Timothy Oliver Stoen (born January 16, 1938) is an American attorney best known for his central role as a member of the Peoples Temple, and as an opponent of the group during a multi-year custody battle over his six-year-old son, John. The custody battle triggered a chain of events which led to U.S. Representative Leo Ryan's investigation into the Temple's remote settlement of Jonestown in northern Guyana, which became internationally notorious in 1978 after 918 peopleincluding Stoen's sondied in the settlement and on a nearby airstrip. Stoen continued to work as a deputy district attorney in Mendocino County, California, where he was assigned to the District Attorney's Fort Bragg office. Stoen later joined the Mendocino County Public Defenders. He is now in the private practice of law.
Early life Timothy Stoen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,Stoen, Timothy Oliver, SmartVote Timother Oliver Stoen election biography. State of California, 1998 the child of religious middle-class parents from Littleton, Colorado. Throughout high school and college he was a scholar, athlete and devout Christian. Stoen graduated from Wheaton College with a B.A. in political science. He graduated from Stanford Law School in 1964 and was admitted to the California bar in 1965.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 108.
Stoen worked for a year in an Oakland real estate office before joining the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office in Ukiah as a deputy district attorney.Stoen, Timothy Oliver, SmartVote Timother Oliver Stoen Candidate Page, State of California, 1998 In 1967, Stoen left this position with the intention of doing work for flower children and similar hippie groups in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and also worked as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County. Though he represented black militants and supported an ecological platform, he briefly considered running for office as a Republican.
In 1970, Stoen married Grace Lucy Grech, whom he had met at a march at the San Francisco Civic Center against overpopulation and pollution.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 107. Their son, John Victor Stoen, was born on January 25, 1972.
Temple beginnings
Introduction to Peoples Temple
Stoen first encountered the Peoples Temple when it was suggested that he ask the group to help renovate the Mendocino County legal aid offices. Two dozen Temple volunteers showed up the following Sunday, and Stoen began sending people to the Temple for drug and marriage counseling.Sims, Hank, Tim Stoen's Story, North Coast Journal, September 25, 2003 He became impressed with the purported character and good deeds of the Temple's leader, Reverend Jim Jones, especially when he saw Jones scrubbing toilets in the Temple's Ukiah headquarters. By the end of 1969, when violence erupted in Berkeley over People's Park and Third World students' rights, Stoen began to integrate his personal life with the Temple.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 109.
In 1970, Stoen moved to the Temple's headquarters, where he worked as a deputy district attorney and head of Mendocino County's civil division.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 110. He began providing legal aid for the Temple and politically converted to the Temple's socialist ideology.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 112.
San Francisco Assistant District Attorney
Despite still referring to its Ukiah facility as its "mother church", the Peoples Temple moved its headquarters to San Francisco around 1972. Following the 1975 mayoral election, former San Francisco District Attorney Joseph Freitas named Stoen to lead a special unit to investigate election fraud charges.Taylor, Michael, "Jones Captivated S.F.'s Liberal Elite", San Francisco Chronicle, November 12, 1998 Shortly thereafter, Freitas hired Stoen as an assistant district attorney in the consumer frauds division.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 270.
Stoen found no evidence of election fraud, but Temple members later alleged that the Temple arranged for "busloads" of members to be transported from Redwood Valley to San Francisco to vote in that election under threats of physical violence.Crewdson, John, "Followers Say Jim Jones Directed Voting Frauds", New York Times, December 16, 1978 When asked how Jones could know for whom they voted, one member responded, "You don't understand, we wanted to do what he told us to." Stoen later claimed that he was not aware at the time of election fraud, despite being in charge of the special unit investigating that specific crime, but that it could have happened without his knowledge because, "Jim Jones kept a lot of things from me."
Defection from the Peoples Temple On February 6, 1972, just two weeks after his son John was born, Stoen signed an affidavit in which he stated that Jones was the child's biological father. The single-page document eventually became the most important piece of paper in the Temple's history. Stoen's affidavit not only seemed to contradict his putative paternity, but also "bound the child to Jones and the church for life." In the years to follow, Jones would cite the affidavit countless times to demonstrate his paternity of the child, to denigrate Grace's worthiness to be a mother, and to dismiss Stoen's claims of custody rights.
Grace, meanwhile, had grown to greatly dislike the Temple. Not only had she been forced to give up John by signing the affidavit, but she had also been berated and threatened sometimes by Jones himself in Temple meetings for denying Jones' paternity of the child, watched the child be publicly paddled, listened to Jones portray Stoen as a homosexual, and witnessed the beating of a 40-year-old woman who had claimed the Temple turned members into robots.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 286-7. Grace and Temple member Walter "Smitty" Jones (no relation to Jim Jones) agreed to leave together.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 287. In July 1976, Grace and Smitty fled to Lake Tahoe.
Grace was unable to take John with her; he had already been sent to the Temple's Jonestown settlement in Guyana, and she did not want to put his life in jeopardy along with hers. Nevertheless, Grace began to fight for custody almost immediately after her defection. In February 1977, Grace threatened to divorce Stoen.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 316 Fearing that possible legal action against Stoen would make the custody dispute public, Jones sent him to Jonestown. Stoen quit his job as assistant district attorney and began working in Guyana, both at Jonestown and at the Temple's headquarters in the capital of Georgetown.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 317 However, distrustful Temple members were secretly spying on Stoen and examining the contents of his briefcase.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 323 Within a year, Stoen also left the Temple, returned to San Francisco, and joined Grace's custody battle. Stoen subsequently became the chief antagonist to Jones, who encouraged Jonestown residents to write detailed, humiliating fantasies about murdering Stoen.
Battling the Temple In July 1977, Jones moved several hundred Temple members to Jonestown,Layton, Deborah. (1998) Seductive Poison. Anchor, 1999. . p. 113. on the same night that an editor at New West magazine read Jones a pending article, written by Marshall Kilduff, detailing allegations of abuse by former Temple members.Kilduff, Marshall and Phil Tracy. "Inside Peoples Temple." Alternative Considerations of Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Jonestown Project: San Diego State University. August 1, 1977. Two months later, a Georgetown court ordered the Temple to show cause why a final order should not be issued compelling the return of John to his mother.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 361 A few days later, the same court issued a second order for Jones' arrest.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 366
In fear of being held in contempt of the court orders, and in an attempt to further manipulate his followers, Jones staged a false sniper attack on himself and began a series of "White Night" rallies, called the "Six Day Siege", where he told Temple members about attacks from outsiders and had members surround Jonestown with guns and machetes.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 360-72 Angela Davis and Huey Newton communicated via radio-telephone to the Jonestown crowd, urging them to hold strong against the "conspiracy."Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 369 Jones made radio broadcasts stating "we will die unless we are granted freedom from harassment and asylum."Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 367 Guyanese Deputy Prime Minister Ptolemy Reid finally assured Jones' wife Marceline that Guyana Defence Force would not invade Jonestown.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 370 A court clerk refused to sign the arrest warrant for Jones, and there was talk of interference in the legal process by the Guyanese government.Kilduff, Marshall and Ron Javers. Suicide Cult: The Inside Story of the Peoples Temple Sect and the Massacre in Guyana. Bantam Books, New York, 1978. . page 108.
After this initial round of the Stoen custody dispute, Jones directed Temple members to write to over a dozen foreign governments inquiring about their immigration policies in the event that they had to flee Guyana.Reiterman, Tim and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . p. 371 He also wrote the U.S. State Department inquiring about North Korea and Albania.
Concerned Relatives Meanwhile, in San Francisco, the Stoens and other relatives of Jonestown members began attending meetings at the home of Jeannie Mills.Reiterman, Tim, and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Dutton, 1982. . page 408 Calling themselves the "Concerned Relatives", the group began sharing details of their grievances with the Temple, interviewed Temple defectors, and reviewed shortwave radio transcripts of communications between Jonestown and the Temple's San Francisco headquarters. Temple surveillance teams, aware of these meetings, checked licence plates in front of Mills' house to determine the identity of their "enemies." Stoen's addition to the group was vital because of his knowledge of Temple operations, his letter-writing campaigns to the Secretary of State and the Guyanese government, and his trips to Washington, D.C. to lobby for a federal investigation. Stoen became the Concerned Relatives' primary legal representative and filed four court actions against the Temple and its leadership on November 18, 1978, on the group's behalf.