Jim Jones’ Right-Hand Woman: Carolyn Layton (feat. Laura Elizabeth Woollett)

Criminal Broads

Cloud10

True Crime, History, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 November 2018

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

While many remember the 1978 Jonestown massacre as a dark monument to the power of a single man’s paranoia and fanaticism, the tale of Jim Jones’ lover, Carolyn Layton, reveals a more complicated narrative—and a more frightening truth. Carolyn was a bubbly young woman who believed in pacifism and political engagement, but when she met Jim Jones, she became an unsmiling woman would do anything for Jones’ cause—including death. Was this a personality change, or had Carolyn been a secret fanatic all along? Author Laura Elizabeth Woollett comes on the podcast to tell us Carolyn’s long-forgotten story, which she covers in her latest novel, Beautiful Revolutionary. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Is it a skin? A crime? Loving you dear life I do. Is this a crime?
0:17.0	Is this a swine, then I'm guilty,
0:27.0	guilty of loving you.
0:30.0	Hello, all you true crime fanatics. to criminal broads a true crime and history
0:35.3	podcast about wild women on the wrong side of the law I'm Tori Telfer your podcast
0:39.6	host and I am also someone who recently got in trouble for bringing up Jeffrey Dahmer, not once, but three times in conversation with a stranger.
0:49.0	I thought my anecdotes are relevant, but the stranger thought that I was horrifying. Anyway, today I have a very special
0:56.5	guest for you. We are going to hear from an extraordinarily talented lady who was recommended to me by a lovely listener named
1:04.6	Yesenia who emailed me months ago suggesting I get in touch with this author so
1:08.6	Yasenia thank you I hope you enjoy this. Laura Elizabeth Woollet is an Australian writer who writes a lot about
1:16.4	the real women of history who have for better or for much much worse fallen in love
1:21.7	with extraordinarily bad men.
1:24.4	Her short story collection, the love of a bad man, dives into the girlfriends, the wives,
1:29.5	the mistresses of men like Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Paul Bernardo, and Charles Starkweather, who we actually talked about in episode 8.
1:38.0	Her latest novel, which came out in July, is called Beautiful Revolutionary, and though the book is fiction she did so much intense
1:45.0	research for it that I thought it would be fun to have her on the podcast so she
1:48.0	could tell us a little bit about what she uncovered. Because this is a story that we're all probably pretty familiar with
1:55.2	but we're only familiar with half of it. We're familiar with the man in the story.
2:00.8	We're very familiar with the man in this story. But Beautiful
2:04.3	Revolutionary is the tale of the woman in this story. A woman named
2:08.9	Carolyn Leighton. Carolyn Leighton. Did you know that name? I didn't, but I knew the name of her lover and I bet you will too. His name was Jim Jones. I realized that I was always bored by men until I met Jim.
2:44.0	Whatever interest I had in all men before him faded and bought him ensued within a few days,
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -2329 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Cloud10, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Cloud10 and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.