Layton Called Part of Plot at Jonestown

SAN FRANCISCO —  On the eighth anniversary of the slaughter at Jonestown, a prosecutor told jurors Tuesday that former Peoples Temple member Larry Layton was part of a conspiracy to murder a congressman and keep the outside world from learning about conditions at the jungle compound.

“A number of persons, including Larry Layton, knowingly agreed to kill everyone who was planning to depart Jonestown,” including Rep. Leo Ryan (D-Calif.), fleeing temple dissidents, relatives and reporters, said U.S. Atty. Joseph Russoniello in his closing argument to the jury.

He interspersed his argument with tape-recorded segments of the Rev. Jim Jones’ speeches to his followers before Ryan and his party arrived on an investigating mission. The recordings included Jones’ warning that “if they enter this property illegally, they will not leave it alive.”

But defense lawyer Tony Tamburello said the prosecution failed to show that Layton had any part in the shootings of the federal officials and instead was trying to whip up the jury’s emotions with graphic details of the murders on an airstrip and reminders of the carnage that followed.

“So much death--you have a sense that someone has to pay for this,” Tamburello told jurors. But, he added, “Larry Layton is not responsible for those deaths.”

Ryan, three newsmen and a temple defector were shot to death by a temple ambush squad and 11 people were wounded on an airstrip in Guyana as they prepared to leave the South American country Nov. 18, 1978. Hours later, Jones and 912 followers died by poison and gunfire in a murder-suicide ritual at the cult’s nearby agricultural settlement.

Layton, 40, the only former temple member to be tried in the United States, is charged with conspiring with Jones and others to murder Ryan and Richard Dwyer, deputy U.S. chief of mission in Guyana, who was wounded at the airstrip. The charges are punishable by life in prison.

Layton is also charged with aiding and abetting in the attacks on both men by shooting two temple defectors, allegedly to avoid witnesses to the killings. Layton had gone to the airstrip posing as a defector.

Layton’s first trial, in 1981, ended in a hung jury. He was acquitted in an earlier trial in Guyana on charges of attempting to murder the two defectors, whose shootings in a foreign country are not punishable under U.S. law.

Layton is not accused of taking part in the shootings of Ryan and Dwyer because he had already boarded a separate plane carrying temple defectors when the shootings occurred. But the prosecution contends that he was part of an overall conspiracy to do anything necessary, including murder, to keep conditions at Jonestown a secret.

The defense portrayed Layton as a brainwashed Jones follower who had been deluded into believing that temple defectors were part of a CIA plot to destroy the group. The defense said that Layton was trying to kill the defectors, not Ryan or Dwyer. The defense rested its case without calling any witnesses, as it did at the first trial.

Russoniello said Layton, an obscure member of the Jonestown community, was the perfect person to play a vital role in the murder conspiracy.

“Who is the only person in all of Jonestown who is quiet, mild-mannered . . . experienced in the handling of firearms? . . . Only one, Larry Layton,” the prosecutor said.

“He was intent, he was deliberate, he was intelligent. He had the courage to persist in the face of certain failure. He wanted to be a hero.”