28 Facts About Timothy Stoen

Timothy Oliver Stoen was born on January 16,1938 and is an American attorney best known for his central role as a member of the Peoples Temple, and as an opponent of the group during a multi-year custody battle over his six-year-old son, John.

Timothy Stoen continued to work as a deputy district attorney in Mendocino County, California, where he was assigned to the District Attorney's Fort Bragg office.

Timothy Stoen was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the child of religious middle-class parents from Littleton, Colorado.

Timothy Stoen graduated from Stanford Law School in 1964 and was admitted to the California bar in 1965.

Timothy Stoen worked for a year in an Oakland real estate office before joining the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office in Ukiah as a deputy district attorney.

In 1967, Timothy Stoen left this position with the intention of doing work for flower children and similar hippie groups in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, and worked as a staff attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County.

In 1970, Timothy Stoen married Grace Lucy Grech, whom he had met at a march at the San Francisco Civic Center against overpopulation and pollution.

Timothy Stoen first encountered the Peoples Temple when it was suggested that he ask the group to help renovate the Mendocino County legal aid offices.

Two dozen Temple volunteers showed up the following Sunday, and Timothy Stoen began sending people to the Temple for drug and marriage counseling.

Timothy Stoen became impressed with the purported character and good deeds of the Temple's leader, Reverend Jim Jones, especially when he saw Jones scrubbing toilets in the Temple's Ukiah headquarters.

In 1970, Timothy Stoen moved to the Temple's headquarters, where he worked as a deputy district attorney and head of Mendocino County's civil division.

Timothy Stoen began providing legal aid for the Temple and politically converted to the Temple's socialist ideology.

Timothy Stoen found no evidence of election fraud, but Temple members later alleged that the Temple arranged for "busloads" of members to be transported from Redwood Valley to San Francisco to vote in that election under threats of physical violence.

On February 6,1972, just two weeks after his son John was born, Timothy Stoen signed an affidavit in which he stated that Jones was the child's biological father.

Timothy Stoen quit his job as assistant district attorney and began working in Guyana, both at Jonestown and at the Temple's headquarters in the capital of Georgetown.

However, distrustful Temple members were secretly spying on Timothy Stoen and examining the contents of his briefcase.

Timothy Stoen subsequently became the chief antagonist to Jones, who encouraged Jonestown residents to write detailed, humiliating fantasies about murdering Timothy Stoen.

Timothy Stoen wrote the US State Department inquiring about North Korea and Albania.

Timothy Stoen became the Concerned Relatives' primary legal representative and filed four court actions against the Temple and its leadership on November 18,1978, on the group's behalf.

In January 1978, Timothy Stoen travelled to Georgetown in an unsuccessful bid to take custody of the child.

Timothy Stoen wrote a white paper to Congress that stated how Jones was illegally holding his son.

In later affidavits and lawsuits filed in 1978, Timothy Stoen cited communications the group had intercepted through their monitoring.

Timothy Stoen acted as the lawyer in three different lawsuits filed in May and June 1978 on behalf of members of the Concerned Relatives against Jones and other Temple members, collectively seeking over $56 million in damages.

The suit alleged that Timothy Stoen was attempting to "harass and oppress" his former client and sought to enjoin Timothy Stoen from soliciting former members as clients in suits against the Temple.

On November 15,1978, both Grace and Tim Timothy Stoen traveled with the Ryan delegation to Georgetown.

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

Six-year-old John Timothy Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones' cabin at Jonestown.

Later, Timothy Stoen returned to work for the district attorney's offices in Humboldt and Mendocino counties.