Layton Was Loyal to the End, Ex-Cult Member Testifies

Peoples Temple survivor Larry Layton, accused of conspiring to kill Rep. Leo Ryan (D-San Francisco), was not “an honest defector” when he left Jonestown with a congressional investigating party, a former cult member testified Thursday.

Dale Parks told a U.S. District Court jury that, when Layton got in one of the trucks to leave, “I expressed my concern to the others that he was not an honest defector.”

“I told them that he was on the truck as a plant and that he was still in a very loyal frame of mind to Jim Jones.”

Parks and several members of his family were Peoples Temple members at Jonestown. He was on the witness stand in the third week of testimony in Layton’s second trial on charges of conspiring to murder Ryan and U.S. diplomat Richard Dwyer as well as charges of aiding and abetting Ryan’s killing and the wounding of Dwyer.

Layton, 40, is the only person brought to trial in the United States in the congressman’s death. His first trial in 1981 ended with a deadlocked jury, which voted 11 to 1 for acquittal.

When an investigative delegation led by Ryan visited the cult’s Guyana commune in November, 1978, the Parks family decided to leave with it.

“It was a very fearful, anxious situation,” Parks said during his second day of testimony before Judge Robert Peckham.

He said that, when the delegation and group of defectors arrived at Port Kaituma airstrip, Layton boarded a small plane with Parks and four others. As the plane was about to take off, Parks said he heard shooting outside the plane and then saw Layton “pull a gun out of his groin area.”

“He started shooting passengers on the plane,” Parks said. After Layton fired five shots, Parks said he jumped forward to wrestle the gun out of Layton’s hand.

Meanwhile, Ryan, three journalists and Parks’ mother, Patty, were shot and killed in an ambush by Temple members who had followed the group to the airstrip.

The journalists killed were NBC reporter Don Harris, cameraman Bob Brown and San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson.

Shortly after the slayings, 913 people in the Jonestown commune, including Jones, committed suicide by drinking poison or were shot by other cult members.

Defense attorneys, led by Tony Tamburello, admit that Layton shot two temple defectors at the airstrip but deny that he was part of any larger conspiracy to kill Ryan and prevent the others from leaving Guyana.