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James
Warren JONES
A.K.A.: "Jim Jones"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Founder of the Peoples Temple
group - Mass suicide by poison
Number of victims: 900 +
Date of murders:
November 18,
1978
Date of birth:
May 13,
1931
Victims profile: Men, women and children
Method of murder:
Shooting
- Poison
Location: Jonestown, Guyana
Status: Dead from a gunshot wound to the head
the same day
On November 18, 1978,
Congressman Leo J. Ryan was shot and killed in Guyana, along with four
other individuals. Congressman Ryan was visiting Jonestown, Guyana, for
the purpose of conducting a Congressional inquiry into the activities of
the People's Temple and Reverend Jim Jones. The FBI investigated his
murder under the code name "RYMUR" and in 1986, Lawrence John Layton was
found guilty in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, of
several federal violations, including conspiracy to murder a congressman.
James Warren "Jim"
Jones (May 13, 1931 –
November 18, 1978) was the American founder of the Peoples Temple group,
which became synonymous with group suicide after the November 18, 1978
mass suicide by poison in their isolated agricultural intentional
community called Jonestown, located in the country of Guyana. Jones was
found dead from a gunshot wound to the head among the 909 corpses there.
Early life
and founding of Temple
Jones was born in Lynn, Indiana to
Lynetta Putnam and James Thurman Jones. He graduated from high school
at Richmond High School in Richmond, Indiana. He became a preacher in
the 1950s. He obtained a bachelors degree at Butler University in 1961,
and after graduate school from Indiana University in Bloomington, IN,
Jim sold pet monkeys door-to-door to raise the money to fund his own
church that would be named Wings of Deliverance.
He later renamed his church the
Peoples Temple, located in Indianapolis. He gained respectability when
he became an ordained minister in 1964 in- the mainstream Christian
denomination, Disciples of Christ.
The church was exceptional for its
equal treatment of African Americans and many of them became members of
the church. He started a struggle for racial equality and social
justice, which he dubbed apostolic socialism. Jones authored a booklet,
called "The Letter Killeth" pointing out what he felt were the
contradictions, absurdities, and atrocities in the Bible, but the
booklet also stated that the Bible contained great truths.
He claimed to be an incarnation of
Jesus, Akhenaten, Buddha, Lenin, and Father Divine and performed
supposed miracle healings to attract new members. Members of Jones'
church called Jones "Father" and believed that their movement was the
solution to the problems of society and many did not distinguish Jones
from the movement. The group gradually moved away from the mainstream.
Jonestown and
mass murder-suicide
In the summer of 1977, Jones and most
of the 1000 members of the Peoples Temple moved to Guyana from San
Francisco after an investigation into the church for tax evasion was
begun. Jones named the closed settlement Jonestown after himself. His
intention was to create an agricultural utopia in the jungle, free from
racism and based on quasi-communist principles.
People who had left the organization
prior to its move to Guyana told the authorities of brutal beatings,
murders and of a mass suicide plan, but were not believed. In spite of
the tax evasion allegations, Jones was still widely respected for
setting up a racially mixed church which helped the disadvantaged.
Around 70% of the inhabitants of Jonestown were black and impoverished.
The religious scholar Mary McCormick
Maaga argued that Jones' authority waned after he moved to the isolated
commune, because there he was not needed anymore for recruitment and he
could not hide his drug addiction from rank and file members.
Consequently, he lost some of his power to inner-circle members.
In November 1978, U.S. Congressman
Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to the Jonestown settlement in
Guyana after allegations by relatives in the U.S. of human rights
abuses. Ryan's delegation arrived in Jonestown on November 15 and spent
three days interviewing residents.
They left hurriedly on the morning of
Saturday November 18 after an attempt was made on Ryan's life. They took
with them roughly 15 Peoples Temple members who wished to leave.
Delegation members later told police that, as they were boarding planes
at the airstrip, a truckload of Jones' armed guards arrived and began to
shoot at them.
At the same time, one of the supposed
defectors, Larry Layton, drew a weapon and began to fire on members of
the party. When the gunmen left, six people were dead: Representative
Ryan, Don Humphrey, a reporter from NBC, a cameraman from NBC, a
newspaper photographer, and one defector from the Peoples Temple.
The former California State Senator
Jackie Speier, a staff member for Rep. Ryan in 1978, Richard Dwyer, the
Deputy Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy at Georgetown and
allegedly an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a producer
for NBC News, Bob Flick, survived the attack.
Later that same day, around 913 of
the remaining inhabitants of Jonestown, 276 of them children, died in
what has commonly been labeled a mass suicide, although many who died
were murdered. While some followers obeyed Jones' instructions to commit
"revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor
Aid (often misconstrued as Kool-aid), others died by forced cyanide
injection or by shooting. Jones was found dead sitting in a deck chair
with a gunshot wound to the head, although it is unknown if he had been
murdered or committed suicide.
The autopsy on his body showed levels
of the barbiturate pentobarbital that could have been lethal to humans
who have not developed physiological tolerance. His drug usage
(including various LSD and marijuana experimentations) was confirmed by
his son, Stephan, and Jones's doctor in San Francisco.
Other issues
Jones was married to Marceline Jones.
They had two sons together, one biological and one adopted. Their
biological son, Stephan Gandhi Jones, did not take part in the mass
suicide because he was away, playing with the Peoples Temple basketball
team in a game against the Guyanese national team. Jones' adopted son,
Jim Jones Jr., was African American. Jim and Marceline were the first
white couple in Indiana to adopt an African American child.
Jones claimed to be the biological
father of John Victor Stoen, who was the legal son of Grace Stoen and
her husband Timothy Stoen. The custody dispute over Stoen had great
symbolic value for the Peoples Temple and intensified the conflict with
its opponents who consisted of, among others, a group called the "Concerned
Relatives".
Marceline and Jim Jones' son Stephan
Jones is today a businessman and family man, married with three children
of his own. He appeared in the recent documentary Jonestown: Paradise
Lost which aired in the USA on the History Channel. He states that
he won't watch the film and that he does not mourn his father, only his
mother Marceline Jones.
In MacArthur Park, Los Angeles on
December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with soliciting a man
for sex in a movie theater bathroom known for homosexual activity. The
man, as it turns out, was an undercover Los Angeles Police Department
vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers that he
was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of his
sexually abusing a male member of his congregation in front of the
followers, ostensibly to prove the man's own homosexual tendencies.
One of his
sources of inspiration was the controversial cult leader Father Divine.
Jones had borrowed the term "revolutionary suicide" from Black Panther
leader Huey Newton who had argued "the slow suicide of life in the
ghetto" ought to be replaced by revolutionary struggle that would end
only in victory (socialism and self determination) or revolutionary
suicide (death).
Literature
Shiva Naipaul: Black & White,
Hamish Hamilton, London 1980, ISBN 0-241-10337-1
Deborah Layton: Seductive
Poison, Anchor Books, 1999, ISBN 0-385-48984-6
Jonestown was the
communal settlement made in northwestern Guyana by the Peoples Temple, a
cult from California. Jonestown was founded in the mid-1970s by the cult
leader, Jim Jones, for whom it was named, but it was occupied for only a
few years. It stood amidst jungle, about seven miles (11 km)
southwesterly from Port Kaituma.
Jonestown gained lasting
international notoriety in 1978, when nearly its whole population died
in a mass murder-and-suicide ordered by Jones. Jones himself was among
the slain, numbering somewhat over nine hundred men, women and children.
The place was promptly abandoned by
the collapsing remnant of the Peoples Temple. Afterward, it was at first
tended by the Guyanese government, which allowed its re-occupation by
Hmong refugees from Laos for a few years in the early 1980s, but it has
since been altogether deserted.
Origins
The Peoples Temple was formed in
Indianapolis, Indiana, during the mid-1950s. In the 1960s, Jones'
congregation had dwindled to fewer than a hundred members and was on the
verge of collapse. Jones managed to secure an affiliation with the
Disciples of Christ.
This new association bolstered the
Temple's reputation, increased its membership, and spread Jones'
influence. Beginning in 1965, Jones and about 80 followers moved to
Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California, where they believed they
would be safe from nuclear fallout if there were a nuclear attack on the
United States.
In 1972, Jones moved his congregation
to San Francisco, California and opened another church in Los Angeles,
California. While in San Francisco, Jones changed his political image
from anti-Communist to socialist, vocally supported prominent political
candidates, was appointed to city commissions and made grants to local
newspapers with the stated goal of supporting the First Amendment.
Partly inspired by the eccentric preacher Father Divine, he began
charity efforts with the goal of recruiting the poor.
After several scandals and
investigation for tax evasion in San Francisco, Jones began planning a
relocation of the Temple. According to the American Journal of
Economics & Sociology, Jones considered locations in California and
Brazil before settling on Guyana. In 1974, he leased over 3,800 acres
(15.4 km²) of jungle land from the Guyanese government.
Soon, members of the People's Temple
began the construction of Jonestown under the supervision of senior
Temple members. Jones then went back to California before he encouraged
all of his followers to move to Jonestown in 1977. Jonestown's
population increased from 50 members in 1977 to more than 900 at its
peak in 1978.
Jonestown established
Many of the Peoples Temple members
believed that Guyana would be, as Jones promised, a paradise. Instead,
most of Jonestown's residents, including children, ended up raising food
and animals for the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project". The work was
performed six days a week, from seven in the morning to six in the
evening, with temperatures that often reached over 100 degrees
Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), in Guyana's equatorial climate.
According to some, meals for the
members consisted of nothing more than rice and beans while Jones dined
on eggs, meat and soft drinks from a private refrigerator, separate from
the others.
Medical problems such as severe
diarrhea and high fevers struck half the community in February 1978.
According to the New York Times, copious amounts of drugs such as
Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate, Demerol and Valium were
administered to Jonestown residents, with detailed records being kept of
each person’s drug regimen; Jonestown residents claimed the drugs were
administered to control their behavior.
Various forms of punishment were used
against members considered to be serious disciplinary problems. Methods
included imprisonment in a 6x4x3-foot (1.8 X 1.2 X 0.9 m) plywood box
and forcing children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes
upside-down. Members who attempted to run away were drugged to the point
of incapacitation. Armed guards patrolled the compound day and night to
enforce obedience to Jones.
Children, surrendered to communal
care, addressed Jones as "Dad" and were only allowed to see their real
parents briefly at night. Jones was called "Father" or "Dad" by the
adults as well. Up to $65,000 in monthly welfare payments to Jonestown
residents were appropriated by Jones, whose own wealth was estimated to
be at least $26 million.
Local Guyanese, including a police
official, related stories about harsh beatings and a "torture hole," a
well into which Jones had "misbehaving" children thrown in the middle of
the night. Jones had terrified the children by making them believe there
was a monster living at the bottom of the well, which was in fact Jones'
henchmen who pulled and tugged the children's legs as they descended
into the well.
The mass
suicides that would make Jonestown notorious were rehearsed during
"white nights". In an affidavit, Peoples Temple defector Deborah Layton
explains how these were rehearsed.
"Everyone, including
the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we
were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the
liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We all
did as we were told. When the time came when we should have dropped
dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had
just been through a loyalty test. He warned us that the time was not far
off when it would become necessary for us to die by our own hands."
Investigations
On Tuesday November 14, 1978,
Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Francisco, flew to Guyana,
along with a team of 18 people, consisting of government officials,
media representatives and members of the group "Concerned Relatives of
Peoples Temple Members."
The group
included Ryan; his legal advisor, Jackie Speier; Neville Annibourne,
representing Guyana's Ministry of Information; Richard Dwyer, Deputy
Chief of Mission of the US Embassy to Guyana at Georgetown (who some
believe to have been a CIA agent); reporters Tim Reiterman (San
Francisco Herald-Examiner) and Don Harris (NBC); Greg Robinson; Steve
Sung; Bob Flick; Charles Krause; Ron Javers; Bob Brown; and Concerned
Relatives representatives Anthony Katsaris, Jim Cobb and Carolyn Houston
Boyd.
Ryan and the others
intended to investigate allegations that human rights were being
violated daily at the Peoples Temple, that individuals were being held
against their will, that individuals had their money and passports
confiscated, that mass suicide rehearsals were being conducted, and that
seven attempted defectors were killed.
From the time Ryan and the others
arrived at midnight in Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, before
Wednesday the 15th, there were signs that things would not run smoothly.
Previously booked hotel rooms were occupied and the group had to find
other lodgings. In the days that followed, Jones' lawyers in Georgetown,
Mark Lane and Charles Garry, refused to allow Ryan's party access to
Jonestown.
During his stay at Georgetown, Ryan
visited the Temple headquarters at a large house called "Lamaha
Gardens". At a rear patio, Ryan spoke with Temple members Laura Johnston
Kohl and others, who showed him around the house's first floor. Ryan
asked to speak to Jones by radio, but Sharon Amos, the highest-ranking
Temple member present, advised Ryan that his present visit was
unscheduled. Members recalled Ryan as a likeable man who had a bad cold.
Ryan’s
Jonestown visit
By late morning on Friday, November
17, Ryan informed Lane and Garry that he would leave for Jonestown at
2:30 p.m., regardless of Jones' schedule or willingness. Ryan's party
did so at roughly that time, accompanied by Lane and Garry, and came to
Port Kaituma airstrip, 10 km from Jonestown, some hours later. Only Ryan
and three others were initially accepted into Jonestown, but the rest of
Ryan's group were allowed in after sunset.
It was later reported (and verified
by audiotapes recovered by investigators) that Jones had run rehearsals
in how to receive Ryan's delegation, to convince them that everyone was
happy and in good spirits.
On the night of Ryan's arrival, there
was a reception and concert held for the Ryan delegation. Temple members
were carefully selected by Jones to accompany individual visitors around
the compound. Some were angry and saw the Congressman's visit as trouble
brought in from outside, while many went on with their usual routines.
Two Peoples Temple members (Vernon
Gosney and Monica Bagby) made the first move for defection that night--
Gosney passed a note to Ron Harris, reading "Vernon Gosney and Monica
Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown."
That night the Ryan delegation (Ryan,
Speier, Dwyer, and Annibourne) stayed in Jonestown. The entire press
corps and the members of Concerned Relatives were told that they had to
find other accommodations, and so they went to Port Kaituma and stayed
at a small café.
In the early morning of November 18,
more than a dozen Temple members sensed danger enough to walk out of the
colony toward Matthew's Ridge, in the opposite direction of the airstrip
at Port Kaituma. These defectors included the five members of the Evans
family and Leslie Wilson and her two sons, who were the family of
Jonestown's head of security, Joe Wilson.
Later, when the reporters and
Concerned Relatives had arrived, Marceline Jones, wife of Jim Jones,
gave a tour of the settlement for the visiting reporters. There was a
dispute outside a small dormitory building, where elderly black female
temple members were living. The windows and doors were all shut, and
Jones loyalists accused the press of being racist for trying to invade
the privacy of the elderly women. The journalists replied that they
wanted to know about the living conditions.
Jim Jones woke late on the morning of
November 18, and the NBC crew handed him Vernon Gosney's note. Jones was
angry and believed that those who wanted to leave the community would
"lie" and destroy Jonestown. Jones and many other members of the Peoples
Temple saw themselves as a family that had the right and the duty to
stay together.
Then two families stepped forward and
asked to be escorted out of Jonestown by the Ryan delegation. They were
the Parks and the Bogue families, along with Christopher O'Neal and
Harold Cordell, who were partners of women in the two families. Cordell
would lose 14 family members (ages 2-76) that evening during the
poisonings. The Bogues would lose their daughter Marilee (age 18), and
Gosney would lose his son Mark (age 5).
Jones was angry, even though other
members and visitors told him it was actually a compliment that out of
over 1,000 people only a few dozen wished to leave. Jones then gave them
permission to leave, with some money and their passports. Jones also
told them they would be welcome to come back at any time. That
afternoon, there was a very long negotiation under a pavilion, during
which Jones was upset by news that the Evans and Wilson families had
defected on foot.
While negotiations proceeded under
the pavilion, some new emotional scenes developed between family
members. Al Simon, an Amerindian member of the Peoples Temple, walked
toward Ryan with two of his small children in his arms and asked to go
back with them to the US, but his wife Bonnie was summoned on the
loudspeakers by Jones' staff and she loudly denounced her husband.
Another famous scene took place on
camera between Maria Katsaris (a Jones' staff member) and her brother
Anthony. He pleaded with her to return to the US and consult with their
family, but she bitterly rejected his suggestion. Maria pulled off her
gold necklace, threw it at her brother and cursed him as the visitors
and defectors were about to leave.
Violence
breaks out
Because more people were leaving than
had been expected, and due to the limited seating available on the small
Cessna aircraft Ryan had chartered back to Georgetown, Ryan planned on
sending a group there, and staying behind with the rest until another
flight could be scheduled.
Temple member Don Sly (nicknamed
"Ujara"), acting directly under Jones' orders, attacked Ryan with a
knife. This was one of a series of orders Jones gave that day which had
one or more of his loyalists taking drastic action without any other
loyalists knowing of Jones' instructions, resulting in much confusion
between Temple members. In fact, when Sly attacked Ryan, other loyal
Peoples Temple members helped stop the attack.
Although the congressman was not
seriously hurt in the attack, he and Dwyer realized the visiting party
and the defectors were in danger. Ryan's party and 16 ex-Temple members
left Jonestown and reached the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip at 4:30
p.m., where they planned to use two planes (a six-passenger Cessna and a
slightly larger Twin Otter) to fly to Georgetown.
Shortly before the scheduled
departure, Jones loyalist Larry Layton demanded to join the group.
Several other defectors voiced their suspicions about his motives, but
Ryan and Speier allowed him to join. Before the Cessna took off, Layton
produced a gun he had hidden under his poncho, and started shooting at
the passengers. He wounded Monica Bagby and Vernon Gosney, and he tried
to kill Dale Parks, who disarmed Layton.
At about this time, a tractor
appeared at the airstrip, driven by members of Jones' armed guards (the
"Red Brigade"). The tractor got within about 30 feet of the Otter, and
then the Jones loyalists opened fire while circling the plane on foot
and apparently in military-style formation.
At this time, Congressman Leo Ryan
was shot dead along with four other journalists. A few seconds of the
shooting were captured on camera by NBC cameraman Bob Brown, whose
camera kept rolling even as he was shot dead.
Congressman Ryan, news team members
Brown, Robinson, and Harris, and 44-year-old Jonestown defector Patricia
Parks were killed in the few minutes of shooting. Jackie Speier was
injured by five bullets. Steve Sung and Anthony Katsaris also were badly
wounded. The Cessna was able to take off and fly to Georgetown, leaving
behind the gunfire-damaged Otter (whose pilot and copilot also flew out
in the Cessna).
Journalist Tim Reiterman, who had
stayed at the airstrip, photographed the aftermath of the violence.
Dwyer assumed leadership at the scene, and at his recommendation, Layton
was arrested by Guyanese state police. Dwyer was hit by one bullet, in
his buttock, at the airstrip.
It took several hours before the 10
wounded and others in their party gathered themselves together and spent
the night in a café, with the more seriously wounded in a small tent on
the airfield. A Guyananese government plane came to evacuate the wounded
the following morning.
Five teenage members of the Parks and
Bogue families, with one boyfriend, were told by defector Gerald Parks
after the shooting to hide in the adjacent jungle until help arrived and
their safety was assured. They went into the jungle but got lost for
three days and nearly died, until they were found by Guyanese soldiers.
Many Guyanese soldiers and civilians
were looking on from alongside the airstrip as the shooting transpired.
None of them attempted to intervene, and none of them came forward later
to offer witness testimony. To date none of them have even been
identified.
Mass
murder-and-suicide
About 45 minutes after the Port
Kaituma shootings (which is how long it took to travel the rough 6-mile
road back to Jonestown) the airstrip shooters arrived back in Jonestown,
and one eyewitness (Tim Carter, a Vietnam war veteran) recalled them
having the "thousand-yard stare" of weary soldiers. The shooters
numbered about nine, and their identities are not all certainly known,
but most sources agree that Joe Wilson (Jones’ head of security), Thomas
Kice Sr., and Albert Touchette were among them.
Jim Jones called a meeting under the
pavilion as night fell. It was announced as another "white night", the
fake-suicide which had been rehearsed before. But this time, Dr.
Laurence Schacht, Nurse Annie Moore, and others mixed cyanide and Valium
into a metal vat full of grape Flavor Aid.
Before the murder-suicide got under
way, Jones argued with two Temple members who actively resisted his
decision for the whole congregation to die. One was 60-year-old
Christine Miller, who repeatedly suggested alternative strategies, such
as taking all the children to Russia along with Jones himself. Another
dissenter was almost certainly Jones’ own wife, Marceline.
Jones assured his followers that
CIA-sponsored mercenaries or Guyanese soldiers would soon emerge from
the jungle and slaughter all of them. Loyalists with crossbows and
firearms formed a circle around the area where the poison was being
injected into children's mouths with plastic syringes and distributed in
paper cups.
When families each assembled and
arrived at the head of the line, the children were poisoned first. This
is often suggested to be the reason so many adults continued toward
their own deaths with little or no resistance. Stephan Jones, surviving
son of Jim Jones, asserted afterward that, to many, it would have been
impossible to carry on living after seeing so many children die.
According to eyewitness Stanley
Clayton, the families were then escorted away from where the poison vat
was located, and told to lie down together along walkways and areas out
of the close vision of the people who were still being dosed, because
anyone present who believed that this was just another rehearsal would
not believe so any longer after seeing people convulsing and dying. The
poison was extremely effective, causing death within about five minutes
to everyone who drank it.
Four people, who were intended to be
poisoned, decided not to cooperate and survived. They were 76-year-old
Hyacinth Thrash, who hid under her bed when nurses were going through
her dormitory with cups of poison; 36-year-old Odell Rhodes, a Jonestown
teacher and craftsman who hid; 25-year-old Stanley Clayton, who also
hid; and 79-year-old Grover Davis, who was hard of hearing and so
missing the announcement on the loudspeaker to assemble, lay down in a
ditch and pretended to be dead. Thrash and Davis were recovered by
Guyanese soldiers on Sunday morning. Rhodes and Clayton left for Port
Kaituma.
Five people were given assignments by
Jones or his staff that did not call them to their deaths. His two
lawyers, Charles Garry and Mark Lane, who were not Temple members, were
escorted to "the East House", which was used to accommodate visitors,
far away from the pavilion. Tim Carter (30), Mike Carter (20), and Mike
Prokes (31) were given luggage containing money and documents, which
they were told to deliver to Guyana’s Soviet Embassy.
Lawyers Garry and Lane walked through
the jungle during the night and eventually made it to Port Kaituma.
While in the jungle near the settlement, they heard cheering, then
gunshots.
This observation concurs with the
testimony of Clayton, who heard the same sounds as he was sneaking back
into Jonestown to retrieve his passport and to snatch a bottle of Jones’
cold beer. Clayton and Rhodes (who were not aware of each other’s
movements) both looked for the home of one Guyanese family they knew,
which was near Jonestown on the way to Port Kaituma.
Only Clayton found the house in the
dark, while Rhodes continued on to Port Kaituma. Clayton told the
Guyanese family what had just happened, but he was not taken seriously.
Clayton then suggested that the people of Jonestown no longer needed
their tools and equipment. The father of the Guyanese family then went
to Jonestown as Clayton slept. He returned in the morning with a
disturbed look on his face, according to Clayton.
Evidently, Jones and his immediate
staff, after having organized and supervised the "white night", came
together and killed themselves and each other with handguns, after
giving a final cheer.
However, the only two people who were
killed by gunfire were Jones and Annie Moore; it is unknown whether
Jones shot himself or was shot by someone else, and Moore left a suicide
note before shooting herself inside Jones' cabin. Recovery workers
entering Jones' cabin found the door blocked by her body. As a means of
escaping the slow death endured by his followers, it is believed by his
son Stephan, that Jim Jones chose to be shot rather than poisoned.
Other non-suicides appeared to have
had the poisonous brew injected into them between the shoulder blades by
unknown persons. Moore was one of only seven people (out of 913) to have
an autopsy performed on her, at the insistence of her family. Her sister
Rebecca Moore, who was not a Peoples Temple member, has since 1999
hosted a website about the disaster.
Moore's note in
part stated: "I am at a point right now so embittered against the world
that I don't know why I am writing this. Someone who finds it will
believe I am crazy or believe in the barbed wire that does NOT exist in
Jonestown." Another last note was left, unsigned, either by Richard
Tropp or by Marceline Jones.
The Carter brothers
and Mike Prokes were put into protective custody in Port Kaituma, but
released in Georgetown. Rhodes, Clayton, and the two lawyers were also
brought to Georgetown. Larry Layton, who had opened fire aboard the
Cessna, was extradited to the USA and put in prison; he is the only
person ever to have been held responsible for the events at Jonestown.
He was paroled in 2002.
There is no evidence indicating that
mercenaries or Guyanese soldiers, or indeed anyone else, were present in
the jungle surrounding Jonestown on the evening of the mass
suicide/murders, as Jones told his followers.
Aftermath
Early reports claimed that about 400
Temple members had been killed, and the remainder had fled into the
jungle. This death count was revised over the next week until the final
total 909 was reached.
The sheer scale of the event, as well
as Jones' socialist leanings, led some to suggest CIA involvement,
however, in 1980 the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
investigated the Jonestown mass suicide and announced that there was no
evidence of CIA involvement at Jonestown. Most government documents
relating to Jonestown remain classified.
According to various press reports,
surviving Temple members in the U.S. announced their fears of being
targeted by a "hit squad" of Jonestown survivors; similarly, in 1979,
the Associated Press reported the claim of a U.S. Congressional aide
that there were ".. 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown
awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."
The legacy of
Jonestown
Jonestown itself became a "ghost
town" after 1978 and was mostly destroyed by a fire in the mid-1980s,
after which the ruins were left to decay. Today there remains little to
mark the site where one of the most notorious mass suicides in history
occurred. The buildings and grounds were not taken over by local
Guyanese people because of the social stigma associated with the murders
and suicides.
The Jonestown deaths were among
several incidents from about 1978 to 1982 that greatly undermined cults
or "new religious movements" in the United States.
Bibliography
Renardo Barden,.
Cults (Troubled Society series).
Rourke Pub Group. ISBN 0-86593-070-8.
Sean Dolan (2000). Everything you need to know about cults.
New York: Rosen Pub. Group. ISBN 0-8239-3230-3.
Jack Sargeant, (2002).
Death Cults: Murder, Mayhem and Mind Control
(True Crime Series).
Virgin Publishing. ISBN 0-7535-0644-0.
Rebecca Moore (1985).
A sympathetic history of Jonestown: the Moore
family involvement in Peoples Temple.
Lewiston: E. Mellen Press. ISBN 0-88946-860-5.
Charles A. Krause; with
exclusive material by Laurence M. Stern, Richard Harwood and the
staff of The Washington Post; with 16 pages of on-the-scene photos.
and commentary by Frank Johnston (1978).
Guyana massacre: the eyewitness account.
[New York]: Berkley Pub. Corp. ISBN 0-425-04234-0.
Shiva Naipaul (1982).
Journey to nowhere: a New World tragedy.
Harmondsworth [Eng.]: Penguin. ISBN 0-14-006189-4.
(published in the UK as Black and White) Shiva Naipaul
Phil Kerns, (1978).
People's Temple, People's Tomb.
Logos Associates. ISBN 0-88270-363-3.
Raven: The
Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and His People
by Tim Reiterman with John Jacobs
by Marshall Kilduff and
Ron Javers (1978). The suicide cult: the
inside story of the Peoples Temple sect and the massacre in Guyana.
New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-553-12920-1.
Jonestown:
The Life and Death of Peoples Temple a
film by Stanley Nelson
Jonestown Massacre: A "Reason" to Die
by Fiona Steel
The Official Story
The first
reports out of Guyana on November 18, 1978 were that Congressman Leo J.
Ryan and four other members of his party were shot and killed as they
attempted to board a plane at Port Kaituma airstrip. Within hours, came
the shocking announcement that 408 American citizens had committed
suicide at a communal village they had built in the jungle in Northwest
Guyana.
The community
had come to be known as "Jonestown." The dead were all members of a
group known as "The People's Temple" which was led by the Reverend Jim
Jones. It would soon be learned that 913 of the 1100 people believed to
have been at "Jonestown" at the time, had died in a mass suicide.
According to the official report submitted to the U.S.
House of Representatives on May 15, 1979, the chain of events leading to
Leo Ryan's death in Guyana began a year earlier, after he read an
article in the San Francisco Examiner on 13 November 1977.
The article entitled "Scared Too Long" related the death
of Sam Houston's son, Bob, in October 1976. Houston had decided to speak
out about his son's death because he believed that the reason Bob had
died, beneath the wheels of a train, was because he had announced his
decision to leave the People's Temple the day before. Houston was also
concerned that his two granddaughters, sent to New York for a vacation,
had ended up in "Jonestown," Guyana and never returned.
Over the ensuing six to eight months, Ryan would hear
more about the People's Temple through newspaper articles and from
direct requests for assistance from concerned families whose relatives
had disappeared into the Guyana jungle to join the "Jonestown" community.
There were claims of social security irregularities, human rights
violations and that people were being held against their will at "Jonestown."
In June 1978, 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.
After meeting with a number of concerned relatives,
Ryan's interest in the People's Temple became widely known and the
reports about the group, both favourable and unfavourable, began to pour
in. He hired an attorney to interview former People's Temple members and
the relatives of members to determine whether there had been any
violations of Federal and California state laws by the group.
In September
1978, Ryan met with Viron P. Vaky and other State Department officials
to discuss the possibility of Ryan making a trip to "Jonestown" in
Guyana. This request was made official on 4 October. Permission was
granted and the trip was planned for the week of November 12-18. Ryan's
intention to visit "Jonestown" soon became widely known and the numbers
wishing to accompany him had grown substantially.
By the time of
his departure there were nine extra media people and 18 representatives
from a delegation of Concerned Relatives who would go with him, at their
own expense. The official party, or Codel, consisted of Ryan, James
Schollaert and Jackie Speier, Ryan's personal assistant.
In the days of preparation for the trip to "Jonestown,"
Ryan contacted Jim Jones by telegraph to inform him of his intention to
visit the settlement. Through the U.S. Embassy in Guyana, Ryan learned
that agreement for the visit was conditional. Ryan would have to ensure
that the Codel was not biased, there would be no media coverage of the
visit and Mark Lane, the People's Temple legal counsel, would have to be
present.
On 6 November, Lane wrote to Ryan and informed him that
he would not be able to attend at the time they wanted, and claimed that
the Codel was nothing more than a "witchhunt" against the People's
Temple. Lane responded with a declaration of his intentions to visit the
settlement anyway and that he would be leaving on 14 November.
Problems began for the group as soon as they arrived in
Guyana at midnight. Ron Javers, from the San Francisco Chronicle was
detained overnight at the airport, as he did not have an entry visa. The
group of Concerned Relatives, despite having confirmed reservations, had
to spend the night in the lobby of the Pegasus Hotel in Georgetown,
because there were no rooms available for them.
Over the next two and a half days, Ryan met with Embassy
personnel and organised a meeting with Ambassador Burke and the
Concerned Relatives. He and the family members attempted to speak with a
representative of the People's Temple at their headquarters in
Georgetown, but could not gain entry. In addition, Ryan was unable to
negotiate successfully with Lane or Garry, another legal representative
of the People's Temple, resulting in the postponement of the scheduled
flight to the mission until Friday 17 November.
The
negotiations still had made no headway on Friday morning, so Ryan
informed Lane and Garry that he and his party would be leaving for "Jonestown"
at 2:30 pm. There were two seats on the plane if Lane and Garry wished
to leave with them. The plane left as scheduled at 2:30 pm that day. On
board were Ryan, Speier, Deputy Chief of Mission, Richard Dwyer, Lane
and Garry, all nine media representatives, four representatives of the
Concerned Relatives group, and Neville Annibourne, a representative of
the Guyanese Government.
At the Port
Kaituma airstrip, Corporal Rudder, the Guyanese Regional Officer of the
Northwest district, met the plane. His instructions from "Jonestown"
were that only Lane and Garry were to be allowed to leave the plane.
Negotiations as to who would be allowed entry into "Jonestown" then
ensued between Ryan and "Jonestown" representatives who were at the
airport. Eventually it was agreed that all but one media representative
could go. Gordon Lindsay, consulting for NBC on the story, was denied
entry because of an article he had written in the past that had
criticised the People's Temple.
Upon their arrival at "Jonestown," the delegation was
served dinner and entertained by a musical presentation by People's
Temple members. As the evening progressed, reporters interviewed Jim
Jones while Ryan and Speier talked to People's Temple members whose
names had been provided by relatives in the U.S.
During the course of the evening, a "Jonestown" member
passed a note to NBC reporter Don Harris indicating that he and his
family wished to leave. Another member made a similar verbal request to
Dwyer. Both requests were reported to Ryan.
At 11:00 pm, the media and family representatives were
returned to Port Kaituma as Jim Jones refused to allow them to spend the
night on the compound. Ryan, Speier, Dwyer, Annibourne, Lane and Garry
were the only ones who spent the night of Friday, 17 November at "Jonestown."
Back at Port
Kaituma, local Guyanese, including one police official who told stories
of alleged beatings at "Jonestown", approached media representatives.
They complained that Guyanese officials were denied entry to the
compound and had no authority there. They also described a "torture hole"
in the compound.
The media and
relatives were not returned to "Jonestown" until 11:00 am the next day,
several hours later than planned. Ryan had continued interviewing
members since early in the morning, during which time more individuals
told of their desire to leave. By 3:00 pm there were a total of 15
People's Temple members climbing into the trucks with the delegation to
drive to Port Kaituma airport. Ryan had intended to stay but was
attacked by People's Temple member, Don Sly, with a knife. He was not
hurt but Dwyer insisted that Ryan leave with them. Dwyer planned to
return to "Jonestown" later to resolve a dispute with a family who was
split on the question of leaving Jonestown.
The party
arrived at Port Kaituma airport at about 4:30 pm but the two planes did
not arrive until about 5:10 pm. The delay had been caused by the
unexpected request to the US Embassy for a second plane to carry the
extra fifteen passengers. Soon after its arrival, a six-passenger Cessna
was loaded and ready to leave. As it began to taxi to the far end of the
airstrip, one of the "Jonestown" defectors on board, Larry Layton,
opened fire on the other passengers.
At the same time, as Ryan's party were boarding the other
plane, a twin-engine Otter, occupants of a tractor and trailer owned by
the People's Temple, opened fire. Ryan, three members of the media and
one of the defectors were killed. Speier and five others were seriously
wounded.
The shooting lasted between 4-5 minutes and the larger
plane was disabled. The Cessna was able to take off and reported news of
the attack to controllers at the Georgetown tower. They in turn notified
the Guyanese officials. The attackers left the airport soon after, while
survivors of the attack sought cover and protection for the night.
According to the official report, the mass suicide began
at about 5:00 pm as the shooting was beginning at the airport. At about
6:00 pm, Ambassador Burke was informed of the shooting. He, in turn,
informed the US State Department at 8:30 pm by cable. At approximately
7:40 pm, Guyanese police told Sherwin Harris, a member of the Concerned
Relatives Group, that his ex-wife Sharon Amos and three of her children
were found dead at the People's Temple headquarters in Georgetown.
Word of the
deaths at "Jonestown" reached Port Kaituma at about 2:00 am on Sunday
morning when survivors, Stanley Clayton and Odell Rhodes, arrived there.
At dawn, Sunday, 19 November, the first contingent of
Guyanese Army rescue forces arrived in Port Kaituma. More soldiers
arrived within the hour. Their arrival later in the morning at "Jonestown"
confirmed earlier reports of the mass suicide. The first Guyanese rescue
aircraft landed at Port Kaituma, without medical supplies or personnel,
at about 10:00 am. All of the wounded and most of the survivors were
airlifted from Port Kaituma before nightfall and transferred to US Air
Force medical evacuation aircraft in Georgetown.
A Time to Die
As Ryan's
delegation was preparing to board their aircraft, Jim Jones called the "Jonestown"
community together. He explained to them, as if it were a premonition
rather than foreknowledge, that someone on the plane was going to kill
Ryan. The consequences of this action would be that those political
forces that had been trying to destroy the People's Temple for years
would attack the people at "Jonestown".
The "enemy"
would descend upon them and kill them mercilessly. This was not a new
threat to the community at "Jonestown," they had lived in fear of an
unnamed enemy and destroyer for many years, nor was Jones's solution new
to them. He had been preparing them for what he termed "revolutionary
suicide" for some time. They had even had a number of practice runs to
prepare them for just such an event.
A tape-recording
of the mass-suicide reveals that there was little dissent about the
decision to die. One or two women who felt that the children should be
able to live protested, but they were soon reassured by reminders of the
alternative undignified death at the hand of the enemy and the shouted
support of the group. The poison-laced drink was brought to the hall and
dispensed.
The babies and
small children, over two hundred of them, were first, with the poison
poured into their mouths with syringes. As parents watched their
children die, they too swallowed the fatal potion. The moments before
the final decision to die brought resistance from a few, but armed
guards who surrounded the room shot many of them. Of the estimated 1100
people believed to have been present at "Jonestown" at the time, 913
died, including Jim Jones, the rest somehow escaped into the jungle. It
is not certain whether Jones shot himself or was shot by an unknown
person.
The most puzzling question, which has arisen out of the
tragedy at "Jonestown", is how one man could achieve such control over a
large group of people to the point that they would willingly die at his
command. It would be easy to assume that "Jonestown" was a unique
situation that could only have occurred because of Jim Jones's dynamic
and charismatic personality, combined with the weakness and
vulnerability of his victims. Such an analysis may bring some peace that
such a thing could never happen again, but it falls a long way short of
providing true understanding of the situation, thereby leaving us all
vulnerable to the danger of further tragedies such as "Jonestown"
occurring.
To properly understand "Jonestown," it is necessary to
explore the social and psychological processes that were employed which
ensured that such extremes of social conformity and obedience were
achieved. They are processes that are common in all social groups, but
in instances such as the People's Temple, they were used to the extreme,
with corresponding extreme results.
Members of the
People's Temple had been trained for many years in readiness for the
mass suicide that had finally occurred in November 1978. Jim Jones had
shared with his followers his paranoid belief that the American
government was plotting to destroy anyone who was involved in the
People's Temple.
Jones's
followers were accustomed to looking to Jones for salvation. Over the
years, Jones had introduced many outside "threats" to the safety of his
followers but he had always removed the danger for them. Time and time
again he had rescued them, they had learned to trust this man known to
them as "Father."
Jones and his
followers had moved to "Jonestown" with the vision to create a
completely self-sufficient community based on the ideals of socialism
and communalism. Each person would work for the common good, providing
food, shelter, clothing, health care and education for themselves. In
this community everyone would be equal and could live in peace. It was a
noble ideal. One, as Jones would constantly remind them, which was worth
dying for.
By November 1978, the people of "Jonestown" were ready to
die. After many years of input, which had held such action as something
to be aspired to, with no input negating such a belief, the members of
the People's Temple would have easily seen their own deaths as an act of
nobility and dignity.
The Visionary
Over the
twenty years preceding the events at "Jonestown," the Reverend Jim
Jones's number of followers throughout America had grown considerably,
as he drew to himself the outcasts of society, along with those who
desired to help the downtrodden and serve those in need.
During the
early 1960's, Jones preached the need for racial brotherhood and
integration, an unpopular doctrine at that time which brought him much
criticism from the church hierarchy. To avoid such criticism, Jones
founded the People's Temple in 1963, where both black and white
worshipped side by side. The poor and society's misfits were welcomed
with open arms. Jones's congregation worked to feed the poor, find
employment for the jobless and help ex-criminals and drug addicts to put
their lives back together.
As Jones's congregation grew, so too did the demands he
made upon his flock. Greater sacrifices and dedication were required of
the People's Temple membership. As criticism of the church's practices
increased, Jones relocated to northern California in 1965, along with
100 of his most dedicated and faithful followers. Once in California,
the People's Temple grew considerably until there were several
congregations, with its headquarters based in San Francisco.
To attract new members to his "church," Jones widely
publicised his services, promising miraculous healings where cancers
would be removed and the blind made to see. Upon arrival, potential
recruits would witness a community of brotherhood and fellowship where
everyone, no matter their social standing or colour, was treated as
equals. Each new potential member was greeted with personal warmth
rarely encountered in the more traditional churches.
People's Temple members would stand before the crowd and
recount stories of illnesses that Jim Jones had cured for them. To
further convince his audience of his great powers he would make
predictions of events that would always come to pass, and receive "revelations"
about members or visitors, things that only they could have known.
Before their eyes, Jones would heal cancer patients and a mass of putrid
tissue would be torn from the patient's body.
The passing of
a severe initiation was required by new members that had the effect of
making entry that much more desirable. Something that has to be earned
is naturally valued more highly than that which is obtained freely. It
also had the effect of creating a much higher level of commitment from
members. Each new level of commitment asked of the member was
immediately justified by the fact that much had already been sacrificed.
To reject the new situation would mean admitting that the previous acts
of commitment had been wrong. It is a natural phenomenon that people
will tend to prolong a previously made commitment, even when painful,
rather than admit that they had been mistaken.
The demands made upon a new member were only small and
the level of choice was high. The commitment of further time and energy
into the organisation was gradual; the desire to do so was increased by
the promise of the achievement of a higher ideal. All members were
taught that the achievement of this ideal required self-sacrifice. The
more that was sacrificed, the more that would be achieved.
The new members would gradually come to see the long
meetings and hours of work done for the church as being worthwhile and
fulfilling. Jones increased his demands on the member only in small
increments. At each new level of commitment, any reservations the person
may have had could be easily rationalised and justified. By the time
Jones's demands had become oppressive, the individual members were so
heavily committed that to not fulfil any new demands would require a
complete denial of the correctness of all past decisions and behaviour.
Just as the demands on a member's time increased
gradually over time, so did the level of financial commitment increase.
In the early days of membership, giving money was completely voluntary,
although the amounts given were recorded openly. By recording the
amounts given, an unspoken expectation was conveyed. The new member
could choose to give nothing or very little, but knew that his level of
commitment was being measured. Over a period of time, the level of
contribution was increased to 25% of each person's income and was no
longer voluntary.
The highest
level of commitment that could be demonstrated was when an individual or
family lived at the People's Temple facilities, handing over all
personal property, savings, and social security cheques to the Temple.
The ideal of communal living was a large aspect of Jones's teaching as
being the only truly spiritual ideal. The outside world of capitalism
and individualism was seen as evil and destructive.
Forces of that
evil system would see the ideals and achievements of the People's Temple
as a threat to its own stability and thereby want to destroy it. Through
such teachings, Jones was able to create the illusion that the only
place of safety and comfort was the People's Temple. The member saw any
criticism of the church from the outside as being untrustworthy and
proof of what Jones had taught.
From the earliest stages of their indoctrination each
member was taught that the achievement of a higher spirituality would
require a struggle against their own weaknesses. Any areas of resistance
an individual harboured against the church were quickly suppressed as
being an indication of that person's lack of faith. Jones would
regularly bring critics before the assembly and chastise them for their
'unbelief.' He would then require other members of the group to mete out
the necessary punishment.
Parents would publicly beat their children for
transgressions while husbands and wives would be required to punish each
other. In this way, each person was made personally responsible for the
action and had to find a way to justify and rationalise it. In this way,
Jones was able to become more and more brutal in his punishments as each
member had learned to internalise the belief that such punishments were
necessary and just.
The desire to relinquish more and more control of their
lives over to Jones was further encouraged by the new-found harmony and
peace that committed members found in their lives. Disputes within
families gradually diminished. There was no longer any cause for
disagreement since the rules were clearly laid down by Jones. The
everyday stress, and sometimes even turmoil, they had known in the past
from the constant need to make decisions and choices was now gone. Life
was easier with fewer choices.
Any idea about
leaving the People's Temple was quickly dismissed by the individual for
a number of reasons. Their total commitment to the church usually meant
that they had isolated themselves from their family and friends, whether
from lack of association or open enmity. To leave the fold of the church
would mean either admitting their mistakes to family and friends or
being alone without any support group.
Church
reaction to, and retaliation against, other defectors who were hated as
traitors and enemies would also make leaving difficult. To deliberately
put themselves into a situation of being despised by their friends was
extremely daunting, especially when for so long the People's Temple had
come to be seen as the only safe haven from an evil world.
The final
barrier to emancipation was economic. Each individual had surrendered
all of his or her possessions and income to the People's Temple. To
leave would mean to abandon all the possessions they had, leaving them
penniless and homeless. Staying could easily be justified, and the
consequences seem more appealing than what could be faced outside.
The
individual's isolation from any outside forces meant that even when they
disagreed with the teachings or actions of the group, that disagreement
was nowhere confirmed. With no support or agreement from another source,
the individual would soon repress his own reservations. This process was
made doubly effective, as each person was required to report any
expressions of disagreement or dissatisfaction to Jones. Children would
report their parents, husbands their wives, and parents their own
children. It was not safe to trust anyone with your negative feelings,
to do so would risk the public humiliation and severe punishments meted
out for such "offences."
At "Jonestown" this isolation was even more extreme. The
community was situated in the middle of a jungle with armed guards along
the few roads that led to civilisation. Even if one succeeded in leaving
the complex, he had no passport, papers or money to help him to escape.
When Ryan and his delegation arrived at "Jonestown," anyone who wanted
to leave had the option of doing so openly without the normal threats to
their safety, yet only fifteen chose to do so. This is a strong
indication of the effectiveness of Jones's indoctrination.
The Man They Called "Father"
Jim Jones was
born in Lyn, Indiana in 1931 during the Great Depression. As his parents
struggled to eke out an existence, Jones was free to explore the world
around him. At an early age he happened upon a Pentecostal congregation
known as the Gospel Tabernacle, made up mainly of people who had moved
to the area from Kentucky and Tennessee. The church and its members
dwelt on the fringes of the community and were known as "holy-rollers"
and "tongues people" by the more conservative community of Lyn.
By his early
teens, Jones was no longer interested in the normal activities of the
other boys. He was much more interested in the emotional and religious
fervour he found at the Gospel Tabernacle. Here he learned about
spiritual healing and was soon receiving praise for his preaching.
In 1947 at the
age of sixteen, Jones was preaching on street corners in both black and
white neighbourhoods, sharing the wisdom and knowledge that he believed
he possessed and was obliged to share with others. He believed in the
brotherhood of man, regardless of social standing or race. His
sympathies lay with the poor and the downtrodden.
Jones considered himself a leader among his peers and
looked down upon the behaviour of other boys his age that he considered
frivolous and sinful. Yet, he strongly feared rejection and would
retaliate angrily at any adverse criticism or disagreement that he saw
as betrayal. An example of this was when his best friend chose to go
home rather than comply with Jones's demands. As his friend walked away,
Jones grabbed his father's gun and shot at the boy's fast retreating
figure.
During his high school years, Jones first became
interested in the lives of powerful and influential men, taking a
special interest in Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. By the time he met
his future wife, Marceline, in his late teens, he had already developed
a keen knowledge and concern for social issues and world events.
Marceline was a student nurse at the hospital where Jones worked part-time.
They married after Jones graduated from high school with honours and
began college.
The first years of their marriage were very stormy. Jones
was insecure and domineering. His greatest fear, that of being abandoned
by the ones he cared about, caused him to be jealous of any attention
Marceline gave to anyone else. Jones's constant emotional explosions and
tirades were extremely difficult for Marceline, but her belief that
marriage was a lifetime commitment caused her to endure.
Throughout
this period, Jones began to question his faith, finding it difficult to
reconcile his belief in a loving and merciful God with the reality of
suffering and poverty he saw around him. He now proclaimed that there
was no God. He expected Marceline to share his new wisdom and threatened
to committ suicide if she continued to pray. He softened his view in
1952 when the Methodists, the denomination of the church that Marceline
attended, displayed a social conscience in line with his own beliefs.
The church espoused the rights of minorities and worked toward putting
an end to poverty. The Methodists' opposition to unemployment and
support for collective bargaining for workers and security for the aged
particularly impressed Jones.
In the same year, while continuing his college studies,
Jones accepted a position as student pastor at the Somerset Methodist
Church in a less affluent, mostly white neighbourhood in southern
Indianapolis. Secretly, Jones visited a number of African-American
churches in the area and invited those he met there to his own services
and into his home. During this time Jones attempted to adopt Marceline's
cousin, who had been living with them since they rescued him from a
foster home. The twelve-year-old boy was not happy about this decision
and resisted.
Jones told him that any thought of returning to his
mother was hopeless as she was unfit and didn't love him. After visiting
his mother, the boy believed differently. In an emotional rage, Jones
attempted to impose his will upon the boy, but he would not be swayed.
He returned to live with his mother and refused to see Jones when he
came to visit.
Within a couple of years, Jones was successfully
preaching at Pentecostal meetings at other churches, drawing large
crowds with his healings and miracles. This success led him to leave The
Somerset Methodist Church and begin his own church. By 1956, he moved
his congregation to larger premises and began calling his activities a "movement"
and his church the "People's Temple."
His emotional style and preaching of integration and
equality were unusual qualities in a white preacher in the mid-fifties
and Jones's congregation did not provide the strong financial backing
needed to increase his influence. Despite its lack of numbers, Jones's
church established a soup kitchen and advocated giving shelter to the
needy and the adoption of children. At this time, Jones and Marceline
adopted a black child and a Korean orphan as well as giving birth to a
son.
The intensity
of the Cold War in the mid-fifties influenced Jones considerably and he
believed that Communism could best be fought with communalism. He was
able to Christianise his burgeoning political beliefs by referring to
biblical passages about people selling their possessions.
Jones's good
works and belief in civil rights was soon rewarded by his appointment as
head of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission. His radical beliefs
and actions at this time brought many complaints and criticisms from the
conservative sectors of the community. Jones began to relate to local
newspapers, stories of harassment and threats to his life, although none
of his claims could be substantiated by police inquiries.
Coincidentally,
it was as criticism of his politics was heightening that Jones had a "vision"
of nuclear attack. Believing that the Midwest was the most likely target
of such an attack, Jones began looking for a "safer" place to move his
congregation. Leaving his congregation in the hands of his assistants,
Jones went in search of the ideal location. He travelled to Hawaii and
then Brazil where he stayed for two years, teaching English to support
himself. It was during his return trip from Brazil that Jones first
visited Guayana where he was impressed by the socialist doctrines of the
government.
In 1965, two years after his return to Indianapolis,
Jones moved with 140 of his followers to Ukiah in Mendicino County,
California, because he had read in Esquire magazine that the area would
be safe in the event of a nuclear attack. Once they were settled, Jones
found part-time work as a teacher and Marceline worked as a social
worker at Mendicino State hospital.
They had not been there long before Marceline decided she
wanted to end their marriage. Jones's extra-marital sexual encounters
had become more frequent since the move to California and his lust for
power and control had increased dramatically. Their son Stephan had
little respect for his father because of his hypocrisy. He made rules to
satisfy his own whims, yet lived up to none of them himself. Jones was
using a variety of drugs to control his emotional ups and downs
including Quaaludes, which Stephan used to try to kill himself.
In 1968, with
his family falling apart and his congregation only numbering 68, Jones
applied for, and was granted, affiliation with the Disciples of Christ,
a denomination that boasted 1.5 million members. With very little
supervision from the church administration, Jones was able to ignore its
requirement for Holy Communion and baptism; instead he preached
socialism and baptized new members "in the holy name of socialism."
Being a member
of a recognised church gave Jones tax exemptions and higher esteem. His
congregation quickly grew to 300. Jones and his followers spent much of
their time promoting the church and its good works, not only in the
community but also across the country.
Over 30,000
copies of a newsletter were sent nationwide every month and Jones began
radio broadcasting, ensuring that his good works would be known by all.
By 1973, his congregation had grown to two and a half thousand and had
spread to San Francisco and Los Angeles where he began to preach as well.
In 1974, Jones obtained permission from the government of
Guyana to begin building a commune on a 300-acre allotment, 140 miles
from Georgetown. The lease was signed and Jones named the commune "Jonestown".
With some of his followers already living at the commune site, Jones
decided to visit Georgetown and publicise himself there. Members of his
staff approached Father Andrew Morrison to gain permission for Jones to
give a service at the Catholic Sacred Church. Ill-informed of the nature
of Jones's preaching, Father Morrison and others who attended were
horrified by the obviously fake healings and miracles that occurred.
Disappointed, Jones returned to California where the
reception for his staged antics was much more favourable. Staff members,
usually intellectuals with a strong mystical bent, would pilfer the
garbage of temple members to glean information Jones could use to fake
clairvoyance in his meetings.
Potential Temple members were invited to small meetings
where they were carefully screened. Anyone who appeared to be too
politically conservative was excluded from further involvement, while
those with anti-establishment attitudes and sympathy with Pentecostal
type services were welcomed. These criteria meant that the majority of
recruits were African-American, the uneducated and the poor.
In response to
Jones's teaching of Christian communalism, Temple members pooled their
incomes and turned their property over to the People's Temple to be sold,
in return they received room, board and a two-dollar a week allowance.
Jones preached that only through socialism could anyone achieve perfect
freedom, justice and equality. According to Jones, socialism was the
manifestation of God. His miracles, healing of the sick and care for the
poor were all proof that he was Christ incarnate.
Jones saw
himself as a social revolutionary despite the fact that his own
organisation was anything but socialistic. There was no collective
leadership and his staff, nearly all white, was not able to question his
ideas. There was one source of authority only - Jim Jones.
Jones's dualism and hypocrisy were reflected in his
teachings on sexual relationships. He believed in sexual liberation yet
advocated marriage. He attacked marriage without sexual freedom as being
counter-revolutionary; any spouse who reacted jealously over their
partner's sexual infidelity was attacked openly. At the same time he
preached the virtues of celibacy and the sexuality of all members were
under attack.
Each person was required to confess their sexual
practices and fantasies, while women were required to publicly complain
about their husband's lovemaking. Jones told his congregation that he
was the only true heterosexual, yet in private he sodomised a man,
justifying his actions as being the only way to prove to that man that
he was really homosexual.
In December 1973, Jones was arrested in MacArthur Park, a
known meeting place for homosexuals, and booked for lewd conduct.
Although the charges were dismissed, Jones was required to sign a
document admitting that there was good reason for the arrest.
Jones was able to keep his arrest a secret and continued
to gain acceptance in the San Francisco area. Left-wing groups welcomed
him for his support of progressive causes and anti-establishment
teachings. Temple members worked in political campaigns in San Francisco
and Jones cultivated relationships with a variety of powerful political
figures, using his large congregation and large accumulation of People's
Temple funds to cement his influence.
While his
outside influence was growing and his control over his congregation was
almost unbroken, Jones was not able to prevent all negative criticism
directed at the People's Temple, although he did attempt to do so. He
had members of his congregation take jobs in some of the leading
newspapers in the area to warn him of any plans to print negative
material about him.
Before the
papers could take the story to print, Jones would begin threatening them
with legal action. Any of his opponents who persisted in discrediting
him would soon receive threatening mail and be awoken in the middle of
the night with threatening phone calls. Defectors from the Temple were
too terrified to tell of their negative experiences with Jones, as they
were constantly threatened with grave punishments.
Having been
well experienced in Jones's punishments and his uncontrollable anger
towards anyone who dared to leave him, defectors believed that he would
make good his threats if they pushed him. Grace Stoen, the wife of Tim
Stoen who was the Temple's Lawyer, experienced first hand Jones's wrath
when she dared to leave the community because of the brutal beating of a
member who had criticised Jones. Jones was outraged at her betrayal in
light of "all that he had done for her." With Tim's support, Jones began
a fierce custody battle for the Stoens's son, whom Jones falsely claimed
was his own.
It was this custody battle, along with a growing number
of complaints from ex-members and relatives of members, which caused a
great deal of public attention to become focused on the People's Temple.
With the mounting negative publicity, Jones's paranoia became even more
exaggerated and he began to prepare his congregation for the final move
to Guyana.
Once in Guyana, Jones was able to maintain control over
his community of followers without the conflicting input of outside
agencies. Confined to the 300-acre property with no money or passports,
Jones was guaranteed that no more of his followers could abandon him. He
could now be in complete control of his people.
When that control was again threatened by the departure
of fifteen more people with Leo Ryan's party, Jones's vengeful act of
murder at the airport was typical of Jones throughout his life. The
order for the mass-suicide was his means to gain ultimate control, if he
could not have control of his people in life, he would have it in death!
Sinister Connections?
Although the
official explanation of the events at "Jonestown" has been widely
accepted by the American people, there are many that question its truth.
From the moment the first reports of the massacre were released, various
theories of the real events leading to the tragedy began to circulate.
The most prevalent of these was that the CIA was somehow involved.
According to
one of these theories, "Jonestown" was a continuation of a CIA mind-control
program that infiltrated cults, such as The People's Temple, to carry
out their experiments. CIA theorists claim that Jim Jones had many
questionable associations with the CIA throughout the years he was
establishing The People's Temple.
The most
significant association is Jones's supposed friendship with Dan Mitrione
that dated back to their childhood years. Dan Mitrione was the local
police chief in the early days of Jones's "ministry" in Indianapolis.
Mitrione later entered the International Police Academy, supposedly a
CIA front for training in counterinsurgency and torture techniques.
Coincidentally,
when Jones left with his wife to live in Brazil, despite his apparent
lack of financial resources, Mitrione was already living there. Jones is
purported to have made several visits to Belo Horizonte where the CIA's
Brazilian headquarters was situated and Mitrione resided. CIA theorists
report that Jones's neighbours in Brazil state that Jones had told them
that he was employed by the US Office of Naval Intelligence who supplied
him with transport, living expenses and a large home in which he "lived
like a rich man."
Soon after his return to America, with $10,000, Jones
moved the People's Temple to California. Here he began building the
People's Temple communal facilities and, without any trained medical
personnel or the usual licensing, was able to run a nursing home.
During this time Jones allegedly adopted 150 foster
children, most of whom were sent to the People's Temple by court order.
The Temple had a strong association with the World Vision organisation
that many conspiracy theorists believe to be another CIA front, and had
as a consultant, a mercenary from the rebel army UNITA, supposedly
backed by the CIA.
Other supposed CIA connections with "Jonestown" include
the allegations that:
Richard
Dwyer's name had appeared in the publication Who's Who In The CIA
US Ambassador
John Burke and another embassy official, Richard McCoy, had strong links
with the CIA
The Georgetown
CIA station was situated in the US Embassy building
Dan Webber,
sent to Guyana immediately after the massacre, was with the CIA and
Joseph
Blatchford, the officially appointed attorney for the "Jonestown"
survivors, was involved in a scandal involving CIA infiltration of the
Peace Corps.
The
involvement of Larry Layton in the ambush of Ryan and his party also
provokes great interest from the CIA theorists because of his family
background. Layton's father was Dr Laurence Laird Layton who had been
the chief of the army's Chemical Warfare Division during the 1950's. It
had also been Larry Layton's brother-in-law, the UNITA link, who had
negotiated with the Guayana government, on behalf of Jones, for the
establishment of "Jonestown."
Another point,
which CIA theorists use to support their beliefs, is the fact that,
despite the growing controversy surrounding the People's Temple, Jones's
move to "Jonestown" was given full support from the American Embassy in
Guyana.
Leo Ryan's murder is seen by many as being much more
sinister than the hysterical behaviour of a madman. Leo Ryan had been a
strong critic of the CIA and was the author of the Hughes-Ryan Amendment,
which, if passed, would have required that the CIA report to Congress on
all of its covert operations before they commenced. Soon after Ryan's
death, the Hughes-Ryan Amendment was quashed in Congress. The question
conspiracy theorists ask is whether Ryan was killed in order to reach
this objective and the massacre at "Jonestown" merely a smoke screen to
distract attention away from Ryan's murder?
Witnesses at the airport, where Ryan and four others were
murdered, described the gunmen as being "glassy eyed", "mechanically-walking
zombies" who were "devoid of emotion." The question CIA theorists would
like answered is who were these people? The official report stated that
there were approximately 1100 people at "Jonestown" at the time of the
massacre but other reports claim that there were closer to 1200.
Of this number there were 913 dead bodies found and 167
survivors. Twenty people, if the 1100 figure is correct, are left
unaccounted for. If they were the assassins, where are they now? Also
unaccounted for, and never referred to in news reports, are the armed
guards who were present in "Jonestown" but were free to come and go from
the compound. A congressional aide may have been referring to these men
in an Associated Press quote "There are 120 white, brainwashed assassins
out from Jonestown, awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."
Such a
possibility seems to be confirmed for the theorists by a number of
unusual deaths that have occurred since the "Jonestown" massacre. The
first of these occurred in Georgetown at the People's Temple
headquarters at the same time as the "Jonestown" massacre. Charles
Beikman, an early Jim Jones follower who had become an "adopted son" was
found to be responsible. Apparently, Beikman was also a Green Beret, of
which there were over 300 in Guyana at the time on a "training exercise."
Nine days
after "Jonestown," San Francisco Mayor George Mascone and Supervisor
Harvey Milk were killed. Both men had received financial support from
Jones while he was in San Francisco and were involved in an ongoing
investigation into their involvement in the disappearance of People's
Temple funds. Dan White, described as being in a "zombie state" at the
time of the killings, murdered them. White's lawyers attempted to defend
their client by stating that White had been temporarily insane due to
the effects of eating too much sugar, a defence which was mockingly
known as the "Twinkie defence."
Some time later, Michael Prokes, a former member of the
People's Temple, informed a press conference, held in his motel room,
that the CIA and FBI were secretly holding an audiotape of the "Jonestown"
massacre and that he was an FBI informant. Immediately following his
announcement, Prokes went into the bathroom where he supposedly
committed suicide.
Jeanne and Alan Mills, People's Temple members who had
defected before the move to Guyana, were found bound and killed in their
home almost a year after the "Jonestown" massacre. They had written a
book about the People's Temple and had expressed their belief that they
would eventually be murdered. Official reports state that the Mills
probably knew their murderers, as there were no signs of forced entry or
struggle. Their son was at home at the time of the murders but somehow
escaped death. The case continues to remain unsolved.
The final area
of concern in the "Jonestown" massacre regards the official US decision
not to conduct autopsies on the victims of the massacre; the reason
given was that the cause of death was readily apparent. The results of
pathology examinations conducted by Guyanese coroner Leslie Mootoo
however, revealed his belief that as many as 700 of the victims were
murders, not suicides.
Mootoo claims
that in a 32-hour period he, and his assistants, examined the bodies of
137 victims. They had all been injected with cyanide in areas of their
bodies, which could not have been reached by their own hand, such as
between the shoulder blades; many other victims had been shot. Charles
Huff, one of the seven Green Berets who were the first American troops
on the scene following the massacre, claimed that "We saw many bullet
wounds as well as wounds from crossbow bolts." Those who were shot
appeared to have been running toward the jungle, away from the compound,
at the time they were shot.
The discrepancy in the numbers of dead in the first
reports, and the final figure had led many to speculate that
approximately five hundred people had escaped the first spate of
killings and escaped into the jungle, but were then hunted down and
murdered. The descriptions of witnesses to the layout of the bodies, and
the fact that there were obvious signs that many of the bodies had been
dragged to their final resting place, tends to contradict the 'official'
explanation that at the first counting five hundred bodies had been
concealed by the other 408 bodies.
Epilogue
Twenty-one years have
passed since the tragedy of "Jonestown" occurred and still many wonder
at how it came about. For many, the possibility that one man could
manipulate so many people to such a great extent is incomprehensible.
They look to a variety of sources to explain the apparently
unexplainable, in a vain attempt to satisfy the need for understanding.
Unfortunately, the
processes that had been at work in the People's Temple for many years,
ultimately leading to the mass suicide and murders of 913 of its member,
are not unique to this particular group. We are social creatures who
need to feel that we belong to something greater than ourselves and rely
heavily upon the approval of others to measure our worth. Such a
situation leaves us vulnerable to others, quickly changing our
viewpoints to fit in with those around us, denying our own instinctive
values and beliefs when faced with the conflicting views of others.
People such as Jim
Jones, driven by their own insatiable need to be accepted and loved,
have an instinctive knowledge of the weaknesses of others and how to
manipulate them to their own advantage.
Whether "Jonestown" was the result of some heinous
experiment in mind control or not, cannot be fully determined one way or
the other without stronger evidence, but the cloud of mystery will
continue to hang over the incident until all of the documentation
collected during the investigations have been revealed.
At the time that it released its report, the US State
Department chose to withhold over 8000 documents pertaining to "Jonestown"
for a number of years. After many legal battles, it was determined that
these documents should be released. Perhaps, as the information in these
documents becomes available some of the mystery will be solved.
