Her fears were, of course, founded and not only did her mother die of cancer in Jonestown shortly before the mass suicide, but Larry was convicted for the conspiracy to kill Congressman Leo Ryan and is still in prison. Concerned for her mother, brother and friends still in Jonestown, she went to both the press and the State Department to warn of a possible mass suicide-murder but found few who believed her.
By May 1978, Layton had engineered a complex escape plan and returned to the U.S. In the months that followed, she became aware of trouble in ""Paradise,"" realizing she had arrived in a work camp patrolled by armed guards and ruled by a deceitful ""Father"" (Jones), who practiced manipulative mind-control tactics, dictated grueling physical labor, staged suicide drills and devised bizarre punishments such as wrapping a boa constrictor around the neck of a ""sinner"" or hanging children upside-down in a well. For seven years, she was Jones's close confidante in California, and in 1977, she left with her mother for the ""Promised Land"" of Jonestown. A troubled teen from an affluent family in Berkeley, Calif., Layton and her mother were introduced to Jones by her brother, Larry.
Published on the 20th anniversary of the suicide-murder of more than 900 followers of Reverend Jim Jones in the Guyanese jungle, Layton's book is the first by a former high-level member of the People's Temple.
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