1978 SPECIAL REPORT: "TIM AND MIKE CARTER SPEAK OUT ON JONESTOWN"

By October 1978, all of the defectors had allied with Stoen and the Concerned Relatives.


On October 3, Stoen told the State Department that he would retrieve his son John from Jonestown by force if necessary. Three days later he sent a telegram reiterating the threat and warning of the danger of mass suicide at the settlement.


As pressure grew, the Temple learned that Stoen would accompany a investigatory trip by Rep. Ryan to Guyana. On November 15, 1978, both Grace and Tim Stoen traveled with the Ryan delegation to Georgetown. However, they were not permitted to accompany the delegation on its trip to Jonestown on November 17.


While the Stoens remained in Georgetown, the Ryan delegation was attacked on November 18 at an airstrip in Port Kaituma, near Jonestown. Ryan and four others were killed by Temple members wielding rifles and shotguns, while several others were injured.


Stoen encountered Jones' son Stephan in his Georgetown hotel, neither knowing that Jones was conducting a mass murder-suicide two hundred miles away.


As they spoke, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown, 276 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around the settlement's central pavilion. An audio recording of Jones, speaking to his followers during the massacre, mentions Stoen: Jones stated:

What we'd like to get are the people that caused this stuff, and some – if some people here are p – are prepared and know how to do that, to go in town and get Timothy Stoen, but there's no plane. There's no plane. You can't catch a plane in time. He's responsible for it. He brought these people to us. He and [Jeannie Mills]. The people in San Francisco will not – not be idle over this. They'll not take our death in vain, you know. ...

It's suicide. Plenty have done it. Stoen has done it. But somebody ought to live. Somebody – Can they talk to – and I've talked to San Francisco – see that Stoen does not get by with this infamy – with this infamy. He has done the thing he wanted to do. Have us destroyed. ...

Tim Stoen has nobody else to hate. He has nobody else to hate. Then he'll destroy himself.
— Jim Jones on the final "death tape"

Jones also discussed whether the Temple should include Stoen among the names of those committing "revolutionary suicide", and whether to include children in the plan:

do you think I'd put John's life above others? If I put John's life above others, I wouldn't be standing with Ujara [nickname of Don Sly, a Temple member who attempted to stab Rep. Ryan]. I'd send John out – out, and he could go out on the driveway tonight. ... I know, but he's no – he's no different to me than any of these children here. He's just one of my children. I don't prefer one above another. I don't prefer him above Ujara. I can't do that. I can't separate myself from your actions or his actions.
— Jim Jones on the final "death tape"

Six-year-old John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin at Jonestown.[66] The mass murder-suicide was the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster until September 11, 2001.