Seductive Poison - Deborah Layton

Seductive Poison - Deborah Layton ... followers of Reverend Jim Jones in the Guyanese jungle, Layton's book tells the story of a troubled teen and her affluent family in Berkeley, who became trapped in Jones's web. 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. 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. By May 1978, Layton had engineered a complex escape plan and returned to the U.S. 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. 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.