Layton Guilty of Role in ’78 Ryan Murder

Former Jonestown cult member Larry Layton was convicted of conspiracy today in the killing of California Rep. Leo Ryan and wounding of a U.S. diplomat in a 1978 jungle ambush that preceded the mass murder-suicide of 913 Peoples Temple members in Guyana.

The verdict came in Layton’s second U.S. trial on the charges. His first trial ended in 1981 with a jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for acquittal.

Layton, 40, who sat expressionless while the verdict was read, was the only one of the temple survivors held to account in the United States for the killing of Ryan and wounding of State Department diplomat Richard Dwyer.

He was brought to the United States and charged with membership in a purported conspiracy to kill Ryan and Dwyer, both internationally protected figures under U.S. law since Ryan was a congressman and Dwyer was a diplomat.

Killed in Ambush

On Nov. 18, 1978, Ryan was killed by ambush in a burst of gunfire at the Port Kaituma airstrip near Jonestown. Three journalists and a temple defector also died in the shootings. Eleven people were wounded.

Within hours of the shootings, 912 Peoples Temple members--exhorted by the ravings of their charismatic cult leader, the Rev. Jim Jones--died in a mass murder-suicide. Jones died with them.

They drank cyanide-laced soft drink, in what Jones had called “revolutionary suicide.” He had harangued the temple members for weeks that the outside world would try to destroy the temple.