Her Story


The family traveled to the People’s Temple when she was twelve years old and the final move came in 1970. Early indoctrination proved to make her viable to the church. She became devoted to the ideology of living a life of serving. Later years, she would doubt, discover and decide that the life of Peoples Temple was not the life she wanted. Witnessing brutality, manipulation, control she began to separate herself. Married, 19 and a mom, Jim Jones and her husband planned the ultimate plan. Her son Jakari, then not quite two years old was the pawn for Leslie to re-dedicate her to the so-called cause of “socialism.”

Confused and brainwashed, Leslie actually thought that her son, Jakari would be better without her; now that she was considered bourgeois’ and non-productive. Her husband Joe Wilson further convinced her that Jakari would thrive in Jonestown, and she did not fight to keep him in the States. Jakari left with a close older friend of Leslie’s along with Jim Jones, when he made his cowardly escape from the United States after the Peoples Temple’s deceptive and cult like tactics were exposed in an article published in the magazine “New West.”
Two months later she would get a phone call telling her it was time to go to Jonestown. She heard a voice speak before she could answer “If you don’t go now, you will never see your son again.” That was her first encounter with faith. The rest is history.