Picker, you said, "I wished someone would have moved earlier against Jim Jones, don't you?" I'm not an expert on Jim Jones, or what they were doing down there in South America. I think they moved to get away from being harassed, or perhaps to escape some criminal act. I don't know. What I do know is I used to shoe horses for members of Jones cult when they were in Northern California -- Redwood Valley to be exact. My nephew dated Jones daughter in high school. We all thought the church was weird, but the people I dealt with were all nice. When asked, they swore that Jones never came into the church through a door, he entered through a wall. And I mean they really believed that. I never challenged that, they were customers, and I said "Wow," and put their money in my pocket. So I was quite surprised about the suicides. I think the biggest problem they had was inter racial, at least when they were in Redwood Valley. Most all the couples were mixed races, at a time in our history when that wasn't accepted by most of the people that I talked to, and one of my clients was a shrink at the State Hospital, and he didn't accept what they were doing. When I had anything to do with them, as far as I can remember, they did nothing that would cause the government to come down on them. I understand things kind of went to pot in Giana, and a fed investigation was launched, but that had nothing to do with guns. In Redwood Valley they didn't flaunt guns. If they owned any, certainly nobody cared. What law were they breaking that the cult could have been broken up and Jones arrested? None that I can think of. I didn't think they were all that bad, it was mostly the mixed race relationships that were causing the problems, and the rumor was that if you were married, you had to let Jones service your wife anytime he wanted. But I don't know it that was true, however it was spoken out loud around town, and even though I think it's stupid, I don't think it's against the law. Certainly not Federal law. They weren't bad people, and they stayed to themselves, paid their way, making no problems for anyone else. I moved to Nevada several years before they moved to south America, so don't know if anything or what might have happened after I left. So you think Jones should have been stopped sooner. Have you got any ideas how you would go about doing that? How about Scientology, you going to raid them as well? I don't even think a cult can be raided in a liberal utopia like Chicago.
