Jonestown



Jonestown was the communal settlement made in northwestern Guyana by the Peoples Temple, a group widely referred to as a cult from California. Jonestown was founded in the mid-1970s by the group leader Jim Jones, for whom it was named. It stood amidst jungle, about seven miles (11 km) southwest of Port Kaituma. It had a population of about one thousand once it was fully established and the bulk of Jones' followers had moved there, but they occupied it only for a few years altogether, and most of them lived there for under a year.

Jonestown gained lasting international notoriety in 1978, when nearly its whole population died in a mass murder and suicide ordered by Jones. Somewhat over nine hundred men, women and children were slain, Jones among them.

The place was abandoned promptly thereafter by the collapsing remnant of the Peoples Temple. Afterward, it was at first tended by the Guyanese government, which allowed its re-occupation by Hmong refugees from Laos, for a few years in the early 1980s, but it has since been altogether deserted. It is now a ruin, mostly destroyed by a fire in the mid-1980s and then left to decay and be swallowed up again by the jungle.

Origins
The Peoples Temple was formed in Indianapolis, Indiana, during the mid-1950s. In the 1960s, Jones' congregation had dwindled to fewer than a hundred members and was on the verge of collapse when Jones managed to secure an affiliation with the Disciples of Christ. This new association bolstered the Temple's reputation, increased its membership, and spread Jones' influence. Beginning in 1965, Jones and about 80 followers moved to Redwood Valley in Mendocino County, California, where they believed they would be safe from nuclear fallout if there were a nuclear attack on the United States.

In 1972, Jones moved his congregation to San Francisco, California, and opened another church in Los Angeles, California. While in San Francisco, Jones changed his political image from anti-communist to socialist, vocally supported prominent political candidates, was appointed to city commissions and made grants to local newspapers with the stated goal of supporting the First Amendment. Partly inspired by the eccentric preacher Father Divine, he began charity efforts with the goal of recruiting the poor.

After several scandals and investigation for tax evasion in San Francisco, Jones began planning a relocation of the Temple. According to the American Journal of Economics & Sociology, Jones considered locations in California and Brazil before settling on Guyana. In 1974, he leased over 3,800 acres (15.4 km²) of jungle land from the Guyanese government. Members of the People's Temple began the construction of Jonestown under the supervision of senior Temple members. Jones then went back to California before he encouraged all of his followers to move to Jonestown, which he called the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", in 1977. Jonestown's population increased from 50 members in 1977 to more than 900 at its peak in 1978.

Jonestown established
Many of the Peoples Temple members believed that Guyana would be, as Jones promised, a paradise. Work was performed six days a week, from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with temperatures that often reached over 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius), in Guyana's equatorial climate.

According to some, meals for the members consisted of nothing more than rice and beans while Jones dined on eggs, meat, fruit, salads, and soft drinks from a private refrigerator, separate from the others. Medical problems such as severe diarrhea and high fevers struck half the community in February 1978. According to the New York Times, copious amounts of drugs such as Thorazine, sodium pentathol, chloral hydrate, Demerol and Valium were administered to Jonestown residents, with detailed records being kept of each person’s drug regimen; Jonestown residents claimed the drugs were administered to control their behavior.



Various forms of punishment were used against members considered to be serious disciplinary problems. Methods included imprisonment in a 6x4x3-foot (1.8 x 1.2 x 0.9 m) plywood box and forcing children to spend a night at the bottom of a well, sometimes upside-down. Members who attempted to run away were drugged to the point of incapacitation. Armed guards patrolled the compound day and night to enforce obedience to Jones.

Children, surrendered to communal care, addressed Jones as "Dad" and were only allowed to see their real parents briefly at night. Jones was called "Father" or "Dad" by the adults as well. Up to $65,000 in monthly welfare payments to Jonestown residents were appropriated by Jones, whose own wealth was estimated to be at least $26 million.

Local Guyanese, including a police official, related stories about harsh beatings and a "torture hole," a well into which Jones had "misbehaving" children thrown in the middle of the night

The mass suicides that would make Jonestown notorious were rehearsed during "white nights". In an affidavit, Peoples Temple defector Deborah Layton explains how these were rehearsed. "Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We all did as we were told. When the time came when we should have dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had just been through a loyalty test. He warned us that the time was not far off when it would become necessary for us to die by our own hands."

Investigations
On Tuesday November 14, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan, a Democrat from San Francisco, flew to Guyana along with a team of 18 people consisting of government officials, media representatives and members of the group "Concerned Relatives of Peoples Temple Members." The group included Ryan; his legal advisor, Jackie Speier; Neville Annibourne, representing Guyana's Ministry of Information; Richard Dwyer, Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy to Guyana at Georgetown (who some believe to have been a CIA officer ); reporters Tim Reiterman (San Francisco Herald-Examiner) and Don Harris (NBC); Greg Robinson; Steve Sung; Bob Flick; Charles Krause; Ron Javers; Bob Brown; and Concerned Relatives representatives Anthony Katsaris, Jim Cobb and Carolyn Houston Boyd.

Ryan and the others intended to investigate allegations that included: daily human rights violations; charges of false imprisonment and the forced confiscation of money and passports; mass suicide rehearsals; and the murder of seven attempted defectors.

From the time Ryan and the others arrived at midnight in Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, before Wednesday November 15, there were signs that things would not run smoothly. Previously booked hotel rooms were occupied, and the group had to find other lodgings. In the days that followed, Jones' lawyers in Georgetown, Mark Lane and Charles Garry, refused to allow Ryan's party access to Jonestown.

During his stay at Georgetown, Ryan visited the Temple headquarters in the suburb of Lamaha Gardens. At a rear patio, Ryan spoke with Temple members Laura Johnston Kohl and others, who showed him around the house's first floor. Ryan asked to speak to Jones by radio, but Sharon Amos, the highest-ranking Temple member present, told Ryan that he could not because his present visit was unscheduled.

Ryan’s Jonestown visit
By late morning on Friday, November 17, Ryan informed Lane and Garry that he would leave for Jonestown at 2:30 p.m., regardless of Jones' schedule or willingness. Ryan's party did so at roughly that time, accompanied by Lane and Garry, and came to Port Kaituma airstrip, 6 miles (10 km) from Jonestown, some hours later. Only Ryan and three others were initially accepted into Jonestown, but the rest of Ryan's group was allowed in after sunset.

It was later reported (and verified by audiotapes recovered by investigators) that Jones had run rehearsals in how to receive Ryan's delegation in order to convince them that everyone was happy and in good spirits.

On the night of Ryan's arrival, there was a reception and concert held for the Ryan delegation. Temple members were carefully selected by Jones to accompany individual visitors around the compound. Some were angry and saw the Congressman's visit as trouble brought in from outside, while many went on with their usual routines. Two Peoples Temple members (Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby) made the first move for defection that night&mdash;Gosney passed a note to Don Harris, reading "Vernon Gosney and Monica Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown."

That night the Ryan delegation (Ryan, Speier, Dwyer, and Annibourne) stayed in Jonestown. The entire press corps and the members of Concerned Relatives were told that they had to find other accommodations, and so they went to Port Kaituma and stayed at a small café.

In the early morning of November 18, more than a dozen Temple members sensed danger enough to walk out of the colony toward Matthew's Ridge, in the opposite direction of the airstrip at Port Kaituma. These defectors included the five members of the Evans family and Leslie Wilson and her two sons, who were the family of Jonestown's head of security, Joe Wilson. Later, when the reporters and Concerned Relatives had arrived, Marceline Jones, wife of Jim Jones, gave a tour of the settlement for the visiting reporters. There was a dispute outside a small dormitory building, where elderly black female temple members were living. The windows and doors were all shut, and Jones loyalists accused the press of being racist for trying to invade the privacy of the elderly women. The journalists replied that they wanted to know about the living conditions.

Jim Jones woke late on the morning of November 18, and the NBC crew handed him Vernon Gosney's note. Jones was angry and said that those who wanted to leave the community would "lie" and destroy Jonestown. Jones and many other members of the Peoples Temple saw themselves as a family that had the right and the duty to stay together. Then two families stepped forward and asked to be escorted out of Jonestown by the Ryan delegation. They were the Parks and the Bogue families, along with Christopher O'Neal and Harold Cordell, who were partners of women in the two families. Cordell lost 14 family members (ages 2-76) that evening during the poisonings. The Bogues lost their daughter Marilee (age 18), and Gosney lost his son Mark (age 5).

Jones gave them permission to leave, with some money and their passports. Jones also told them they would be welcome to come back at any time. That afternoon, there was a very long negotiation under a pavilion, during which Jones was upset by news that the Evans and Wilson families had defected on foot.

While negotiations proceeded under the pavilion, some new emotional scenes developed between family members. Al Simon, an Amerindian member of the Peoples Temple, walked toward Ryan with two of his small children in his arms and asked to go back with them to the U.S., but his wife Bonnie was summoned on the loudspeakers by Jones' staff, and she loudly denounced her husband.--> He pleaded with her to return to the US and consult with their family, but she bitterly rejected his suggestion. Maria pulled off her gold necklace, threw it at her brother and cursed him as the visitors and defectors were about to leave.

Violence breaks out
Because more people were leaving than had been expected, and because of the limited seating available on the small Cessna aircraft Ryan had chartered back to Georgetown, Ryan planned on sending a group there and staying behind with the rest until another flight could be scheduled.

Temple member Don Sly (nicknamed "Ujara"), acting directly under Jones' orders, attacked Ryan with a knife while Jones sat by, watching and unnaffected. Two men pulled Sly off Ryan and in the struggle Sly was injured, his blood splattering Ryan. This was one of a series of orders Jones gave that day which had one or more of his loyalists taking drastic action without any other loyalists knowing of Jones' instructions, resulting in much confusion between Temple members. Although the congressman was not seriously hurt in the attack, he and Dwyer realized the visiting party and the defectors were in danger.

Shortly before departure, Jones loyalist Larry Layton demanded to join the group. Several other defectors voiced their suspicions about his motives, which Ryan and Speier disregarded.

Ryan's party and 16 ex-Temple members left Jonestown and reached the nearby Port Kaituma airstrip at 4:30 p.m., where they planned to use two planes (a six-passenger Cessna and a slightly larger Twin Otter) to fly to Georgetown. Before the Cessna took off, Layton produced a gun he had hidden under his poncho and started shooting at the passengers. He wounded Monica Bagby and Vernon Gosney, and he tried to kill Dale Parks, who disarmed Layton.

At about this time, a tractor appeared at the airstrip, driven by members of Jones' armed guards. The tractor got within about 30 feet of the plane, and the Jones loyalists opened fire while circling the plane on foot. At this time, Congressman Leo Ryan was shot dead along with four journalists. A few seconds of the shooting were captured on camera by NBC cameraman Bob Brown, whose camera kept rolling even as he was shot dead. Congressman Ryan, news team members Brown, Robinson, and Harris, and 44-year-old Jonestown defector Patricia Parks were killed in the few minutes of shooting. Jackie Speier was injured by five bullets. Steve Sung and Anthony Katsaris also were badly wounded. The Cessna was able to take off and fly to Georgetown, leaving behind the gunfire-damaged Otter (whose pilot and copilot also flew out in the Cessna).

Journalist Tim Reiterman, who had stayed at the airstrip, photographed the aftermath of the violence. Dwyer assumed leadership at the scene, and at his recommendation, Layton was arrested by Guyanese state police. Dwyer was grazed by one bullet, in his buttock, at the airstrip.

It took several hours before the 10 wounded and others in their party gathered themselves together and spent the night in a café, with the more seriously wounded in a small tent on the airfield. A Guyananese government plane came to evacuate the wounded the following morning.

Five teenage members of the Parks and Bogue families, with one boyfriend, were told by defector Gerald Parks after the shooting to hide in the adjacent jungle until help arrived and their safety was assured. They went into the jungle but got lost for three days and nearly died, until they were found by Guyanese soldiers.

Mass murder and suicide
There is a great deal unknown about what happened in Jonestown on the evening of November 18, 1978. The media has generally reported the event as a mass suicide, but in recent years, variations of the term "murder-suicide" have popped up. Those who believe the event was a mass suicide concede that the 287 children had no ability to consent to such an act and so were murdered. Many others point to evidence that most, if not all, of the 909 people who died in Jonestown were murdered.

Jim Jones called a meeting under the pavilion in the early evening. Before the meeting, aides prepared a metal vat with grape Flavor Aid, poisoned with Valium, chloral hydrate, and presumably (though not certainly) cyanide. When the assembled gathered, Jones told the gathering "one of the people on that plane is gonna, is gonna shoot the pilot, I know that. I didn't plan it but I know it's going to happen. They're gonna shoot that pilot and down comes the plane into the jungle and we had better not have any of our children left when it's over 'cause they'll - on us." He went on to remark "they'll torture our children, they'll torture some of our people here, they'll torture our seniors. We cannot have this." He explained their actions thusly, "All it is, is taking a drink to take... to go to sleep. That's what death is, sleep." Before the murder-suicide got under way, Jones argued with at least one Temple member who actively resisted his decision for the whole congregation to die. A 43-minute audio tape, which was edited at some point by persons unknown, was left behind, documenting the affair. Christine Miller is heard objecting to mass death and called for an airlift to Russia. After several exchanges, she backed down, apparently after being shouted at by the crowd.

About 45 minutes after the Port Kaituma shootings (which is how long it took to travel the rough 6-mile road back to Jonestown) the airstrip shooters arrived back in Jonestown, and one eyewitness (Tim Carter, a Vietnam war veteran ) recalled them having the "thousand-yard stare" of weary soldiers. The shooters numbered about nine, and their identities are not all certainly known, but most sources agree that Joe Wilson (Jones’ head of security), Thomas Kice Sr., and Albert Touchette were among them.

Jones exhorted his followers "you don't know what you've done", and that Guyanese soldiers or mercenaries would soon "parachute in here on us" and torture and slaughter all of them.

The children were poisoned first. Aides took the children from their parents and brought them to stand in line. Some parents apparently went with their children. Poison was squirted into children's mouths with plastic syringes. Eyewitness Stanley Clayton, who was assisting already-poisoned children, reports that many children resisted and were physically forced to swallow by guards and nurses. With regards to the frequent assertion that the adults committed consensual suicide, it could be argued that it was the shock of the deaths of the community's 287 children that caused the adults to go to their own deaths with (allegedly) little or no resistance.

According to Clayton, the poison was extremely effective, causing death within about five minutes. After consuming the poison, according to Clayton, people were then escorted away and told to lie down along walkways and areas out of view of the people who were still being dosed, perhaps because anyone who believed this was just another rehearsal would be dissuaded at seeing people convulsing and dying.

The audio tape records numerous "screams" and "anguished cries" (Jones' words), from women and children. Clayton reported being in close contact with many such dying victim children. Oddly, of the approximately 150 photos taken a few days later, none of the bodies show this distinct rigid contorted configuration.

Survivors/eyewitnesses
Four people, who were intended to be poisoned, managed to survive. They were:
 * 79-year-old Grover Davis, who was hard of hearing and so missed the announcement on the loudspeaker to assemble, lay down in a ditch and pretended to be dead;
 * 76-year-old Hyacinth Thrash, who hid under her bed when nurses were going through her dormitory with cups of poison;
 * 36-year-old Odell Rhodes, a Jonestown teacher and craftsman who volunteered to fetch a stethoscope and hid under a building; and
 * 25-year-old Stanley Clayton, a kitchenworker and cousin of Huey Newton, tricked security guards and ran into the jungle.

Three more survivors claim they were given an assignment by Maria Katsaris, a top lieutenant of Jones, and thereby escaped death. Brothers Tim and Mike Carter (30 and 20), and Mike Prokes (31) were given luggage containing $500,000 US currency and a document, which they were told to deliver to Guyana’s Soviet Embassy, in Georgetown. They soon ditched most of the money and were apprehended heading for the Temple boat (Cudjo) at Kaituma. It is unknown how they were supposed to reach Georgetown, 250 miles away&mdash;the boat had been sent away by Temple leadership earlier that day.

At the start of the meeting, Jones' two lawyers, Charles Garry and Mark Lane, were told that the people were angry at them. The lawyers were escorted to "the East House", which was used to accommodate visitors, far from the pavilion. According to the lawyers, they talked their way past armed guards and made it to the jungle, before eventually arriving in Port Kaituma. Lane describes it in his book Strongest Poison. While in the jungle near the settlement, they heard cheering, then gunshots. This observation concurs with the testimony of Clayton, who heard the same sounds as he was sneaking back into Jonestown to retrieve his passport.

The standard explanation, concocted on scene by the Guyanese chief of police, is that Jones and his immediate staff, after having successfully carried out the "revolutionary suicide", came together and killed themselves and each other with handguns, after giving a final cheer. However, the only two people reported to have gunshot wounds were Jim Jones and Annie Moore&mdash;one wound each.

Medical examinations
The first government official to examine the scene at Jonestown was Guyanese Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Leslie Mootoo. Working for 32 hours straight, Mootoo and his assistants examined 137 bodies. He concluded that all but two or three bodies were victims of murder: 80% to 90% had needle injection marks on their upper arms or shoulders, and most of the remainder were shot with crossbow bolts.

Countless needles and syringes were found on tables and on the ground around the area, many with bent or broken needles, suggesting struggles among unwilling adults.

Only seven bodies of 913 were autopsied, including Jim Jones, Annie Moore, and Dr. Lawrence Schact. No autopsies would have been performed at all, were it not for the tireless insistence of the Moore family. (Rebecca Moore (sister of Annie and Carolyn Moore, members of leadership in Peoples Temple), who was not a Peoples Temple member, hosts a large website about Peoples Temple. )

Suicide notes
Annie Moore left a final note. Moore's brief note in part stated: "I am at a point right now so embittered against the world that I don't know why I am writing this. Someone who finds it will believe I am crazy or believe in the barbed wire that does NOT exist in Jonestown." The last line ("We died because you would not let us live in peace.") is written in different color ink. No other specific reference is made to the events of the day. Some wonder if that one line is all she wrote that day.

Another suicide note was found, 25 years later, buried among reams of unrelated paperwork. The document, entitled "Last Words", unsigned, was most likely written by Richard Tropp. It, too, is anything but explanatory.

Inconsistencies

 * Hyacinth Thrash, one of four on-the-scene survivors, said in her autobiography that she was given a meal on Sunday morning, November 19, however the Guyanese army was allegedly first on the scene and reportedly did not arrive in Jonestown until Sunday evening.


 * At 4:44 a.m. local time (just about 8 hours after the deaths) the CIA's National Operations and Intelligence Watch Officers Network broadcast news of "mass suicides" at Jonestown, according to an official report from January 1979. But Guyanese soldiers were the first to arrive on scene, and they did not arrive until more than 12 hours after that transmission.


 * It is unknown whether Jones shot himself or was shot by someone else. Jones' son Stephan believes Jim Jones chose to be shot rather than poisoned, as a means of escaping the slow painful death endured by his followers.


 * Evidence suggests that Annie Moore may not have shot herself. Her body was found inside Jones' cabin, blocking the door . The angle of the bullet was wrong to be self-inflicted. Also, aside from the bullet wound in the face, Ann Moore had large amounts of cyanide in her stomach.


 * President Bill Clinton signed a bill into law in the 1990s, mandating the expiration of secrecy in documents after 25 years. It has been nearly 30 years since the mysterious mass deaths in Jonestown. The majority of Jonestown documents remain classified, despite Freedom of Information requests from numerous people over the past three decades.

Aftermath
Escaping Jonestown, Clayton and Rhodes (who were not aware of each other’s movements) both looked for the home of one Guyanese family they knew, which was near Jonestown on the way to Port Kaituma. Clayton found the house in the dark, but Rhodes could not, and he continued on to Port Kaituma. Clayton told the Guyanese family what had just happened, but he was not taken seriously. Clayton then suggested that the people of Jonestown no longer needed their tools and equipment. The father of the Guyanese family then went to Jonestown as Clayton slept. He returned in the morning with a disturbed look on his face, according to Clayton.

The Carter brothers and Michael Prokes were put into protective custody in Port Kaituma but were released in Georgetown. Rhodes, Clayton, and the two lawyers were also brought to Georgetown.

Micheal Prokes committed suicide in March 1979, four months after the Jonestown incident. In the days leading up to his death, Prokes sent notes to several people, together with a thirty-page statement he had written about Peoples Temple. One note went to columnist Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle, who reprinted the note.

"“The ‘total dedication’ you once observed of me was not to Jim Jones – it was to an organization of people who had nothing left to lose. No matter what view one takes of the Temple, perhaps the most relevant truth is that it was filled with outcasts and the poor who were looking for something they could not find in our society.

And sadly enough, there are millions more out there with all kinds of different, but desperate needs whose lives will end tragically, as happens every day. No matter how you cut it, you just can’t separate Jonestown from America, because the Peoples Temple was not born in a vacuum, and despite the attempt to isolate it, neither did it end in one.”"

Prokes then arranged for a press conference, held in a motel room in Modesto, California, at which he read a statement to the eight reporters who attended. . He then excused himself, went to the bathroom and fatally shot himself in the head.

Larry Layton, who had opened fire aboard the Cessna, was found not guilty in Guyanese court. He was later extradited to the U.S. and put in prison; he is the only person ever to have been held responsible for the events at Jonestown. He was paroled 24 years later, in 2002.

The first headlines claimed that 407 Temple members had been killed and that the remainder had fled into the jungle. This death count was revised several times over the next week until the final total of 909 was reached.

The sheer scale of the event, as well as Jones' socialist leanings, led some to suggest CIA involvement. In 1980 the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence investigated the Jonestown mass suicide and announced that there was no evidence of CIA involvement at Jonestown. Most government documents relating to Jonestown remain classified.

According to various press reports, surviving Temple members in the U.S. announced their fears of being targeted by a "hit squad" of Jonestown survivors; similarly, in 1979, the Associated Press reported the claim of a U.S. Congressional aide that there were ".. 120 white, brainwashed assassins out from Jonestown awaiting the trigger word to pick up their hit."

Legacy
The area formerly known as Jonestown was at first tended by the Guyanese government, which allowed its re-occupation by Hmong refugees from Laos, for a few years in the early 1980s, but it has since been altogether deserted. It was mostly destroyed by a fire in the mid-1980s, after which the ruins were left to decay. The buildings and grounds were not taken over by local Guyanese people because of the social stigma associated with the murders and suicides.