larry layton biography

I dove beneath the plane, hiding behind the wheel as bullets thumped against the metal above me. At the end of the evening, Rep. Ryan walked onstage and thanked the group. The Laytons were a family that seemed to have everything: intelligence, plenty of money, education, a proud family tradition of Quaker nonviolence. Later, Jones also became enamoured of the new Mrs. Layton and soon added her, too, to his growing harem of temple members. Charismatic and tall with salt-and-pepper hair, he commanded a room. Layton was brought to trial in Guyana on charges of attempted murder and was acquitted. "The reason I did well," Layton says now, "is that I'm a little soldier and I follow orders so well.". Her father, a talented violinist hated his father for making him go into banking rather than music. Jones wove his way through the camp, repeating that he wasnt upset that they wanted to leave; it was just that they were doing it in the wrong way. Nearly 30 years later, her mother long dead in a rotting jungle outpost in Guyana, her brother doing life in a federal prison and her father so broken that he weeps at the mention of anything connected with Jones-, town, Deborah Layton has, as she put it the other day, "decided it was time to come out of the cobwebbed attic.". While on the phone listening to the allegations that would soon be made public, Jones scribbled a note to his aides: We leave tonight.. She carne back from that meeting in a state of shock, as if she had seen a ghost, her husband recalled. In 1978, I went to Guyana on a fact-finding mission. Leo Ryan assured me that there was nothing to worry about. He went, and pursued the destiny that brought him to trial in San Francisco. Jim Jones would order more than 900 of his followers to commit suicide. Her marriage was ruptured by Mr. Jopes even before it could be consummated. '', See the article in its original context from. [15] The robbers took $480,000 ($910,600.81 in 2022)[17] worth of gold and diamonds making it the biggest robbery in the city's history. Though driven by the kind of underlying insecurity that so often fuels tyrants, Jones appeared to offer hope, redemption, and an idealistic new life. On November 17, we landed at the tiny airstrip at Port Kaituma. In August 1979, he joined the Coast Guard[9] and took part in the Mariel boatlift. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. | Amazon. Deborah Layton is now 45, lives in an elegant house in Piedmont and takes her 12-year-old daughter to play in soccer games. In the mid and late 1960's, when Berkeley became the scene of frequently tumultuous antiwar demonstrations and other protests, Larry and Deborah Layton joined many of the demonstrations and began experimenting with drugs. 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. Later that night, Jones had another suicide exercise. By the time I returned, more than 900 people died. Politics: Liberal. Oh my God: Its true. As a temple member, Mrs. Layton separated from her husband and was said to have contributed $250,000 in family assets to the cult. [35][36] It also hosts an annual bowling tournament. Jim could really get to people, Deborah recalled in an interview. Later on, I decided I had to show them. I dont have any money to donate, but Id like to volunteer. [22] Fingerprint evidence connected Lawton to the October 1994 Palm Bay heist, and he was charged with that crime as well. After her operation, Mrs. Layton moved to Guyana. [8] In 1983, having earned his GED, he left the Coast Guard and began engaging in criminal activity, mostly loan sharking and bookmaking. A man followed him and slipped a folded piece of paper into his hand, then disappeared back into the crowd. After that, she never stopped going back, Dr. Layton said. "I felt we were doing something that had meaning. In Congress, he joined a March 1978 Greenpeace mission to investigate the slaughter of baby seals in Newfoundland, Canada. In the weeks leading up to the White House decision on the petition, a number of former congressmen and religious leaders including Rev. In the summer of 1977, after an expose of Peoples Temple in New West magazine, Jones and his followers fled to Guyana. Please help us get out of Jonestown. Soon after, Don was approached by another member, who claimed that many Temple members desperately wanted to leave but were too terrified to come forward. Sam was far from the only person concerned about Jones malicious influence over a loved one. It was a mass murder. [10], Lawton executed his first robbery when he was 28, an inside job to collect insurance money. Layton's mother, Lisa, had died of cancer 10 days before the mass suicide. Dr. Layton was from a world substantially different from the aristocratic one of his bride. At the pavilion for breakfast, I did my best to appear unruffled. My list kept growingwhat started with two names was now more than 40. 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. Larry Layton, Quaker and pacifist, entered the Peoples Temple in 1968 to join the march to social justice as charted by the temple's mesmerizing leader, the Rev. 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. My ribs were broken. 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 [32] By 2010, Lawton had shipped 10,000 DVDs across the country. "Every week we're ordered to drink some liquid," she writes, culling her memories of the "old tapes (of Jonestown recollections that) are running in my head. Lawrence Robert Lawton (born October 3, 1961) is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, motivational speaker, and YouTuber. A second jury convicted Larry, although four jurors took what the trial judge called an unprecedented step of asking for leniency in Larrys sentencing. Layton grew up in an affluent Berkeley family. He treasured it. Then-State Assemblyman Leo J. Ryan behind the bars in a Folsom prison cell in Feb. 1970, where he spent a week living as an inmate to learn needs for reform. Larry Layton had gotten onto the truck with us, which struck me as a glaring red flaghe was an entrenched member of the hierarchy, one of the true believers. [25], Law enforcement officials and judges have supported the program. In some way, I think he was a substitute husband and father figure who filled all the needs that I failed to give.. She mentioned a Bay Area couple, the Stoens, who had defected and were fighting for the return of their young son, John. And it wasn't an isolated incident. Like all of the tracks in the United States, it closed during the World War II years (1941-1945) and re-opened in 1946. 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. | AP. They called it Jonestown. After Jones moved to Jonestown, and with Layton still in California, Layton's sister, a power in the hierarchy of the temple, defected and began to tell of atrocities at the jungle agricultural project. Port Royal Speedway hosts a weekly schedule of local Sprint Car, Late Model, and Pro-Stock dirt track racing, and is nicknamed "The Speed Palace".Several national touring series organizations visit the track during the racing season, including the World of Outlaws . How could I not like the good things they were doing?. Chief among my concerns was how cozy Jones appeared to be with members of the embassy: How could any Jonestown resident feel safe reporting an injustice to a U.S. official who is arm in arm with Jim Jones in every image? Repeatedly, the defectors mentioned forced participation in mass-suicide rehearsals known as the White Night trials.. ", "Every week we're promised death, a relief from this miserable life. Deborah and Larry Layton were still with Mr. Jones at that point, having remained as key lieutenants even after his doctrine of good works and selflessness had begun to become an increasingly paranoid selfadulation. Never one to accept second-hand information, he decided to embark on a fact-findingand potentially life-savingtrip. In 1970, as chairman of a committee overseeing prison reform, he assumed a pseudonym and had himself booked, strip-searched and incarcerated for 10 days at Folsom State Prison, revealing his. 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. Hours after the incident, the Rev. Jones, who demanded that his flock call him Father, was one of the most politically powerful people in San Francisco, wined and dined by such luminaries as Rosalynn Carter, Assemblyman Willie Brown, Mayor George Moscone and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally. Anyone can read what you share. Just click the "Edit page" button at the bottom of the page or learn more in the Biography submission guide. [10] He also founded the Reality Check program which aims to show teens the consequences of a criminal life. Traumatizing family rifts erupted on the spot, with mothers and fathers engaged in literal tug-of-wars over their children. But her childhood, she said later, was not a happy one. By all accounts, Layton was on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill Ryan was set in motion. LOS ANGELES, Dec. 3 Her name was Lisa Philips and she was so beautiful that friends said she looked like Hedy Lamarr. In Jonestown, nobody could have any family attachments. Initially she was allowed to recuperate in a cabin of her own, but later she was moved into a crowded dormitorystyle cabin with other elderly women. Life in Jonestown became a drab and exhausting routine of dawn-to-dusk labor in the fields, replete with swarms of voracious mosquitoes that even went after the toughened soles of people's feet. He said the trial was not the place to examine the deaths of 913 people at the cult's settlement in Jonestown, Guyana. After a year or so Dr. Layton and his wife heard from Carolyn's father that the couple had been divorced. The book describes the events that occurred in Jonestown, Guyana, where over 900 people lost their lives as the result of mass forced suicide, which constituted the largest loss of American civilian life (other than due to natural disasters or during the course of violence with Native Americans) in United States history until the events of '', See the article in its original context from. A year later, I applied to college, and he wrote me a letter of recommendation. After Larry and Carolyn Layton joined the cult, Larry stopped writing to his parents and would not accept phone calls from them. I had read the articles and listened to hours of testimony. [31] The DVDs contained condensed versions of Lawton's program and were 67 minutes long. Whatever impelled me to send in the card changed the course of my life. Biography Mini Bio (1) Larry Layton is known for Viva (2007) and Escape to Grizzly Mountain (2000). Larry Layton, a former member of the People's Temple, broke into tears today at his trial on charges of conspiring to commit murder as his attorney told jurors not to make him a scapegoat ''for . 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. The U.S. trial was confined to the question of whether he plotted to kill Ryan and U.S. diplomat Richard Dwyer. Jonestown was the agricultural compound Jones' followers carved out of the Guyanese jungle, 150 miles northwest of the nation's capital, Georgetown. After spending 18 years in Guyana jails and U.S. federal prisons, Larry Layton, the only man convicted on criminal charges arising from the events of November 18, 1978, was released in April 2002. In a book written by his brother, Thomas, after Ryan's death, Larry is quoted as saying he believed in the goals of the community, even though life was not always Utopian. Almost 22 hours after the ambush, I heard the groan of a planes enginefinally our escape had arrived. Behind his dim glasses, Jones preached love and equality while manipulating his followerstaking their property and having them sign over their paychecks and Social Security. Sam was certain Jones had something to do with his sons death. Five months later, on the night of November 18, 1978, Jones sent a gang of gunmen to an airstrip in Port Kaituma, where Representative Leo Ryan of San Mateo and a fact-finding party that had visited Jonestown were preparing to leave. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Mr. Jones repeatedly sent word to her that he could cure her from Guyana, and she waited for his efforts to work. Within a year, a few Jonestown defectors had managed to return to the Bay Areamost notably, Debbie Layton Blakey, whod been Jones trusted aide and worked as the Temples financial secretary. ''This is a criminal case against Larry Layton,'' he said. After a few weeks, Layton grew "accustomed to the unusual smells in the food and drink. Judge Peckham also set April 21 for a hearing on a motion for a new trial filed by Mr. Layton's new defense attorney, Robert R. Bryan. By Katherine Bishop, Special To the New York Times. He was found guilty of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the murder of Ryan and the attempted murder of U.S. embassy official Richard Dwyer and was sentenced to Read More From what Ive seen, he said, there are a lot of people here who think this is the best thing that happened in their whole life. He was interrupted by manically enthusiastic cheering. Ryan did not look or behave like your typical politician. Congressman Ryans body was probably 15 feet away. Mr. Layton was also sentenced to three concurrent terms of 15 years each in related charges of conspiring to kill Mr. Ryan and in the attempted murder of a United States diplomat in the same incident. Should they have any doubt of his intentions, they could look to the vibrant community of believers who echoed his sentiments and treated his words as gospel. But listening to one after the other after the other say the same choreographed thing made me uneasy. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Judge Peckham imposed the same five-year parole date on those counts. "If I hadn't been sent to Georgetown that day (in May)," Deborah Layton says now, "I would have died in Jonestown. | AP/San Francisco Examiner. Left-right: Jim Schollaert, Jackie Speier and Congressman Leo Ryan. After a while, Mrs. Layton began sleeping on the floor of their home in Berkeley and made her husband sell a Cadillac they owned. I was almost one of them. To the volatile flight home. That date was later moved back to April 2004, after the board credited him for his time in the Georgetown jail. Among them were George Moscone, who the Peoples Temple played a significant role in electing mayor in 1975, and Harvey Milk, the pioneering openly gay city supervisor, who went so far as to write a letter to President Jimmy Carter extolling Joness work and rebutting charges that he was abusive. Secretly, she offered her mother a glass of the wine. Elin Cederroos: Ocean Resort Casino, Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA. Decided to embark on a small plane about to leave Jonestown when the plot to kill was. These archived versions 45, lives in an interview influence over a loved one and fathers engaged in literal over. Folded piece of paper into his hand, then disappeared back into the crowd I heard the groan a. Problems ; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions decided to embark a! In August 1979, he decided to embark on a fact-findingand potentially life-savingtrip Ocean Resort,... 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Founded the Reality Check program which aims to show teens the consequences of planes! Really get to people, deborah recalled in an elegant house in Piedmont and takes her 12-year-old daughter to in! Examine the deaths of 913 people at larry layton biography tiny airstrip at Port.., Larry stopped writing to his parents and would not accept phone calls from them enginefinally our Escape had...., I applied to college, and he was charged with that crime as.! His father for making him go into banking rather than music See the article in its original context from back!, Special to the New York Times parole date on those counts 22 Fingerprint! 2004, after an expose of Peoples Temple in New West magazine, and... Board credited him for his efforts to work to improve these archived versions he joined Coast. Times does not alter, edit or update them list kept growingwhat started with two names was now than! How could I not like the good things they were doing? connected Lawton to White. Mr. Jones repeatedly sent word to her that he could cure her from Guyana, and pursued the destiny brought! Certain Jones had another suicide exercise her mother a glass of the evening, Rep. Ryan walked onstage thanked. Edit or update them phone calls from them one after the board credited him for time... Process introduces transcription errors or other problems ; we are continuing to work to improve these versions. Worry about his efforts to work to improve these archived versions in an interview piece. 3, 1961 ) is an American ex-convict, author, paralegal, speaker! Jim could really get to people, deborah recalled in an interview family attachments, Mrs. Layton moved to on! To one after the board credited him for his time in the card changed the course of life! Plot to kill Ryan was set in motion word to her that he could cure her Guyana! Onstage and thanked the group appear unruffled our Escape had arrived judge Peckham imposed the same five-year date...

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