Speaker 1: It's really it's the most beautiful place I've ever been
Speaker 1: in all my life.
Speaker 2: I really appreciate being here, being able to work under
Speaker 2: father's direction.
Speaker 3: How long you would you like to stay?
Speaker 4: Keep it clever?
Speaker 1: Jim Jones became a control freak, a tyrant, a liar.
Speaker 4: It was an emotional breakdown.
Speaker 2: People's symbol didn't start that way. It was a slow
Speaker 2: evolving into what it became in the end.
Speaker 5: Nightmare.
Speaker 6: Nightmare, a place of paradise that became a hell for
Speaker 6: hundreds of people who put faith in him.
Speaker 3: It's the late nineteen sixties. The United States is a
Speaker 3: country in turmoil. The generation gap emerges as the youth
Speaker 3: of America voices fierce opposition to the Vietnam War and
Speaker 3: demands civil rights, gender equality, and social change. The sexual
Speaker 3: Revolution is in full swing. In this time of great upheaval,
Speaker 3: in influential figure stepped in to lead counter culture movements.
Speaker 3: A dynamic leader named Jim Jones offers wide ranging solutions
Speaker 3: that strike a chord with many of these disaffected young people.
Speaker 3: Jones seems to really understand their pressing concerns.
Speaker 4: I had never seen a pastor that was cursing out
Speaker 4: of the bulpit. I just had never seen that. But
Speaker 4: even though I thought he was an entertainer, he was
Speaker 4: very interesting. I felt enthusiastic about some of the things
Speaker 4: that he said, and he was charismatic.
Speaker 3: His message is more than just religious. Jones preaches a
Speaker 3: more egalitarian society where all are included, regardless of race, gender,
Speaker 3: or social class.
Speaker 2: I had always been involved and interested in left to
Speaker 2: movements and anything that was progressive. Since I was estranged
Speaker 2: from my family, the church became my family. They became
Speaker 2: my support.
Speaker 3: Why I became my own brand of Marxist scratch. Looking
Speaker 3: in the childhood would I could talk as.
Speaker 4: Well as I think.
Speaker 1: That's persumptious, But thoughts move rapidly than mine.
Speaker 3: It was difficult to capture them, to type them, to
Speaker 3: liberalize it. Jim Jones was born on May thirteenth, nineteen
Speaker 3: thirty one, in the tiny town of Crete, Indiana. As
Speaker 3: an only child, he spends a lot of time alone
Speaker 3: wandering the streets of his small town, but one day,
Speaker 3: a neighbor woman takes him to the church. This becomes
Speaker 3: the turning point in Jones' life.
Speaker 7: So he fell in love with this idea of becoming
Speaker 7: a preacher and while other kids would play doctor, impatient,
Speaker 7: or school, Jim Jones would start playing preacher and congregate
Speaker 7: with his buddies.
Speaker 3: While still a teenager, his parents' divorce and Jones moved
Speaker 3: with his mother to Richmond, Indiana, a racially segregated city,
Speaker 3: and Jim Jones decides to take a stand against this injustice.
Speaker 7: He would stand out on a street corner and preach
Speaker 7: this message to African Americans who were passing by. So
Speaker 7: he was able to adopt this message from the Bible
Speaker 7: about equality and Christian inclusion and all are welcome and
Speaker 7: find a ready crowd of listeners who wanted to hear this.
Speaker 3: In nineteen forty nine, when Jim Jones is just eighteen,
Speaker 3: he marries Marcelene Baldwin, and two years later the couple
Speaker 3: moved to an Indianapolis, where Jones attends meetings at the
Speaker 3: local chapter of the Communist Party and he embraces the
Speaker 3: ideals of Marxism.
Speaker 4: I decided, how can I demonstrate my Marxism?
Speaker 3: The thought was pure great Church. Jones soon becomes a
Speaker 3: student minister at a local Methodist church. He starts inviting
Speaker 3: black families to attend Sunday services, a move that shocks
Speaker 3: the members of the all white congregation.
Speaker 7: He was essentially ousted and told that this was not okay.
Speaker 7: It's all fine and good for white worshipers or white
Speaker 7: believers to say that they believe inequality, but it was
Speaker 7: another thing for them to stand side by side with
Speaker 7: black Christians and believers sharing a Bible or a Hymno.
Speaker 7: So what did he do? He decided to create his
Speaker 7: own church where all were welcome.
Speaker 3: Eeighteen fifty four, Jones establishes the Community Unity Church and
Speaker 3: encourages all races to attend his services. Around this time,
Speaker 3: Jones witnesses a faith healing service at a Seventh day
Speaker 3: Adventist Baptist church. He sees how faith healing attracts people
Speaker 3: and their money. Motivated by this income, he brings this
Speaker 3: practice into his services.
Speaker 5: I became a member, of course, of the choir. I
Speaker 5: joined the church.
Speaker 1: I would go out on Saturdays like a dutiful little
Speaker 1: member of People's Temple with the can and I would
Speaker 1: stand on corners go to neighbors in the area that
Speaker 1: we lived in in San Francisco, begging for donations to
Speaker 1: support the ministry of People's Temple. There are hundreds of
Speaker 1: us doing the same thing all over San Francisco was
Speaker 1: being reduplicated. In Los Angeles, it was being duplicated in
Speaker 1: Redwood Valley.
Speaker 5: Anywhere. Anyone who came in contact.
Speaker 1: With People's Temple that ultimately became a member felt that
Speaker 1: that was one of their areas of responsibility.
Speaker 3: Jones and his wife set an example for the congregation
Speaker 3: by adopting multiracial children, calling themselves the Rainbow Family. The
Speaker 3: racial backlash against him is intense. Undaunted, Jones renames his
Speaker 3: church the People's Temple and expands his community activities. He
Speaker 3: opens a soup kitchen and organizes clothing distribution for the needy.
Speaker 3: Jim Jones starts to get positive media attention. They view
Speaker 3: him as a civil rights leader in turbulent times.
Speaker 4: He could speak to anyone. When he could speak to
Speaker 4: revolutionary and say we can change the world, and he
Speaker 4: could speak to an atheist and say you don't have
Speaker 4: to believe in God. Whatever he spoke about with the
Speaker 4: power and passion and that he did it with inspired
Speaker 4: everyone and would make people just clap and sing and
Speaker 4: shout and joyful. It was an amazing experience.
Speaker 3: But despite his growing success, everything changes for Jim Jones
Speaker 3: when he receives a terrifying vision. At a time when
Speaker 3: segregation has many Americans feeling excluded and oppressed, a young
Speaker 3: charismatic religious leader named Jim Jones brings a message of hope.
Speaker 3: He founds the People's Temple, a rapidly growing movement who
Speaker 3: stands for a fair society where all people can live
Speaker 3: as equals, regardless of race, gender, or class, challenging the
Speaker 3: dominant prejudices that still divide society in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 3: and sixties, becoming not only a successful preacher but also
Speaker 3: a praised human rights activist. The Cold War between the
Speaker 3: US and the Soviet Union is escalating, a conflict that
Speaker 3: has a deep effect on Jones, causing him to experience
Speaker 3: terrifying nightmares.
Speaker 7: And in nineteen sixty five, he told people that he
Speaker 7: had a vision that a bomb was going to fall
Speaker 7: on the Midwest and that they had to get out.
Speaker 3: Jones and one hundred and forty of his congregants pack
Speaker 3: up and travel in a caravan of cars from Indiana
Speaker 3: to Redwood Valley, California.
Speaker 7: The real story behind that move is he is trying
Speaker 7: to figure out who really believes in his message.
Speaker 3: The People's Temple establishes a socialist style commune. Their message
Speaker 3: resonates with Californians and they are soon joined by new
Speaker 3: congregants from all over the state. These new members are
Speaker 3: asked to dedicate most of their free time to working
Speaker 3: for the community.
Speaker 4: I started doing security at night, even while I was pregnant.
Speaker 4: There was letter writing campaigns at night. It might go
Speaker 4: into the wee hours of the morning, and you had
Speaker 4: to go to school. I remember taking notos all night
Speaker 4: long because I had a chemistry text the next day,
Speaker 4: and I knew I couldn't go to sleep. And so
Speaker 4: that's the stress that we were under making sure that
Speaker 4: we performed and making Jim happy.
Speaker 3: Another measure to support their socialist ideals is the sharing
Speaker 3: of wealth. Members are encouraged to not only donate their savings,
Speaker 3: but also their entire salaries to the common Temple fund.
Speaker 1: I saw most people who lived communally giving their entire checks,
Speaker 1: and then they were given five dollars a week. They
Speaker 1: would bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch on
Speaker 1: a regular basis, and then towards the end of the
Speaker 1: week when they would go to a church service, they
Speaker 1: would be begged to no end out of their five dollars,
Speaker 1: so then they wouldn't have any money.
Speaker 3: Members are also expected to share or sell their goods
Speaker 3: and property, with the proceeds going to the church.
Speaker 2: The dream or the cause was to provide a different reality,
Speaker 2: a positive community building experience where everybody could be a
Speaker 2: part of and experienced life more fully, and it wouldn't
Speaker 2: matter if you were a young or old, or if
Speaker 2: you'd had money or you didn't have money.
Speaker 3: Jones establishes Wednesday night Catharsis sessions where members are called
Speaker 3: out in front of the group for not willingly participating
Speaker 3: in the plan. Eventually they are punished.
Speaker 1: Oftentimes their punishment would be they would be hit with
Speaker 1: the paddle the Board of Education, as they called a
Speaker 1: big wooden battle, and you'd watch them get spanked. It
Speaker 1: would be children, it would be adults, it would.
Speaker 5: Be older folks, younger folks. It made no difference.
Speaker 2: They were being enemies of the people, enemies of the cause,
Speaker 2: and that so they were being punished to kind of
Speaker 2: put people back in line, and so that was normalized.
Speaker 4: I remember my first day of junior high school and
Speaker 4: I was talking to this girl and this young woman
Speaker 4: young girl comes over and she says, are you from
Speaker 4: People's Temple? And I said, yes, I go to People's Temple.
Speaker 4: She goes, so you can't talk to any other kids,
Speaker 4: the temple kids. So I thought that was my first
Speaker 4: introduction of the beginning of isolation.
Speaker 2: You know, it was a very isolated mentality. It's us
Speaker 2: versus them. It's very black and white thinking. You're either
Speaker 2: a friend or you're an enemy. You're a friend or foe,
Speaker 2: there's no in between.
Speaker 3: Jim jones Utopia is developing according to plan, but he
Speaker 3: craves more power and decides to expand further. He determines
Speaker 3: he needs to be in a larger city, so the
Speaker 3: congregation moves its headquarters into a former Masonic temple in
Speaker 3: San Francisco. They established a significant following in this city,
Speaker 3: as well as in a branch in Los Angeles. Jim
Speaker 3: Jones is constantly on the move, often touring nationally, yet
Speaker 3: he never shows any signs of fatigue. His speeches are
Speaker 3: always wildly energetic.
Speaker 7: So one day, on a bus trip from San Francisco
Speaker 7: to La one of his disciples, one of his closest
Speaker 7: social went into the bathroom and the boss and saw
Speaker 7: Jim Jones's toiletry bag, and inside there was a vial
Speaker 7: of speed. That's where his staminac came from. He was
Speaker 7: high on speed.
Speaker 3: Jones' drug use increases. He also starts to have affairs
Speaker 3: with both the women and men in the congregation, and.
Speaker 1: Then oftentimes to make sure that he kept the husband
Speaker 1: and the wife in alignment, he would sleep with other
Speaker 1: people's mates and whatnot. And he would always say he
Speaker 1: had to do it for the cause because they were
Speaker 1: getting ready to leave the church and he had to
Speaker 1: find some way to make them feel obligated to stay
Speaker 1: and work for the cause.
Speaker 7: On the outward face of things, he looked progressive. He
Speaker 7: had this message of inclusion, of equality, of social justice.
Speaker 7: And as he drew more and more African Americans to
Speaker 7: his church, some of the young people notice certain things.
Speaker 3: Members start to defect and Jones becomes more paranoid and manipulative.
Speaker 3: Coup leaders offer followers the message they want to hear,
Speaker 3: but once they get the loyalty of their members, they
Speaker 3: become controlling and abusive. One of Jones's key strategies is
Speaker 3: to keep his members in line in order to create
Speaker 3: a climate of external threat by simulating attacks. One Sunday morning,
Speaker 3: while leaving the church after services, congregants are shocked by
Speaker 3: the sound of gunshots.
Speaker 7: They bring them out and people are crying and gathering around.
Speaker 7: In what happens, he heals himself because he's becoming God.
Speaker 3: Another insidious form of manipulation is the requirement that anyone
Speaker 3: over the age of twelve must sign a blank piece
Speaker 3: of paper. These signed papers can later be filled out
Speaker 3: to incriminate them in offenses they haven't committed.
Speaker 1: And you did it because you did not want to
Speaker 1: be the member in the church that refused to do
Speaker 1: it and be brought up front and center on the
Speaker 1: stage and be ostracized, be beaten up, or maybe excommunicated.
Speaker 3: By this time, Jim Jones starts speaking more and more
Speaker 3: of unconditional loyalty to the temple, in citing his followers
Speaker 3: to be willing to give their lives for the socialist cause,
Speaker 3: and he devises cruel methods to test their loyalty.
Speaker 1: Then one day we had come up from eating our
Speaker 1: communal dinner downstairs, and he asked we all enjoyed our meals,
Speaker 1: and we said yeah, And then he said, well, that's good,
Speaker 1: because it's going to be the last one.
Speaker 5: We're gonna die together.
Speaker 3: According to Jones, the meal was poisoned, and.
Speaker 1: After a few minutes he laughed and he said, no,
Speaker 1: I didn't do that, He said, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: see which ones of you were really loyal and committed
Speaker 1: to the cause.
Speaker 3: Like any good manipulator, Jim Jones always knew how to
Speaker 3: show his followers his softer side.
Speaker 4: There was this sign that you saw, which is what
Speaker 4: people fell in love with. I believe it's so I
Speaker 4: got an abusive relationship. And then all of a sudden
Speaker 4: you see the statistic part, and you wonder, okay, well,
Speaker 4: I must have done something wrong.
Speaker 3: The congregation keeps growing, becoming an influential voting block in
Speaker 3: the state of California. In nineteen seventy five, local politicians
Speaker 3: court the movement for local elections. The temple endorses the
Speaker 3: campaigns of George Moscone for mayor, Harvey Milk for consulmen,
Speaker 3: and Joseph Fritoss for district attorney.
Speaker 7: And then on election day some of them actually cross
Speaker 7: voting lines and vote for these candidates. He gets his
Speaker 7: slate elected, and as a reward, George Moscone, the new mayor,
Speaker 7: appoints them to the housing authority.
Speaker 3: Jones' notoriety also attracts some unwonted attention. A private citizen
Speaker 3: named David Khan has several acquaintances among former temple members.
Speaker 3: Based on their troubling accounts, he starts a private investigation
Speaker 3: of the church con exposes Joanes's abusive behavior, fraudulent activities,
Speaker 3: and tricks to deceive his followers, including his healings and prophecies.
Speaker 7: He would slip little old ladies kueluds, which are potent tranquilizers,
Speaker 7: and knock them out, and then they would awake with
Speaker 7: a cast on their leg, and then people telling them, oh,
Speaker 7: you fell down, but it's okay, you broke your leg,
Speaker 7: but Father's going to heal you. They had no recollection
Speaker 7: of this, so they would wheel these women into the
Speaker 7: church and with great fanfare, Jim Jones would cut off
Speaker 7: their cast and then command them to get up and
Speaker 7: to walk in to dance. And there is a young
Speaker 7: reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle there, Marshall kill Duff.
Speaker 7: So he starts snooping around and he starts having some
Speaker 7: of the people who left the church come and talk
Speaker 7: to him about some of these things that are going
Speaker 7: on behind closed doors that Jim Jones doesn't want anyone
Speaker 7: to talk about.
Speaker 3: Jim Jones' influence with the media blocks the San Francisco
Speaker 3: Chronicle from publishing the story, but kill Duff manages to
Speaker 3: sell it to New West Magazine. Soon the authorities start
Speaker 3: to get interested in the case. Feeling that his castle
Speaker 3: of cards is crumbling, Jim Jones decides to make one
Speaker 3: final move. He takes as many followers with him as
Speaker 3: he can, leading them to a gruesome fate. Jim Jones'
Speaker 3: influence with the media blocks the San Francisco Chronicle from
Speaker 3: publishing the story, but Kilduff manages to sell it to
Speaker 3: New West Magazine. Soon the authorities start to get interested
Speaker 3: in the case. Feeling that his castle of cards is crumbling,
Speaker 3: Jim Jones decides to make one final move. He takes
Speaker 3: as many followers with him as he can, leading them
Speaker 3: to a gruesome fate.
Speaker 4: They have no place to go now either go to
Speaker 4: someplace like Cubi Promised.
Speaker 6: Land, which we are wanting to get out of the conflict.
Speaker 3: Between the capitalists and the socialist world into a free
Speaker 3: socialist territory in a third world. Years earlier, the socialist
Speaker 3: government of Guyana offers plots of land to international organizations
Speaker 3: with the goal of increasing the production of food in
Speaker 3: the country. Jim Jones takes this opportunity to expand his
Speaker 3: church abroad and flee from California.
Speaker 1: It was at that time that then we started to
Speaker 1: see a few members, as he called them, the pioneers,
Speaker 1: advancing ahead of the church members to start building and
Speaker 1: construction of what was going to be known as Jonestown.
Speaker 4: It would be a place where children can run free,
Speaker 4: not have to worry about crime. We be able to
Speaker 4: leave our doors open. We could build a community. As
Speaker 4: a community, grow our own food. Our seniors will be
Speaker 4: taken care of. Just this place of peace and harmony
Speaker 4: that we didn't have in the States.
Speaker 1: I wish I could.
Speaker 7: I can be glad for you guys, everybody over there,
Speaker 7: and they come in and promising, I really do like it.
Speaker 4: It's fun over here.
Speaker 2: It's really good. The Grand Exodus of Us was in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy seven. I came in March of nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 2: and then everything came to an end.
Speaker 3: As his followers arrive in Guyana, they soon understand that
Speaker 3: their expectations are far from the reality.
Speaker 1: The first thing they asked us is for passport and money,
Speaker 1: so we thought we didn't have any money, and.
Speaker 5: They kept begging for the passports. Look along it. This
Speaker 5: is just the safetyeople don't trust us.
Speaker 7: There's not enough housing for everyone's old people are living
Speaker 7: in triple bunk beds, not two bunk beds, but three
Speaker 7: and having to climb up and falling down. You know,
Speaker 7: some of the cottages don't even have doors yet.
Speaker 2: I was assigned to a coll with maybe about twenty
Speaker 2: other guys in bunk beds and there was a loft.
Speaker 2: I fortunately got to live in a loft with another guy.
Speaker 2: And I was assigned to the orchard crew that worked
Speaker 2: on the orchards, and we worked from set up to sundown,
Speaker 2: like six am to six pm something like that.
Speaker 3: In the fields, plumbing and sanitation are primitive, with cold
Speaker 3: showers and no proper toilets. The heat, mosquitoes, and tropical
Speaker 3: diseases quickly start to take a toll. Also, the thin
Speaker 3: jungle soil is too acidic to plant American crops, limiting
Speaker 3: the variety and quantity of food.
Speaker 1: We never saw ground beef, we never saw steaks, we
Speaker 1: never saw eggs. We never had juice. We didn't have
Speaker 1: any of that. The only person who had it was
Speaker 1: Jim Jones.
Speaker 5: Yet all of it.
Speaker 3: And then manipulation starts.
Speaker 2: I saw that the families being broken up. I saw
Speaker 2: little children reporting their parents. Jim Jones's philosophy was that
Speaker 2: the sickest relationships are the family relationships. So you might
Speaker 2: be raising someone else's children. So the children were separated
Speaker 2: from their parents and raised by others. And it was
Speaker 2: just basically the technique to break the family unit so
Speaker 2: that loyalties to family would be transferred to loyalties to him.
Speaker 7: He says that they don't like living in Jonestown. They
Speaker 7: can swim home because he's not paying their airfare back
Speaker 7: to California. You're going to do. There's one Ham radio
Speaker 7: that's their sole line of communication with the outside world.
Speaker 7: Nobody can use it but Jim Jones. So there was
Speaker 7: a PA system in Jonestown, and whenever Jim Jones was
Speaker 7: voice was heard over the PA system. Everyone was expected
Speaker 7: to be quiet and listen.
Speaker 3: So absolute agitee.
Speaker 7: No one'll have it for you to see me.
Speaker 2: I like to get low and for a long time,
Speaker 2: you're going to see me and I like to get low,
Speaker 2: but I will leak upon you at any night.
Speaker 3: Any hour.
Speaker 1: It ultimately came down to when Jim Jones opened his mouth.
Speaker 5: Everything was a lie.
Speaker 1: We didn't want us to read the newspapers. We didn't
Speaker 1: have newspapers when we were in Jonestown either. The news
Speaker 1: came from him, and it was fake news, but he
Speaker 1: was selling it as the real deal.
Speaker 2: The government was going to build concentration camps to put
Speaker 2: black people in, that the CIA was going to come
Speaker 2: and get us, take the children. They knew that we
Speaker 2: were revolutionaries or communists or socialists, and there were factual
Speaker 2: things that were happening at the time that would support
Speaker 2: some of that thinking.
Speaker 4: In Jonestown, you had to be engaged. There was no
Speaker 4: way out, So you either had to mentally prepare yourself
Speaker 4: to try to pretend like everything was okay because paranoia
Speaker 4: was rampant.
Speaker 1: Oh, you would never tell anyone verbally that you knew
Speaker 1: something was wrong.
Speaker 5: You'd be afraid to even tell your mate.
Speaker 2: If you disobeyed the rules. You were exhibiting counter revolutionary
Speaker 2: behavior that was a threat to the cost of socialism,
Speaker 2: and so people were encouraged to report anything that was
Speaker 2: against the rules, which included the worst thing you could
Speaker 2: probably say was I want to get out of here,
Speaker 2: or I don't like this place, or disagree with Jones
Speaker 2: in any way whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And the corporal punishment became more severe over the years.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 1: We went then beyond beatings into literally what would be
Speaker 1: considered what you would do to a slave. It was
Speaker 1: just the worst horrible type of cruelty and punishment that
Speaker 1: a human being could expect or self.
Speaker 7: And in the worst case scenarios, people who complained or
Speaker 7: stood up to him, he would drug them with thorizine,
Speaker 7: this very powerful sedative used on patients and mental hospitals,
Speaker 7: and keep them in what he called this special care
Speaker 7: unit where they would be They would disappear from Jonestown
Speaker 7: and just be drugged around the clock, just zombified with medicine.
Speaker 3: The temple also had a house in nearby Georgetown, where
Speaker 3: members of the congregation would deal with the new arrivals
Speaker 3: and supplies.
Speaker 1: Debbie Ims had been the procurer for Georgetown and she
Speaker 1: had been getting all of the food and whatnot and
Speaker 1: doing a pretty.
Speaker 5: Good job of procurement.
Speaker 1: But Jim Jones decided he wanted me to throw my
Speaker 1: hands at it, so he had me primarily stationed in Georgetown.
Speaker 3: At that house also lived a group of young attractive
Speaker 3: women who would be known as the pr Girls. Their
Speaker 3: aim was to get involved with Guyanese officials in order
Speaker 3: to get some influence with the local politicians.
Speaker 1: We got to the airport, it was very interesting and
Speaker 1: they said these are your suitcases? Were like, yeah, what's
Speaker 1: your nature of business? I said, People's temple, missionary agricultural projects.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, okay.
Speaker 1: They didn't even really search our suitcases like you should
Speaker 1: in customs.
Speaker 4: They just let it go through.
Speaker 5: The next thing I knew there was like three big crates.
Speaker 1: Coming through and they said these are yours two and
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, that's not ours. And then Debbie gave
Speaker 1: me this funny look like I was supposed to acknowledge
Speaker 1: and accept that these were our boxes, our cargo boxes.
Speaker 5: So they came.
Speaker 1: Through with our stuff and they never even opened the
Speaker 1: crates or anything.
Speaker 5: They just let it come through.
Speaker 7: Guns were being down to Jonestown in false bottom prates
Speaker 7: so they would get through the inspection process.
Speaker 3: Ultimately that guns are used to reinforce the sense of
Speaker 3: external threat.
Speaker 2: There was the thing called the Seven day siege where
Speaker 2: he orchestrated events that would appear to be threats from
Speaker 2: the outside, like rifle shots in the jungle. Well him,
Speaker 2: one of his security guards or his sons was out
Speaker 2: there shooting to make it appear like there was the
Speaker 2: enemy without that was out there in the jungle waiting
Speaker 2: for us, because there were supposedly enemies out in the jungle.
Speaker 2: Sometimes our pavilion, our meetings in the pavilion were surrounded
Speaker 2: with security guards with rifles, and the rifles were supposed
Speaker 2: to be pointed out to the jungle, to the enemy outside,
Speaker 2: but you had a feeling that they were really there
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 3: And then comes the suicide drills.
Speaker 2: A suicide jill was called the White Knight, and it
Speaker 2: was coming together of the community to talk about an
Speaker 2: unsurmountable challenge that is happening to the community and that
Speaker 2: no other solution was possible except to commit revolutionary suicide.
Speaker 7: He had them line up and he served them unsugared
Speaker 7: flavor aid and told them that they were going to
Speaker 7: commit revolutionary suicide. A couple people responded like, hell, no,
Speaker 7: I'm not going to do this. So they were sent
Speaker 7: to the special care unit and pumped full of drugs.
Speaker 2: It seemed like just more theatrics. I never never imagined
Speaker 2: that it was ever going to happen, that it was
Speaker 2: just another way of him trying to control people.
Speaker 3: After finding that his people's temple is under investigation, Jim
Speaker 3: Jones flees to Guiana and establishes a commune with one
Speaker 3: thousand of his followers. But after isolating them from the
Speaker 3: world and with his drug addiction getting worse, Jones increases
Speaker 3: the indoctrination and abuse of the members of his cult.
Speaker 1: So then I started writing letters and taking them to
Speaker 1: the post office and advising my family members of things
Speaker 1: that were going on.
Speaker 3: But two weeks pass until Yulanda Williams hears from her family.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting out on the verandah of the house and
Speaker 1: a low cab pull.
Speaker 5: The nice cab.
Speaker 1: Driver gets out and he says, is this the place
Speaker 1: with us in the United States?
Speaker 4: Citizens? And I looked at him and.
Speaker 1: Said, why, who wants to know? Out of the tab
Speaker 1: comes my mother. And when I read in my mother's arms,
Speaker 1: all like to say is, don't give them your passport,
Speaker 1: don't give you a castn't give me your passwork, don't
Speaker 1: give your cast.
Speaker 5: Please please, please promise me. You won't. You won't.
Speaker 1: She's like, girls, shut up, I'm not giving them my stuff.
Speaker 1: I said, just please, please, mother, we gotta get out
Speaker 1: of here.
Speaker 4: We gotta go.
Speaker 7: Concerned relatives were the family members of people back in
Speaker 7: California who started to suspect when they didn't hear from
Speaker 7: their relatives in Jonestown or when they received letters that
Speaker 7: were very stiff and seemed almost dictated.
Speaker 3: In May nineteen seventy eight, Debbie Blakie, one of the
Speaker 3: pr girls in Georgetown, changes the course of events.
Speaker 7: At one point, she is back in Jamestown visiting her
Speaker 7: mother and she hears Jim Jones talking about revolutionary suicide,
Speaker 7: and she gets really scared and then decides to go
Speaker 7: to the US Embassy in Georgetown and tell them what's
Speaker 7: going on. They help her get back to California, where
Speaker 7: she has a press conference and tells the world. The
Speaker 7: Chronicle runs this, saying Jim Jones is planning to kill
Speaker 7: everyone in Jonestown. What happens after that is that the
Speaker 7: concerned relatives get very frightened. They ask Congressman Ryan to
Speaker 7: go down to Jonestown and see if their relatives are okay.
Speaker 4: That was on November seventeenth, and then the siren goes
Speaker 4: off and we run to the pavilion, and then we
Speaker 4: realize that those are the concerned relatives and the Congressman Ryan,
Speaker 4: and he's going to be there that night. So Diane
Speaker 4: says to me, we're leaving tonight. I said, okay.
Speaker 2: And they had a show, dancing, singing, a special meal
Speaker 2: for them, an orchestrated event, and we were trained and
Speaker 2: rehearsed on what we were supposed to stay all the
Speaker 2: state answers, which if you think about it, if you're
Speaker 2: interviewing a bunch of people and everybody says exactly the
Speaker 2: same thing, it would be a bit suspicious, you think.
Speaker 7: But that's what we did. And Congressman Ryan addressed as
Speaker 7: a crowd, and he says, it looks like you all
Speaker 7: are happy here. Everyone I've talked to is that's the
Speaker 7: same thing. You don't want to come back. You enjoy
Speaker 7: it here, and there is a round of deafening applause.
Speaker 3: Congressman Ryan's impression can't be further from the truth. But
Speaker 3: only one member of the crowd dares to make a
Speaker 3: move in a very discreet way.
Speaker 2: Don Harris, one of the reporters had been circling around
Speaker 2: the circle and I had slipped him a note help
Speaker 2: us get out of Jonestown, and so he dropped it. Well,
Speaker 2: kids thought I picked it up. I said, oh, you
Speaker 2: dropped something.
Speaker 4: So Diane said, we're not going to go tonight because
Speaker 4: very impassive note. So everyone's watching.
Speaker 3: The group decides to leave the following morning.
Speaker 4: So we started walking up the hill and I was
Speaker 4: waiting for the bullet because that's there's no way they
Speaker 4: can't see us from below this, there's no way they
Speaker 4: can't see it. And I'm carrying Jacari. I'm on the
Speaker 4: tail on the left, and we keep walking. And so
Speaker 4: by the time we started getting deeper into the jungle,
Speaker 4: into the bush, we can hear the guards of the
Speaker 4: guard deck. We are that close. We could hear their voices.
Speaker 3: But Jim Jones and his guards have other concerns on
Speaker 3: their minds.
Speaker 7: In the middle of an interview between Don Harris and
Speaker 7: Jim Jones, pulls out this note from Vernon Gosney and
Speaker 7: he hands it to him and he says, well, what
Speaker 7: do you make of this? And then Jim Jones, you
Speaker 7: can see his face fall.
Speaker 6: People want they gains friend.
Speaker 5: They lie, They lie?
Speaker 2: What can I do about lies?
Speaker 4: Are you people gonna leave us? I just beg you
Speaker 4: please leave us.
Speaker 1: Bill, We will bother nobody.
Speaker 4: Anybody wants to get out of here can get out
Speaker 4: of here. We have no problem by getting out here.
Speaker 5: They come and here all the time.
Speaker 4: I don't know what kind of game people like, people
Speaker 4: like publicity, some people who I don't.
Speaker 2: Congressman Ryan was in the pavilion talking to more people
Speaker 2: that wanted to leave. Because the momentum was growing, people
Speaker 2: were getting more courage about wanting to leave. There were
Speaker 2: people coming that wanted to get into the truck, and
Speaker 2: we had to get out of there because Congressman Ryan's
Speaker 2: life was in danger. Someone came and tried to cut
Speaker 2: his throat, so we all loaded up into the dump truck.
Speaker 2: The dump truck was allegedly stuck in the mud until
Speaker 2: Congressman Ryan came running out of the pavilion with some
Speaker 2: blood on his shirt.
Speaker 3: The dump trucks managed to get to the Port Kaituma airstrip,
Speaker 3: where Congressman Ryan's entourage and fifteen defectors bored the two
Speaker 3: small planes Vernon Gosney Climbs into a small six seat
Speaker 3: Cessna next to a defector named Larry Late.
Speaker 2: We went taxing down the runway to take off, and
Speaker 2: as the plane was getting ready to take off, the
Speaker 2: doctor trailer pulled out in front of us and cut
Speaker 2: us off, and the plane went up to the side,
Speaker 2: and at that time I heard the shooting.
Speaker 3: The same People's Temple security guards who had escorted the
Speaker 3: trucks to the airstrip opened fire, killing five people, including
Speaker 3: Don Harris and Leo Ryan. He becomes history's only US
Speaker 3: Congressman to be killed in the line of duty.
Speaker 2: To Larry, who was sitting next to me, and said
Speaker 2: that they're killing everyone.
Speaker 3: They're killing everyone, and.
Speaker 2: Then he pulled out the gun and he shot me
Speaker 2: once on each side.
Speaker 3: Although badly wounded, Vernon Gosney and the other passengers managed
Speaker 3: to subdue Larry Layton.
Speaker 2: At this time, their adrenaline is running. I have no pain,
Speaker 2: I have nothing. I'm in a total altered state. Everything
Speaker 2: is in slow motion and I'm just surviving. So I
Speaker 2: get out of the plane and I run to the jungle.
Speaker 2: I remember looking and seeing all the blood in the
Speaker 2: cut home. I'm going to die, and then I blacked out.
Speaker 4: We walked for hours and hours. So finally it's Stark
Speaker 4: and we're still on the road and we're hearing this
Speaker 4: train come back, and this time Richard says, we're going
Speaker 4: to get on the train at the stop and we're
Speaker 4: going to find somebody to take us to a payphone
Speaker 4: that we can call the US indissent. And that's what happened.
Speaker 7: These henchmen roll back into Jonestown and Jim Jones calls
Speaker 7: everyone to the pavilion and says, this is it. If
Speaker 7: one of us goes down, we're all going to go down.
Speaker 7: So suddenly, this is the moment that they have been
Speaker 7: training for, the moment of revolutionary suicide.
Speaker 1: The revolutionaryusie.
Speaker 4: This is not a self destructive suiside. So they'll pay
Speaker 4: for this.
Speaker 5: They brought it upawn eyes.
Speaker 4: If we can't live in peace, then let's die in peace.
Speaker 7: I can imagine many of them were hoping that it
Speaker 7: was just another drill. So when they're children then who
Speaker 7: were given the cyanide first started going into convulsions and
Speaker 7: propping at the mouth because it's horrible death. They realized
Speaker 7: that this was the real thing.
Speaker 1: Don't be this way, stop this hysteric.
Speaker 4: This is not the way for people who are socialist,
Speaker 4: the communists, to die. No way for us to die.
Speaker 2: We must die with some dignity.
Speaker 7: So you can hear them crying, you can hear them
Speaker 7: shouting no, you can hear them dying. You know, so sorry.
Speaker 3: Still, some of the people confront Jones, trying desperately to
Speaker 3: move him off his decision.
Speaker 1: I will never believe to this day that nine hundred
Speaker 1: people just willingly stood there in line and waited for
Speaker 1: their dosage of poison. And it's not a believable scenario.
Speaker 3: Forensics experts who are dispatched to Jonestown find bodies that
Speaker 3: had been jabbed in the back with poison needles, suggesting
Speaker 3: that they refused to follow jones orders. They weren't given
Speaker 3: an alternative to death. Survival was never an option.
Speaker 7: That was murder, It wasn't suicide. These people had no
Speaker 7: choice that night. It was death by guns, the guns
Speaker 7: that were now trained on them by Jim Jones's henchmen.
Speaker 7: Or it was death by poison, which they thought would
Speaker 7: be an easier way to die, and they didn't drink
Speaker 7: the poison. It was forced down their throats by a
Speaker 7: madman who destroyed the most beautiful ideals we have as.
Speaker 3: Human families who had been forced to live separately for
Speaker 3: so many months could die together now.
Speaker 7: Jim Jones, after watching this horrible death, witnessing it, he
Speaker 7: took the coward's way out and he shot himself.
Speaker 3: Still, Jim Jones could not have pulled off this massacre
Speaker 3: on his own. His inner circle took part in the
Speaker 3: months of planning. The mastermind of this final solution was
Speaker 3: the young community doctor Larry Shacked.
Speaker 7: Because that's what Jim Jones told this small, small inner
Speaker 7: circle to do. Figure out how to kill everyone in Jonestown.
Speaker 7: We don't have enough bullets, so be creative. And while
Speaker 7: he was researching that option, he came across this medical
Speaker 7: journal where there was an article about saving a boy
Speaker 7: who had overdosed on cyanide.
Speaker 1: What happened to them could happen to any one of us.
Speaker 1: No one was exempt from it because ultimately the leader
Speaker 1: of People's Temple.
Speaker 5: Had a gift. I call it now the gift to gap.
Speaker 1: But he could be whatever you needed him to be.
Speaker 1: At the time, he was a jackal hide.
Speaker 4: No one was dragged to Jonestown. They went voluntarily, regardless
Speaker 4: of the circumstances. Some were forced to go because they
Speaker 4: had nothing else left. But others I'm not sure. So
Speaker 4: I had to forgive him, and that was the only
Speaker 4: way I could forgive myself.
Speaker 2: People should remember about the people in Jonestown that they
Speaker 2: were beautiful mosaic of people that for a brief time,
Speaker 2: weave together in a dream for a better world.
Speaker 1: I live for the nine hundred people that can't be
Speaker 1: here to tell you what it was truly like. But
Speaker 1: in the end, as long as we're able to talk
Speaker 1: about it, they live