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Nearly 40 Years Later, Jonestown Offers A Lesson In Demagoguery

Terry Gross

A 2010 memorial service for the Jonestown massacre in Oakland, Calif., featured photographs of the victims. Eric Risberg/AP hide caption

A 2010 memorial service for the Jonestown massacre in Oakland, Calif., featured photographs of the victims.

On Nov. 18, 1978, an itinerant preacher, faith healer and civil rights activist named the Rev. Jim Jones led more than 900 of his followers to kill themselves by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid at their Jonestown settlement in the jungle of Guyana. Nearly 40 years later, questions still linger regarding the Jonestown massacre and the man who inspired it.

Journalist Jeff Guinn details how Jones captivated his followers in his new book, The Road to Jonestown. He calls Jones a "tremendous performer" who exhibited "the classic tendencies of the demagogue."

Guinn says Jones, who founded Peoples Temple church, would take current events and exaggerate them to create a sense of fear and urgency. He drew his followers to Guyana by convincing them that America was facing imminent threats of martial law, concentration camps and nuclear war.

Father Cares: The Last Of Jonestown

After claims of abuse in Jonestown surfaced, Rep. Leo Ryan, D-Calif., came to Guyana to investigate. A number of Jonestown residents sought to return to the U.S. with Ryan, but others opened fire on the delegation, killing the congressmen and four others. The mass suicide followed.

Guinn says the lessons of Jonestown still resonate today. "Jim Jones epitomizes the worst that can happen when we let one person dictate what we hear [and] what we believe," he says. "We can only change that if we learn from the past and try to apply it to today."

Interview Highlights

On the idealistic side of Jones' Peoples Temple church

Jim Jones originally organized Peoples Temple as a storefront church in Indianapolis in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It became one of the first major mixed-race churches in that part of the country, and Jones was instrumental in integrating Indianapolis, which had been one of the most segregated cities in America. They later moved to California.

The purpose of Peoples Temple, as stated, was to feed the hungry, clothe the needy, ostensibly to try to raise up all the people who had been left out by society. Privately, within their organization, within their meetings where no outsiders were allowed, they also talked about what they were trying to do was set a "socialist example," everyone treated the same, where race, money, nothing mattered. Human dignity was at a premium.

On how Jones tricked people but also appealed to their interest in social justice

The Road to Jonestown

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Instinctively he understood the things that he would need to do in front of a crowd, not just to get their attention, but to hold it and be remembered by them. ... He would [fake] being able to summon cancers from people's bodies, which were actually rotten chicken parts that he would have planted earlier.

And even then, as he starts to gain a following through these apparent miracles, he has a number of followers who are well aware [that] it's a trick. But they tell themselves Jim is doing what he has to do to bring people in for the greater good, because at the same time he's ... tricking people, he's also out there working for integration, for civil rights, for women's rights, and that is his argument: "I need to do whatever is necessary to get people into the cause. After that we can all accomplish great things."

On how Jones targeted poor people to join his following

The whole idea was that they would distribute these fliers, not in the well-to-do parts of town; they would go into the ghettos, into the public housing, where people have absolutely nothing. He understood that when you believe life is almost hopeless, that's when you're most ready to buy into some miracle that might lift you up. ...

The people who followed Jim Jones, many of them, [were] intelligent, socially conscious, ready to work hard to make the world better, and ultimately he sacrificed them to his own ego and his own belief in himself. That is unforgivable.

On Jones orchestrating a mass suicide of his followers

By the end in November 1978, Jones' attitude towards his followers had changed. In the early stages of his ministry, when actually great things were often being accomplished, he thought of himself as the shepherd guarding his flock. More and more over the years, as his paranoia increased, as his drug use increased, he began to think of himself at war with almost everyone in the outside world — the United States government, all kinds of secret forces. ...

At the end he saw himself as a general, and his followers were his troops, and ... Jones made the decision that there must be one last great gesture so that his name would live in history ... [and that it] would require the deaths of his followers. ...

If Leo Ryan, the congressman, had not come to Jonestown there still would've been some event at this point that would've triggered Jones' order to everyone to commit a "revolutionary act," as he called it. He tried to convince them it wasn't suicide, it was something much grander than that.

'Jonestown': Portrait of a Disturbed Cult Leader

On trying to understand how 900 victims agreed to the suicide

One of the things that's hardest for us to understand now, looking back almost 40 years, is how almost 900 people ... could have followed what appeared to be ridiculous orders from an obvious demagogue to kill themselves — but it's much more complicated than that.

First of all, not everybody in Jonestown that day did agree to die, to drink the poison. ... Out of over 900 human beings, 300 children, many of them infants, they have no choice. Their parents are making the choice for them.

Then, we have another third, who are elderly people, who aren't in the best of health, who if they don't follow Jim Jones' orders are going to be left out in the deepest, densest, most dangerous jungle in the world. Their choices essentially are die quickly or die long, lingering deaths.

In the middle you have the adults, the younger people, and even among them there's no unanimity. Some do believe that Jim Jones is God or something close to God and they worship him and if he says "do this" they're going to. Others don't believe Jones is a god, but they believe in their cause, and they have bought into his preaching that the rest of the world is coming in to get them.

On the day that the Guyanese troops came to Jonestown and saw what happened

Bio Credits Manson's Terrible Rise To Right Place And Time

The Guyanese troops that came in the next morning thought they were going to be facing armed revolutionaries. They guessed there might be 100 or more Jonestown men armed with rifles waiting for them, so they're coming through the jungle cautiously.

It's the hot season in Guyana. There's been a torrential downpour the day before and steam is coming up from the floor of the jungle. It's almost like fog. And so they're coming into Jonestown in the perimeter expecting to be attacked any minute. They've got their guns up and ready, the fog, the steam is in front of them, they can hardly see.

All of a sudden they start to stumble and they think that maybe these revolutionaries placed logs on the ground to trip them up, and now they're going to start shooting from ambush — and then a couple of the soldiers look down and they can see through the fog and they start screaming, because there are bodies everywhere, almost more than they can count, and they're so horrified.

Radio producers Sam Briger and Mooj Zadie and web producers Bridget Bentz and Molly Seavy-Nesper contributed to this story.

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• Who was Jim Jones?

What was the Jonestown massacre?

The Jonestown massacre was a mass murder-suicide of the Peoples Temple cult at the behest of their leader, Jim Jones , in 1978. After cult members attacked Congressman Leo Ryan, who was investigating the cult, Jones enacted a suicide plan at the Jonestown compound. A fruit drink laced with cyanide was given to children and adult members, killing more than 900 people. Jones died of a gunshot wound.

Related Questions

The Truth About Jonestown

Offers a look at the jonestown holocaust and explains why 13 years later, we should still be afraid. background; the peoples temple; the cult's founder and religious leader, reverend jim jones; the fundamental weakness of the human mind; the mass suicide of 912 people; comments from survivors; what jones talked the people into doing; discussion of many abuses; peoples' belief that he was god; how jones died..

By K. Harary published March 1, 1992 - last reviewed on June 9, 2016

THE OLD PEOPLES TEMPLE BUILDING COLLAPSED in the last big San Francisco earthquake, leaving behind nothing but an empty plot of land to mark its passing. I'd avoided the place for nearly 10 years -- it always struck me as a dark reminder of the raw vulnerability of the human mind and the superficial nature of civilized behavior. In ways that I never expected when I first decided to investigate the Jonestown holocaust, the crimes that took place within that building and within the cult itself have become a part of my personal memory . If Jim Jones has finally become a metaphor, a symbol of power-hungry insanity—if not a term for insanity itself—for me he will always remain much too human.

SUICIDE IS USUALLY an act of lonely desperation, carried out in isolation or near isolation by those who see death as an acceptable alternative to the burdens of continued existence. It can also be an act of self-preservation among those who prefer a dignified death to the ravages of illness or some perceived humiliation . It is even, occasionally, a political statement. But it is rarely, if ever, a social event. The reported collective self-extermination of 912 individuals (913 when Jim Jones was counted among their number) therefore demanded more than an ordinary explanation.

The only information I had about Jim Jones was what I could gather from news accounts of the closing scene at the Jonestown compound. The details were sketchy but deeply disturbing: The decomposing corpses were discovered in the jungle in the stinking aftermath of a suicidal frenzy set around a vat of cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid. Littered among the dead like broken dolls were the bodies of 276 children. A United States congressman and three members of the press entourage traveling with him were ambushed and murdered on an airstrip not far from the scene. It had all been done in the name of a formerly lesser-known cult called the Peoples Temple.

The group was started years before with the avowed vision of abolishing racism . Although it was headquartered in San Francisco, its members sought to found their own Utopia in a nondescript plot of South American jungle near Georgetown, Guyana. The commune they created was named in honor of the cult's founder and religious leader , a charismatic figure in dark glasses named the Reverend Jim Jones.

While the news media treated the Jonestown holocaust like a fluke of nature, it seemed to me a unique opportunity to learn something crucial about the fundamental weakness of the human mind. In addition to my formal education in psychology, I had recently spent four years as a suicide-prevention counselor and had helped train dozens of other counselors working in the field. But even with that experience, the slaughter that took place in Jonestown seemed incomprehensible.

No casual observer could adequately explain what was happening in the minds of the Peoples Temple members when they allowed Jones to assume ultimate power over their lives. The question of how one person—nonetheless an entire group—could be motivated to give away such power was, however, the most critical one to ask. Not only was it essential to answer that question in order to explain what became of the Peoples Temple; it was equally crucial to answer it in order to prevent a similar tragedy from happening again in the future. Had the massacre succeeded in killing all the witnesses to what occurred inside the confines of Jonestown, it would have been impossible to get a believable answer. But there were a number of survivors: An old woman sleeping in a hut slipped the minds of her fellow members who were preoccupied with dying at the time; a nine-year-old girl survived having her throat cut by a member who then committed suicide; a young man worked his way to the edge of the compound and fled into the jungle. The only other eyewitness escaped when he was sent to get a stethoscope so the bodies could be checked to make certain they were dead.

Other survivors included a man wounded by gunfire at the airstrip who managed to escape by scrambling into the bush; the official Peoples Temple basketball team (including Jones's son), which was visiting Georgetown during the holocaust; a number of members stationed at the San Francisco headquarters; and a small group of defectors and relatives of those who had remained in the cult. The last was gathered at a place called the Human Freedom Center in Berkeley—a halfway house for cult defectors founded by Jeannie and Al Mills, two Peoples Temple expatriates.

Since most of the survivors lived in and around San Francisco, it was clear that in order to get to know any of them, I would have to be willing to go where the moment took me. I resigned from my position in the psychiatry department of a New York medical center, shipped most of what I owned to a storage facility, and moved to California. Shortly after arriving, I learned that the center was looking for a director of counseling. It was exactly the position I wanted.

It is impossible to look back on my first encounter with Jeannie and Al without coloring the memory with the knowledge that both of them were murdered almost exactly one year later. We met in the same room where they had once helped Congressman Leo Ryan plan his ill-fated expedition to Jonestown, which was mounted to give him and the press a close-up look at the cult and to offer any constituents who wanted safe passage an opportunity to return to San Francisco. They had hoped the visit would precipitate the demise of the Peoples Temple, but instead of allowing his game to be raided, Jones had Ryan killed and passed out the poison. The Millses never imagined the scenic route to hell they were paving with their good intentions: Had they not convinced the congressman to go to Guyana, the massacre would most likely never have happened.

In the years that have passed since the Millses' assassination, I have never again been able to take a death threat lightly.

The pair had been members of the Planning Commission—the elite inner circle of the Peoples Temple. They had been with Jim Jones since the early days of the cult and had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for his cause. But Jeannie wanted a bigger role in running the group than Jones was prepared to give her. His refusal to allow her to manage the affairs of the temple created a bitter falling-out between them. She and Al quit after spending six years in the cult, fearing for their lives because Jones always threatened that anyone who left would be murdered by his "angels"—a euphemism for his personal squad of thugs.

Jones had forced them to prove their loyalty by signing blank pieces of paper, blank power-of-attorney forms, and false confessions that they had molested their children, conspired to overthrow the U. S. government, and committed other crimes while members of the cult. (It was the sort of thing Jones did to control people, like the time he tricked a member into putting her fingerprints on a gun and told her he would have someone killed with it and frame her for the murder if she ever left the group.)

There was a deliberate malevolence about the way Jones treated the members of his cult that went beyond mere perversion. It was all about forcing members to experience themselves as vulgar and despicable people who could never return to a normal life outside of the group. It was about destroying any personal relationships that might come ahead of the relationship each individual member had with him. It was about terrorizing children and turning them against their parents. It was about seeing Jim Jones as an omnipotent figure who could snuff out members' lives on a whim as easily as he had already snuffed out their self-respect. In short, it was about mind control. And, after all that, it was not incidentally about Jones's own sick fantasies and sexual perversions.

Both men and women were routinely beaten, coerced into having sex with Jones in private and with other people in public. Husbands and wives were forbidden to have sex with each other, but were forced to join other members in watching their spouses being sexually humiliated and abused. In order to prove that he wasn't a racist, a white man was coerced into having oral sex in front of a gathering of members with a black woman who was having her period. Another man was made to remove all his clothes, bend over and spread his legs before the congregation while being examined for signs of venereal disease. A woman had to strip in front of the group so that Jones could poke fun at her overweight body before telling her to submerge herself in a pool of ice-cold water. Another woman was made to squat in front of 100 members and defecate into a fruit can. Children were tortured with electric shocks, viciously beaten, punished by being kept in the bottom of a jungle well, forced to have hot peppers stuffed up their rectums, and made to eat their own vomit.

Dozens of suicide drills—or "white nights" as Jim Jones called them—were rehearsed in San Francisco and in the jungle in a prelude to the final curtain he said might fall at any moment. Members were given wine to drink, then told it had been poisoned to test their loyalty and get them used to the idea that they might all be asked to take their lives as a sign of their faith. Their deaths, Jones tried to convince them, would be honored by the world as a symbolic protest against the evils of mankind -- a collective self-immolation. (This would also serve to eliminate anyone who might reveal the dirty secrets of life with the Peoples Temple.) The faithful would be "transformed," Jones claimed, and live with him forever on another planet.

The abuses had been going on for years, which made it seem all the more unbelievable. Those who underestimated the fragility of the human mind could not comprehend how anyone in California could remain a member, let alone follow Jim Jones into the jungle. Yet those who believed in him could not consider any alternatives that were not among the choices he provided. Even those who might have been capable of imagining themselves getting free of the cult knew about the stated Policy of murdering defectors. And since any loved ones who were left behind would suffer retribution, few dared escape while family members remained in Jonestown. The practical effect of that double bind was a twilight-zone reality in which people pretended to be enjoying a Utopian existence while living in constant fear for their lives.

THE HUMAN freedom Center was a beaten-up, two-story wood-and-stucco building that had once been used as a private rest home. Its long rows of odd-size rooms filled with broken-down furniture could have served as a backdrop for a 1950s horror movie set in a sanitarium. Although most of the Peoples Temple survivors who might have taken refuge there were suddenly dead, the events in Jonestown instantly made many other organizations seem potentially as dangerous. Jeannie and Al decided to open the center to defectors from all sorts of cult groups, from the Unification Church to the Hare Krishnas. I had already decided that— whatever the pay—if they offered me the director of counseling position, I was going to take it.

Al Mills gripped my hand like an old war buddy the first time we met. His square chin and warm smile all but obliterated the other features on his face. He had marched with Martin Luther King and once believed that the Peoples Temple would fulfill his dream of integration and racial equality. (That belief was trampled when he realized that Jones rarely allowed blacks to assume positions of authority within the temple.)

My first discussion with Jeannie was less like a job interview than a confrontation. She looked straight at me and said that a Peoples Temple hit squad might burst in and kill us at any moment. Jim Jones, she said, had sworn in the midst of the holocaust that she and Al and everyone associated with them would eventually pay with their lives for betraying the cult and sending Ryan to Guyana. The possibility lent a certain sense of immediacy to our interaction.

My exact response seemed less important than the fact that I didn't make an excuse to leave the building immediately and that I had already demonstrated my commitment to understanding the cult mentality by dropping everything and moving to California. By the end of the meeting, Jeannie offered me a token salary for a job that would often require more than 12 hours a day and frequently seven days a week.

Most of the center's clients were people seeking help in extricating family members from various cults, or ex-cult members who were starting to put their own lives back together. Additionally, a couple of former Peoples Temple members lived on the premises, and others came in periodically to talk about their present feelings and past experiences.

The first thing that struck me when I met the clients and got to know them was that, although the specific details of their belief systems and activities varied considerably, those who became involved in cults had a frightening underlying commonality. They described their experiences as finding an unexpected sense of purpose, as though they were becoming a part of something extraordinarily significant that seemed to carry them beyond their feelings of isolation and toward an expanded sense of reality and the meaning of life. Nobody asked if they would be willing to commit suicide the first time they attended a meeting. Nor did anyone mention that the feeling of expansiveness they were enjoying would later be used to turn them against each other.

Instead they were told about the remarkable Reverend Jones, a self-professed social visionary and prophet who apparently could heal the sick and predict the future. Jim Jones did everything within his power to perpetuate that myth: fraudulent psychic-healing demonstrations using rotting animal organs as phony tumors; searching through members' garbage for information to reveal in fake psychic readings; drugging his followers to make it appear as though he were actually raising the dead. Even Jeannie Mills, who later told me she knowingly assisted Jones in his faked demonstrations said she did so because she believed she was helping him conserve his real supernatural powers for more important matters.

Critical levels of sleep deprivation can masquerade as noble dedication. A total lack of adequate nutrition can seem acceptable when presented as a reasonable sacrifice for a worthy cause. Combining the two for a prolonged length of time will inevitably break down the ability to make rational judgments and weaken the psychological resistance of anyone. So can the not-infrequent practice of putting drugs in the members' food. The old self, the one that previously felt lonely and lacking in a sense of purpose, is gradually overcome by a new sense of self inextricably linked with the feeling of expansiveness associated with originally joining the cult and becoming intrigued with its leader.

Belonging to the group gradually becomes more important than anything else. When applied in various combinations, fear of being rejected, of doing or saying something wrong that will blow the whole illusion wide open; being punished and degraded, subjected to physical threats, unprovoked violence, and sexual abuse ; fear of never amounting to anything; and the fear of returning to an old self associated almost exclusively with feelings of loneliness and a lack of meaning will confuse almost anyone. Patricia Hearst knows all about it. So did all the members of the Peoples Temple.

Once thrown off balance (in the exclusive company of other people who already believe it) and being shown evidence that supports the conclusion, it is not difficult to become convinced that you have actually met the Living God. In the glazed and pallid stupor associated with achieving that confused and dangerous state of mind, almost any conceivable act of self-sacrifice, self-degradation, and cruelty can become possible.

The truth of that realization was brought home to me by one survivor who, finding himself surrounded by rifles, was told he could take the poison quietly or they would stick it in his veins or blow his brains out. He didn't resist. Instead, he raised his cup and toasted those dying around him without drinking. "We'll see each other in the transformation," he said. Then he walked around the compound shaking hands until he'd worked his way to the edge of the jungle, where he ran and hid until he felt certain it had to be over.

"Why did you follow Jim Jones?" I asked him.

"Because I believed he was God," he answered. "We all believed he was God."

A number of Peoples Temple survivors told me they viewed Jones in the same way—not as God metaphorically, but as God literally. They would have done anything he asked of them, they said. Or almost anything.

The fact that some members held guns on the others and handled the syringes meant that what occurred in Jonestown was not only a mass suicide but also a mass murder . According to the witnesses, more than one member was physically restrained while being poisoned. A little girl kept spitting out the poison until they held her mouth closed and forced her to swallow it -- 276 children do not calmly kill themselves just because someone who claims to be God tells them to. A woman was found with nearly every joint in her body yanked apart from trying to pull away from the people who were holding her down and poisoning her. All 912 Peoples Temple members did not die easily.

Yet even if all the victims did not take their own lives willingly, enough of them probably did so that we cannot deny the force of their Conviction. Only a small contingent of Peoples Temple members asked to return with Leo Ryan to San Francisco. The rest chose to stay behind. Jim Jones may have had less to fear from Jeannie and Al Mills than he believed.

It should also be remembered that Jones never took the poison he gave to his followers but was shot by someone else during the final death scene in Jonestown. He created a false reality around himself in which the denial of his own mortality must have made his own demise seem inconceivable. The fact that he had millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts and had often alluded to starting over elsewhere led Jeannie to speculate that he planned to escape the holocaust but was murdered by one of his guards or mistresses.

It is difficult to imagine what incomprehensible sense of insecurity must have led Jim Jones to feel that he had to convince himself and other people that he was God incarnate. It was not a delusion that he ever suffered well. Some of those who knew him personally described him to me at various times as a mere voyeur, a master con artist, a sociopath , and a demon. Al Mills once said that any private interaction between Jones and another person always felt like a "conspiracy of two." For my own part, I resist any description of the man that might make any of us feel too secure in the notion that he was one of a kind and the likes of him will never come again.

After Jeannie and Al were murdered, I went back alone for a final look inside the Peoples Temple building where Jeannie once gave me a private tour. All that remained of that particular nightmare setting was a dusty maze of dimly lit corridors, hollow rooms, and twisting stairways. The daylight seemed reluctant to come in through the windows, as though it entered more out of a sense of obligation than any real desire to be there. It was impossible to walk through the place without feeling as though somebody were coming up behind me—nearly everything about it seemed haunted.

"This may not be the best idea in the world," I remembered Jeannie saying when she took me there. "There may be some people hanging around here who want to kill me." It may have been guilt that led her to say that, or paranoia , or the realistic conclusion that the relatives and friends of many of the victims must have held her at least partly responsible for what happened. The Jonestown holocaust might have been inevitable or it might have been avoided; but by turning up the pressure on Jones in the way that they did, Jeannie and Al inextricably became accessories to the disaster.

Under the circumstances, I suggested that getting the hell out of there might be the best approach. "Life is short, Keith," Jeannie told me. She showed me where Jones's personal armed guards had once been posted, before taking me to lunch at a hamburger stand where she used to hang out in the heyday of the temple.

In many ways, Jeannie was a social relic of the best and worst aspects of a way of life that died in the jungle with Jim Jones. She said and did things designed for their disarming effect, to crawl around under your skin and keep you off guard. She was an expert at making you feel that you were a part of something important, dangerous, and utterly surrealistic—and she may have been right. It did not surprise me to learn that she was monitoring my personal telephone conversations at the Human Freedom Center from a line she had installed at her home up the street. It was exactly the way things were done in the Peoples Temple.

Al Mills was found on the bedroom floor of the cottage that he and Jeannie shared, with a single bullet in the head. He may have been going for the gun he once told me that he kept there. Jeannie was found behind the kicked-in door of the adjoining bathroom, also shot once in the head. It looked as though she had tried to escape from her murderer by running into a room that had no exit. Their daughter, Daphene -- who may or may not have just happened to be there—was found lying on the bed above Al, with a bullet in her head and three or four other bullets in the mattress surrounding her. A neighbor had reportedly heard two male voices outside, and one of them saying, "You're not gonna pin it on me," before the three bodies were found. The victims were reportedly shot with .22-caliber bullets, coincidentally the alleged preferred choice of professional assassins. Jeannie and Al's young son, Eddie, was found listening to a stereo with headphones in the other room of the tiny cottage when the bodies were discovered. He told the police that he didn't hear anything at all while both his parents and his sister were being killed. He had grown up in the Peoples Temple. The case is still open.

For my own part, I believe that Jeannie and Al were victims of their fatalistic vision of reality and that whoever pulled the trigger completed a course of events that was set into motion years before. In their inability to otherwise put to rest their experiences in the cult, they had never really left the Peoples Temple.

FOR THOSE OF US WHOSE LIVES were directly touched by the massacre, the images of Jonestown have never entered the realm of dispassionate historical memory. They remain a part of the hidden present, providing a point of reference in defining the conditions under which people can be led across the boundary between rational and extremely irrational behavior.

Had more of the children of Jonestown survived, they might have tried to warn us that we have more to fear than the fact that whoever murdered Jeannie and Al is still on the loose and may kill again. A lone fanatic is much less dangerous than the potential that exists within all of us for committing evil ourselves or allowing it to be committed in the name of some supposed good. There is no doubt that there are—right now—other cult groups that hold the same potential for deadly violence as did the Peoples Temple.

Jim Jones did not create the human weaknesses that led so many people to follow him; he merely exploited them. Ultimate power is seductive not only to those who achieve it themselves but also to those who give up their own power in order to help others achieve it. It is the ability to answer the unanswerable questions about the meaning of life and death. And it does not matter if those answers make no sense—the belief in them and in the individual who bears them makes any sacrifice in the service of some more eternal purpose seem acceptable.

Most of us don't think of ourselves as the kind of person who could ever possibly become embroiled in a cult like the Peoples Temple. We are not at all correct in that assumption. Given an unfortunate turn of fate that leads to a moment of weakness, or a momentary lapse in judgment that expands into a shift in our perception, nearly any of us could find ourselves taking the cyanide in Jonestown—if not passing out the poison to other people.

People end up joining cults when events lead them to search for a deeper sense of belonging and for something more meaningful in their lives. They do so because they happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and are ripe for exploitation. They do so because they find themselves getting caught in the claws of a parasite before they realize what is happening to them.

Those who join cults don't do so with the intention of demeaning themselves or torturing children. They join in the hope of creating a better world, and because they believe in a lie, or a series of lies, in the same way that the rest of us sometimes find ourselves falling in love with the wrong person or allowing ourselves to be manipulated. The only real difference between them and us is the extent to which they are led to carry those same sorts of feelings to extremes.

The spectre of Jonestown has entered the social unconscious , leading to a kind of macabre fascination with Jim Jones and his victims. A Boston company recently sold out its first printing of "Death Cult" cards commemorating the massacre; they depict such images as "Spiking the Kool-Aid." At least for those not directly involved, the unthinkably horrific has become entertaining. We dissociate ourselves as human beings from any sense of connectedness to Jonestown by turning the event into a kind of theater. But it was that same sense of theater upon which Jim Jones depended, as has every cult leader who has ever exploited human weakness. If you have ever slowed down and stared at the results of a highway accident, you are not immune.

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The perfect storm that led to the Jonestown massacre

Jim Jones leveraged upheaval surrounding civil rights and the Vietnam War to earn trust and manipulate his followers.

The Jonestown massacre remains one of the largest mass murders in American history. In a single day, 901 Americans and 8 Guyanese died from Jim Jones’ actions. Met with criticism rather than compassion, victims and survivors of the 1978 tragedy were often blamed and seen as “crazy” for joining the movement.  

The truth is that Jonestown’s leader, preacher Jim Jones, was successful in drawing in followers in the United States because his message resonated in an era of frustration and upheaval—and his views were legitimized by other civil rights leaders. In Guyana, Jones offered a utopia where followers could enact their vision of an equal, self-sufficient society.  

(Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown will premiere June 17 on Hulu and August 14 on National Geographic.)

  Wildly charismatic, Jones preached what so many Americans longed to hear. Young radicals, disillusioned by establishment politics and the Vietnam War, applauded the socialist principles he promoted at his church, Peoples Temple. Black members were also drawn in, at one point making up 80 to 90 percent of the congregation. Not only did much of Jones’ work take on civil rights issues, he also modeled traditional Black worship styles, touted his adopted Black and Korean children , and even claimed he himself was Black.

Considering the months and years that led up to the massacre, it’s clear the folks who joined Jonestown weren’t “crazy” or “cultists.” Instead, they were simply people looking to build a fairer, better world—and Jonestown gave them a way to see their community realized.

Jones capitalized on a societal storm

Jim Jones opened what would become Peoples Temple in Indiana in 1954. The Peoples Temple drew from socialism, communism, and Christianity to   promote equality and attract a multi-racial congregation. Jones   proselytized with a showman’s panache and used faith-healing to attract followers.

Black Americans made up a significant share of church membership. Peoples Temple’s commitment to racial equality, and its incorporation of Black American religious traditions, meant that it was what scholar Rebecca Moore called “a culturally as well as racially Black movement.”  

“The first time that I got there I was greeted by a rainbow coalition of people, and this was the first time I had been in an atmosphere where it’s one church, multiracial and multigenerational as well,” Former Peoples Temple member Yulanda Williams remembers. “When I heard Jim Jones, he spoke about how much he respected the civil rights movement and how important it was that we continued to live out Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.”

Jones’s charisma and vision attracted the attention of some of the country’s most visible activists, including actor Jane Fonda and Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther movement. Jones also won the support of the political establishment in San FranciscoCalifornia, where he moved his church in 1965. There, he met Rosalynn Carter, wife of President Jimmy Carter, who was so enthralled with Jones she went on to speak from his pulpit.; the two also had dinner together and exchanged letters.   Harvey Milk fawned over Jones’s work, and politicians courting voters often turned up at Peoples Temple.

  Why Jonestown was built in Guyana  

After a series of reports debunked Jones’ faith healing and accused him of abuse, Jones started believing these were signs that America was out to get Peoples Temple––and him. Drug use only fueled his paranoia that the U.S. government would target the church or turn fascist. These fears convinced Jones and other church leaders that the future of their movement lay outside America’s borders.

In 1974, Peoples Temple acquired land in the jungle of Guyana. Since A conveniently English speaking country, Guyana also’s population included a mixture of people of African, Asian, and Amerindian descent, and Jones believed it would be perfect for a multiracial utopia . The church planned to construct an agricultural commune where members could live out their values.

A big wave of Peoples Temple members, including Jim Jones, came in the summer of 1977. As Rebecca Moore wrote in her book Understanding Jonestown and Peoples Temple , these “members believed they were not just deserting something worse but also moving to something better. They set the goal of creating a community without racism, in which all children would be free and equal.”

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  By November 1978, Jonestown’s population had swelled to 1,020. Moore estimated that Jonestown’s largest demographic group were Black women and girls, who made up 45 percent of the population. Black members made up 68 percent of Jonestown’s total population. The commune was also predominately youthful , with 63 percent of the population 35 or younger, and 152 children under the age of 12.

Everyone played a role. Residents acted as cooks, carpenters, and engineers. Teachers delivered student-centered instruction to children, teaching subjects like math, reading, and Guyanese history. Older students participated in apprenticeship programs in the community.

The compound had a generator, dormitory-style cabins, and a communal kitchen. Residents also had access to a library and health center. An audio system enabled Jones to make frequent announcements through a loudspeaker, so his voice was ever present.  

In addition to the mandatory meetings every night, residents participated in different activities, including sports teams, dance and musical arts groups, and movie nights .

Some initially enjoyed their time in Jonestown. “They were bringing in electricity, building beautiful homes where we wouldn’t have to pay rent, all the food we needed, our medical would all be taken care of,” Williams remembers. “It was something that was absolutely amazing. We were safe and secure. A great utopia, the better life, helping each other as one, big, happy family.”  

The end of utopia

Still, Jonestown wasn’t the utopia Jim Jones had promised.

Grace Stoen left Peoples Temple before the building of Jonestown, but she still learned of what was happening there. “I started hearing that people were being badly mistreated. […] Jim was making their lives a complete misery, bullying and controlling them.”  

The man who preached the gospel of equality anointed himself ruler of his kingdom in the jungle. He hoarded everyone’s passports, preventing them from leaving. Residents couldn’t date or break up without his approval. Punishments included social ostracism , and according to witnesses , he bound children in the forest and wrapped a snake around a woman’s leg.

Jones’s paranoia worsened, and he was convinced that soldiers would storm Jonestown. Insisting mass suicide was the only way out, he gathered residents and told them to drink what he said was poison—it wasn’t; it was a test to prove their loyalty, and to prepare them for what was to come. Jonestown residents went along with it because they had performed these suicide drills in California, and these The drills may have desensitized Jonestown residents them to what Moore called a “ritualized” ceremony.

On November 18, 1978, Jones directed the people of Jonestown to act out what they had rehearsed. After a visit from U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, Jones decided the end times had come. He compelled his congregation to consume a cyanide cocktail. Some may have willingly taken it, but many were likely coerced into the act, perhaps fearing that they would be killed if they refused. Others, including children, were forced to drink it, or it was injected into their bloodstream with syringes. When the commune fell silent, over 900 men, women, and children were dead.

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The Jonestown Massacre

Jones had established the Peoples Temple, a Christian sect, in Indianapolis in the 1950s, preaching against racism, and attracting many African Americans. After moving to San Francisco in 1971, his church was increasingly accused of financial fraud, physical abuse of its members and mistreatment of children. The paranoid Jones then moved his Temple to Guyana, to build a socialist utopia at Jonestown.  A group of former Temple members and concerned relatives of current members convinced Congressman Ryan to investigate the settlement in person.

On November 17, 1978, Ryan arrived in Jonestown with a group of journalists and other observers. At first the visit went well, but the next day, as Ryan’s delegation was about to leave, several Jonestown residents approached the group and asked them for passage out of Guyana. Jones became distressed at the defection of his followers, and one of Jones’ lieutenants attacked Ryan with a knife.

The Congressman escaped from the incident unharmed, but Jones then ordered Ryan and his companions ambushed and killed at the airstrip as they attempted to leave. The Congressman and four others were murdered as they boarded their charter planes. Back in Jonestown, Jones commanded everyone to gather in the main pavilion. The youngest members of the Peoples Temple were the first to die, as parents and nurses used syringes to drop a potent mix of cyanide, sedatives and powdered fruit juice, similar to Kool-Aid, into children’s throats. Adults then drank the concoction while armed guards surrounded the pavilion.

Richard Dwyer was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Guyana when the tragedy took place. In his oral history, he recounts the prelude to the massacre, how he pretended to be dead when shot at the airstrip, and how he dealt with the subsequent harrowing events. He was interviewed by ADST’s Charles Stuart Kennedy starting in July 1990.

Go here to read about other massacres .

“The most difficult problem of a consular officer’s life”

I went up there shortly after I got to Georgetown. There were, I suppose, 900 to 1,000 people there at the time….(Pictured entrance to Jonestown)

Jonestown had…a half-hour or a forty-five minute program on the Georgetown radio at least once a week…. It was a publicity and propaganda type thing of what they were doing with forests, how many acres they had cleared, what they had grown, how they were establishing their big farm, their chicken ranch, cattle, how they were developing new crops, etc. It sounded very impressive on the radio.

Indeed at first glance, Jonestown, itself, was very impressive. It reminded me of the early days in a kibbutz in Israel. There was still a great deal of that enthusiasm. What was weird was that as they were taking me around to look at these things, these things were being described in exactly the same words I had heard on the radio program just the week before. In other words, they were rote….

The Jonestown people, as far as we could see, were not physically abused. They were wiry and there was no question that they worked hard to accomplish what they did, but none maintained that they were forced to do so or leave. None of the people that McCoy interviewed privately expressed a desire to leave….

The people at Jonestown were a mix. The large proportion of them were urban black, many from the ghettos. There were many elderly people there that were called the seniors. These undoubtedly had an attraction for Jones because they had Social Security benefits that were sent to them in Guyana, which they would then endorse. The money went to the People’s Temple….

Somewhere about then we were notified that a congressional delegation would be coming to see us. This would be a delegation of two or three congressmen led by Congressman Leo Ryan of California, whose district included a number of constituents both among the relatives and among the people in Jonestown itself. But looking back on it, it was amazing how little we knew about what had happened in California with the People’s Temple or about Ryan or what he knew, or for that matter what Consular Affairs in the Department of State knew.

Ryan had been a high school teacher and had a friend whose grandchildren were at Jonestown and who was very concerned about them. The father of these children had been killed in an alleged accident in a railroad yard in Los Angeles. The suspicion being but never proved that the People’s Temple were responsible for it — that it was in fact a murder. The mother had taken the children to Jonestown. So it was a very personal concern of Congressman Ryan’s.

And something else that I had been unaware of until he told us, John Burke and myself on his arrival, that he had a daughter who was very much involved in the Church of Scientology and he thought they did much good work. Thus he wasn’t necessarily against all cults, but he had had some experience with that…. He had been a leader in getting the Congress to pass a resolution urging the pardoning of Patty Hearst. In other words, a man who had had some experience with publicity and unusual ways to get it. Nonetheless his interest in Jonestown, I think, was very real….

I should say that Ryan arrived not only with the press, but a whole bunch of People’s Temple relatives. I don’t remember how many came down, 15 or 20 or so…. We were met at the airstrip by a local government representative and a group of people from the People’s Temple. The group of people from the People’s Temple were unfriendly, to say the least.…

Jim Jones gave his usual spiel that these were people who had been emotionally and economically deprived in the United States and the whole purpose of this wilderness settlement was to remove them from the temptation of the large city. Although he said at one point that if he had to do it over again maybe he would not remove them quite so far. The People’s Temple were the victims of malicious and untrue propaganda put out by the concerned relatives….

[After a day there, they decided to leave Jonestown.] The big dump truck was pulled up and the concerned relatives who were leaving began to load their things on it. The mass of People’s Temple members stood around quietly and watched. There were some exchanges.

Then a man came up with, I think two children, and said that he wanted to come too and take the children. A woman followed him screaming saying, “You can’t take my children. My children and I stay here.” We had the most difficult problem of a consular officer’s life of a custody question right there.

Someone grabbed Congressman Ryan and threatened him with a knife

By this time I knew we had a small single engine aircraft coming up that would carry four people…. I wanted to get as many people out of there as possible. With this couple coming we told them that whether the man was coming with the children or without the children was not something that we could decide.

This was a legal question that we had no authority to determine. But it looked like, although we didn’t have any more people wanting to go, with the exception of a young man who came very late who said he wanted to go, it looked conceivably that we might have some more if we talked to people.

Congressman Ryan and I talked about it. We decided that we would stay — in fact he decided he would stay and if he stayed, I stayed — overnight again. The people who were leaving would go. I said I would take all those who were leaving to the airport and then return with the truck. We had everybody pretty much loaded up on the truck….

Anyway, we were all on the truck when suddenly there came…shouts and screams from the pavilion. I got off the truck and ran back to the pavilion. A couple of the large young men who were the security force for the People’s Temple would not let the press or anyone else, besides myself — I guess they let one press guy — go back.

What had happened apparently was that this young man had approached Ryan from behind with a knife, grabbed him from the back and put the knife to his throat and said that he was going to kill him. A couple of the People’s Temple members and one of the lawyers grabbed the guy and wrestled him to the ground. In the process the young man’s hand was cut and be bled all over Ryan’s shirt.

Ryan said that the young man had to be put in custody and the police had to be notified. The only real police were at Matthew’s Ridge, an old mining town about 30 miles away, except for the guy in shorts with a shotgun in town. He was assured that this would be done and that he would be prosecuted under Guyanese law and that they would call the police right away. Of course they had no means of calling the police.

Congressman Ryan was shaken obviously but still very much in command of himself. He and I walked aside and he asked, “What do we do now?”

I said, “Congressman, I am not sure what I’m doing, but I want you out of here right now as fast as we can.”

He said, “Will you stay and see about the people who want to come back?”

And I said, “Yes, I would.” Looking back at it I shudder to think about it. But in any event, my main concern was getting him out of there.…

“I decided that I would play dead”

Ryan was standing out by the wing tip. The airplane was facing south and the engines were running. Ryan started to walk towards the aircraft when a farm tractor pulled on to the field towing a farm cart with wooden sides going up two or three feet…. The tractor pulled on to the field and came down along the side of the tarmac. I turned around to look and as we watched, nine or ten people stood up from the truck and they had various guns….

The tractor…was between the airplane and the bush on the one side of the airstrip. So those people who were closer to the bush could run off into the bush, while those of us at the airplane and in front of it didn’t have much of a place to go. We decided to independently run across the tarmac to the protection of some houses and trees on the other side.

About at that stage the NBC television tape ends with the murder of the cameraman. It was all filmed from the time the firing began. He was obviously a target. I got to the other side of the airplane and decided that there was just no way that I could possibly make it across another 75 yards of open territory and decided that I would play dead. As I was about to artistically fall to the ground, and indeed I must have almost been on the ground, somebody shot me…with a .22 long. As I later learned I wasn’t badly hurt. It had entered my left thigh and lodged up near the spine. It is still there; it is more dangerous to take it out than leave it alone.

Anyway, I was on the ground there. Staccato firing continued for what seemed like a long time but probably couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes. I had thought that the reason I didn’t want to run across the tarmac or try to go any further was because I thought we were in a cross-fire between the big truck that was parked on the other side of the tarmac from the tractor. I had thought that we were being fired on from that truck. Later only one other person thought we had been fired on from that truck, so I don’t know whether we were or not. Anyway, I was convinced we were and that I would never make it past that truck.

I lay on the ground and the firing stopped. I was trying to pretend that I was dead. I couldn’t decide whether I would be more convincing playing dead with my eyes open or closed. Finally, I decided that I at least would like to see those bastards. I heard feet on the loose stones of the dirt on the tarmac and a shotgun went off. More steps and the shotgun went off again. Ryan had obviously been hit more than once….

The shotgun continued for five shots, including right next to me–Ryan. I was waiting for the next shot which never came. To this day I do not know why. I suspect that it was a five-shot shotgun and the last one was used on Ryan.

The steps went away and I lay on the ground until finally I heard the vehicles drive away. There was no conversation, no shouts that I recall…. After a few moments I looked around carefully and there wasn’t anybody there.

The Washington Post reporter, who was lying not far from me and I knew had done the same thing as I had, played doggo, Charles Kraus, got up. I walked around to the Congressman. He had been shot, obviously, more than once. Probably with a rifle, but the better part of his face had been blown away with the shotgun. The cameraman was dead. The photographer from the Hearst newspapers was dead.

We had wounded all over the place. Jackie Spears had been badly hurt. A couple of the NBC cameramen had been badly hurt. My immediate concern was that these people could come back and finish the job. Why they didn’t finish the job I don’t know. I guess the fact was that they were not very good at anything. We carried the wounded over to the tall grass and hid them as much as we could. It wasn’t too good as you could see the tracks going into the grass….

[The news crew] was in absolute shock. Everyone there had cameras, but not one of them pulled them out. The cameraman was killed, his audio guy had half of his arm shot away. The anchorman for the NBC production that had interviewed Jones, etc., had obviously been a target. He had been killed.

Bob Flick the producer of the show was just absolutely stunned. He had worked with this crew through Vietnam and various war zones among other places, and was just absolutely crushed that here in this rinky-dink country’s backwoods he had lost a major part of his crew. He sat with the wounded all night and refused to leave. He gave them water, took care of them, held their hands, took down what we thought were their last words, etc. The rest of the news crew took 45 minutes and a number of them were back to normal. They began writing their notes and comparing stories.

The “White Night” Rehearsal for Death

The People’s Temple group were remarkable and so were the relatives. Nobody panicked, nobody broke down into hysterics. I don’t know whether it was the idea of having lived with People’s Temple and being used to doing what somebody said without complaint or whether it was a hard life that they stood up for themselves, but it was a truly remarkable group, even the children…. We were told by…the defectors from the People’s Temple that they were sure that the White Night would be for real back at Jonestown.

The White Night, I learned, had been a rehearsal for death that Jones would have people go through a number of times in the middle of the night. He would get everybody out of bed by the loudspeakers and they would come in and he would harangue them and pass them Kool-Aid or some such drink and tell them that it was poison. They would drink it and…

We waited, waited, and waited. Early in the morning and before dawn, I would say around 3:00, the government representative from the village came down to say that he had been finally in radio contact with Georgetown, that a company of troops were being flown into Matthew’s Ridge and would take the little freight train that used to haul the ore down to Kaituma….

The shooting had occurred about 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon and…we had nothing but the first aid kit on the airplane to try and bandage these people with. We found a nurse from a dispensary. She brought down all the morphine tablets she had; there weren’t many. We were giving some people rum, but I was concerned. Obviously they were going to need a lot of medical attention and I was afraid to give them too much morphine or too much rum, even though they were in severe pain. Amazing though how little complaint there was, it was just incredible….

All this time we did not know what had gone on at Jonestown, except for one or two people who had gotten away and came back with stories saying that they were all dead — killing themselves. But this came with a story that one of the people in our group told me, that they had made a tank at Jonestown which was hidden in the woods — all kinds of rumors….

By this time it was almost dusk again. We flew into a small airport…. The Ambassador came over and debriefed me. I learned of the murders of Sharon Amos and her children at the People’s Temple headquarters in Georgetown. Apparently there had been instructions that everybody down there would kill themselves….

Nine hundred bodies on the ground, beginning to decompose

The most difficult decision that the Ambassador had to make at that time was what to do with the bodies up at Jonestown. The Guyanese government had come to him with the request that the bodies be taken back to the United States. John Burke quite correctly went back to Washington asking for instructions on how to do it….

They could have been buried there, but there were all sorts of problems…. On Sunday evening, just as I was leaving, the military went in to Jonestown and discovered, of course, that the worst had come to pass and there were 900 odd bodies lying on the ground in the tropical heat already beginning to decompose.

The options were fairly limited. One of the major things to do was try to identify the bodies. And I believe they had brought back to Jonestown a couple of the People’s Temple members who went around and tried to identify the bodies, as many as they knew.

They tagged them all. Of course they tagged them all with washable ink, someone told me later, and when the first rain came along it was all gone.

The Guyanese government, of course, was completely overwhelmed. There were no forensic facilities to speak of at all, etc. The only option seemed to be to just bury them up there, but this had all kinds of problems. We knew that relatives and other people would certainly want to have the bodies of their relatives back, although as it turned out there were not that many. There were a lot of people up there without relatives or with relatives who didn’t want the bodies back. In any event, Burke strongly urged the Department to do this and we did so.

So the Air Force came in with crews to take the bodies back. These crews were coming in on Monday morning. A typical Air Force operation–you know just an enormous mound of equipment and airplanes and everything else. The embassy at the time had…I think something like 70 or 80 survivors that had to be taken care of. I had an outside telephone on my desk in my office and this had been hooked up with the Operations Center with a speaker phone and was just left open for 24 hours a day. We had, with the Department’s help, borrowed several consular officers from surrounding posts to help with the problems….

We were submerged by the press. there must have been a couple of hundred–two or three hundred, I would guess–from all over the world. Everyone from Agence France Presse to somebody from Spain and all the American news service and everything else. They besieged my poor wife and family in trying to get in and talk with me….

The major immediate problems at the embassy were threefold. The first was the removal of the bodies. The second was the preservation, insofar as possible, of the site at People’s Temple, because we knew that the records and what have you of the People’s Temple would be terribly important. And…there was all kinds of personal property up there and as it turned out all kinds of cash and everything else. So that was a second priority. Another priority was obviously the remaining people from People’s Temple up there.

For the first couple of days after the tragedy of Jonestown, particularly, there was a high state of wariness, because many of the People’s Temple people had told us that there had been plans that, if this White Night or mass suicide or murder ever came to pass, there were hit teams that were supposed to go out and assassinate various people. And indeed in Georgetown, at the People’s Temple headquarters, the People’s Temple representative and her three or four children had been killed or had committed suicide.

Right about that time, I can’t exactly remember when, then or a few days later, the mayor of San Francisco, Moscone, had been assassinated and there was concern in Georgetown, and I presume in San Francisco as well, that this might have been a People’s Temple hit. As it turned out it was not….

The most far-out thing to come that developed was a series of newspaper articles out on the West Coast, picked up by some of the wire services, alleging that this had all been a CIA conspiracy, that Jonestown had been used by the CIA to experiment with mind-control drugs, and that I, Dwyer, was their man on the scene and, after we had all been shot up at the airport, had gone back to Jonestown somehow and cleaned up everything and hidden all the records and things.

In part this came from the admin assistant of Congressman Ryan, who just judging by the news reports had just gone off the deep end but good.

In part it was due to some young guy over in CIA, I don’t know who it was, who had told this guy and maybe somebody else that he had direct reports from their man on the scene, so he could give them the hot poop. There wasn’t anybody there, I was it. It was frustrating as hell for any Foreign Service officer. As you know, we have standard procedures for questions such as that. Any Foreign Service officer who is asked such a question is to say that he can neither confirm or deny any such rumor.

In some way I wish I had just told the State Department to go to hell and said, “No, I am not CIA, never was and do not intend to be.” Yet we were sensitive there, because there had been a man in Georgetown who had been with the Agency, had been station chief. He had been identified as such in a book by a man called James Agee and he had been assassinated, possibly because of this identification in the book, in Greece just a year or two before….

“The great majority did in fact kill themselves”

Only one person eventually was charged in Guyana with a crime and that was the man who had been at the Georgetown People’s Temple office, a man of somewhat below intelligence who was suspected of and eventually was convicted of helping Sharon Amos kill her children. He had been a Marine, but he was functionally illiterate and to this day it was quite possible he did what he was accused of, but in no way was he a leader or anything else of the group. And he served some time there.

The Guyanese government did not prosecute this case as well as they might. I think they did it purposely. They just didn’t want this guy in Guyana; they vastly preferred to get rid of him. So Larry Layton was acquitted.

Back in the United States he admitted that he had in fact shot these people, so there was no question about it. The Guyanese government had the decency of at least putting him on a direct flight to Miami where he was arrested by the FBI….[Note: Layton was tried twice on four charges related to the shootings, including conspiracy to kill a Congressman. He was released in 2002 after having served 18 years in prison.]

By the time we began to get the identity straightened out of the people who died at Jonestown, the FBI came to the conclusion that all of those that had attacked us at the airport were dead. I had a little list in my office and whenever we would identify one I would check him off. I was very much relieved when we found that the last one there had been checked off….

I should add that these people in Jonestown recorded everything on audio tapes. They had all of Jim Jones’ speeches or harangues to the group, and incredibly enough we discovered a tape of that last 45 minutes of the People’s Temple…. That tape affected me too because it included Jim Jones’ last harangue to the People’s Temple, saying that they should all kill themselves, that the Congressman was dead and although Jones was not responsible for it he felt responsible for everything that had happened and therefore the time had come to make the final protest, which was to be mass suicide.…

The big question always came back to the fact: did these people in Jonestown kill themselves and commit suicide or were they forced to do so? Obviously under any criteria of any common law, children can’t commit suicide voluntarily, so there is no question that the children were murdered. And they were murdered by their parents and their relatives.

But on balance I am still convinced that the great majority of these people did in fact kill themselves. There were only one or two there, including Jim Jones, with bullet wounds. Some had injections of cyanide, but there was no way of telling whether these injections had been forced or not. Also, they had swallowed cyanide as well in many cases. So you didn’t know whether these had been injections to hurry on what they had already started or what have you.

And I was struck a year or two later by an article in The New York Times Magazine that reported on a woman who very much regretted that she had not been there. She had been in the United States for some reason, but she still regretted that she had not been there to take her own life with her colleagues.

So I think my personal thing, my biggest mental anguish came from the children. These were children I had watched playing and had played with just hours before they were to be killed by their parents.

Reflections on a Career: Health and Population in East Africa

You know a coup is coming but no one will listen: sudan 1964, intelligence, research, god and country: a tour in inr, 2 replies to “the jonestown massacre”.

I think this is more or less correct, Doug. Dwyer, in fact was *supposed* to be staying there that night, but at the last minute left with the entourage. Walking or even driving back through the jungle with a bullet in him and making it in time to be on that tape? simply not possible, as juicy a conspiracy story as it is. I think after the “death tape” concluded, Jones and about a dozen or so of his most trusted and loyal comrades went to the “west house” and were alive until the next morning. I have photos that support his, eyewitness testimony, and there is mystery tape Q875 that was made after the killings on the 18th.

…evidence indicated the presence of a CIA agent on the scene at the time of the massacre. This man, Richard Dwyer, was working as Deputy Chief of Mission for the U.S. Embassy in Guyana.[197] Identified in Who’s Who in the CIA, he has been involved since 1959, and was last stationed in Martinique.[198] Present at the camp site and the airport strip, his accounts were used by the State Department to confirm the death of Leo Ryan. At the massacre, Jones said, “Get Dwyer out of here” just before the killings began.[199]

Other Embassy personnel, who knew the situation at Jonestown well, were also connected to intelligence work. U.S. Ambassador John Burke, who served in the CIA with Dwyer in Thailand, was an Embassy official described by Philip Agee as working for the CIA since 1963….

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The Jonestown Radio Network: How Jim Jones Spread His Message Of Death

By: Erin Blakemore

Published: November 16, 2018

“There’s no way we can survive.” 

It was November 18, 1978, and cult leader Jim Jones needed to convince over 900 of his followers that they needed to die. As he pressured members of the Peoples Temple to drink cyanide-laced punch, they screamed, wept and argued. Slowly, they began to die, the adults waiting until the children had been fed cyanide before taking it themselves. A reel-to-reel tape recorder caught the entire thing on tape.

After the Jonestown massacre claimed 918 lives, investigators and then historians tried to reconstruct what exactly had happened there. Tapes like the grisly “death tape” that recorded the night of the suicides helped them in their task. After the deaths in Guyana, investigators discovered “mountains” of tape— about 1,000 recordings in all—including sermons, meetings, Peoples Temple propaganda, and private conversations.

Because Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple acolytes were so committed to recording their activities, and used radio that was monitored by the FCC, FBI and others, historians know more about the cult and its demise than similar events like the deaths of members of the Heaven’s Gate cult . The tapes have allowed researchers to reconstruct what really happened at Jonestown, even though few witnesses remain.

Audio also played an outsized role in how the events of Jonestown unfolded. Jones understood the power of radio as a medium and used it to broadcast sermons and tempt new followers. And after he moved his Peoples Temple to the Guyanese jungle, he needed radio more than ever. Soon, Jonestown had its own radio show that broadcast propaganda about the compound to residents of Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, where the Temple was officially headquartered.

Shortwave radio linked Jonestown to the rest of the world. During the 1970s, ham radios had become increasingly common, and Jonestown residents used the shortwave radio to communicate with their acolytes worldwide. Ham radio operators in Jonestown sent “QSL cards” to people they had communicated with, a common practice at the time.

Jones “assumed, correctly, that people eavesdropped on Temple communications,” wrote journalist Tim Reiterman in Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People . “In fact, those radio relays probably entertained hundreds of amateur radio operators around the world.”

Amateur radio played a role in stoking Jones’s paranoia and fears. The Federal Communications Commission had granted the Temple an amateur radio license, but began to investigate the group’s use of radio when it realized they were using it for business and not amateur purposes. The FCC monitored the propaganda and conversations Jones and his followers sent over ham radio, and Temple acolytes increasingly viewed the possibility of their connection to the outside world being cut as a dire one. Jones also believed he was being monitored by the CIA. He was correct in this assumption, notes historian Rebecca Moore, a fact only revealed by later FOIA lawsuits.

That paranoia helped decide the fate of the Jonestown residents. The night of November 18, Jones began carrying out a “White Night,” his name for a temple-wide crisis. At some point that evening, he used his ham radio to contact Sharon Amos, a trusted Temple board member who was at the Temple headquarters in Georgetown along with Jones’s son, Stephen, and others. Using code, Jones told Amos that “You’re going to meet Mr. Frazier,” his code for death. It was an order to kill everyone in the headquarters and themselves.

In a later transmission, Amos told him the Jonestown group that they had nothing to commit suicide with.

The answer came back , in code. “K-n-i”—the speaker said. Then the transmission was cut off.

Amos understood its intention. She and the others were to use knives. She tried to convince the others to follow through, but they balked. Then Amos got a butcher knife from the kitchen and called her three children, 22-year-old Lianne, 10-year-old Christa, and 9-year-old Mike, into the bathroom. She slit the throats of her screaming children; then Lianne and Sharon simultaneously slashed one another’s.

Unbeknownst to Amos, the transmission had been intercepted by an American shortwave operator in Georgetown who had figured out the compound’s ham radio frequency and was listening in to monitor the in-progress visit of U.S. Representative Leo D. Ryan. The operator copied down the transmission and the code and eventually got it to the FBI. By then, it was too late—Jonestown was the site of mass murder. Officials only translated the code once they got their hands on a codebook from the Peoples Temple.

Eventually the radio broadcasts and tapes made at Jonestown would become critical primary sources that have helped historians reconstruct just what happened there. Today, the tapes are archived at the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University. They are eerie documents of a phenomenon that led to the largest loss of American civilians until the September 11 attacks.

Audio wasn’t just a lifeline in Jonestown: It could be a direct line to death, too. But though the tapes make for skin-crawling listening, they are the closest thing to a direct witness that exists for much of the cult’s chaotic history.

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• American History

25 Unpleasant Facts About the Jonestown Massacre

On November 19, 1978, over 900 people died from drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid. On this date, parents and children gathered at the compound of the Peoples Temple cult in Jonestown, Guyana, knowing the fate that awaited them. An outcome that would leave the world spinning.

Their leader, Reverend Jim Jones asked the parents to give their children the drink. After, they were to take a drink. The group would die together, placing this date in history as one of the most significant losses of civilian life as the result of a deliberate act.

25. The People’s Temple Was A Church That Helped People In Need

Established in 1956 by Jim Jones, the People’s Temple was a church that focused on helping people in need. In fact, this was one of the main ways that Reverend Jim Jones pushed to find members. After all, most people want to feel like they are giving back to their community.

Jones knew that one of the best organizations to accomplish this was a church. It didn’t take the People’s Temple long to start growing. The People’s Temple looked like any other helpful church in the community. Jim Jones and his family seemed like the perfect family to manage a church.

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24. Jim Jones Was a Charismatic Monster

History is full of people who have persuaded others to act on horrible deeds. However, there are very few men who were as horrific as Jim Jones. Starting in the 1950s, people begin to see Jones as a charismatic leader. He seemed to want the best for everyone.

In reality, Jim Jones was a manipulative monster, which is precisely what ex-members call him today. With persuasion, Jones influenced almost 1,000 people to move around the world with him in search of the best place to settle. He persuaded 918 people to drink the Kool-Aid that would kill them.

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23. The People’s Temple Started In The United States, But Jones Always Had Other Dreams

At first, the People’s Temple’s headquarters was in Indianapolis, Indiana. A decade later, the church moved to a more “open-minded” area in Redwood Valley, California. It wouldn’t be long until Jones would open a branch of the church in San Francisco. This branch became the headquarters shortly after.

During the late 1960s, Jones traveled to Guyana and saw land he fell in love with. He felt that his church wouldn’t receive the utmost respect in America. Therefore, he wanted to move his religion elsewhere. In the mid-1970s, Jones persuaded about 900 people to move to Guyana with him.

22. Jonestown Becomes an Isolated Settlement in Guyana

It wasn’t easy for Jim Jones to persuade nearly 1,000 of his members to uproot their families and move from California to Guyana. However, once the members moved, Jones quickly worked to make the camp feel like a home.

With nearly 4,000 acres of land, the People’s Temple had a lot of room for its members. Furthermore, the location was perfect for Jones. They were isolated from society, located around 150 miles from the capital of Guyana. The land consisted of muddy roads with the nearest body of water 7 miles away.

21. The Government of Guyana Didn’t Like Jonestown

Not everyone liked the idea of Jonestown or the People’s Temple. Even though Guyana believed in socialism more than the United States, the government of Guyana did not care for Jim Jones or his ideas. They didn’t see the People’s Temple as a religious organization. They saw it as a cult.

Many people in Guyana’s government thought Jones had other ideas, which would turn into a disaster for the country. In a way, they were right. Jones picked Guyana because he saw the country as weak and thought it to be an area he could obtain a lot of influence over people.

20. There Is Still A Lot Of Fact Vs. Fiction When It Comes To The Jonestown Massacre

There are several stories when it comes to the Jonestown Massacre. Over the last few years, many people have come out about being a part of the People’s Temple, but not being on the camp that fateful day in 1978. Because they were not there, they cannot directly state what happened.

Another reason for the fiction is because of all the unanswered questions. Unfortunately, many of these questions will never receive answers. People wonder what was going through the mind of Jim Jones when he told nearly 1,000 people to drink the Kool-Aid .

19. Jim Jones’ Sons Say Their Dad Didn’t Understand Reality

Jim Jones, Jr. and Stephen Jones both spoke openly about their father during ABC’s “ Truth and Lies: Jonestown – Paradise Lost ” documentary. They discussed who their father was to them. They spoke about their father as a leader and how he didn’t understand reality like everyone else.

In the documentary, Stephen said, “There was nothing spiritual about my father…he had every bit the loved and juicy soul…that everyone else does, but he had lost complete sight of that. His entire existence was superficial.” According to Stephen, this superficial existence happened over time, as Jones changed with his power.

18. Jim Jones Murdered Cats As A Child

Since the Jonestown Massacre, people have studied the life and mind of Jim Jones as much as possible. Psychologists, Criminologists, and other experts have asked what made Jones tick and ask early 1,000 people to kill themselves. On the outside, he seemed like a humbled man, but the inside was a bit different.

One theory is Jones always had the ability to murder inside of him. Classmates and other people who knew Jones as a child said he was strange. He was obsessed with having funerals for dead animals. He was also known to have murdered a cat.

17. Jim Jones Was Obsessed With Adolf Hitler and Stalin

As a child and young adult, Jim Jones became fascinated with death and the “darker side of life.” People saw him as a weird person who liked to talk about tragedies in the world. Jones became captivated by how Hitler persuaded thousands of people to follow him.

Jones would often read about Joseph Stalin , Adolf Hitler , and Karl Marx , who learned how to manipulate and persuade people. He would mimic the ways Hitler and Stalin spoke in front of a crowd. He formed his personality around their personalities like it was a technique to get people to believe in him.

16. The People’s Temple Became More Of A Socialist Movement

The People’s Temple started as a religious organization. While it followed its own agenda, people still considered the Peoples Temple a church . However, its plan also included a lot of values that tied with socialism, which is one reason Jones moved the organization to California and then Guyana.

Jones wanted to take all his followers and live in one location. He told them that he would be their leader, whether they felt he was their father, brother, pastor, or god. He would be whatever they needed him to be, but they had to follow him. People had to listen to him and live near him.

15. Jim Jones Convinced His Members American Society Is Evil

Jim Jones needed to do a lot of persuading when it came to asking nearly 1,000 people to move to Guyana. While some members would go without much question, many didn’t want to leave their home, job, extended family, and friends. They wanted a good reason why they should go.

Jones persuaded many people by telling his members’ American society is full of evil. The only way they could escape from the evil soaring around them was to move to Guyana. They would purchase land away from any sin, allowing them to survive.

14. Peoples Temple Members Rehearsed the “Revolutionary Suicide” Before the Massacre

Jim Jones planned the Jonestown massacre for a period of time. We know this because of the practice suicide members took part in before the killings. Jones referred to these practices as “ white nights “. These rehearsals included recordings of Jones talking over speakers so everyone could hear.

The rules were no one could talk when Jones spoke, and they had to listen for him to call “white night.” Once the members heard “White Night! White Night! Get to the pavilion! Run! Your lives are in danger!” on the speakers, they all had to run to the middle of the camp.

13. Jim Jones Convinced His Members That The United States Killed People

The “white night” warning worked for Jones and the Peoples Temple because he convinced his members the United States put Africans and African Americans in concentration camps. Jones told them people walked up and down the streets with guns. When he yelled, “white night,” people were coming to their camp to take them away.

Jones convinced his members he protected them with this warning. Once everyone came to the middle of the camp, women brought out Kool-Aid in a cup. Everyone had to take a drink, or people forced them to drink it.

12. They Murdered Hundreds of Children During The Jonestown Massacre

When people became members of the Peoples Temple, the whole family became members. Adults and children all had to take part in the Peoples Temple activities. They all had to listen to what Jim Jones said in order to maintain their membership.

Nearly 300 children were forced to drink the Kool-Aid during the Jonestown Massacre. Jim Jones and his wife took care of most of these children . In fact, they were wards of the State of California. This also means the children weren’t supposed to leave California. Jones and his wife snuck them into Guyana.

11. The Jones Family Struggled With Jim Jones’ Popularity

During ABC’s “Truth and Lies: Jonestown – Paradise Lost” documentary, Stephen and Jim Jones, Jr. discussed the reality of their situation. While most people saw the Jones family as the “rainbow’ family, this wasn’t true on the inside.

Behind the door, were Jones’ children who felt they didn’t have a father. Many of his kids resented the Peoples Temple because they thought their dad loved the members more than them. Stephen called his father an actor and said he cared more about other people’s perceptions of him than his own family. Jones always needed the most praise.

10. Peoples Temple Members Who Refused To Drink The Kool-Aid Died In Other Ways

Contrary to popular belief, not everyone drank the Kool-Aid on that fateful day in Guyana. Some of the members refused to drink the potion, especially once they saw people falling to the ground and dying. Frightened children started crying and pleading with their parents to let them go.

Parents started trying to find ways to escape. But, no one could escape from the middle of the compound that day. People walked around with guns, shooting anyone who refused to drink the Kool-Aid. Some people died from knife wounds, while others faced a lethal injection of the drink.

9. A California Congressman’s Visit To Jonestown Pushed Play On The Massacre

Not too long before the massacre, several Peoples Temple members reached out to California. They feared for their safety and complained about abuse from Jones. Congressman Leo Ryan went out to Jonestown to meet with the members. After reaching the members, Ryan decided to take the ones with him who wanted to leave the cult.

As Ryan and others started to leave, gunmen from the People’s Temple opened fire. Ryan’s staffer escaped from the attack. Ryan, three journalists, and other people did not make it out alive. After this incident, Jones knew he had to follow through with his plan.

8. “Don’t Drink The Kool-Aid” Comes From The Jonestown Massacre

Members from the Peoples Temple who lived to tell the stories we know today, state they didn’t always receive Kool-Aid. In fact, many people believe that it was more of a flavor aid than a Kool-Aid mixture with cyanide, valium, Phenergan, and chloral hydrate on that fateful November day.

Nonetheless, the statement “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” comes from the Jonestown massacre. This statement means that you shouldn’t take part in a particular action or follow the crowd. Survivors of the Peoples Temple cringe when they hear this statement. Many ex-members take offense to the saying.

7. Jim Jones Didn’t Drink The Poisoned Drink

Even though Jim Jones forced most of the Peoples Temple members to drink the poison, he didn’t take part in this. Jones died of a gunshot wound to the head on the day of the massacre. To this day, no one knows if Jones killed himself or if one of the members from the Peoples Temple murdered him. Some members, though extremely difficult, escaped through the jungle next to the compound. Some people believe one of the survivors shot Jones as he still had communication with members.

6. People Looked Up to Jim Jones During the Civil Rights Movement

Jim Jones became an essential part during the early years of the Civil Rights Movement . He believed that American society should fully integrate, allowing African American and white civilians to become equal. Of course, this brought hundreds of African Americans into the Peoples’ Temple. In fact, at its height, over 50% of the group was African American.

Jim Jones and his wife said one way they fought against segregation was through adopting African American children. They would soon come to be known as the “rainbow” family because the couple took children from any background, race, and ethnicity.

5. Most Of The Peoples Temple Members Understood Danger Was Around Them

When you hear about other cult stories similar to the Jonestown Massacre, you hear about how thousands of people became brainwashed. This is not the case for the members of the Peoples Temple. While Jones manipulated and persuaded them to follow him, most understood danger was coming their way.

Starting months before the massacre, members began to find ways to leave the Peoples Temple. Of course, most had to escape in the middle of the night through the jungle because of the watch guards. Another way people showed they understood Jones was dangerous occurred by contacting the California government for help.

4. The Majority Of The Peoples Temple Members Were Not Societal Rejects

Most people assume that the people who followed Jim Jones to Guyana were social rejects. They didn’t have a home, or families to care about them, most runaway, or they felt they didn’t belong in mainstream society. However, the opposite is the truth. Most of the members had families and jobs.

They believed that the temple could be a better place. They thought that Jim Jones would help make the world a better place. They felt he truly wanted unity in the United States and would fight for it. Above all, they wanted to help other people.

3. The “Death Tapes” Give Us The Most Information About That Fateful Day

One of the main reasons people know so much about the Jonestown massacre is because of the audio recordings tapped on that day. These tapes are now known as the “death tapes” and are often the first piece of information people look for when researching the massacre.

On these tapes, you can hear the conversations people had, the cries from the children, the way Jim Jones spoke to the group, and so much more. Psychologists and other professionals continuously analyze these tapes as a way to learn more about Jones and the massacre.

2. Most Members Did Not Want To Die

Listening to the “death tapes” is a challenge. The Jonestown massacre is a tragedy that people still struggle to understand, no matter how much they learn about the people involved. The more research completed from the “death tapes,” the more people realize one factor – most members didn’t want to die.

As you listen to the tapes, you hear several members tell other people that death is not the answer. People tried to find different ways, such as asking Jones if they could leave to try to make peace in the United States. Other people stated the children deserved to live.

1. Many People Compare The Peoples Temple To A War Prison

While Jim Jones tried to convince members, he saved them from concentration camps; most survivors compare the Peoples Temple to a war prison. Members could not leave the base, and they received very little food. Guards always watched the camp, making sure people did not escape the grounds.

The working members of the Peoples Temple had to work at least 12 hours a day in the fields. The days were scorching and humid. Members received very little water. Eventually, Jones tried to keep members from communicating with each other for fear of a revolt.

Where did we find this information? Here are our sources:

“Things You Never Knew About The Jonestown Massacre.” Jonathan Sherman. Ranker.

“10 Facts About Jonestown You Didn’t Know.” Makenzie Kennedy. Vocal Criminal. October 2018.

“Jonestown.” Wikipedia.

“The Jonestown Massacre: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know.” Beth Heyn. Heavy. February 2018.

The Psychology Behind The Jonestown Massacre Finally Explained

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 men, women, and children, died by suicide and murder at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana. As reported by History , the suicides and murders were committed under the direction of Reverend Jim Jones, who was the leader of the Peoples Temple religious sect.

Psychology Today reports, "suicide is usually an act of lonely desperation, carried out in isolation or near isolation." However, mass suicide, especially of the scale that happened at Jonestown, is extraordinarily rare.

For the last 43 years, people have questioned how one man could convince more than 900 others to knowingly kill their children and commit suicide. In addition to determining how and why the Jonestown Massacre happened, Psychologists want to make sure it never happens again.

As reported by The Washington Post , Jim Jones opened his first church in 1953, at the age of 22. Although he was not yet formally ordained, he gained respect, and a following, for his dedication to racial equality and human rights.

In the early 1960s, Jones was ordained as a Disciples of Christ minister and continued to build his following at The Peoples Temple Full Gospel Church. However, by 1965, he became obsessed with concerns about a nuclear war. He eventually convinced his congregation to move with him to California, where he believed they would all be safe if a nuclear war occurred.

By the late 1970s, History reports some sources estimated Reverend Jim Jones had up to 20,000 followers.

What actually happened in Jonestown?

In 1974, Reverend Jim Jones signed a lease for 27,000 acres of land in Guyana. History reports Jones continued to lead his church in California. However, he sent a group of his followers to Guyana to prepare the land for farming and to establish a compound.

In 1977, Jim Jones and more than 1,000 of his followers moved to Guyana to live in the newly established Jonestown settlement. A little more than one year later, more than 900 of those followers were dead. Some survivors managed to escape.

History reports the Jonestown Massacre was prompted by a congressman visiting the compound. Amid reports of ongoing abuse, the congressman traveled to the compound to check the welfare of its residents. During the visit, several members asked the congressman to help them leave. However, the group was ambushed on their way back to the plane and four people were killed.

Within hours, Jones convinced his followers to poison their children and to take their own lives. As reported by History, Jones told them they were about to be attacked in retaliation for the ambush.

Psychologists believe Reverend Jim Jones used mental and physical abuse, blackmail, humiliation, and threats to break his followers down and ultimately convince them he was their savior. Those who weren't convinced were simply too frightened to leave.

As reported by Psychology Today , Jones routinely forced his followers to sign blank power of attorney forms and false confessions to crimes, including child molestation, to prove their loyalty to him and the church.

How Jim Jones gained control of his followers

As reported by Psychology Today , Jones also used degradation and humiliation to exert control over his followers. Although couples were prohibited from having sex with each other, they were forced to have sex with Jones or other members while their spouses were forced to watch. He also humiliated his followers by making them strip naked and criticizing their bodies in front of others.

Unfortunately, children were not exempt from Reverend Jim Jones' abuse. Children were routinely beaten, "tortured with electric shocks," and left in the bottom of an abandoned well as punishment. There are also reports that they were sexually abused.

Psychology Today reports Reverend Jones used abuse and humiliation to weaken his followers' willpower. However, the threats of blackmail ensured they would remain under his control.

In addition to the blackmail, Jones routinely threatened to have any defectors killed by his "angels." Not only were many followers afraid to leave, but they were also afraid of what might happen to any loved ones they left behind.

As reported by Psychology Today, Jonestown ultimately became "a twilight-zone reality in which people pretended to be enjoying a Utopian existence while living in constant fear for their lives."

With little willpower left, Jim Jones' followers were susceptible to his assertions that he was, in fact, God, and that he had their best interests in mind. He also convinced them they would be transported to another planet, where they would live in paradise if they ever died.

‘It Was 46 Years Ago, But It’s Still Vivid’: A Jonestown Massacre Responder Speaks Out

By Elizabeth Yuko

Elizabeth Yuko

On November 18, 1978, 918 members of Jim Jones ’ Peoples Temple cult died in Jonestown, Guyana , in the single largest loss of American civilian lives in a deliberate act before 9/11. From the moment media coverage of the massacre began, much of the reporting has characterized the event as a “mass suicide,” in which people willingly drank cyanide-laced Flavor Aid when their leader instructed them to do so. 

The reality of what transpired was far more nuanced — as was life in Jonestown since establishment of the failed utopian community in 1974.

Even as popular culture has slowly started to shift away from certain types of victim-blaming, Jonestown is still routinely presented as a situation where people consensually died by suicide. But a new three-part docuseries, Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown — which premieres on Hulu on June 17 and Nat Geo on Aug. 14 — takes a strikingly different approach. 

A few hours before the deaths of more than 900 people, San Francisco Congressman Leo Ryan — who had come to Jonestown to investigate alleged abuse of members — three journalists, and a Peoples Temple defector were killed in an ambush shooting on the Port Kaituma airstrip a few miles outside of the commune. Several other members of his party were wounded, but had survived by playing dead, or hiding behind the wheels of their Twin Otter aircraft.

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The firsthand account of Ret. Gen. David Netterville — one of the first three U.S. servicemen on the ground in Jonestown following the massive loss of life — bolsters this argument. A ​​sergeant at the time, Netterville was a combat controller with the Air Force Special Operations Division, an elite group of highly specialized soldiers that worked with the various branches of the military and Special Ops, similar to the Green Beret Special Forces, the Army Rangers, and the Navy SEALs. He had enlisted five years prior to making the trip to the Guyanese jungle. 

While there is no shortage of documentaries about Jonestown, this is the first time Netterville is sharing his perspective on the aftermath. Rolling Stone recently caught up with him to discuss his experience at Jonestown, why he decided to speak out about it now, and what people still don’t understand about the massacre nearly 46 years later.

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How did you find out you were going to Guyana? On November 19, [1978] I got a call about 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday. The phone was ringing off the wall,  but I was sleeping, and wasn’t going to answer it. When I finally did, it was Senior Master Sergeant Alvin Huddleston, our noncommissioned officer in charge. He said: “I need you to pack a bag, go over to the armory, get some weapons, some radios, batteries, some water, some C-rations, and put them on the Jeep. We’re going to load the C-130 [military transport aircraft] as soon as possible, and we’ll be out of here.”

Did you have any knowledge of Jim Jones or the Peoples Temple before going to Guyana? No, I’d never heard of it or him. I had been in Panama for a little more than a year at that point, and you lose track of things going on in the States.

When were you told where you were going? That morning I asked Huddleston if we’re going to Nicaragua. He said he couldn’t tell me because it was a classified mission, but he’d have more information once we were airborne. About 12:30 [p.m.] we were wheels up, and I’m trying to notice which direction we were flying out of Howard. Instead of turning north towards Nicaragua, we turned and went east. 

An hour later, Captain Mike Massengale told us we were going to Guyana. I looked at Huddleston and Dalton and I go, “Guyana? Where’s Guyana?”

They tell us that it’s suspected that there’s a hippie commune in Guyana where mass killings are going on, and they’re fighting and shooting each other. They think there may be several thousand people there. So, I look at my two buddies and go, “There’s three of us, and there are a few thousand of them. This is really gonna be a tough one.”

They all come out dressed in nice suits. I was going to introduce myself and see who they are. Huddleston says, “No, don’t bother those guys. Leave them alone. They have nothing to say to you.” Now I’m really curious, and so I ask about them again. He says that they’re from another government agency — probably the CIA. 

I did go over and asked ‘em a few questions and the first answer I got is, “You don’t have a need to know.” That’s their modus operandi. 

Where in Guyana did you eventually land? We left Caracas as soon as these guys got on board, and flew into Georgetown’s international airport. We offloaded our Jeep, trailer, and equipment and we’re sitting on the ramp. There was no one there to meet us. No information. There’s no telephones around. Nothing. 

An Air Force C-141 medical evacuation aircraft was [at the airport in Georgetown] when we landed. It loaded the people that were wounded [the previous day in the Port Kaituma shooting] — like Congressman Ryan’s aide, Jackie Speier — and those who had died, [in order to bring] them back to the States. We tried to get information from the sergeant in charge [of the aircraft] and they didn’t know anything. 

The captain in charge of the C-130 aircraft taxied over, refueled, and came out and talked to us. He says, “I’m going back to Panama — I don’t know what you guys are supposed to do.”

The three of us were just sitting there. Finally, a state department employee from the U.S. embassy comes walking up to us and he asks who we are. He didn’t know we were coming, so we introduced ourselves. He said, “Oh, I see you have a radio Jeep, yeah? Oh man, we can use you. Don’t go away.” And he walked off to go to a telephone. 

Eventually, the State Department individual came back, and we locked the Jeep up in a hangar. We spent the night at his home in downtown Georgetown, trying to figure out how we’re going to get to Jonestown. The next morning we went back to the American Embassy for an intel briefing. They showed us pictures of what Jim Jones looked like, and told us who to look for. 

When we landed there, we saw the Twin Otter aircraft that got shot up, and met a small squad of Guyanese army soldiers. Then, a Guyanese army helicopter landed, but [the soldiers inside] didn’t know anything about us coming. We told them we were there to go into Jonestown and find out what’s going on, and they agreed to give us a ride. 

It was just unbelievable — the carnage. The number of people laying on the ground. 

When I first saw it from a distance — we were about five miles out — it looked like someone had scattered clothes all across the ground over about a two- or three-acre site. Colorful clothes, shirts and everything. I’m like, “Wow, look at all the clothes over there. They must have washed clothes.” I had never seen so many clothes. Never. When we got closer, I realized it wasn’t clothes — it was people. Corpses.

We landed in a softball field on the complex, got out, and started looking for anybody that survived. We were told there would be survivors, but didn’t see any that first time we got into the camp. 

Did you ever find any survivors? We flew back to Port Kaituma and ended up spending the night there in an elementary school with the Guyanese soldiers. While we were there, a guy came in. I think his name was Odell Rhodes , and he said that  he was the camp medic. He had survived because when Jim Jones was having people injected with the cyanide, he sent Odell to the little medical hut there to get a stethoscope to make sure that they were dead. 

Well, Odell said, “You know what? I knew I’d be next. So I hid in that medical clinic, I went out the back door, and I was gone. I stayed out in the jungle and followed the railroad tracks back over to Port Kaituma.”

He ended up spending the night with us there, sleeping on the floor of the elementary school. He left the next morning — there was a plane that came in and they took him out of there almost immediately. I never saw him again. 

Finally, he comes out, walks over to us, introduces himself, and asks if we had any water. They had spent almost two nights out there in the jungle. So I said “Yeah, we got water. Hungry? We got food.” So he was a happy guy, but he’s still leery of us because of the weapons and everything. He was just scared to death because I mean, he’s witnessed the shootings and the people getting killed.

So once we got his confidence, he went back into the jungle and came out with his two teenage daughters. We give them some C-rations. We could just tell the trauma that they had been through. Not long after that, another airplane came in, loaded them up, and they were gone. We really didn’t have a chance to talk with them at all.

That day we flew back into Jonestown on the same helicopter. 

What was Jonestown like when you returned? It was hot and it was humid. We did have fresh water, though. Jonestown had artesian wells where they had put pipes and water was coming out. An Air Force surgeon came in the next day and they tested the water to make sure that we could drink it, and it was safe. It was real cold, and real good. 

We were trying to find people that were still alive that maybe had survived. We walked around the edge of the jungle. Every so often we’d holler “Hey, is anybody here? Can you hear me?” Nobody. 

Then Sergeant Dalton had the idea to count the beds in these little small wooden frame homes to find out how many people lived there. So we did, and there were approximately 1,000 beds. 

While we’re there, another Guyanese army helicopter came in and had the Guyanese Surgeon General on board. I escorted him over to where Jim Jones was, by the bucket of Kool-Aid — actually, it was grape Flavor Aid mixed in with cyanide and some other things. He did a field autopsy on Jim Jones. 

Now, you have to remember that by this time, these bodies were starting to bloat and the stench was terrible. 

He said that he would highly suggest wearing a mask.

Well, there were no masks to be had, so I improvised. I went and got a pillowcase and I cut me out a bandana like a cowboy, and I wore that the rest of the time I was there. I’d soak it every morning with Old Spice aftershave. To this day, I can’t smell Old Spice aftershave. If I do, I throw up. 

I don’t blame you. Were you the one who identified Jim Jones? The first people to actually find him was the Guyanese army. Jim Jones was shot in the head. Now, I didn’t see a pistol laying next to him, so I don’t know if he did it himself, or if one of his security guys had shot him. But he was laying on his back, right there behind his pulpit at the entrance of the Peoples Temple [pavillion]. He had on a bright red shirt, tan khaki pants. He was pretty easy to recognize.

What about everyone else? Most people were laying on the ground on their stomach; many still had syringes stuck in the back of their neck. We also found people that had been shot in the head with a 38-caliber pistol.

Whoever was administering the syringes would just drop people right there as they died and stack [the bodies] on top of each other. Like, you’d have four or five people piled up. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of children — a lot of young children — one- and two-year-old kids that had a syringe stuck in their neck like that. It was terrible. Man, how could someone do this. 

That’s why we didn’t know how many people there really were when we made the initial count. We were estimating 400, 450 from what we could count. We radioed that back on the high frequency radio, and they didn’t believe it. They didn’t want to believe it. 

Did you continue counting after reporting the initial numbers? No. After that, a group of soldiers flew in to take over. It was a graves registration unit, and that’s their job, say, on the battlefield: they go out and recover bodies, put them in body bags, and then evacuate them. 

What else did you come across during your investigation? They had even shot all the animals: dogs, cats, in that little zoo there with a chimpanzee — I think his name was Mr. Muggs — shot him, shot two other monkeys in a cage. Man, they killed everything and everybody.

We did go over to Jim Jones’ house, and I took a crowbar from the workshed out there and pried open his safe. There were four, five, six boxes of passports and Social Security checks inside.

About this time, one of the CIA guys who came down on the plane with us walked in and asked what we were doing. We said that we were looking to see what’s in the safe. So he said, “Who told you to do it?” And we said, “Nobody. We’re investigating here.” You don’t know how bad I wanted to say “You don’t have a need to know, sir.” 

He says that he’s got to take the boxes back. I said, “Have at it,” turned around and walked off. I left him there. I had other things to do.

What were your other responsibilities during the mission to Jonestown? We found an observation tower and set up our radios to talk to any aircraft that may be coming in. It was right by the little building that we slept in — a little hooch [temporary shelter] — and so we set that up as our command post, and we did all our air traffic control out of that tower. 

Once I got in that tower, I was talking to 200 or 300 airplanes every day coming in and out of there. If it wasn’t one of the military guys, there were a lot of news people that had rented airplanes, and I was trying to keep all those guys separate — you know, vertically. 

How long were you in Guyana? We were there seven days total; we got back to Panama on the eighth day.

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What do you wish people understood about Jonestown, nearly 46 years later? The church that Jim Jones had in San Francisco was actually under investigation for stealing people’s money, taking their homes, stuff like that. He probably brainwashed a lot of these people. He had some of them actually believing that they should all die and go to heaven together.

And the people that didn’t [willingly ingest the poison]? Well, they ended up getting shot, or being held down while someone stuck a syringe in the back of their neck. Once it got going, people were dying left and right. There’s really nothing they could do. 

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Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown

Survivors and eyewitnesses tell the immersive story of Jim Jones' idealistic organization's final hours that spiraled into a mass casualty event. more

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Alternative Considerations of Jonestown & Peoples Temple

Diplomatic Intervention of the Jonestown Conspiracy

By riley de leon.

What would somebody have to say to a person to get him or her to do something they could not possibly believe they were capable of? On November 18, 1978, after unlawful persuasion, Jim Jones and 908 other Peoples Temple members were found dead in the South American jungle. Despite his intentions, Jim Jones was truly a charismatic Christian preacher who championed the cause of the underclass. Unfortunately, he was also able to manipulate a congregation of nearly 1,000 people that resulted in “the largest single loss of American civilian life, in a non-natural disaster until the events of September 11, 2001” (“Moments”). Faced with the problem of potential Social Security fraud and continued human rights violations by the Rev. Jim Jones, Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Guyana to investigate the safety of American civilians living in Jonestown. However, had the U.S. government agencies upon whom Ryan depended for background information been more informed themselves about the origins of Peoples Temple, they might have been better able to protect those susceptible to cult involvement and prevent the fleecing of U.S. citizens and the mass suicides in Guyana.

The power of the church seized Jim Jones from a young age. An Indiana native, Rev. Jones grew up with an abnormal interest in healing and spirituality. After marrying Marceline Baldwin in 1949, he moved to Bloomington, Indiana, where he earned a degree in secondary education (Reiterman 28). Jones was very studious and particularly enjoyed scrutinizing the strengths and weaknesses of powerful leaders that came before him. His interest in communism was sparked after attending several local rallies in 1951. After the fall of Joseph Stalin, Jones began to identify with the ostracism faced by open communists (Reiterman 24). Jones distinguished himself from other authoritarians by infiltrating the church with these ideals. Hoping to integrate congregations across the United States, Jones began his own church originally known as the Peoples Temple Full Gospel Christian Church (Rosenberg).

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the streets of America erupted in violence and civil strife. The war in Vietnam, civil rights marches, and political assassinations were bearing heavily on a financially-depressed nation (“Jonestown”). Out of this turmoil, thousands of Americans flocked to hear the sermons of Rev. Jones. The Peoples Temple congregation would spend months at a time traveling cross-country, acquiring revenue for the church and spreading the word of Rev. Jones, recruiting people to return to Indianapolis with them. To many, Jones was the perfect integrationist (Scheeres 11). His comforting speeches became a mixture of socialist ideals and Christian redemption. What many people failed to see was Jones’ ability to disguise his Marxism as religion (Reiterman 61).

As Peoples Temple continued to grow, Jones became more concerned with accomplishing his social goals and ensuring member loyalty to Peoples Temple. In 1961, Jones claimed that he had a vision of Chicago coming under a nuclear attack and that Indianapolis would also be destroyed (Kilduff). At the same time Jones began to find more community in the Pentecostal Church. Hoping to move power to an urban area, the Temple began holding services in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1970 (McGehee).

In 1977, as media scrutiny of Peoples Temple began to intensify, Jones and his followers moved to Guyana, where they had created the community “Jonestown,” formally known as “The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project.” (McGehee). Jonestown exceeded the expectations of Jim Jones. The close-knit community existed in a sovereign nation where socialism ruled and people were isolated from the racism and poverty that they experienced in the United States. Ultimately, Jonestown was the result of Reverend Jones’ ever-expanding fascist views in the United States. Most importantly, members of Peoples Temple were living in an environment where somebody cared about them and they were being cared for— or so they were led to believe.

Meanwhile, numerous domestic allegations of impropriety were being made against Jim Jones. A so-called “government conspiracy” led to the eventual investigation of Peoples Temple in Guyana. Former Temple members notified various government intelligence agencies, including the State Department, of their concerns. Among those concerns were Jones’ ability to control members through disciplinary beatings, relinquishment of private property and government entitlements, and in some cases, custody of their children. Further, Jones controlled members of his Temple through a multitude of human rights violations including demoralization, exhaustion, and malnourishment. His ability to hold people against their will with the threat of death as retribution if they chose to leave Jonestown was a powerful glue that kept his flock largely intact (“Jonestown”).

In early 1978, defector Tim Stoen joined several former members of Peoples Temple who formed an alliance known as the “Concerned Relatives” and made attempts to reach out to the American government seeking aid (Steel). Up to this point, there had been no national security interest in the Peoples Temple presence in the Guyanese jungle. In response to these complaints and original suspicions, Congressman Leo Ryan tried to entice several additional members of Congress to accompany him to Guyana and investigate the potential safety concerns, although they all declined his request. In 1978 the U.S. Embassy questioned numerous Social Security recipients to ensure that they were not being held against their will. “None of the 75 people interviewed by the Embassy stated that they were being held against their will, were forced to sign over welfare checks, or wanted to leave Jonestown” (Ma’at-Ra). Temple members believed that someday the government, through the FBI, CIA, or another agency, would try to destroy “the most promising hope for world socialism” (Reiterman 164).

Ryan flew into Georgetown, Guyana on November 14, 1978, accompanied by a team of eighteen people consisting of government officials, media representatives, and various members of the Concerned Relatives. The media presence aggravated Jones. Because of this, Ryan and his delegation originally were not accepted into Jonestown. However, after several pleas made by Peoples Temple lawyer Charles Garry to Jim Jones, the crew was granted entry (Steel).

Tim Reiterman, one of the journalists that traveled with the congressional delegation to Jonestown, claimed that it was “disturbing to hear him [Jones] put a figurative gun in the hands of those [Peoples Temple members] who had come to visit Jonestown. It was shocking to see his glazed eyes and festering paranoia face to face, to realize that nearly a thousand lives, ours included, were in his hands” (“Jonestown”). After receiving private requests from several defectors to leave Jonestown, many of the delegation realized that there had been a potential for danger all along. When Jim Jones recognized that people wanted to leave his utopia, he became weak. Paired with his consistent drug abuse and pathological insanity (Knight-Griffin), Jim Jones had finally fallen apart.

When the Ryan delegation had processed as many defectors as the U.S. Embassy could manage to safely return to the States, Jim Jones had given his loyalists orders to close in with rifles and shotguns and take revenge at the Port Kaituma airstrip. As a result, the congressman and several members of his delegation were killed. After the ambush at Port Kaituma, Jones coerced his followers into what he phrased “revolutionary suicide,” protesting the conditions of an inhumane world (“Jonestown”). This consisted of nearly 304 children and 603 adults voluntarily or through forcible injection, drinking a fruit-flavored drink laced with cyanide poison. Jones believed that those who shared his conception of peace should, “die with a degree of dignity” (“Jonestown”). Jones was killed that same day with a single gunshot wound to the head, one of only two people to die by gunshot.

Many people willingly followed Jones to Guyana because they adored his fiery rhetoric and his promise of a society free of discrimination. The Jonestown massacre has left an indelible mark on subsequent history, which has a tendency to reveal flaws that were thought to be nonexistent. The Guyana tragedy brings very poignant issues to the forefront of society that hopefully have since been reconciled. Although the federal government is careful not to infringe upon constitutional rights of American citizens, it is likewise incumbent upon them to protect those citizens as well.

“In June 1978, Leo Ryan read excerpts from the sworn affidavit of Debbie Blakey, a defector from Jonestown, which included claims that the community at Jonestown had, on a number of occasions, rehearsed for a mass suicide” (Steel). Before traveling to Guyana, Ryan read on the 1977 edition of New West magazine, which headlined, “…Jim Jones is one of the state’s most politically potent leaders. But who is he? And what’s going on behind his church’s locked doors…” (Kilduff). This is evidence that official government agencies had suspicions of ill-gotten gains on Jones’ behalf, but failed to act in the absence of concrete facts. Historically, it was not a priority of the government to care for those minorities susceptible to cult type involvement.

A plausible alternative solution to the drastic investigation of Jonestown would have been a more in-depth, domestic investigation of Peoples Temple origins, prior to cult evolvement. This would include paying more attention to those that represent the masses in the United States versus a choice few who generate revenue for the political parties involved. Had the federal government put more emphasis on the best interest of Americans in general, versus Americans who are constantly in the limelight, this tragedy and others similar to it may have been averted.

One of the demands placed upon elected officials is confirmation and verification of the adherence to the rule of law. Given the events of the last decade, the expectation for security and accountability has risen to an all-time high (“Moments”). Citizens of the United States now have preconceived ideas about what their elected officials should do to procure security. This security must be balanced with sensitivity towards discrimination from both a racial and financial standpoint.

Alternatively, had the congregants of Peoples Temple been more financially literate and better informed as to their religious and social options, a crisis of this magnitude could have been easily avoided. An informed consumer is always more inclined to make good decisions. This would have certainly held true in the case of the Guyana tragedy. Had people been better educated and cared for, rather than being given the rubber stamp of approval from government authority, it would have been less likely that they be taken advantage of. Part of their ignorance was the limitations involved with access to information as compared to the modern world.

This alternate solution directly involves implementations on the behalf of various government intelligence agencies. Had agencies such as the FBI or CIA made an effort to release information obtained about Jones’ motives to move to Guyana, they might have better been able to prevent Jones from fleecing U.S. citizens of their Social Security entitlements and other crimes. It is possible that these agencies were aware of the direction of the flow of funds but had restrictions placed on their ability to pursue effective intervention (Knight-Griffin).

According to McGehee, “The FBI withheld these startling revelations from the public under the national security exemption to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for 31 years, until a recent review of all classified material in government files which are more than 25 years old resulted in their release.” Had there been less government restriction, the U.S. State Department would have been able to step in and give government officials a more specific directive regarding potential abuses or neglect (Knight-Griffin). Further, interrogation by the U.S. Embassy in Guyana would have been more organized had they known of these revelations. Had this happened, it is possible that the mass suicides could have been prevented and Jones could have defeated before he spiraled out of control. If not for the complete lack of control over rogue organizations such as Peoples Temple, the Guyana Tragedy may not have gone down in history as one of the most tragic public relations disasters in U.S. State Department history.

Historically, Jonestown and the disturbing events that occurred there have proven that there is a fine line between citizens’ autonomy and a government’s socialistic intervention. It is unfortunate that it takes an event of such epic proportion to bring this truth to the foreground. Nonetheless, a society can only operate effectively under adherence to a minimal set of standards and the concept of lowest common denominator.

Faced with the problem of potential Social Security fraud and continued human rights violations by the Rev. Jim Jones, Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Guyana to investigate the safety of American civilians living in Jonestown. However, had the government agencies providing information to Ryan been more informed about the origins of Peoples Temple, they might have been better able to protect those susceptible to cult involvement and prevent the fleecing of U.S. citizens and the mass suicides in Guyana. If groups or individuals are allowed to act with impunity and without consequences for their actions, the moral fabric of that society will deteriorate and ultimately cease to exist. In the infamous words of French philosopher Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities” (Voltaire 9).

Works Cited

Jonestown: Nightmare in Paradise . Dir. Tim Wolochatiuk. Perf. Stephan Jones. National Geographic Channel . N.p., 2012. Film.

This documentary was found on the National Geographic Channel while I was browsing through television programs. It was a catalyst for choosing this topic and it provided a reliable general source for my research. It was useful because it included eyewitness testimonials from Jim Jones son, Stephan, several members of the Ryan delegation who survived the Port Kaituma shootings, and several defectors who lived to tell their stories. The source provided a lot of background information about my historical event, but it did not specifically analyze my research question.

Kilduff, Marshall and Phil Tracy. “Inside Peoples Temple.” New West Magazine 1 Aug. 1977: 30-38. Print.

This periodical was referenced in several other resources that are cited in this paper. The transcript was found online . It provided reinforced evidence that government officials were suspicious of criminal activity on Jones’ behalf, but remained skeptical and failed to act. The source is well documented, and it gives insight from a different perspective than that of Jim Jones loyalists. This introduced the potential safety concerns to be investigated in Jonestown, but because it was written within its historical setting, it did not go into great detail as to what would come of the safety concerns.

Knight-Griffin, Chris. Personal interview. 4 Feb. 2013.

This historian is a contributor to the McGehee citation listed below. Email correspondence began my research on the topic, and Knight-Griffin helped pinpoint an alternate solution. He pointed me in the direction of several other resources listed. Specifically, he confirmed the lack of a government conspiracy and Jones’ evident insanity.

Ma’at-Ra, Djehuty. “Jonestown Massacre.” DHealthStore . N.p., 8 Aug. 2012.

This website was found online as a subscript from the McGehee citation listed below. It was used solely to provide factual evidence that members of the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project were not technically being held against their will. It is a valuable and credible source because the U.S. Embassy in Guyana conducted the survey referenced.

McGehee, Fielding M., and Rebecca Moore. Alternative Considerations for Jonestown & Peoples Temple . The Jonestown Institute . San Diego State University, 1998.

This database was found online and is loaded with primary source contributions from historians, and former Peoples Temple members. The most efficient use of this information was to compare and contrast alternate considerations for Jim Jones’ establishment of Peoples Temple. Overall this database lent itself to an abundant amount of additional sources and submissions, including specifics on the relations between U.S. and Guyanese policy. This most sufficiently answered my original research question, because it led me to a wider variety of findings.

“ Moments in U.S. Diplomatic History .” Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training . N.p., n.d. Web.

This webpage was found online during the beginning stages of my research. Its primary function was to serve as a resource that would put the event in its historical context and additionally, into perspective when considering other tragedies like it. Specifically, this source identified that the great majority of Peoples Temple loyalists did in fact, kill themselves. It further gave reasoning behind this claim, and provided details about the CIA involvement in the events of the Jonestown Massacre as they unfolded.

Reiterman, Tim, and John Jacobs. Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People . New York: Dutton, 1982. Print.

This book was found at the Meyer Library at MSU. It is rich source of primary information from Jonestown. Reiterman was a member of the Ryan delegation that originally traveled into Jonestown to investigate the allegations against Rev. Jones. For my research it was most useful in making claims about Jones’ early interest in communism, and how that developed throughout his establishment of Peoples Temple. Though the book was light on government sources, it did support my research topic by analyzing the socialist views of Jim Jones, and how he convinced his congregation to believe these views were revolutionary.

Rosenberg, Jennifer. Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple . 20th Century History . About.com, n.d. Web.

This information was found online at a credible website, “about.com,” often used by researchers to gain general knowledge. When analyzing the information this source offered, I specifically focused on Jim Jones’ infatuation with the spiritual healing process, and his future drug abuse, power, and paranoia. This source did help to answer my original research question when developing my alternate solution, because it explained the origins of the People’s Temple in greater depth.

Scheeres, Julia. A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown . New York: Free, 2011. Print.

This book was found at the Meyer Library at MSU. The information in the book was written in an obscure perspective; however, the research conducted from this source evaluated Jones as an integrationist and civil rights advocate during the 1960s and 1970s. The source established a vivid contrast between Jones as an authoritarian and Jones as a humanitarian. The source was used very minimally throughout the rest of the research paper.

Steel, Fiona. Jonestown Massacre: A ‘Reason’ to Die . TruTV.com, n.d.

This website was found online and was used to investigate the details of U.S. State Department’s decision to send Congressman Leo Ryan and his delegation into Jonestown. The Congressman’s investigation was the only viewpoint this source focused on, which made it very easy to obtain detailed information pertaining to his visit. This source was useful in addressing and researching the United States solutions to the problem. Ultimately, it makes inferences about the Ryan delegation visit and how it led to the massacre.

Voltaire, and David Claparède. Questions Sur Les Miracles: à Monsieur Le Professeur Cl….. Genève: n.p., 1765. Print.

This book was used to research minimal background information concerning religion and spirituality. The only use for it in my research paper was to conclude with Voltaire’s quote, which dramatically emphasizes the tragedy in its entirety. In similar contexts, the massacre is compared to similar tragedies and Jones is compared to similar authoritarians (e.g., Adolf Hitler, Karl Marx, etc.)

(At the time he wrote this article, Riley de Leon was a high school senior at Greenwood Laboratory School in Springfield, Missouri.)

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