple foster homes
and a lot of welfare it was collected after she died.

(20:51):
So there, I suppose there's a motive. I'm not sure
about that that one. It's hard to say. Probably not.
That's another one who had a heart attack occupation that
they she but she was in her sixties. Um and
it's been said some people have accused the temple of
putting on giving her drugs to induce a heart attack.

(21:12):
Sounds substantiated. I think her name was truth Heart. And
again again it's hard to say. The next one was
John had He was a guy with mental issues. He
got a ten thousand dollar insurance settlement which he used
to buy silver bullion. Excuse me, a sil silver bullion.
That's what you make, you know, silver soup. Yeah, so

(21:35):
he bought some bully and ten thousand bucks with a
bully and apparently at the suggestion of a temple member,
and then the same temple member persuaded to join the temple,
and of course when he joined, he turned the bullion
over to Jones. Three weeks later, he jumped or fell
off of a three story warehouse and died. It was
ruled suicide. Maybe maybe not. Yeah, he did mental issues. Yeah.

(21:57):
These are all kind of like very convenient, yeah, but
slightly questionable if anything hinky was going on. Yeah, last
there was a guy named Chris Lewis who worked as
security for the temple. He actually came to the end
of the temple as a drug addict and he was
one of the success cases, but he wind up joining
the temple, and he became one of the one of

(22:19):
the thugs, one of the enforcers, and there was he
was security. Yeah, he was security, but you know, you
were things like he would he would call people up
who had left the temple and threatened them and stuff
like that. There's a lot of that going on. I
was reading about that in the FBI file. So he's
kind of a militant, would that be the right word. Yeah,
I guess, yeah, fiercely loyal to the temple. Uh. Some

(22:39):
people have said that he had become kind of a liability,
like a little pr liability for the temple. And so
he was found dead in late nineteen seventy seven, although
the police concluded that it was either drug related or
some sort of vengeance killing, but they did they did
rule it a murder. Yeah, yeah, it was that. Yeah
it was. But that's so again, there's no real evidence there,
but it's it's nd of weird. A lot of people

(23:01):
seem to be dying. Yeah, except for Robert Houston Jr.
Which I think really is suspicious. All these others there's
really not much evidence. But given all the incredibly murderous
things that happened later, I wouldn't entirely ruin rule it out.
So in ACTE, this is when the Myrtles changed their
name to Alan Jennie Mills, and that's when they founded

(23:21):
a group called the Concerned Relatives, which brought together They
got brought together a lot of former temple members who
were critical of the temple. They held press conferences. You
know that Jones just hated these people. They had press conferences.
They filed lawsuits on child custody and property disputes because
of course a lot of the kids were still in
the custody of the temple. A lot of people there

(23:42):
were people that wanted their kids back, a lot of
the temple had a lot of people's property. They wanted
their property back. They also lobbied Congress, and they eventually
came to the intention of Congressman Leo Ryan of California.
And if you're familiar with this case, you know who
Leo Ryan is. But we're we're gonna tell you more
about him in a few minutes here. In the summer

(24:03):
of nineteen seventy seven, an article appeared in New West
magazine which apparently they interviewed a whole bunch of former
Temple members and there was a lot of dirt in
this magazine article about Temple, and this has been listed
as the cause, the precipitating cause for them to pick
up and leave the US and moved to Guiana where

(24:24):
Jonestown was now Jonestown. They had they had actually been
building since nineteen seventy four and they had at least
several thousand acres of jungle from the Guiana government and
they had built a bunch of stuff and built a
bunch of a bunch of buildings and little little tiny
houses for most of the worker peace to be and
then and of course a much nicer accommodation for Jim Jones.

(24:45):
Of course they had a big open air pavilion, pavilion
in the center of camp, which is where you know,
people would go for to like to eat, and they
go for things like White Knights, which is when they
had get to sit around and listen to Jim Jones
ramble on randomly for hours. That stuff. Well, no, that
wasn't what the White Knights were. That was a regular
basis for just the White Knights were crisis crisis talks, right,

(25:08):
they were. They were crisis Knights where you were given
one of four decisions as a group to make. You
could commit suicide, you could fight back, you could run
and suddenly I can't think of what the fourth option was.
I remember there was four choices in the group communally
had to decide. Dropped down and curl up into a ball.

(25:30):
Oh that was it. Surrender? Yeah, that was actually surrender. Yeah,
I'm so glad. I don't I'm not part of a weird,
crazy cult. Yeah. Well, as far as I know, did
you find out why the Guiana and Guineas government gave
them the crown they gave him? No? I didn't figure
that one out why they did, but they had to

(25:54):
go through a whole bunch of red tape to do it,
and evidently they were. The government wasn't on board with
doing it at first. Are you talking about the temple
women who did favors? No, no, not at all, not
at all. They gave them a chunk of jungle land
that was basically useless from the government's perspective. But here's

(26:18):
the great thing. What's the other country that's on the border, Venezuela.
And so are you hinting that perhaps that was it
was like a handy way point for trucks modeling. No, No,
there was some friction between those two governments at the time,
and Guiana said, well, if we have this huge white

(26:40):
American population living right next to the border, they're not
going to invade because if they invade, they're gonna kill
all these people, and then the American government's gonna get
mad and come in and wipe them out. So it
was it was kind of a ploy to to put
Jonestown between themselves and and at a time of political enemy.

(27:02):
I see, that makes sense, especially if there's a border dispute. Yeah,
and that's it. It was. It was totally a border
issues and there was there's a whole long list of
stuff that was going on there. But that's that's the
simple version of it. Those crazy South Americans after they
migrated to Jonestown, the concern relatives stepped up their campaign.

(27:23):
So this is after the People's Temple moved to I
guess I did put that right after the People's Temple
moved to Jonestown, because they moved the majority of their congregation.
They moved about a thousand people down there, and you
would be concerned, especially if there were you know, any
kind of questionable things, yeah, or like kids that you
wanted back, or property you wanted back. It becomes way

(27:46):
harder to get all that stuff back. Oh yeah, I
really I think that's one of the reasons that Jones
took them all down there beyond the reach of US law.
So they accused Jones and the temple accurately of virtual
holding everybody their prisoner. They said that it was pretty
much a concentration camp. And uh, frankly, in reading the

(28:06):
FBI s files their interviews with people, that's a whole
lot of those people said, and he said it was
like living in a concentration camp. Temple though they said
that this is again the concerned relatives said that the
temple confiscated everyone's passports and their money, which would which
would make it impossible for them to leave, and that
all male outgoing and incoming was censored, and that everybody
accept the elite, looking at the guys with the guns

(28:28):
who were the guards kept them all aside, were forced
to work twelve hour days and field fed really crappy food.
Mostly what they ate was rice and gravy. Yeah, not
a not a healthy balanced diet. Yeah. And also people
were subjected to harsh punishment for very small infractions of
the rules. Everything the considered relative and relatives said was true,

(28:48):
and we talked about before. You know, Jim Jones would
get on stage and he would talk for an hour
to three at a time. Oh, sometimes end of the
wee hours. Yeah, you had to go after are working
a twelve hour day board and listen, and I bet
you got beat if you fell asleep. I imagine falling

(29:09):
asleep was highly frowned upon. Yeah, I can kind of
see why you would drink the kool aid after months,
I'll be honest, you know, at some point you kind
of hit that point where you're like, you know what,
honestly though, death is better than this, So we no,
I mean there's no awe about it. No, No, you
hit a point. We know. I can understand. I mean,

(29:31):
I were kind of making fun of the state of mind,
but I can't. I see what you're getting at being
genuine when I say that, So you know, I'm genuinely
saying that if I were subjected to this, I would
probably try to kill myself. I would try to escape myself.
And there were people who tried to escape there. There
was a small group of people put together a little
a little conspiracy, and they tried. They took some clothes

(29:53):
and stuff and put in bundles and prepositioned them out
in the jungle and stuff, so they didn't sense supplies
and things like that. So when they're all ready to
finally make their escape, then they could all just like
you know, beat feed into the jungle for them. It
didn't work out. Yeah, and unfortunately, what are the reasons
it didn't work out? Is? Um, Well, let's get back
to Congressman Ryan. The concerned relatives finally persuaded Congressman Ryan

(30:17):
to go to Jonestown to investigate and maybe, if possible,
get some of their relatives out of there. So he
went down to Guiana along with his assistant and a
bunch of journalists and also a bunch of relatives, and
in the end only four of them got to go
along and go into Jonestown, only for the relatives concerned,
because the rest of the whole entourage was the journalists

(30:38):
and the congressman and and also a lawyer for the
for the temple called named Charles Gary. And I read
his did he read his statement to the FBI? I
didn't find it. That's such a huge fun Yeah, yeah,
that was interesting. Yeah, they were. There are actually two
attorneys there that two attorneys there that day, there was
Charles Gary and Mark Lane, and their their story was

(31:01):
kind of interesting. Actually, um, I'll tell you a little
bit more about that, but prior to that, the Congressman
is in the entourage arriving in Jonestown. Of course this
came out in statements that all that everybody gave the FBI.
They were told and there was no one certain terms,
to act really happy, don't talk to these people if
you could possibly help it. Just go about your your

(31:21):
duties and just act like you're really thrilled to be here.
And of course you know, and of course they got
better food. That was one of the nice things about
having visitors come, because then suddenly they would get a
little meat for a change, and not just rice and
rice engraving and so yeah, and and and so they
put on this whole dog and pony chow chow to
make then and they actually had Ryan a bit fooled

(31:42):
at first. Uh. And then at that point he told
people that he was there if possible, if anybody wanted
to leave, to take them with him if you want to.
And so you'd encouraged people to let him know that
anybody wanted to leave. And meantime, uh, some of the
journalists that were there, we're getting little note handed to
them from people who were living in Jonestown and Jones

(32:03):
or something notes in the order I want to get
the hell out of here. Please. When did Ryan? When
was Ryan in Jonestown? He was there. He arrived on
November seventeenth, nineteen seventy eight, which is a Friday. Yeah,
and then uh, things really kind of went all to
hell the next day on November eighteen, because yeah, I

(32:25):
was I was just sitting here thinking. I can't remember
if he was here for two or three days? Yeah,
two days. Yeah. So at this point he realized that
there were people who wanted out, not everybody was drilled
and happy to be there. And yeah, and he told
Jones this, that people wanted out. And I believe the
number of people that wanted that Soul said they wanted
to go out was ultimately fourteen, but the number actually

(32:48):
was really a lot higher. I think a lot of
people were afraid to speak out. Yeah, yeah, I understandably. Yeah,
but I told you about the attorneys Mark Lane and
Charles Gary. Those guys actually didn't have a good relationship
at first, but it's sort of got better as as
And at one point they took a little walk. I
think it was Friday afternoon, it might have been Saturday,
but and I got this from Gary's statement to the FBI,

(33:10):
and Mark Lane said to him and says, don't tell
anybody this, but there are a lot of people in
this place who want out. You mean, Gary said to Lane.
Lane said that to Gary Gary, Gary was totally Gary
hadn't spent a lot of time in Jonestown and he
was totally totally had the wool pulled over his eyes
about this whole thing. So Lane was also a lawyer

(33:31):
for the temple. Yeah, he was. That was one of
the reasons they didn't get along is that Gary thought
he was the council for the temple and the found
out that that they found out that they had another
lawyer working, and then that really that really picked him off.
Time eventually got over it and they wound up actually
escaping together. But the so Lane told Gary that at

(33:52):
least a hundred and fifty people wanted out really bad,
and maybe he's thinking maybe his highest three hundred people
and how many people were living there at the time,
about the thousand, Yeah, roughly a thousand. Seems like maybe
a thousand actually wanted out. I mean, if you were
one of the elite, you know, you got to you
got to carry a gun and push people around it
you got better food, and you didn't. But how many, realistically,
like what percentage of them were the elite right at

(34:14):
the most? Yeah, not even probably more like about five
percent probably didn't want out. Okay, let's let's let's delve
into this a little bit as well. There is a
part of the masses that were happy. They're not all
of them, but happy. One of the reasons that those
people were happy and content is that they were on drunks, which, Joe,

(34:39):
do you remember what it was that they were feeding people.
I keep wanting to call it thorsen, and I know
that's not it. It's it was it was something to
keep them calm. Yeah. Yeah. And then and of course
if you if you can, committed a serious infraction, they
would send you that They send you off to this
this house where you'd basically be heavily sedated for weeks

(35:00):
at times sometimes. So people were super drugged up. They
were functional, but they were super drugged up. And so
they were happy, it's okay, no big deals. While they
may have in a sober state of mind, wanted out
in their state of mind, when everybody showed up, there

(35:21):
was a portion of them where the drugs were seriously
doing their job. And also also people didn't dare. A
lot of people didn't there confide to one another two
because Jones encouraged them all to inform in each other,
So you don't know who to trust. Yeah, I remember
the remember those people, and hopefully I remember remembering this,
remembering this correctly. But the people who pre pre positioned

(35:42):
some stuff in the jungle for for their escape, right, Yeah,
and they finally had to go. They didn't tell their
kids about it because they were afraid their kids would
inform on them. And so and then they go to
get their kids and tell the kids, Hey, you know,
we we gotta get out of We're leaving that. Sorry
we didn't tell you before, but now we're going. So
we're going down because it's like, oh, thank god, I've

(36:03):
been wanting to say something, but I was afraid you
to inform on me. Yeah. But then but then Ryan
shows up and he's saying, hey, anybody want to leave
and these guys decided to throw it with Ryan instead.
Well it's probably looked like a life raft. Oh yeah,
definitely turns out it had lots of holes. Yeah, bullet holes. Yeah.

(36:24):
Back to what what Mark Layne said to Gary that
Charles Gary, Uh, if he's right, at least probably at
least a hundred and fifty people were murdered because if
they were forced to drink cyanide against their will, So
we're talking the whole thing wasn't just a mass suicide,
it was a mass murder. Also, keeps deal, there's tons

(36:44):
of detail about this, and if you want to read
the FBI file, just send me an email and I'll
send you the link and post it. Yeah, well it's
that's a hard part. Is said. I don't think we
can actually post the FBI files, not because I know
we can supposed to link to them, but we can
waiting through a lot of Yeah, be prepared to search
through hundreds of documents that are hundreds of pages thick.

(37:09):
In fairness, I kind of have the impression that our
listeners would enjoy something like that. Oh no, no, no,
I'm just I'm just telling people. Yeah, well, we'll send
you the link. But be prepared to be over well
hours reading. I know Joe Diday's it's yeah yeah, So
I hate to cut this short, but the whole story

(37:33):
of them leaving the temple and getting out to the
air strip where they were will be picked up by
two airplanes the fourteen defectors, right, yeah, and plus the
entourage for Ryan. Yeah. Yeah. The whole story is a fascinating,
spell binding tail in and of itself. What happened at
the airstrip and everything, and what happened on the way
out to the airstrip. But I'm going to summarize it

(37:55):
really briefly. And I was reading that and I read
I read that story, like I say, interviewed all the
people that survived, and so I read that whole story
again and again and again, but told from a different
point of view, and it's very rashavon, like everyone was
kind of different. Some of them were a lot different,
and of course they all did different things, like one
guy ran off into the jungle and hid and just

(38:18):
washed in horrors what was happening. But anyway, back to
our thing, that the airstrip was six miles away from
Jonestown and they got all the way out there, and
then they were dropped off by a truck from Jonestown
and which turned and left, and their planes had not
yet arrived. But then pretty seen, the small one shows up. Uh,

(38:38):
then the larger one shows up. It's time to get
on board one of the Uh. One of the guys
that was there was a guy named Joe Wilson who
was head of security there and he apparently had he
was he was not defecting. But another guy who was
a plane, his name was Larry Layton, claimed that he
did wanted a fact, he wanted to leave. Joe Wilson

(39:00):
apparently gave late in the gun. So Layton got aboard
the small plane and then he started shooting people. And
at this time a tractor shows up from Jonestown telling
a trailer with a bunch of guys on it with
guns and automatic rifles. Yeah seven not all they were
automatic rifles. Yeah. And they showed up with guns and

(39:21):
started shooting the place up. Real good congressmen. Ryan was killed,
along with a bunch of other people, several of the journalists.
Several of the journalists were killed, a lot of people
were wounded. Also, some people escaped into the jungle and
there wasn't there one person who hid like under a
house that happened actually in Jonestown. That was in Jonestown. Yeah, sorry,

(39:41):
we'll talk about that. I'm jumping. Yeah, that's it's okay.
There's so many this is one of those things kind
of just a spiral. Yeah, yeah, there there's so many
individual stories it's hard to keep him straight. Yeah, and uh,
fascinating story. But anyway, Yes, some people survived the Congress.
That's why I said there was an assassination I considered
to be an assassination the congressmen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So

(40:03):
the whole thing was really tragic. The shoots all left
and went back to Jonestown where the infamous mass murder
suicide took place. It was really gruesome, especially the babies.
They did the babies first. Yeah, yeah, right, for I mean,
I think we're kind of making the assumption that people
do know what happened, and we've kind of alluded to it.

(40:23):
But I think in no uncertain terms we can say,
right that the people that were members of this cult
or whether willing or not, almost all of them drank
a kool Aid cyanide mixture and died and died. And
maybe I think a few of them got shot. Um
they I mean, you know, I think that we were
going to talk about this a little bit, but you know,

(40:45):
it was poured down babies throats. Yeah, people were held
at gunpoint, told to drink this liquid if they wouldn't
if they refused. You know, there were people who had
needle marks in them in places where it couldn't have
been self injected, like in the back, shoulder blade. And
it's speculated that maybe the needle marks were they were

(41:05):
held down, or the needle marks were from them giving
them more of something because they were having such an
adverse reaction. So it's not a smooth, peaceful transition. It's
a giant seizure. So let's just get them out and
due him in. I don't think cyanide is a super
pleasant no. Well, but it wasn't a straight cyanide concoction.

(41:28):
There was other stuff, but that makes it even worse
a little bit great, But so I just wanted to say,
you know, I think we're kind of making the assumption
that everybody knows, but I think it's unsafe to make
that assumption. I'll be the horrible person and just say
that's what happened. And a lot of the murder suicide
that we're talking about. Yeah, and so over nine hundred

(41:48):
people died. Part of the part of the description of
what happened there is next to a guy named O'Dell Rhodes.
He's the one who snuck off, smart guy hit under
a hit in her building and witnessed a lot of
this stuff. It must have been really fun to watch.
I'm sure say he felt glad to be where he

(42:09):
was and not out there drinking the kool aid. I
still can't imagine though, I would have been found because
of the sounds of mehrking my guts on just but
also just like crying, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. Some of
the other like the one of the accounts of one
of the guys who escaped when they started shooting up
the airplanes at the airstrip, he ran off to the

(42:30):
jungle about fifty yards away, and from the brush he
looked back to see what was going on. The guys
with the with the rifles were blowing people's brains out
at point blank range, spending finishing off the wounded. Well,
that had to be pretty horrifying to watch too. If
you want to hear anything disturbing We've talked about the
White Night tapes, so those were preparation for something going wrong,

(42:52):
and this the shooting of Congress and Ryan, that's something
going wrong. That last tape of Jim Jones is available
on the internet, and if you want to listen, it's
forty five minutes long. If you want to listen to something,
it's kind of creepy and kind of disturbing, but gives

(43:13):
you a pretty good perspective of what they were thinking.
Listen to that thing. I skimmed through bits and pieces
of it. It's really to me hard to listen to,
but it'll give you an idea their frame of mind. Yeah,
just want o crazy. But anyway, yeah, well making sure
that says that. Yeah, just a slide aside. The two attorneys,

(43:33):
Mark Lane and Charles Gary, after after Leo Ryan left
with all the factors that Jones was obviously he pretended
at the time, he said goodbye, shook their hands, gave
him back their passport. She pretended to be okay with it,
but he was actually, of course not okay with it. Furious,
I believe, yeah, And he said that. The two attorneys says, you, guys,

(43:53):
I want you to go to the East Guesthouse. That's
like in the east side of the compound, which is
the house that Jones original they lived in at first
until his final quarters were built. Says, you guys need
to go to the East West house. Everybody is really mad,
and the attorneys are going and what are you talking about.
People don't look all that mad to me, to us,
and says they're really mad. They're really mad. You just
better go there, and so they're like, okay. They took

(44:15):
their bags and they and they had it off to
the east side of Jonestown. It's on the edge of
the Jonestown and sat in there for a while pondering
what to do. Then they looked out the window and
they see a couple of guys, uh security guys coming
into the hut next door to their house. And they
came back out with a couple of rifles, and then
they came over to their their to their house, and

(44:36):
actually they weren't threatening, they were friendly, but they were
talking about how we're gonna they're going to commit revolutionary
suicide and all this stuff, and it would say it's
a blow for the workers cause in the idy got
and and the lawyers say, okay, that's that's cool. You
might want to think about something a little less drastic maybe.
And and after they left, these guys left and headed
off to the pavilion, which is where it was gathering

(44:57):
for the big, big show that the attorneys like looked
at each other and said, we should get out of here. Yeah,
And they snuck away and went into the jung Mill
And they spent the night in the jungle hiding there.
There's some gunshots and things like that, but yeah, they survived.
Smart move. Yeah, I definitely would have booked. Yeah, back
to the Mills. Afterward of what happened at Jonestown got

(45:20):
back to the US, the Mills family and a lot
of other concerned relatives and defectors, et cetera. Were put
under police protection because, of course, as I said, not
every temple member died, and the ones who survived a
lot of them were the worst of the worst. Are
seeing the worst of the worst, not the worst of
the worst? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The ones who didn't
take the poison where I think, for the most part,

(45:42):
the ones who forced everybody else too. And obviously they
weren't as committed to the church apparently not, and they
might have they might have rationalized it to themselves. All.
You know that the Reverend Jones really wanted me to
offer myself. But you know, I'm gonna tell myself that
I'm gonna stay alive to get revenge on all those
nasty defectors that could cause didn't Jones die? Yeah, drank

(46:02):
the kool a too. He shot him at the same time, right, Yes,
he died everyone else so I think his wife drank
the kool aid and in the end he ended up
taking his own life with a gun. Yeah. I went
to the FBI files on Jonestown anyway and found the
FBI's list of the most fanatical supporters of Jim Jones. Well,

(46:25):
this is compiled from the testimony of the survivors that
they interviewed. I also went to the files to try
to find out who lived and where they wound up.
And some of them actually lived and wound up back
in the US. Yeah. Starting with Terry Buford. She was
I think probably his one of the top people in
this organization, and she one interview, he said interview, he

(46:46):
said that she is the most dangerous person alive. Many others,
many others agreed with that. She's though she was one
of the elite. Gun carries the elite. Yeah, I one
of the elite and apparently means statistic dangerous back in
the US. Well, so, just as an interesting little point,
right that in this time it was a lot of

(47:07):
mixed races that were part of Jonestown. And also the
fact that there were a lot of women in high positions.
That's odd for anything of this time. So I'll just
go ahead and point that out. So at the very
least Jim Jones was equal. He was very progressive that
in terms of race. Yeah, he wasn't a raging e gallitarian.
We consider the way he ran his organization. Where did

(47:29):
he start out again, where did the church? Where did
the temple start out? It started out in Indiana. No,
I'm trying to remember, is that I remember the fact
that he didn't care about race because I know that
he lived in an area that was a mixed population,
which at that time was probably considered a slum. And

(47:51):
that's one of the things that I know he kind
of espoused about when they got to San Francisco. Well,
it's not or gender, because those were both really big
issues at that time. Anyway, So he had a lot
of women hired his organization because he was having sex
with him. Fair but for them all to be you know,
I don't know, equality man, Yeah yeah, equality, I don't know. Yeah.

(48:13):
So who else and are on our list from the FBI?
Stephen Jones was Jim Jones Son who was considered even
more dangerous than Jones, but luckily he was captured by
the by the Guineas and I believe he want spent
some time in prison down there. Oh they even recognized
yeah yeah, Larry Layton, the shooter at the airstrip. He survived,
but he was arrested, put on trial, and in prison.

(48:35):
He was imprisoned in Guiana until two thousand two. So
not a threat for the to the mills because some
other ones. That's a guy named Tim Jones. Again, these
are all the dangerous people. Don't know where about unknown?
Sandy Bratsch also considered dangerous whereabouts unknown? Uh, Eugene Smith,
Carl Bon, A dozen people. There's a lot of people,

(48:58):
and uh, there are several of them. Jimmy Jones Jr.
And John Cobb were in the US. They identified as
being in the US. So I mean and also that
does this is not even these none of these guys
were the guys that were on the trail. They're being
pulled behind the tractor that slaughtered all those people with
the airstrip. You gotta consider those guys dangerous too. Yeah. Yeah.

(49:19):
So anyway, the point I'm making here is that is
that there were some dangerous people still on the loose us. Yeah,
that's true. Yeah, and so they had reason to be
a little bit of fearful for their lives. So I
guess this brings us back to the initial question, who
killed them? Killed the Millers because the Mills, I, I
gotta be honest with you, I a little bit forgot

(49:40):
that that's what we were talking about. Well, we talked
about them for fifteen minutes, and now for the next
forty minutes we've talked about Jonestown. How did you forget
about the mill I don't know, but it was It's
very important background. It's the backstory to this whole thing.
I tried, I admit I tried to research this without
getting into Jonestown. There's no want to go down. It

(50:02):
was impossible. Anybody who was a part of that church group, cult,
whatever their story is tied up in it. Yeah, even
even the Mills, you know, the Mills. Even though they
never went to Jonestown at all, they still were involved
in the whole thing and trying to get people out
of there. Yeah. But by the way, this is the
side that there's a really great book about Jonestown called

(50:24):
Journey to Nowhere by Sheva and I Paul, and it
was published in the UK end of the title black
and white. But it's excellent book. I highly recommended. Sheva
and I Paul was brother of the brother of V. S.
And I Paul, who I'm sure you've heard of, literary
giant and all that, and she Sheva was also quite
a liberal literary giant. But he died unfortunately at the
age of forty of a heart attack, which is kind

(50:45):
of tragic for the world because he was a great writer.
But I recommend that book high. Like, now, that's not
a side. I guess we got to figure out who
killed the Mills family. Yeah, alright, let's lead off with theories.
You guys have any theories you like, I mean, no, no, okay, okay.
One theory is that Eddie did it. This is of
course what the Berkeley PD seems to think. They revived

(51:08):
this later on in the in the early adds a
cold case detective from Berkeley the dope back into it.
I guess reanalyzed the evidence and contacted the family and
asked them for any possible support he evidence that they
could sup goold supply. The family was basically like, we
don't think Eddie did, and we can't think of any

(51:28):
any evidence you know that's relevant that we're gonna give you.
So that was that, and you have this guy. The
detective still pursued his case against Eddie and managed to
get Eddie re arrested again, and that was in right. Yeah,
how did was he like out of the country or Yeah,
he was living in Japan. He actual he actually got
married at a couple of kids. It was living in
Japan and he came back for the holidays. So this

(51:51):
was an early December two thousand five, and they arrested
him at the airport. But I gotta say, I haven't
seen their evidence. I assume they've got more than just
the gunshot residue, because if that's all they've got, then dudes,
well that's the hard part is that it's a it's
technically it's a cold case, so they're not going to
release what they have. Yeah, exactly, so we we can
guess at what they have, but all we know about

(52:12):
for sure he's the gunshot. Well, but that's the other
frustrating thing is that they reopened the case. And usually
that's because the new evidence has come to light, right,
that's why they reopened cases. But it didn't seem like
anything new had come up. Yeah, I don't know. I
mean they might, you know, I mean, there have been changes,
and it might be that they still had evidence in
the evidence room like clothing and and tissue samples and

(52:35):
all kinds of stuff like that, and so maybe using
DNA they were able to but right to figure something out.
Well weren't. So he was arrested, but wasn't weren't there
no charges brought against him because the district attorney was like, no, seriously,
there's not enough evidence for this. Yeah right, I mean,
And so even even that's the thing, the big game

(52:55):
change there, you would think would be like DNA evidence,
But the problem with that is Eddie live in the
same damn houses them, right, their families, Like, hey, Eddie,
we found your DNA at the murder scene, we found
your fingerprint. Well yeah, weird, I know, I know, So
I have no idea. I had no idea what fresh
evidence this guy's got. As far as the gunshot residue.

(53:18):
I did a little research on gunshot residue, and I
had no idea. How unreliable that stuffily unreliable. It's bad. Yeah,
it is not what the television show c s I
tells you. It is. You have gunshot residue on your hands, sir,
you're guilty, yeah, case yeah, And according to this, this
is the one thing that I read. People can pick

(53:39):
it up from the from police officers. You can pick
it up from like shaking someone's hand, Yeah, pick it out, Yeah,
you can pick up from the police car. From you
can I mean, because there's gonna be gunshot residued police
stations and a lot of labs are themselves contaminated with
that stuff. When you also think maybe like if you
put handcuffs that, you've got your gun next to that,
you've got your hands next to that, all of that stuff,

(54:00):
you put it on someone's hands. Gunshot residue isn't a
permanent thing at last. I think it's four to six
hours on a surface before it gets rubbed off and
eventually diluted and disappeared. So having it on the cuffs,
per se. I wouldn't say, but the hands of the
cops if they're holding their gun or they've they've shot

(54:21):
their gun and put it back in the holster. But
that also makes me think, okay, well, if it's four
to six hours and he's got it in his right hand,
and he wasn't home that afternoon, and he went and
saw some friends who happened to be shooting a gun
and he greets them. What is the typical male greeting.
It's to shake hands, which transfers it to him, because

(54:42):
that's how easy it is to transfer this stuff. Well,
and also there's there's other things that can give you
a false positive on that test, like if you feel
like a break mechanic I was told you can. You
can actually even though you've not shot a gun at all,
you'll test positive and break dust. Yeah, I bet there's
some you know, stuff that you could pick up smoking
a lot of marijuana, if you had a certain kind

(55:05):
of lighter for instance, right, or if you had if
you were playing with fireworks because you're a seventeen year
old boy, or you know, there's just so much stuff
that can cause that positive that it just I just
don't find it any kind of now. I don't know
he could have picked it up in his own house too,
because I don't forget that the gun had been fired
three times. Yeah, just you know, And and and then he
goes and looks at these at the bodies of his family,

(55:26):
and that that stuff. You know that the residue from
a gun chat can can actually go three to five
feet away from where the gun is, And so he
was even if he didn't touch the bodies, if he
was touching something right next to them. We've probably got
some of that stuff on him. But I can't remember
it was all Ergenie. They found him in bed, or
maybe it was both. I can't and clarify this for me.
If you remember, Joe, I know that at least one

(55:48):
of them was in bed, Yeah, one in bed was
what was in the bathroom was the daughter was in
the bathroom. So it's it's entirely I think both parents
were in the bedroom. The one of them had fallen
out of bed. But the point is if those guns,
it's that gun was shot in the bedroom, and he
walks up and he places his hand on that parent's chest.

(56:10):
He's gonna pick up the gunshot residue, because that's less
than three feet away from their head where the gun
was fired. Yeah, I mean, I don't Eddie's story is
hinky to me, But I've got to say that it's
completely plausible that he just picked it up accidentally. As
far as as not hearing the gunshots, again, he was

(56:30):
washing his hair. He was washing his hair. Couldn't they
think they could have been the killers, could have used
a suppressor. As far as there were being no screaming
and shouting, Well, you know, when you realize that you're
confronted by a raging psycho from the temple who's going
to murder you, when your and your wife or your husband,
you're probably thinking about your kids. And if you're screaming shout,
the only thing you're going to accomplish is get Eddie

(56:50):
to come out of the room and get killed himself.
I think that's the reason Eddie survived. I don't think
they were there to kill the entire family if and
actually we shouldn't go into that too much anyway, But
so don't think it's that suspicious that Eddie didn't hear anything.
I mean that sense. So that's why I don't really
believe that Eddie did it. So sorry, okay, yeah, yeah, uh,

(57:11):
let's let's see the next one. It was it was
a drug deal gone bad because Eddie was, after all
it addicted to marijuana. Bunk. Yeah. Well, I mean, but
in fairness, right, like, if if it was a drug
deal gone bad because Eddie was addicted to marijuana, he
would be in not a great shape, right, It'd be
targeted at him. It wouldn't be targeted at his family

(57:32):
at the very least, he would have been involved in
some way. Like it's not that it was a drug
deal between family members, isn't. Don't you know, people to
put that that thing out there. I mean, there were
a lot of drugs being shipped down to the temple,
but they weren't like recreational drugs. No, I don't think so.
But well, and that's that's the thing that I'm wondering
about because I know that Joe, who is it there?

(57:55):
They're part of this theory is that somebody else was
supposed to be at the house, and that's who the
gunmen were after. Okay, okay, Well, we've talked a little
bit about this, is that there was a lot of
drugs in Jonestown. Some I've I've read the accountings that
I still don't understand how they did this, but somehow

(58:18):
they got around so many regulations to have drugs, pharmaceutical
grade drugs shipped from the US into Yana and go
through customs and get there. Well, that's all. It was
probably all those signed letters or some kind of bribe.
But the point is those drugs were coming from somewhere.
This is a year later, so it's possible that somebody

(58:41):
got out and intercepted one of those uh those shipments,
or was still receiving those shipments locally before they were
supposed to be sent down. That's all I don't remember.
I mean, there was there was a whole host of
drugs that were being sent to Jonestown. So it's completely
plausible that somebody said, wait, there's this completely legal stream

(59:08):
of drugs that I can get my hands on and
then sell on the street. Let's track that guy down
and the mills they were in the church, they're going
to know about it. Or Stowen was there and we
need to get him. And then the whole thing went
to went to pieces. Yeah. Maybe I know that some
people has speculated that they were looking for Stowe. And

(59:29):
I don't know if Stone was actually involved in the
whole drug business. And I don't know that at all.
Think about was that before he joined the church, he
was actually an assistant district attorney the area, and then
he left. He left that job for a while to
join the Temple, and he did a lot of legal
work for the Temple until he got disaffected. He left
and joined the Concerned Relatives, and now today he's back

(59:52):
to being a district attorney. So I don't think he's
the kind of guy would get involved with running illegal drugs,
But who knows. I mean, if if, how do I
say this without sounding like I'm bashing on his character.
If you can be convinced to fall in with the cult,
you can be convinced for at least a duration of

(01:00:14):
time to fall into a illegal narcon rate pitation. Probably
it's what Israel is not. I don't know, but I'm
not sure. If I think the Stone left, I think
he left the Temple in the nineteen seventies seven before
they went to So yeah, I don't know if he

(01:00:35):
was really involved with the whole level thing. I don't know.
They had to have some US contact shipping that stuff
down there. That's all I but but I know that's
not the only theory we've got that. We've got another
one here, a couple more. The FBI murdered them. I know,
this is a funny one. That's just hilarious. I just somebody,
somebody is to put that, put this out on the internet,

(01:00:57):
and I think it's absurd. But yeah, the FBI, and
once they rung every bit of information out of the mills,
they totally interrogated them, and they killed them rather than
let the story leak out. That's the dumbest thing. It's
really dumb. I have a question. Yeah, what story? What
story had they not already told books and news interviews? Yeah,

(01:01:18):
And you know the thing about it is too, is
that they were at their house interviewing them, and then
Eddie before he went off to the bedroom and smoked
and smoked a little pot and watched two he took
he took a long shower. He's washing his hair. Yeah,
he's washing his hair, and so presumably presumably, uh, he
would be making noise. I mean they'd be like interviewing

(01:01:40):
them then then downstairs and and they'd hear the they
hear the water running and stuff, and then they hear
him come out of the bathroom and walked down the
hallway and go into his bedroom. And this is upstairs,
but it still would make some noise, so they would
have known to go that there was somebody else they
needed to kill before they left the house. Right, Well,
maybe that's why Daphne died instead of him as they
found her because she hid in the bathroom. Yeah, so

(01:02:02):
maybe they found her outside the bathroom. This is so
much bunk. But this doesn't make a damn bit of sense. Yeah,
is there anything? It makes no sense. And the only
the theory is that you know what, I'm my favorite
is that it was a people's temple hit team. It
really does. There was there was motive. There was motive,

(01:02:22):
and those people were killers at and there was a
ladies and gentlemen. If if you do go to that
FBI side that we were talking about and you start
reading through there's docs, there is so many accountings of
the hit squad. They're gonna go after, they're going to
do this. I mean, it was Jones was saying this

(01:02:43):
over and over and so many these interviewees. This was
always popping up in these interviews, which is just scary. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it had to. Once you're done in Beanna
and your passportsman confiscated and all your money too. These
people must have been just scared out of their minds.

(01:03:05):
I mean you're being looked, you know, being beaten for
the slightest infraction. You don't dare talk to anybody else
because they might rat you out. And this guy is
and you can sell from watching Jones was deteriorating by
the end. He was lunear and lunear, and he said
he told everybody had multiple forms of cancer or multiple diseases.

(01:03:29):
It's also speculated that he was getting more and more
into the drugs that they were shipping in. Oh, if
you listen to that Jonestown tape that I talked about
on the Last Night, if you listen to earlier recordings
of Jones, his voice is pretty clear and he's running

(01:03:50):
an easy train of thought. And then you listen to
the Jonestown Last Night tape and he almost he has
a bit of a lisp, which if you've ever been
around somebody who's heavily drugged or has been on drugs
for a long time, like they're there, their speech functions
start to slow and stumble, and that's what he sounded like. Yeah,

(01:04:14):
it's it's really yeah, So it wouldn't surprise me a
whole lot. Yeah. So anyways, back to Eddie for a second.
As I said, he was re arrested once again. He
did a few days in the pokey and then they
put it in front of the d a's office again,
and again the d S office does no. And that's it.

(01:04:34):
So they went back to Japan's went back to Japan,
and I'll bet you he'll never come back to the
st at that point. But he's got you know, I
think I think he's got a built in defense there.
Though again, I mean it's obviously obviously the three of
us the most brilliant detectives in America. It's not the way.
Have already concluded that there's no way the prosecution can

(01:04:55):
win a case against Eddie. I mean, unless unless they've
really got some serio reously damning evidence against him. There
there ain't no way. So it's a waste of time,
you would. You have to have to find the smoking gun.
That's the only way they could ever pin it on Eddie.
They found a gun in his stuff, and it just
never got brought forward. That's not happening because if you

(01:05:20):
did have a gun, he's gotten rid of it by now. Yeah. Yeah.
And the other thing, that's another thing I forgot to mention,
is that is the gun. They didn't find the gun, Eddie,
isn't so Now, if you're going to take off after
you burger your family and go get rid of the gun,
which I presume you gonna want to do a sun
distance from your house hopefully, yeah, you don't just drop
it down the storm drain in front of your house.

(01:05:43):
So obviously he had to go a little distance. Now,
wouldn't it make sense to just stay away for a
while and then come home a little late and say,
oh my god, I s not got the back because
I wanted to go like hang out with my buddies
and smoke some pots, smoke some pot and uh and
I'm not now that's put these cars here and dead buddies.
Oh my god. And instead he just goes up, he
goes out, disposes of the gun, comes back, this goes

(01:06:05):
to his room and sits around, knowing that that's going
to arouse suspicion, right, Yeah, I don't think so. Yeah, Yeah,
I've seen speculation that maybe Eddie wasn't as disenchanted with
the temple as his parents were granted five years later
because they left in Okay. So his parents were shot

(01:06:29):
five four and a half, five years later. But there's
speculation that he wasn't as disenchanted or as an angsty
teenager was saying, oh so much better when we were
with the temple blah blah blah, and somehow was coerced
in doing it that way. But that, again, that doesn't
make any sense to me because the timeline is too long.

(01:06:50):
If it had been a year, I could totally buy
that if his parents had left the year before and
then he you know, you could see him doing it
then because he miss that and he still believe. But
five years just too long for me. Well, the other
thing that the interviewing thing, of course, was Jonestown. And
you know, even if you've been a little miffed, and
I'll say at age twelve when they left, you know,

(01:07:12):
after seeing what happened at Jonestown, he's got mom and dad.
I've been a little angry with you, but you know what,
I thank you. I really want to thank you for
saving my life. Yeah, yeah, I don't think he'd be mad.
I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's no way. So I
don't know unless unless it's just a raging psycho. He
hasn't exhibited any other raging psycho tendencies anywhere, not at all.

(01:07:35):
So yeah, and so again yeah, people stample, people stample,
people stample. Okay, so Mr Solid, it's time to wrap
this up and let you wonderful listeners get on with
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(01:09:44):
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