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Speaker 1: You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast.

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Speaker 2: My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,

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and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my

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experience as the brother of a murder victim to help

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other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book

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on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders, and I'm the co

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administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with

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Kristin Dilly.

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Speaker 3: My name is Kristin Dilly.

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Speaker 4: I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,

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as well as the social media manager and co administrator

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for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner

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in crime.

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Speaker 5: Bill Thomas.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Mind of a Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.

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Speaker 2: And I'm Bill Thomas.

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Speaker 6: We're joined today by author Candice Fleming, here to talk

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to us about Death in the Jungle, Murder betrayal, and

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the Lost dream of Jonestown.

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Speaker 3: Candy. Thank you for joining us today.

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Speaker 5: I am thrilled to be here. Kristin, Thanks, This has.

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Speaker 3: Been a while in the making. I have been trying

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to get you on the show.

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Speaker 6: Since October, so I'm so glad that we have finally

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managed to do this today because your books are really

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wonderful and my students love them too. So shout out

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to all of my students who have been reading your books,

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and thank you for taking the time to work with

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my students and answer their questions.

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Speaker 3: They really appreciated it.

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Speaker 5: Oh they're durable.

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Speaker 3: So start by telling us about your life as a writer.

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You write for a wide range of age and grade levels,

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so just run for cannon real quick.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I do really quick. I write everything from preschool

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to young adult. Actually write for adults once in a while,

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because I do write for The New York Times maybe

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every six weeks or so. I write fiction, I write nonfiction.

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So I write across the board, and it's those things

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that interest me. I'm as interested in we've been talking

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about true crime. I'm as interested as that, or cults

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as I am honestly about talking bulldozers. Depends on my audience.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so Bulldozer's more for the youngest crowd.

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Speaker 7: And then well, yeah, I think Bill that you look

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like a guy who would really like stories about talking

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bull closers. But yes, yes, and you What's great is

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that while I'm working on a book, say like my

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Jonestown book, which was a hard place.

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Speaker 5: To be in for four years, pretty dark. I ended

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up yeah, really dark, and so I ended up writing

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a lot of preschool stuff just because I needed that

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happier side. I'd go to my office some days and go, oh,

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I just need some preschool today, and talking bulldozers. There

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you go.

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Speaker 2: Does your agent say we need more of this and

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less of that, or is it just where your own

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creative instinct takes you.

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Speaker 5: No, I am really lucky. I don't have anyone that

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says you need to write this or you should only

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be writing this other. I have author friends whose editors

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or their agents constantly tell them that they need to

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stay doing this one thing, that you no one will

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know who you are if you don't keep doing the

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same thing. But I'm unbelievably lucky. I have an amazing agent,

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and I have an amazing editor that pretty much trust

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me to do what I want to do. I cannot

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imagine doing the same thing day in and day out.

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A lot of curiosities. I have a lot of interests.

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I like readers of all ages, so I would really

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hate being stuck pigeonholed into one type of writing. So

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I think I'm really lucky they let me do what

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I want to do.

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Speaker 6: So you've written two true crime books now we're among friends,

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about the Leopolden Lobcase, which I loved, and then this

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most recent one, Death in the Jungle, about Jim Jones

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and the People's Temple. Of all the true crime cases

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that are out there, and we know there are hundreds,

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why did you.

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Speaker 3: Choose to focus on these two in particular?

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Speaker 5: Because I was going to write them for teenagers, so

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I was writing, it's their young adult And here's my

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thinking when I write a piece of history when it's

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true crime, and I read a lot of true crime,

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but I'm always thinking to myself, what else do I

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have to say with this piece of history to young

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readers of the twenty first century. I'm always saying that

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if a nonfiction book is only what it appears to

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be about, then somehow the author has failed. While all

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the book about Jonestown is certainly a book about people's

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tuple from nineteen fifty five to nineteen seventy eight, it's

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also about destructive groups. Wh Are those destructive groups in

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your community? Can you dislocate them? Where are they online

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who influences you every day? And everybody's subject influence, so

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who are your influencers? Murder among friends? I again had

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to say something more than just a story that I

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have to tell you. It's my first true crime story

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that I encountered. I think I was twelve years old.

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I live in Chicago, so it is our urban crime story, right,

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and so I thought I knew a lot about it,

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but when I got in there, I discovered as always

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that I did it. But what I loved about telling

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that story for your adults was that there was so

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much more to that story, and really a story about

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the criminal justice system. And it's a story about mitigating

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circumstances which we did not have. We never went in

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and could never go into the judge and go, somebody

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did this crime but they are mentally ill or there.

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We didn't. We just didn't do that at the time.

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And you have the amazing Clared Staro that comes up

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with that literally comes up with that idea of that concept.

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And so Illinois becomes the first state, at least in

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Stake Coourt to have mitigating factors. And it's the first

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time that American parents look at their own teenage kids

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and say to themselves, am I doing all I can

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to keep my kid from being a Nathan Leopold or

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a Richard Lobe. So it has so many echoes from

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then to now, and we're still asking that question, right,

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is genetics? What is that we are always asking which

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the same questions.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, for those people that might not be familiar with

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Jim Jones and the People's Temple because it's been some time,

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been a while, tell us the basics of the story.

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I know that can be a little hard to capitalize. Yeah,

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why do we care about the People's Temple and this

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man named Jones.

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Speaker 5: It's a fascinating story. I think it's a cautionary tale

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as well. So you have a lot of people that

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think they know the story don't realize that People's Temples

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started in nineteen fifty five. Jim Jones formed it or

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started it, created his own church in Indianapolis, and it

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was based on social and economic equality, and so it

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was the first desegregated church in Indianapolis. And he welcomed

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African Americans, all people of color, everyone should come to

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People's Temple and they would work together. And he's sincerely

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in this idea of equality. They also had amazing outreach,

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so they would help. The church would help all kinds

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of people, no matter what color they were. If they

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were needy, the church helped them. In Indianapolis, they tried

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to desegregate other churches in Indianapolis by attending other church

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services restaurants in Indianapolis so they would go too. He

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would take his black members to a white's only restaurant

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in Indianapolis and then convince the owner that his people's

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temple congregation it would come to the guy's restaurant. He

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wasn't going to lose business, He'd probably gained business. So

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Jim Jones started out with a really great idea and

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it appealed to a lot of people who wanted to

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live that way. And they were not we'd love to

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talk about. They were not brainwashed and they were not coerced.

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The many survivors that I spoke to would tell you

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that they had complete free will. They made individual choices,

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even when they knew that some of those choices were

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probably the wrong choices. But after twenty years, what happens

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is that people's temple, how do I want to put this,

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they become this community they're almost like a family. In

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many cases, they are family because they all marry each other,

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They adopt each other's children, they raise other people's children.

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They become a communal society. And this is grow slowly

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from fifty five to seventy eight, and eventually they begin

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to move towards move away from the United States because

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they don't believe capitalism is a way that will work

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for them. They want to have their own community in Guyana,

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but many of them stay because of the community. This

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is their family, these are their people. These are people

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with the common goal, a good goal, right altruistic goal,

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and so they ignore largely all the very terrible things

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that are going on with Jim Jones. And Jim Jones

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has an evolution too, starting out from a guy who

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begins with really great intentions, ends up a drug addict,

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ends up paraloid, delusional, controlling, manipulative, you name it. He was, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 6: When I started reading the book, I was, I guess

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I've expected to hate Jim Jones on site, but everything

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that you said it sounds like a really laudable approach

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desegregation and everything like it. It's I was like, this

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guy doesn't sound too bad. And at some point though

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he does reach that tipping point where this guy's not good,

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this is nothing good is going to happen here. It's

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very interesting to watch him devol throughout the book.

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Speaker 3: That was fascinating.

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Speaker 5: It's like he onlines and he had this it was

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there in his nature too unwind Anyway, even as a kid,

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he was always trying to get intention. He was really

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being like a pastor. Really appealed to him because he

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loved the idea that people set up when he told

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him to and sat down when they told him to,

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and he could get them to pray. And he of

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course grew his congregation based on lies of manipulations because

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he claimed that he could do faith healings, which of

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course he could not, and he faked those. But he

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also had this inner circle of people. A lot of

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times we want to go Jim Jones, the one and only,

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the evil one, right, the mastermind, But he had a

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group of people, very close, inner circle of people that

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did a lot of the dirty work for him at

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his suggestion or his request. And these people are the

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people many of those people that I spoke to, including

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Jim Joe's son Steven, that they would all say that

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there was a part of them that went, I shouldn't

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do this. This is not the action to take. But

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my community, my leader of my community, really needs me

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to do this, and so they would somehow find a

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way to make it work. Right, little cognitive dissonance never

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hurt anybody, Oh until it does. Well.

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Speaker 2: Now, so far, you haven't used the word cult.

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Speaker 5: I don't use it very often.

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Speaker 2: And tell us why. Because most people when they talk

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about Jim Jones, the word cult appears within the first

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couple of sentences of their description. And you've studiously avoided it.

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Tell us why it's not a cult?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, all the time. I studious it. Here's why. If

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you want to use cult, go ahead and use the

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word cult. But I don't. And the reason I don't

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is I think cult stops a conversation. It's meant it's

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almost like an insult. Oh they're a cult. Oh she's

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an a cult. My partner jokes that I have a

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running studio that I love and I've become friends with

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everyone there. Now we do social things, and he's, oh,

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you go into the cult today.

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Speaker 2: I go every day.

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Speaker 5: That's where it's become. So it's either not serious or

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it's men as an insult, and it really stops conversation.

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It stops discussion because it's become pejorative the word and

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easy to fling around what does it really mean? So

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I prefer destructive group because I think it opens up

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conversation because we all have groups that are in our lives.

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We all have groups that were passionate about, obsessed with whatever.

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And if they're not a destructive group, good for you.

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But there are some groups that are destructive groups that

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wield influence in ways that will be destructive in some way,

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but a destructive it will hurt you in some way

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in a bad way.

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Speaker 6: One of the things that was really interesting to me

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is that he did eventually shift away from talking about God,

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like it became less of a church and more of

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sost ideology. Why is it the people who came to

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people's temple because they wanted a church, why did they

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stay even when he stopped mentioning God?

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Speaker 5: Isn't that interesting? Because I really I thought that was

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really interesting too. Okay, so a lot of the people

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that came because he was churchy, he was Pentecostal. He

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really used the whole Pentecostal shtick. And I used that intentionally,

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that word because he actually borrowed. If you want to

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use the mannerisms of black pastors, he used. One of

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the survivors told me that if you closed your eyes,

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you would have thought Jim Jones was a black pastor,

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and he just up basically took that. Now. He did

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that intentionally. It was to appeal to so many African Americans.

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He had so many elderly African Americans that had come

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from the Jim Crow South. Pentecostalism was the religion that

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they were comfortable with. It's one of the reasons that

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he did a lot of fake faith healing, that sort

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of thing. They believed that they expected it, that comes

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straight out of their own cultural history, and so he

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would keep up the act enough, just enough, and some

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of them were a little bit afraid. I thinking about

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a particular woman named Hyacinth Thrash who joined the church

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early member, joined in nineteen fifty five because she said

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he'd done faith healing miracles on her first service. She

258
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was impressed by that, but she said the real miracle

259
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was when she left the church and he was saying

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goodbye to everybody who had everybody in the congregation, and

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that he actually took her hand in both of hers

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and really looked at her, told her he was so

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happy that she was there, and she said, for the

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very first time in her life, she was in her

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sixties at this point she felt seen by a white man,

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and so later on she believed that he healed her

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breast cancer. She was never going to leave him, and

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even when she did, her sister Zipra firmly believed that

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he was and he was telling people by this point

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he was actually God. And in her head, Hyacinth is

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saying to herself, blasphemy. He's not God, you know how.

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But she's still on moved to move away from the church.

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I would also say that Zippy's there, her sister, so

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she didn't want to leave her. But I would also

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say that by the time you get to the seventies,

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seventy four, seventy five, if these people even had wanted

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to leave, they couldn't have. Hyacinth had sold her house,

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given all of the proceeds to the house to the church. Wow,

279
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she gave her social Security checks. Everybody did, so it

280
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made leaving even more difficult. So you've got a group

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that's your family, that you've intermarried with, you're communally raising children.

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You love each other, you know you love each other.

283
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But additionally, you have no resources beyond people's temple.

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Speaker 2: This is far beyond tithing, the tradition of giving typically

285
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ten percent of your income, which could be a lot.

286
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This is way beyond that. And you're just giving a

287
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portion of your earnings. You're actually giving substantial amounts of

288
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your economic security. And some of these people their house

289
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might have been the single most valuable thing they owned.

290
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Here they are giving it to the church. This is

291
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beyond a typical level of commitment to a religious or

292
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social organization.

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Speaker 5: They were committed, I would say most of them gave

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it freely, willingly, happily. They turned it over and knew

295
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that the temple would take care of them, and the

296
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temple did certainly not in the way they might have

297
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taken care of themselves. Food they ate cheaper food, They

298
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ate that together. They bought jeans and t shirts and bulks,

299
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so they did it as cheaply as they possibly could.

300
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But they were indeed taking care of everyone. And if

301
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you think about some folks, like by the time they

302
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moved from Indiana to California, and they expanded into Los

303
00:15:52,919 --> 00:15:57,919
Angeles and San Francisco. They expanded into some really poverty

304
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ridden neighborhoods. Now, think about so you're a single mom

305
00:16:02,159 --> 00:16:04,840
and you've got three kids in a crime written neighborhood.

306
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Your job barely supports them. They don't go to a

307
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very great school. What do they do after school while

308
00:16:10,360 --> 00:16:13,120
you're at work. You have no medical care, right, no

309
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medical insurance. But the Temple will give all of that

310
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to you, so your kids have a place to go

311
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that's safe after school. They picked specific schools Jim Jones did,

312
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and sent the kids to them good schools. In fact,

313
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they were interested in educating your child and sending your

314
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kid to college. They sent kids to college. They were doctors, lawyers, dentists.

315
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It was amazing in many ways. Right, if you're an

316
00:16:35,519 --> 00:16:37,799
elderly woman and you have no family, and you're living

317
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on your two hundred dollars a month social Security check,

318
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this is nineteen seventy five, you worry all the time.

319
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Now you don't have to. You give you two hundred

320
00:16:45,480 --> 00:16:48,159
dollars a month. But now you have an apartment provided

321
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for by the Temple. You have food, you have friends,

322
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you have somebody that comes and checks your blood pressure

323
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every week if that's what's needed, or takes you to

324
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your doctor's appointment, pays for your doctor's appointment. They really

325
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did this. So I think that's part of the story

326
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that no one ever talks about. When they talk about

327
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people's temple, they just go, oh, why did these people

328
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let this terrible man lead them to this terrible death.

329
00:17:11,640 --> 00:17:13,759
There was a lot more going on than that. A

330
00:17:13,839 --> 00:17:17,400
lot of those people were older. The large percentage were

331
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African Americans who needed the church either financially or believed

332
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that he was this great Pentecostal leader. But you had

333
00:17:26,240 --> 00:17:30,480
fully a lot of college educated people who came not

334
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because it was a church, but because they liked the

335
00:17:34,240 --> 00:17:39,119
talk about socialism and about communal living and about racial

336
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and economic equality. So Jones was a bit of a chameleon.

337
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He could be everything for everybody and he did a

338
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really good job of that.

339
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Speaker 6: What eventually prompted people to start leaving? Because there were people,

340
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not many, but there were people who decided to defect

341
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and leave, whether that was here in the US or

342
00:17:56,839 --> 00:18:00,279
later in Guyana. What was it that eventually prompted people

343
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to leave? And how did Jim Jones treat the people

344
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who decided to defect.

345
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Speaker 5: I love you use the word defect, isn't it the

346
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silliest word? I mean, they used it, so we use

347
00:18:10,200 --> 00:18:13,720
it now. Defect like they were leaving their like Russia

348
00:18:13,799 --> 00:18:16,279
or something. I know. But here's what I discovered, and

349
00:18:16,319 --> 00:18:20,519
it's when I did research on destructive groups in general.

350
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This seems to be what happens is some one event

351
00:18:25,799 --> 00:18:28,200
is the event. They could have been there for years,

352
00:18:28,279 --> 00:18:30,440
they could have done all sorts of things that they

353
00:18:30,440 --> 00:18:32,759
would have never thought, they would have never mentioned they

354
00:18:32,759 --> 00:18:36,039
could have done, and there's one event, for really, one

355
00:18:36,079 --> 00:18:38,880
event that tips them over the edge. I remember when

356
00:18:38,920 --> 00:18:41,680
I was doing my research, there was a woman that

357
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:45,000
was a flat earth and no amount of science could

358
00:18:45,039 --> 00:18:47,960
convince her that not the old joke about if it

359
00:18:48,039 --> 00:18:49,960
was flat earth everything would been knocked off by the

360
00:18:50,000 --> 00:18:54,400
cats that didn't. But she just was adamant. No amount

361
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of science would convince her. And then suddenly somebody mentioned

362
00:18:58,559 --> 00:19:01,519
a fact, a flatter fact. I put that in air

363
00:19:01,599 --> 00:19:05,039
quotes because it's not and she says to herself, that's

364
00:19:05,079 --> 00:19:08,440
not true. I learned something else in fourth grade, and

365
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:10,599
all of a sudden, she's not a fltter earther anymore.

366
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And that's the same thing I found with People's Temple

367
00:19:13,799 --> 00:19:17,359
on a bigger level. I'll give you an example. Mike Cartmel,

368
00:19:17,519 --> 00:19:20,839
my dear friend, Mike Kurtmel, was a People's Temple member

369
00:19:20,839 --> 00:19:23,319
from the time he was a child until his twenties.

370
00:19:23,640 --> 00:19:27,720
He was married to Jim Jones's daughter, Susannah. He was

371
00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:30,759
had gone to school on the People's Temple Dime, had

372
00:19:30,799 --> 00:19:35,359
become an attorney, was expected to be the heir to

373
00:19:35,599 --> 00:19:38,960
People's Temple after they thought Jim Jones would retire, but

374
00:19:39,759 --> 00:19:41,759
he was the appointed heir and they were like a

375
00:19:41,839 --> 00:19:45,599
royal couple in People's Temple. So it's nineteen seventy four

376
00:19:45,880 --> 00:19:50,039
and they are having a Catharsis session People's Temple behind

377
00:19:50,079 --> 00:19:53,720
the closed doors. Members would have what they called Catharsis sessions,

378
00:19:53,759 --> 00:19:57,000
which were punishment sessions. So if you did something that

379
00:19:57,200 --> 00:20:00,960
Jim Jones or somebody else felt was again it's the rules,

380
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:03,599
you would get punished. And I'm not talking about like

381
00:20:03,759 --> 00:20:07,319
you were told to say twenty prayers and apologize. It

382
00:20:07,400 --> 00:20:13,240
was brutal punishing, pounding kids with boxing gloves and hitting

383
00:20:13,240 --> 00:20:16,720
them with boards and not a good thing. So Mike

384
00:20:16,759 --> 00:20:19,799
Cartmill is now an attorney, and he's been charged with

385
00:20:20,079 --> 00:20:23,960
creating a form that parents will sign before children are

386
00:20:24,000 --> 00:20:28,680
punished in this Catharsis session, so that if by chance

387
00:20:28,759 --> 00:20:31,240
it should come up some legal issue, they will have

388
00:20:31,319 --> 00:20:34,279
had the parents sign that form. And so if by

389
00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:38,119
chance something happened, like the police came or the parents left,

390
00:20:38,160 --> 00:20:40,640
and then charge of a form, a legal form drawn

391
00:20:40,680 --> 00:20:44,400
up by Mark Mike, the attorney, that would say I

392
00:20:44,519 --> 00:20:47,400
gave them my permission to do this, meaning their parents

393
00:20:47,440 --> 00:20:51,960
would always have the fault. So he's filling out this,

394
00:20:52,160 --> 00:20:54,839
he's working on these forms, and there happens to be

395
00:20:54,920 --> 00:20:58,960
this child, little kid who's being and he's screaming and

396
00:20:59,000 --> 00:21:02,279
they're holding a micro phone to his mouth so everybody

397
00:21:02,319 --> 00:21:04,960
can hear how awful he hear it. And he said

398
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:07,240
he stood there and it was just like, what am

399
00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:11,279
I doing? This is absolutely horrible and I feel reprehensible.

400
00:21:11,359 --> 00:21:13,599
I feel ashamed. I don't want any part of this.

401
00:21:13,920 --> 00:21:17,559
And he said it was seriously like someone just pulled

402
00:21:17,640 --> 00:21:20,559
a blanket off his head, and suddenly he could see

403
00:21:20,559 --> 00:21:22,920
what was going on in ways he'd never seen before,

404
00:21:23,240 --> 00:21:25,079
and so he decided to leave. But he had to

405
00:21:25,079 --> 00:21:28,079
plan it. Very carefully, because if they had known he

406
00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:32,440
was going to defect, there are people that said that

407
00:21:32,599 --> 00:21:35,039
Jim Jones would have had them killed. I don't know

408
00:21:35,160 --> 00:21:37,319
in seventy four if that's true. We certainly know in

409
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:39,400
seventy eight it would have been, but I'm not sure

410
00:21:39,400 --> 00:21:41,640
about that time. But there was enough fear that they

411
00:21:41,720 --> 00:21:44,720
believed it. And so here is the son in law

412
00:21:44,839 --> 00:21:48,880
of Jim Jones, and he can't tell anyone that he's

413
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:52,440
going to leave. When he finally does leave, he pretends

414
00:21:52,440 --> 00:21:55,359
he's going off to work, because they did work outside

415
00:21:55,400 --> 00:21:58,200
of the temple, gave their salaries to the church, and

416
00:21:58,240 --> 00:22:00,519
he never came back. And where he ended up living

417
00:22:00,599 --> 00:22:03,440
was in a senior citizen community for a while, so

418
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,480
that he was well hidden. The irony, of course, is

419
00:22:06,519 --> 00:22:11,920
that Suzanne also left. He did just a few days later,

420
00:22:12,200 --> 00:22:14,759
so the whole time he was planning to go, she

421
00:22:14,960 --> 00:22:18,319
was planning to go. But they could not tell each other.

422
00:22:18,720 --> 00:22:22,799
And there's the people's temple think, right, the group think.

423
00:22:23,079 --> 00:22:27,200
So he knew that if he told Suzanne that she

424
00:22:27,279 --> 00:22:31,240
would tell someone Jim Jones that he was leaving, and

425
00:22:31,319 --> 00:22:33,720
so he'd be trapped before he got out, and he

426
00:22:33,759 --> 00:22:35,920
would have expected her said to me, I would have

427
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:38,799
expected her to tell that, And he said, if she

428
00:22:38,880 --> 00:22:41,640
had told me, I would have told on her, and

429
00:22:41,680 --> 00:22:44,599
she would have expected me to do that. So there

430
00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:49,599
were community rules that they lived by that they stuck to.

431
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:54,039
Speaker 2: Even though both of them were thinking of leaving, and

432
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:58,400
clearly their eyes were somewhat opened to problems like the

433
00:22:58,440 --> 00:23:02,759
Catharsis sessions. Even though both of them thought about, I

434
00:23:02,839 --> 00:23:05,279
need to get out of this thing, they were in

435
00:23:05,319 --> 00:23:09,000
a dynamic in their own relationship where they couldn't share

436
00:23:09,319 --> 00:23:12,480
what they were thinking and feeling about this isn't the

437
00:23:12,559 --> 00:23:13,519
right place for us.

438
00:23:14,079 --> 00:23:16,119
Speaker 5: Yeah, you sound like I did. The first time he

439
00:23:16,160 --> 00:23:18,119
told me the story. It was like say what what?

440
00:23:18,240 --> 00:23:19,519
We can't do? What? All?

441
00:23:19,559 --> 00:23:19,680
Speaker 4: Right?

442
00:23:19,759 --> 00:23:23,599
Speaker 5: Yes? And that dynamic was common. They did not tell

443
00:23:23,960 --> 00:23:26,640
you have married couples that. They did not tell each

444
00:23:26,680 --> 00:23:29,359
other that they were planning to leave. They did not

445
00:23:29,559 --> 00:23:32,480
share their own thoughts. They may have thought that a

446
00:23:32,559 --> 00:23:35,319
Catharsis session was a bad thing. They may have felt

447
00:23:35,319 --> 00:23:38,240
that Jim Jones when he was slurring, they might have

448
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:41,279
come up with the idea that he actually was on drugs,

449
00:23:41,319 --> 00:23:43,960
even though he pretended no one knew. But they would

450
00:23:44,039 --> 00:23:50,839
never ever have said it to anyone, because anyone the community.

451
00:23:50,960 --> 00:23:54,160
One of the values within the community was the fact

452
00:23:54,480 --> 00:23:58,960
that you were completely loyal to the community, not the individual,

453
00:23:59,400 --> 00:24:03,359
the community, and so it was your obligation to the

454
00:24:03,400 --> 00:24:06,319
community to tell, even if you had to tell on

455
00:24:06,359 --> 00:24:08,799
your very best friend, even if you had to tell

456
00:24:08,839 --> 00:24:12,559
on your wife. And they are endless stories of that

457
00:24:12,839 --> 00:24:17,799
where people just stayed very quiet and then would discover

458
00:24:17,920 --> 00:24:20,759
later on that they both felt things were bad, that

459
00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:23,759
things were crazy, that it wasn't right, but they all

460
00:24:23,799 --> 00:24:24,599
stayed quiet.

461
00:24:25,000 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 6: It's interesting because I don't think that a lot of

462
00:24:28,079 --> 00:24:31,519
people outside of academics like yourself, who are working on

463
00:24:31,519 --> 00:24:33,160
books and things like this, I don't think a lot

464
00:24:33,200 --> 00:24:35,680
of people give a lot of thought to the power

465
00:24:35,839 --> 00:24:40,000
of that group think ideology oh destructive a whole entire

466
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:43,519
group can be to the way an individual perceives the

467
00:24:43,519 --> 00:24:46,440
whole entire rest of their life. So this is fascinating

468
00:24:46,480 --> 00:24:49,880
to learn. Now when they ended up in Guyana, and

469
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:51,440
I am going to ask you how did they eventually

470
00:24:51,519 --> 00:24:54,240
get from the US to Guyana, because that's a whole other, strange,

471
00:24:54,240 --> 00:24:59,680
big saga that bid to keep everybody inside the compound

472
00:24:59,799 --> 00:25:02,839
and to be loyal to the group really intensified even more.

473
00:25:03,279 --> 00:25:03,720
Speaker 5: Tell us a.

474
00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:07,079
Speaker 6: Little bit about why Guyana in the first place, and

475
00:25:07,119 --> 00:25:09,759
then how did that sort of group think solidify that

476
00:25:09,799 --> 00:25:12,240
control that he had over them once they reached Guyana.

477
00:25:13,720 --> 00:25:16,440
Speaker 2: You're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back

478
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:23,960
after this word from our sponsors. We're back here at

479
00:25:24,000 --> 00:25:24,880
mindover Murder.

480
00:25:26,519 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 5: I honestly have to tell you, I know that Jim

481
00:25:29,079 --> 00:25:33,599
Jones he visited Ghana really early back in the sixties

482
00:25:33,759 --> 00:25:35,559
and had put it in the back of his mind

483
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:39,359
as maybe a place to take the church. So back

484
00:25:39,799 --> 00:25:43,039
around comes the seventies again and he decides that they're

485
00:25:43,079 --> 00:25:46,440
going to build this mission in South America. He picks

486
00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:50,720
it because they speak English, but it's also a black

487
00:25:50,839 --> 00:25:53,279
run The British had just left, so it was a

488
00:25:53,319 --> 00:25:56,480
government that was run by black officials, and so that

489
00:25:56,720 --> 00:25:59,880
sort of went along with their ideas of equality. He

490
00:26:00,119 --> 00:26:02,960
also picks it because they can get a bunch of

491
00:26:03,039 --> 00:26:05,839
land in the middle of the jungle, basically up against

492
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:10,599
Venezuela's border, for almost next to nothing. The Gainese are

493
00:26:10,680 --> 00:26:13,359
really happy to let them have it because it's up

494
00:26:13,359 --> 00:26:16,160
against the border of Venezuela, who they're having a border

495
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,279
issue with. So nothing better than to have a thousand

496
00:26:19,279 --> 00:26:23,799
Americans on that border to keep anybody from attacking because

497
00:26:23,880 --> 00:26:26,960
they have the US government that wouldn't supposedly let those

498
00:26:27,079 --> 00:26:30,960
citizens be hurt. So he picks this and his first

499
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:35,720
idea is really the initial idea was to have or

500
00:26:35,759 --> 00:26:39,640
a place for a like a summer almost a summer camp,

501
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,119
or a place that he fully intended for People's Temple

502
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:46,400
to continue in the United States, particularly in San Francisco

503
00:26:46,599 --> 00:26:50,119
and in Los Angeles. The idea was that people would

504
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,319
come and go to Jonestown and then back to San Francisco.

505
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:55,240
They would come and go, maybe they would come for

506
00:26:55,279 --> 00:26:58,119
a summer, maybe they would come for a year. Troublemakers,

507
00:26:59,039 --> 00:27:03,200
those that might be a problem within the community, or

508
00:27:03,319 --> 00:27:06,279
kids that needed some sort of lesson would get sent

509
00:27:06,559 --> 00:27:09,200
there as well. But it was really this idea of

510
00:27:09,279 --> 00:27:13,480
having a mission. It wasn't intended to be a place

511
00:27:13,599 --> 00:27:17,720
for them to escape. But what happens is that there

512
00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:22,519
is a magazine expos that is done on People's Temple

513
00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:26,880
and on Jim Jones. It is not a nice portrayal

514
00:27:27,079 --> 00:27:30,039
of People's Temple. In fact, they got it pretty right.

515
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:32,960
In fact, did they actually talk to a bunch of

516
00:27:33,000 --> 00:27:37,359
people who have actually defected from People's temple, So they

517
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:40,759
get a lot of those horror stories about Catharsis sessions

518
00:27:40,839 --> 00:27:43,599
and that sort of thing. So those are all printed.

519
00:27:44,119 --> 00:27:46,599
He feels he needs to leave and he needs to

520
00:27:46,640 --> 00:27:49,160
take everybody with him. So at first it was going

521
00:27:49,240 --> 00:27:52,319
to be maybe one hundred people. There were fifty founders.

522
00:27:52,640 --> 00:27:55,599
They were called the Founders, and they went and literally

523
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:59,480
made Doug. It's astonishing. They actually built a community in

524
00:27:59,519 --> 00:28:01,400
the middle of the jungle. They had to learn how

525
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:03,319
to take down those trees. They had to build a

526
00:28:03,400 --> 00:28:07,079
road first to their property, and then they had to

527
00:28:07,079 --> 00:28:09,000
cut down all that property, and then they had to

528
00:28:09,000 --> 00:28:11,240
grow crops, and then they had to build homes, and

529
00:28:11,279 --> 00:28:13,640
then they had to build furniture. And they did it

530
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:17,279
all by hand. And I think that's astonishing. They loved

531
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:20,640
being there because Jones wasn't he was back in the States.

532
00:28:21,160 --> 00:28:24,279
Speaker 2: Oh, now, who was running it? I always thought he

533
00:28:24,359 --> 00:28:24,839
was there.

534
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,920
Speaker 5: No, he's not there. It's for years he's not there.

535
00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:31,920
So he pops in sometimes and he comes in over

536
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,480
to make a promotional film for the congregation back home

537
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,160
at one point, they take a kind of a congregational

538
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:41,480
group trip, so the hierarchy of the church come over

539
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,359
and take a look at what's happening. But initially he

540
00:28:45,519 --> 00:28:50,160
had fifty founding members, so he sent over particular people

541
00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:54,279
start Jonestown to build, to literally build a road and

542
00:28:54,319 --> 00:28:58,359
build a community in the middle of the jungle. And

543
00:28:57,920 --> 00:29:01,960
these were people that were not raftsmen and engineers and

544
00:29:02,519 --> 00:29:06,200
carpenters and plumbers and whatever, and yet they figure it out.

545
00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:08,559
The Touchetes were one of those. I talked to Michael

546
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:11,279
Touchet who went over when he was a teenager with

547
00:29:11,319 --> 00:29:14,160
his brother and his parents who were the leaders of

548
00:29:14,200 --> 00:29:16,640
the Founders, and he loved every minute of it. He

549
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,079
loved that he learned to drive a bulldozer, He had freedom,

550
00:29:20,480 --> 00:29:22,920
that he was building things with his hands, and he

551
00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:26,440
felt like he was really doing something for his community.

552
00:29:26,799 --> 00:29:31,039
He was building this utopia. And then this expose comes

553
00:29:31,039 --> 00:29:34,759
out about People's Temple, and particularly about Jim Jones, and

554
00:29:34,920 --> 00:29:38,119
he leaves the country. But even before he knows that

555
00:29:38,160 --> 00:29:41,039
the exposee is coming, he knows he's being investigated, and

556
00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:43,759
so he basically says, how many people can I bring

557
00:29:43,799 --> 00:29:46,519
to Jonestown and they're like, how many. He says to

558
00:29:46,559 --> 00:29:48,839
the leaders, the founders, how many can I bring? And

559
00:29:48,839 --> 00:29:51,200
they're like, how many are you talking about? And he's everybody,

560
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,359
And then there's no way. We don't have enough buildings

561
00:29:54,359 --> 00:29:57,160
to house them. We don't have enough showers, we don't

562
00:29:57,200 --> 00:30:01,759
have enough facilities for cooking, we don't have bathrooms, we

563
00:30:01,799 --> 00:30:04,519
don't have enough food. Bottom line, we don't have We're

564
00:30:05,039 --> 00:30:07,440
just figuring out how to grow crops here. We do

565
00:30:07,519 --> 00:30:10,400
not have enough food. And he's too bad, we're doing it.

566
00:30:10,640 --> 00:30:14,000
And so what they refer to is the exodus again

567
00:30:14,440 --> 00:30:19,160
Jim Jones speaking to those cultural African American routs the

568
00:30:19,319 --> 00:30:23,279
know a story that they were deeply, deeply attached to.

569
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:26,720
He begins to send them over. But here's what he does.

570
00:30:26,799 --> 00:30:30,640
He sends them secretly. They go off from different airports

571
00:30:30,799 --> 00:30:34,559
at night. They leave from San Francisco or Los Angeles,

572
00:30:34,599 --> 00:30:37,559
and then they take flights from all different from New

573
00:30:37,640 --> 00:30:42,480
York and Atlanta and wherever they're flying to Georgetown. Jianna,

574
00:30:42,519 --> 00:30:45,319
I don't know, but they actually do this. And so

575
00:30:45,799 --> 00:30:47,880
people are like, there's a knock on the door and

576
00:30:48,200 --> 00:30:51,160
there's a small group of people that have been chosen

577
00:30:51,279 --> 00:30:53,720
to do this job. They knock on the door and

578
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,319
they say you're going today. You're leaving tonight on the

579
00:30:56,359 --> 00:30:58,920
bus and the people are like what, and they're like,

580
00:30:58,960 --> 00:31:02,079
we will help you pack, no worry, And so they

581
00:31:02,119 --> 00:31:05,160
help them pack. They get their stuff together, they get

582
00:31:05,240 --> 00:31:07,079
rid of the other stuff, they sell it and of

583
00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:10,160
course keep the money for the church. They find homes

584
00:31:10,160 --> 00:31:12,359
for pets. They don't bring their pets, so they find

585
00:31:12,359 --> 00:31:15,359
homes for pets. They send letters to. If they're employed,

586
00:31:15,400 --> 00:31:18,680
they send employer letters to the employer. They also all

587
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:22,559
got passports previously to this, and so then they're put

588
00:31:22,599 --> 00:31:24,240
on a busk in the whisked away and they are

589
00:31:24,319 --> 00:31:27,160
told that they will be allowed to return. If they

590
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:30,079
don't like it, they can come home, and they have

591
00:31:30,200 --> 00:31:33,519
been told that it is paradise, like food drops from

592
00:31:33,559 --> 00:31:36,519
the trees and it's a wonderful place to be. They're

593
00:31:36,519 --> 00:31:39,000
also told they can come home. So they get there

594
00:31:39,079 --> 00:31:42,039
and they learn pretty quickly that it is not paradise,

595
00:31:42,440 --> 00:31:46,079
and their passports are taken. So they learn pretty quickly

596
00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:48,519
that they are not going to be allowed to go

597
00:31:48,640 --> 00:31:50,920
home when they want to. And the few people that

598
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:56,480
actually ask publicly are punished pretty severely publicly. So yeah,

599
00:31:56,519 --> 00:31:58,559
that's how it happens. And of course, not everybody in

600
00:31:58,559 --> 00:32:01,240
People's temple got there what I refer to as the

601
00:32:01,279 --> 00:32:05,079
massacre in seventy eight. Not everybody got there. There's lots

602
00:32:05,119 --> 00:32:07,279
of members still back in the United States.

603
00:32:08,119 --> 00:32:12,480
Speaker 2: So how does Congressman Leo Ryan get involved, because he's

604
00:32:12,559 --> 00:32:18,079
obviously a catalyst for some of what happened. How does

605
00:32:18,200 --> 00:32:22,319
Ryan as a congressman get involved with the temple.

606
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 5: Ryan is from California, He's a representative in the San

607
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:32,559
Francisco area. Many of the families, the concerned relatives they

608
00:32:32,559 --> 00:32:36,720
call themselves, are really worried about what's happening in Guiana.

609
00:32:37,119 --> 00:32:39,720
They're really worried about what's going on in Jonestown. Many

610
00:32:39,799 --> 00:32:42,680
of them have defected themselves, so they understand the level

611
00:32:42,680 --> 00:32:45,559
of cruelty that's happening, and they know that level of

612
00:32:45,559 --> 00:32:50,200
cruelty has really ratcheted up. They also know that Jim

613
00:32:50,279 --> 00:32:53,039
Jones is like completely out of his mind out he's

614
00:32:53,519 --> 00:32:58,039
completely drug drug adult, he's paranoid, he's confused, he's just

615
00:32:58,480 --> 00:33:01,720
completely out of his mind. They're very worried. They don't

616
00:33:01,759 --> 00:33:04,720
get mail back when they do get mailed back. They

617
00:33:04,720 --> 00:33:08,000
can tell that their relatives didn't write it. Some of

618
00:33:08,039 --> 00:33:11,720
them discover I'm thinking about one gentleman who's not a

619
00:33:11,759 --> 00:33:14,599
member of the temple, but his wife is and kids are,

620
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:16,839
and he comes home from work and they're all gone.

621
00:33:17,079 --> 00:33:19,759
There's no idea where they've gone. He heads over to

622
00:33:19,799 --> 00:33:22,359
the church in San Francisco, went over to the temple

623
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:25,119
in San Francisco, and nobody will tell him where his

624
00:33:25,160 --> 00:33:29,319
family is. And on top of it, she's taken her

625
00:33:29,359 --> 00:33:32,359
things to South America with the kids, and then the

626
00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:35,559
rest of his stuff, their belongings have Bob had already sold,

627
00:33:35,799 --> 00:33:38,400
oh my god, the church, so they left a mattress

628
00:33:38,440 --> 00:33:40,599
on top of it. But more so, he had no

629
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:43,319
idea where his family was. And he finally realizes they've

630
00:33:43,319 --> 00:33:45,519
gone to Jonestown and he wants them to come home.

631
00:33:45,839 --> 00:33:47,799
They can't get a hold of anybody. No one will

632
00:33:47,839 --> 00:33:51,880
help them. So they write a lot of government officials,

633
00:33:52,200 --> 00:33:56,240
a lot of government officials, including President Carter at the time,

634
00:33:56,599 --> 00:33:59,000
no one will pay any attention to them. And so finally,

635
00:33:59,039 --> 00:34:02,599
and it long last, Congressman Leo Ryan decides that he

636
00:34:02,680 --> 00:34:05,279
will go down and he will take a look and

637
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:08,119
he will bring letters from them, and he will also

638
00:34:08,599 --> 00:34:12,159
give anybody who wants to come home the opportunity to

639
00:34:12,239 --> 00:34:15,079
come home with him, as he calls under the protection

640
00:34:15,360 --> 00:34:19,000
of the US Congress. So he goes down was a

641
00:34:19,079 --> 00:34:24,440
handful of the relatives who are most deeply concerned about

642
00:34:24,480 --> 00:34:27,599
what's happening with their sons, their daughters, their grandchildren, and

643
00:34:27,800 --> 00:34:29,960
that's how he ends up down there.

644
00:34:30,559 --> 00:34:34,039
Speaker 6: We don't want to spoil the big climactic bit of

645
00:34:34,119 --> 00:34:37,519
events that comes, because it reads beautifully, and I think

646
00:34:37,559 --> 00:34:40,599
it reads almost like a screenplay, like I'm sitting there

647
00:34:40,639 --> 00:34:41,440
like churning through the.

648
00:34:41,360 --> 00:34:43,599
Speaker 3: Pages, going, oh my god, I know what's going to happen.

649
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:44,800
I know what's going to happen.

650
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,119
Speaker 6: But it was amazing to watch it on school a

651
00:34:48,119 --> 00:34:50,960
couple of minutes ago. When you were talking, you referenced

652
00:34:51,079 --> 00:34:54,159
what happened at Jurnstown as a massacre, and I think

653
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:58,360
most people, like culturally think of it as a mass suicide.

654
00:34:58,639 --> 00:35:00,360
But the way that you wrote it, you can to

655
00:35:00,360 --> 00:35:02,920
me that it actually is much more of a mass

656
00:35:03,000 --> 00:35:06,960
murder than it was a mass suicide. Can you explain

657
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,880
for people who think what happened at Jonestown was a

658
00:35:09,920 --> 00:35:10,760
mass suicide.

659
00:35:11,159 --> 00:35:13,480
Speaker 3: Explain to them why. I actually, no, it's more of

660
00:35:13,519 --> 00:35:14,760
a murder than anything else.

661
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,000
Speaker 5: Oh, I think it's a definite murder. Okay, so I'll go.

662
00:35:18,119 --> 00:35:20,199
I'll run through my numbers. There are like nine hundred

663
00:35:20,199 --> 00:35:23,239
and eighteen people that die in November of nineteen seventy.

664
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,480
I'll come close with my numbers. I'm not a math person,

665
00:35:25,519 --> 00:35:28,000
but I know them generally. So you have two hundred

666
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:31,480
and sixty children under the ages of sixteen. They are

667
00:35:31,519 --> 00:35:33,519
not given a choice, they don't many of them or

668
00:35:33,559 --> 00:35:35,880
babies don't even know what's going on, and they are

669
00:35:35,920 --> 00:35:40,119
forced to take sin i'd mixed with grape flavored. It

670
00:35:40,280 --> 00:35:43,239
is flavor aid, not kool aid, and it is forced

671
00:35:43,280 --> 00:35:46,599
down their throats. I cannot think that we, any of us,

672
00:35:46,679 --> 00:35:51,880
would call that suicide. We have an, yes, murder. We

673
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,360
have eighty senior citizens who were unable to come to

674
00:35:55,400 --> 00:35:59,079
the pavilion because they were not physically able to get

675
00:35:59,119 --> 00:36:03,159
down there, and so temple nurses and yes, the Temple

676
00:36:03,199 --> 00:36:06,920
did have nurses. Temple nurses go down to their dormitories

677
00:36:06,960 --> 00:36:10,280
and they inject them with the sinide, so they're not

678
00:36:10,440 --> 00:36:14,039
suicides either. Then we have about one hundred and twenty people.

679
00:36:14,119 --> 00:36:17,719
I think that after everyone had died, we have the

680
00:36:17,760 --> 00:36:22,679
Guyanese forensic pathologist comes down and he finds at least

681
00:36:22,880 --> 00:36:25,119
one hundred and twenty people that have been stabbed in

682
00:36:25,119 --> 00:36:28,760
the back with a hypodermic needle, meaning somebody came to

683
00:36:28,800 --> 00:36:31,480
them from the back and stabbed them. I would suggest

684
00:36:31,559 --> 00:36:34,519
that is not murder. If somebody injects you is cyanide

685
00:36:35,039 --> 00:36:37,719
in the back, it implies they were running. And then

686
00:36:37,800 --> 00:36:42,559
you have adults other adults now, but it's mostly younger adults.

687
00:36:42,599 --> 00:36:44,880
But they're in a pavilion, and for the first time

688
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,760
of all their meetings in the pavilion, they are surrounded

689
00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:52,599
by guards who have rifles or guns, and they are

690
00:36:52,679 --> 00:36:55,519
told that they have a choice. They can either take

691
00:36:55,559 --> 00:37:00,400
that cyanide or they can be shot, which do you prefer.

692
00:37:01,039 --> 00:37:04,039
Many of them chose to I don't have a choice.

693
00:37:04,039 --> 00:37:06,159
I'm going to go with my family. I'm going to

694
00:37:06,199 --> 00:37:08,719
go well, to drink it and go. Did they think

695
00:37:08,760 --> 00:37:11,960
more peacefully, I don't know. But they made that choice instead,

696
00:37:12,159 --> 00:37:14,880
and you have I don't know. What does that leave me?

697
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:19,320
A handful basically of people, including his most dedicated people.

698
00:37:19,400 --> 00:37:21,920
So the people in the inner circle, which would include

699
00:37:21,920 --> 00:37:25,679
those guards, those people that actually went up and they

700
00:37:25,719 --> 00:37:28,400
took it willingly, and a few of them if it

701
00:37:28,440 --> 00:37:31,280
was all taped, so the few of them even turn

702
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:33,639
around to go thank you father, which is what they

703
00:37:33,679 --> 00:37:36,760
called Jim father d thank you father, they said before

704
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:39,760
they took it. And you'd say, oh, there's your suicides,

705
00:37:40,039 --> 00:37:43,519
but I would say not, because they took that poison

706
00:37:43,800 --> 00:37:47,119
based on information that they had been given from Jim Jones.

707
00:37:47,159 --> 00:37:49,599
They had been told that there were mercenary soldiers that

708
00:37:49,639 --> 00:37:52,639
were already in the jungle coming to attack the community,

709
00:37:53,000 --> 00:37:55,800
and that community would be killed, the women would be raped,

710
00:37:55,880 --> 00:37:59,119
the children to be tortured. They were on their way.

711
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:01,599
There was nothing else that they could do but to

712
00:38:01,719 --> 00:38:04,280
kill themselves and not to give themselves up to the

713
00:38:04,320 --> 00:38:07,800
capitalist mercenaries. Right, this is the kind of stuff that

714
00:38:07,840 --> 00:38:10,239
they were being told. And because they were isolated, they

715
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:14,920
had no other information, only from Jim Jones. So they

716
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,639
were told that and they made a decision based on

717
00:38:17,719 --> 00:38:21,559
information that was not true. They made a decision based

718
00:38:21,599 --> 00:38:27,159
on a big lie. Is that suicide. I don't think so, because.

719
00:38:26,760 --> 00:38:28,800
Speaker 2: Almost all of them are actually murdered.

720
00:38:29,280 --> 00:38:34,119
Speaker 5: They really are all murdered. Even Jim Jones doesn't kill himself,

721
00:38:34,480 --> 00:38:38,840
he can't take the sinide. His friend, his son, Stephen,

722
00:38:39,079 --> 00:38:41,840
told me that his dad was a coward and he

723
00:38:41,880 --> 00:38:45,760
probably saw how terrible and death by seanide really was,

724
00:38:46,079 --> 00:38:48,559
didn't like how it looked. He could do it take

725
00:38:48,599 --> 00:38:53,360
it himself, and so he had someone shoot him, and

726
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:57,800
so that's how he died. So even Hey didn't commit suicide,

727
00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:02,239
it really was this small group of mostly women, and

728
00:39:02,480 --> 00:39:05,599
some of those guards the inner circle. And in fact,

729
00:39:06,199 --> 00:39:08,800
I would say that it is the inner circle that

730
00:39:08,920 --> 00:39:12,079
has more liability for what happened, if that's the word,

731
00:39:12,599 --> 00:39:16,519
because Jim Jones was so drug addled by this point

732
00:39:16,559 --> 00:39:18,320
that most of the time he couldn't stand up to

733
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:20,159
go to the bathroom. People had to hold him up.

734
00:39:20,199 --> 00:39:24,239
His sons would talk about how very drug addicted he was.

735
00:39:24,760 --> 00:39:27,360
So he had this inner circle of young women that

736
00:39:27,480 --> 00:39:30,559
did his bidding for him. It was they who figured

737
00:39:30,599 --> 00:39:33,639
out how to kill nine hundred people. That circle of

738
00:39:33,679 --> 00:39:36,400
people that figured out how to do it and had

739
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,920
the vats of sign I had made, and then organized

740
00:39:38,960 --> 00:39:41,400
the people to go forward and take them or force

741
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:44,679
it down kids' throats, or however they were administering it

742
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:48,079
at the time. Jim Jones, certainly he sat there and

743
00:39:48,519 --> 00:39:50,800
in his they were for tu as his throne, and

744
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:53,840
he talked to them about needing to do it. But

745
00:39:53,920 --> 00:39:55,840
I do not believe if he hadn't had the help

746
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:57,920
of the Inner Circle, I don't think he probably would

747
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:00,440
have pulled it off. People would have just left, did

748
00:40:00,639 --> 00:40:03,119
argue they didn't want to do it, And we have

749
00:40:03,199 --> 00:40:05,480
some of them on tape, some of them we think

750
00:40:05,639 --> 00:40:08,559
they probably argued, but Jim Jones would turn the tape

751
00:40:08,599 --> 00:40:12,519
on and off so that those opposing voices I think

752
00:40:12,519 --> 00:40:15,920
we have one. Christine's is the only one whose voice

753
00:40:15,960 --> 00:40:17,440
we know thoroughly opposed it.

754
00:40:18,119 --> 00:40:21,679
Speaker 2: And you mentioned Stephen, his son who was there. Now

755
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:23,480
he survived, he did?

756
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:24,440
Speaker 5: He did?

757
00:40:25,079 --> 00:40:28,679
Speaker 2: How did it happen that Stephen, who was there and

758
00:40:29,559 --> 00:40:33,239
remember was there later to tell the tale, not end

759
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:34,440
up dead like the others.

760
00:40:35,079 --> 00:40:37,920
Speaker 5: This is the weirdest This might be the weirdest thing

761
00:40:37,960 --> 00:40:43,920
that I learned. And here's the thing. Basketball. Seriously, basketball,

762
00:40:44,039 --> 00:40:48,079
say somebody sent a basketball accidentally from the church, they

763
00:40:48,079 --> 00:40:53,159
would send supplies over. Somebody accidentally sent a basketball to Jonestown.

764
00:40:53,480 --> 00:40:57,239
Now Steven and his brothers were all big basketball players.

765
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:00,760
Some were the other boys here they're eighteen, nineteen, eighteen, nineteen,

766
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:03,559
twenty years old. They get this basketball and all of

767
00:41:03,639 --> 00:41:05,920
a sudden they decide they're going to they create a

768
00:41:06,000 --> 00:41:09,719
basketball hoop and they use a court that was actually

769
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,880
supposed to was the bottom of what was supposed to

770
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:14,760
be a building, but they take it and use it

771
00:41:14,800 --> 00:41:17,960
for a basketball court. And at first, Jim Jones is like,

772
00:41:18,119 --> 00:41:20,480
why would you waste your time on something frivolous? Get

773
00:41:20,519 --> 00:41:24,199
to work and it's Marceline Jones, his wife, Steven's mother,

774
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:27,719
that sort of convinces him that the kids need to

775
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:31,119
blow off a little steam. And the community loves them,

776
00:41:31,320 --> 00:41:34,039
so they love watching them train, they love watching them

777
00:41:34,039 --> 00:41:36,480
play basketball. They're good players. They were playing in high

778
00:41:36,519 --> 00:41:40,119
school before they got taken to Jonestown, so they're good

779
00:41:40,159 --> 00:41:45,840
basketball players. And weirdly, the Guineas invite them to play

780
00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:50,800
a series of games in Georgetown, and just before Congressman

781
00:41:51,280 --> 00:41:56,559
Ryan's arrival in Jonestown, the basketball team, along with their coach,

782
00:41:57,000 --> 00:42:00,840
leaves Jonestown and goes to Georgetown to play this series

783
00:42:00,880 --> 00:42:04,199
of games. They get there and what Stephen told me

784
00:42:04,400 --> 00:42:06,480
was that they got there and they were like away

785
00:42:06,800 --> 00:42:10,119
from the rules of Jonestown. They're away from listening ears

786
00:42:10,159 --> 00:42:13,960
that might tell on them, and they slowly begin to

787
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:17,440
tell each other that they think things in Jonestown are

788
00:42:17,519 --> 00:42:20,360
not good and that they think things need to change.

789
00:42:20,519 --> 00:42:23,320
They're also enjoying freedom in a way they've never had before.

790
00:42:23,559 --> 00:42:26,079
They had a van, people's tumble had a van, and

791
00:42:26,119 --> 00:42:28,880
he said they drove around town and they went to movies,

792
00:42:29,039 --> 00:42:31,599
and Steven stole some money from his dad, so they

793
00:42:31,599 --> 00:42:34,679
had some cash to do stuff and they were really

794
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:37,800
loving it. And they actually decided that when they got

795
00:42:37,840 --> 00:42:40,599
home back to Jonestown that they were actually going to

796
00:42:40,679 --> 00:42:43,159
as Steven said, this is his quote, they were going

797
00:42:43,199 --> 00:42:46,280
to topple his dad. They just felt it was time

798
00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:49,599
for a change of leadership and that they were going

799
00:42:49,679 --> 00:42:52,239
to do that. And of course that came too late.

800
00:42:52,880 --> 00:42:55,920
And so they were in Georgetown when they found out

801
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,000
what had happened in Jonestown, and needless to say, they

802
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,239
were absolutely Dova stated, that was their family, their community,

803
00:43:02,519 --> 00:43:05,079
the people they loved most, and they felt like, at

804
00:43:05,159 --> 00:43:07,760
least Stephen did. He felt like if they had been

805
00:43:07,800 --> 00:43:10,480
there that it would not have happened. Yeah, But then

806
00:43:10,519 --> 00:43:12,760
On the other hand, he said to me, I don't know, Candy,

807
00:43:13,119 --> 00:43:15,840
if everybody else was taking it in the community, I

808
00:43:15,920 --> 00:43:18,400
might have done it too. Taken that one minute.

809
00:43:18,960 --> 00:43:22,199
Speaker 3: How willing were the Jonestown survivors to talk to you.

810
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:27,679
Speaker 5: I think they were a little reticent first. Yeah, Stephen

811
00:43:27,760 --> 00:43:31,480
was terrific. I remember when I first talked to him.

812
00:43:31,679 --> 00:43:34,519
I had this list of questions, right, all these questions

813
00:43:34,599 --> 00:43:36,639
about his father that I wanted to ask, but they

814
00:43:36,639 --> 00:43:40,599
weren't very nice questions in retrospects, right, And I get

815
00:43:40,599 --> 00:43:43,280
the real man on the phone, and all of a sudden,

816
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:47,719
I think to myself, oh, this is his dad, and

817
00:43:47,800 --> 00:43:51,039
so I have this I like felt so foolish, And

818
00:43:51,079 --> 00:43:54,199
finally I said to mister Jones, I said, you have

819
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:56,719
to I'm really sorry, but I said, I don't know

820
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:59,840
how to ask you these questions because this is your father.

821
00:44:00,199 --> 00:44:02,679
And he's completely silent for a moment, and he goes

822
00:44:03,000 --> 00:44:07,519
two things, Candy, don't call me mister Jones. And the

823
00:44:07,599 --> 00:44:12,119
second thing is, you can't ask me anything I haven't

824
00:44:12,119 --> 00:44:16,559
already thought of. And so he was unbelievably honest, not

825
00:44:16,639 --> 00:44:19,199
only about who he thought his father was, and the

826
00:44:19,320 --> 00:44:22,760
terrible things that his father had done, but also about

827
00:44:23,039 --> 00:44:26,719
those parts of his father that we might forget about

828
00:44:26,920 --> 00:44:29,559
about his He said, one of the things that was

829
00:44:29,679 --> 00:44:32,760
almost impossible to explain was his father could walk into

830
00:44:32,800 --> 00:44:36,119
a room and the place would like light up. That

831
00:44:36,280 --> 00:44:39,159
he could take a woman, a little old woman in

832
00:44:39,199 --> 00:44:43,360
his arms, and it was a real and true emotion

833
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:47,039
coming from his father. It wasn't like a manipulation for

834
00:44:47,159 --> 00:44:50,239
this single woman. It was a real, true and he said,

835
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:53,199
that's one of the hardest things to get across. Then

836
00:44:53,239 --> 00:44:56,800
it was the was that so did he.

837
00:44:56,840 --> 00:44:59,599
Speaker 6: Ever use the term so to see a path through

838
00:44:59,679 --> 00:45:02,119
second path narcissists to describe his father?

839
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:06,280
Speaker 3: Did you ever or is jim Jo's beyond those terms?

840
00:45:06,639 --> 00:45:09,840
Speaker 5: He did it? He would say that things like his

841
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,719
dad was a real attention seeker. His dad learned to

842
00:45:12,760 --> 00:45:16,119
be manipulative early that he had to survive. He was

843
00:45:16,159 --> 00:45:19,719
a child that was completely, you know what, a neglected child.

844
00:45:19,840 --> 00:45:23,800
His mother's working, his dad's basically an invalid, and the

845
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:27,320
poor child's walking around seriously around town naked. His mother's

846
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:29,360
left him a b loney sandwich for the day and

847
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,360
he's four years old. So he learned really quickly as

848
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:36,519
a child to be something for everybody, the ladies in

849
00:45:36,559 --> 00:45:39,000
the town, so that he got fed, he got clothed,

850
00:45:39,039 --> 00:45:41,320
he got taken to church, he got to spend the

851
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,480
night at Missus Kennedy's across the street. She loved him

852
00:45:44,519 --> 00:45:47,440
like a son. But he learned really early on how

853
00:45:47,440 --> 00:45:50,000
to be pleasing to get what he wanted. And it

854
00:45:50,159 --> 00:45:52,920
was Stephen that really pointed that out to me. But

855
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:56,199
he didn't use any psychological terms, and I don't either

856
00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:59,360
in the book. Have my own opinions, but I can't

857
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,039
really make a diagnosis. One sure a psychiatrist, and two

858
00:46:03,199 --> 00:46:09,920
I don't really know him. But yeah, I narcissism, yeah, grandiosity, Yeah, yeah,

859
00:46:09,960 --> 00:46:11,199
I know. Just yeah.

860
00:46:11,760 --> 00:46:14,000
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating conversation, Kenny.

861
00:46:14,119 --> 00:46:19,239
Speaker 6: It's an amazing book about incredibly dark and difficult material.

862
00:46:19,920 --> 00:46:23,119
How is telling the story of Jonestown and the People's

863
00:46:23,119 --> 00:46:27,880
Temple affected you after four years of working in such

864
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:29,960
really deep and dark material.

865
00:46:30,639 --> 00:46:34,599
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a lot of new friends, lovely friends

866
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:38,360
that I hear from. Mike Cartmell I just heard from yesterday,

867
00:46:38,440 --> 00:46:41,400
day before yesterday. He's the one that one day called

868
00:46:41,440 --> 00:46:43,800
me after many conversations we had, he called me up

869
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:46,000
and he goes. One more thing. Don't forget to tell

870
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,719
them that we had fun, but they did. You don't

871
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:51,440
go people's temple and fun doesn't seem like they belong together.

872
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:55,039
But they did dance and have pot lucks and basketball teams.

873
00:46:55,079 --> 00:46:57,400
They'd have fun. So I have a lot of friends.

874
00:46:57,800 --> 00:47:00,400
Here's the thing I came to care, and I had

875
00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:05,039
not expected this. I came to care very deeply about

876
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:08,480
the People's Temple, both the living and the dead, and

877
00:47:08,559 --> 00:47:11,960
I found that writing this book. I started off just

878
00:47:12,039 --> 00:47:13,960
writing this book, and then I got to meet these

879
00:47:14,000 --> 00:47:16,400
people or I would learn about their lives, people that

880
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:20,039
are gone, and I suddenly had this unbelievable pressure to

881
00:47:20,079 --> 00:47:23,079
get it right because I so wanted to push back

882
00:47:23,119 --> 00:47:27,679
against that brainwashed narrative. I so wanted people to really

883
00:47:27,880 --> 00:47:30,960
understand that they weren't people that were missing things in

884
00:47:31,000 --> 00:47:34,480
their life. They weren't mentally ill, they weren't easily led.

885
00:47:34,880 --> 00:47:38,360
There are people like you and I and can easily

886
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:42,400
fall into these sorts of groups, and that I think

887
00:47:42,440 --> 00:47:45,440
has changed a lot for me. I did not expect

888
00:47:45,519 --> 00:47:49,079
to become so deeply. I feel like I'm deeply entwined

889
00:47:49,119 --> 00:47:52,440
with the story. It got to the point, even like

890
00:47:52,440 --> 00:47:55,559
when the FBI scooped up all their photographs and all

891
00:47:55,559 --> 00:47:57,840
that stuff that they scooped up after the murder of

892
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:01,280
the congressman. They went to Jonestown and they took every scrap,

893
00:48:01,519 --> 00:48:05,360
and and people's tumple kept every scrap. They archived their

894
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:08,119
history pretty well. So they had all these photographs of

895
00:48:08,159 --> 00:48:09,960
people that they didn't know who they were, and so

896
00:48:10,000 --> 00:48:12,400
they all went to the Chicago Historical Society and they're

897
00:48:12,440 --> 00:48:15,599
simply labeled boy looking at camera. And I come across

898
00:48:15,599 --> 00:48:17,119
to it, I'm like, that's not a boy looking at

899
00:48:17,119 --> 00:48:20,079
a camera. That's the little amous boy. I know who

900
00:48:20,079 --> 00:48:24,039
that kid is. And suddenly I remember sitting there thinking,

901
00:48:24,079 --> 00:48:27,639
I feel like I'm looking at my own family photograph album.

902
00:48:28,000 --> 00:48:31,079
And that, I think is what I found most astonishing

903
00:48:31,199 --> 00:48:34,679
about this project. And it was painful. There were times

904
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:37,719
like the end was unbelievably painful trying to write that.

905
00:48:37,880 --> 00:48:39,559
I don't know how many times I got there and

906
00:48:39,599 --> 00:48:41,880
I had to lay my head down on my desk

907
00:48:42,079 --> 00:48:45,079
because I came to love, really loved those people. I

908
00:48:45,119 --> 00:48:49,440
love Christine, Yeah, I love Hyacinth, I love Zippy. Marcelene

909
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:52,000
Marcelene Jones was an amazing woman.

910
00:48:52,320 --> 00:48:56,519
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah for my two cent, you got it right.

911
00:48:57,000 --> 00:48:58,079
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you job.

912
00:48:58,440 --> 00:49:01,320
Speaker 6: I love this book and my students who have read

913
00:49:01,360 --> 00:49:03,960
it loved it, and I know that it is receiving

914
00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:06,519
lots of accolades and lots of praise, all of it

915
00:49:06,760 --> 00:49:10,719
well deserved. The book is Death in the Jungle, Murder, Betrayal,

916
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:13,239
and the Lost Stream of Jonestown by Candace Fleming.

917
00:49:13,400 --> 00:49:15,440
Speaker 3: Candace, thank you so much for joining us today. We

918
00:49:15,480 --> 00:49:16,400
really appreciate it.

919
00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:18,960
Speaker 5: Thanks Bill, It's fun that is going to do it.

920
00:49:19,000 --> 00:49:21,480
Speaker 3: For this episode of mind Over Murder. Thank you so

921
00:49:21,559 --> 00:49:24,039
much for listening. We'll see you next time.

922
00:49:33,920 --> 00:49:37,480
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and

923
00:49:37,519 --> 00:49:38,960
Another Dog Productions.

924
00:49:39,519 --> 00:49:42,840
Speaker 2: Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

925
00:49:43,199 --> 00:49:45,639
Speaker 1: Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

926
00:49:46,280 --> 00:49:48,320
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.

927
00:49:48,880 --> 00:49:53,159
Speaker 1: Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with Coral Space Media.

928
00:49:53,559 --> 00:49:56,719
Speaker 2: You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

929
00:49:56,920 --> 00:49:59,480
Speaker 1: You can also follow our page in the Colonial Parkway

930
00:49:59,559 --> 00:50:01,400
Murders on Facebook.

931
00:50:01,159 --> 00:50:04,159
Speaker 2: And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at

932
00:50:04,239 --> 00:50:05,840
Bill Thomas five six.

933
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:09,280
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder