Jim Jones

This article is about the Peoples Temple leader. For other people named Jim Jones, see Jim Jones (disambiguation).

Jim Jones
Jones at an anti-eviction protest in front of the International Hotel in 1977
Born	James Warren Jones (1931-05-13)May 13, 1931 Crete, Indiana, U.S
Died	November 18, 1978(1978-11-18) (aged 47) Jonestown, Guyana
Cause of death	Suicide by gunshot wound to the head
Nationality	American
Occupation	Cult leader
Known for	Leader of Peoples Temple cult
Spouse	Marceline Baldwin Jones ​ ​ (m. 1949; died 1978)​
Children	9

James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American civil rights preacher, faith healer, and cult leader who conspired with his inner circle to direct a mass suicide and mass murder of his followers in his jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana. He launched the Peoples Temple in Indiana during the 1950s. Rev. Jones was ordained in 1956 by the Independent Assemblies of God and in 1964 by the Disciples of Christ. He moved his congregation to California in 1965 and gained notoriety with its activities in San Francisco in the 1970s. He then left the United States, bringing many members to a Guyana jungle commune.

In 1978, media reports surfaced of human rights abuses in the Peoples Temple in Jonestown. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune to investigate. Ryan and others were murdered by gunfire while boarding a return flight with some former cult members who had wished to leave. Jones then ordered and likely coerced a mass suicide and mass murder of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, almost all by cyanide-poisoned Flavor Aid.

Early life

Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in a rural area of Crete, Indiana to James Thurman Jones (1887–1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (1902–1977). Jones was of Irish and Welsh descent; he later claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, but his maternal second cousin said this was untrue. Economic difficulties during the Great Depression led the family to Lynn, Indiana in 1934, where Jones grew up in a shack without plumbing.

Jones was a voracious reader who studied Stalin, Marx, Mao, Gandhi, and Hitler, carefully noting the strengths and weaknesses of each. He also developed an intense interest in religion. One writer suggests this was primarily because he found it difficult to make friends. Childhood acquaintances recalled him as a "really weird kid" who was obsessed with religion and death. They alleged that he frequently held funerals for small animals on his parents' property, and that he had stabbed a cat to death.

Jones and a childhood friend both claimed that his father was associated with the Ku Klux Klan, which had gained a stronghold in Depression-era Indiana. Jones recounted how he and his father clashed on the issue of race, and how he did not speak with his father for "many, many years" after he refused to allow one of Jones's black friends into the house. Jones's parents separated, and Jones moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana. In December 1948, he graduated from Richmond High School early with honors.

Jones married nurse Marceline Baldwin (1927–1978) in 1949, and they moved to Bloomington, Indiana. She died with him in Jonestown. He attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he was impressed with a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt about the plight of African-Americans. In 1951, the couple moved to Indianapolis. Jones attended night school at Butler University, earning a degree in secondary education in 1961—ten years after enrolling.

Founding of the Peoples Temple

Indiana beginnings

Further information: Peoples Temple

Jones's first church in Indianapolis, Indiana

In 1951, twenty-year-old Jones began attending gatherings of the Communist Party USA in Indianapolis. He became flustered with harassment during the McCarthy Hearings, particularly regarding an event that he attended with his mother focusing on Paul Robeson, after which she was harassed by the FBI in front of her co-workers for attending. He also became frustrated with the persecution of open and accused communists in the United States, especially during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Jones said he asked himself, "How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."

Jones was surprised when a Methodist district superintendent helped him get a start in the church, even though he knew Jones to be a communist. In 1952, he became a student pastor at the Sommerset Southside Methodist Church, but later claimed that he left the church because its leaders barred him from integrating blacks into his congregation. Around this time, Jones witnessed a faith-healing service at a Seventh Day Baptist Church. He observed that it attracted people and their money, and he concluded that he could accomplish his social goals with financial resources from such services.

Jones organized a mammoth religious convention to take place June 11–15, 1956 in Cadle Tabernacle. He needed a well-known religious figure to draw crowds, so he arranged to share the pulpit with Rev. William M. Branham, a healing evangelist and religious author who was as highly revered as Oral Roberts. Jones was able to launch his own church following the convention, which had various names until it became the Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel. The Peoples Temple was initially an interracial mission.

Racial integrationist

Jones receives a Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian award from Pastor Cecil Williams, 1977

The New York Times reported that in 1953, "declaring that he was outraged at what he perceived as racial discrimination in his white congregation, Mr. Jones established his own church and pointedly opened it to all ethnic groups. To raise money, he imported monkeys and sold them door to door as pets."

In 1960, Indianapolis Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jones director of the local Human Rights Commission. Jones ignored Boswell's advice to keep a low profile, however, finding new outlets for his views on local radio and television programs. The mayor and other commissioners asked him to curtail his public actions, but he resisted. He was wildly cheered at a meeting of the NAACP and Urban League when he yelled for his audience to be more militant, and then climaxed with, "Let my people go!"

During this time, Jones also helped to racially integrate churches, restaurants, the telephone company, the Indianapolis police department, a theater, an amusement park, and the Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. Swastikas were painted on the homes of two black families, and Jones walked through the neighborhood comforting local black people and counseling white families not to move. He set up sting operations to catch restaurants refusing to serve black customers and wrote to American Nazi leaders and then passed their responses to the media. He was accidentally placed in the black ward of a hospital after a collapse in 1961, and he refused to be moved; he began to make the beds and empty the bed pans of black patients. Political pressures resulting from Jones's actions caused hospital officials to desegregate the wards.

Jones received considerable criticism in Indiana for his integrationist views. White-owned businesses and locals were critical of him. A swastika was placed on the Temple, a stick of dynamite was left in a Temple coal pile, and a dead cat was thrown at Jones's house after a threatening phone call. Other incidents occurred, but some suspect that Jones himself was involved in at least some of them.

"Rainbow Family"

Jones and his wife adopted several non-white children; he referred to the household as his "rainbow family", and stated: "Integration is a more personal thing with me now. It's a question of my son's future." He also portrayed the Temple as a "rainbow family".

The couple adopted three Korean-American children named Lew, Suzanne, and Stephanie, and he encouraged Temple members to adopt orphans from war-ravaged Korea. He also was critical of U.S. opposition to communist leader Kim Il-Sung's 1950 invasion of South Korea, calling it the "war of liberation" and stating that South Korea "is a living example of all that socialism in the north has overcome". In 1954, he and his wife also adopted Agnes, who was part American Indian. Suzanne was adopted at age six in 1959. In June 1959 the couple had their only biological child, whom they named Stephan Gandhi. In 1961, they became the first white couple in Indiana to adopt a black child. They also adopted a son who was white named Tim. Tim's birth mother was a member of the Peoples Temple, and he was originally named Timothy Glen Tupper.

Travel to Brazil

Belo Horizonte

Rio de Janeiro

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Jones's Brazilian locations

Jones traveled with his family to Belo Horizonte, Brazil with the idea of setting up a new Temple location, after preaching at the Temple about the fears of a nuclear holocaust and reading an article in the January 1962 issue of Esquire Magazine which listed the city as a safe place in nuclear war. On his way to Brazil, he made his first trip to Guyana, a British colony at the time.

The family rented a modest three-bedroom home in Belo Horizonte. Jones studied the local economy and receptiveness of racial minorities to his message, although language remained a barrier. He also explored local Brazilian syncretistic religions. He was careful not to portray himself as a communist in a foreign territory and spoke of an apostolic communal lifestyle rather than of Castro or Marx. Ultimately, the lack of resources in the locale led them to move to Rio de Janeiro in mid-1963 where they worked with the poor in the slums.

Jones became plagued by guilt for leaving behind the Indiana civil rights struggle and possibly losing what he had tried to build there. His associate preachers in Indiana told him the Temple was about to collapse without him, so he returned.

Move to California

Los Angeles

San Francisco

Ukiah

Bakersfield

Fresno

Sacramento

Santa Rosa

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Some of the Peoples Temple's California locations

Jones returned from Brazil in December 1963 and told his Indiana congregation the world would be engulfed by nuclear war on July 15, 1967, leading to a new socialist Eden on Earth, and that the Temple had to move to Northern California for safety. Accordingly, the Temple began moving to Redwood Valley, California, near the city of Ukiah.

According to religious studies professor Catherine Wessinger, Jones always spoke of the social gospel's virtues, but he chose to conceal that his gospel was actually communism until the late 1960s. By that time, he began partially revealing the details of his "Apostolic Socialism" concept in Temple sermons. He also taught that "those who remained drugged with the opiate of religion had to be brought to enlightenment—socialism". He often mixed these ideas, such as preaching that, "If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin."

By the early 1970s, Jones began deriding Christianity as "fly away religion", rejecting the Bible as being a tool to oppress women and non-whites, and denouncing a "Sky God" who was no God at all. He wrote a booklet titled "The Letter Killeth", criticizing the King James Bible. Jones also began preaching that he was the reincarnation of Gandhi, Father Divine, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Vladimir Lenin. Former Temple member Hue Fortson, Jr. quoted him as saying, "What you need to believe in is what you can see ... If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father ... If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."

In a 1976 phone conversation with John Maher, Jones alternately stated that he was an agnostic and an atheist. Marceline Jones admitted in a 1977 New York Times interview that Jones was trying to promote Marxism in the U.S. by mobilizing people through religion, citing Mao as his inspiration. She stated: "Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion". He had slammed the Bible on the table yelling "I've got to destroy this paper idol!" In one sermon, Jones said, "You're gonna help yourself, or you'll get no help! There's only one hope of glory; that's within you! Nobody's gonna come out of the sky! There's no heaven up there! We'll have to make heaven down here!"

Focus on San Francisco

Main article: Peoples Temple in San Francisco

Peoples Temple members attend an anti-eviction rally at the International Hotel, San Francisco in January 1977

Within five years of moving to California, the Temple experienced a period of exponential growth and opened branches in cities including San Fernando, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. By the early 1970s, Jones began shifting his focus to major cities because of limited expansion opportunities in Ukiah, California. He eventually moved the Temple's headquarters to San Francisco, which was a major center for radical protest movements, and both Jones and the Temple became influential in San Francisco politics, culminating in the Temple's instrumental role in George Moscone's mayoral victory in 1975. Moscone subsequently appointed Jones as the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission.

Jones was able to gain contact with prominent politicians at the local and national level. For example, he and Moscone met privately with vice presidential candidate Walter Mondale on his campaign plane days before the 1976 election, leading Mondale to publicly praise the Temple. First Lady Rosalynn Carter also met with Jones on multiple occasions, corresponded with him about Cuba, and spoke with him at the grand opening of the San Francisco headquarters—where he received louder applause than she did.

In September 1976, California assemblyman Willie Brown served as master of ceremonies at a large testimonial dinner for Jones attended by Governor Jerry Brown and Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally. At that dinner, Brown touted Jones as "what you should see every day when you look in the mirror" and said that he was a combination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Albert Einstein, and Mao Tse Tung. Harvey Milk spoke to audiences during political rallies held at the Temple, and he wrote to Jones after one such visit: "Rev Jim, It may take me many a day to come back down from the high that I reach today. I found something dear today. I found a sense of being that makes up for all the hours and energy placed in a fight. I found what you wanted me to find. I shall be back. For I can never leave."

Jones hosted local political figures at his San Francisco apartment for discussions, including Davis. He spoke with publisher Carlton Goodlett of the San Francisco Sun-Reporter about his remorse over not being able to travel to socialist countries such as the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, speculating that he could be Chief Dairyman of the U.S.S.R. His criticisms led to increased tensions with the Nation of Islam, so Jones spoke at a huge rally in hopes of closing the rift between the two groups in the Los Angeles Convention Center that was attended by many of his closest political acquaintances.

Jones also forged alliances with key columnists and others at the San Francisco Chronicle and other press outlets, although the move to San Francisco also brought increasing media scrutiny. Chronicle reporter Marshall Kilduff encountered resistance to publishing an exposé, so he brought his story to New West magazine. In the summer of 1977, Jones and several hundred Temple members abruptly decided to move to the Temple's compound in Guyana after they learned the contents of Kilduff's article, which included allegations by former Temple members that they were physically, emotionally, and sexually abused. Jones named the settlement "Jonestown" after himself. Jones may have further been concerned that private investigator David Conn was spearheading a government investigation into Jones's activities.

The Reason Jones fled to Guyana:

The primary reason Jim Jones finally fled to Guyana is because he was running from one David Conn, a mere citizen who had the goods on him. David spent several years conducting his own investigation of Jim Jones. David Conn, formerly of Richmond, California, knew several members of People's Temple. He had attended church with some of them at Barrett Avenue Christian Church (BACC) in Richmond. When these members became disenchanted with Jim Jones they confided in their friend David Conn. They told David about the fake healings, beatings, sexual assaults, child abuse, thefts and other crimes and misdeeds committed by Jones and his aides. These disaffected members included Elmer and Deanna Mertle (alias Al and Jeannie Mills) of People's Temple fame. They were top aides to Jones, but after they deserted him they informed David Conn of all the horrors going on in People's Temple under Jones' direction. Later Jeannie wrote a book about it entitled Six Years with God. Another defector and friend of David Conn from BACC was Larry Tupper who lost three children at the massacre in Jonestown, Guyana. Tupper told David about the child abuse, beatings, blackmail, and other villainy at People's Temple. Larry Tupper got out of People's Temple in time, but unfortunately his wife and children stayed on. David, in turn, passed all this information on to the police and U.S. Treasury Department and to four reporters who used the information in newspaper articles they wrote in the San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle and the New West Magazine (article of August 1st, 1977). The four reporters were Lester Kinsolving, Marshall Kilduff, Tim Reiterman and Nancy Dooley. David Conn also apprised his friend and government attorney Larry Lee Litke of the crimes and misdeeds of Jim Jones. Litke was a Deputy County Counsel for Alameda County, California. He wrote a 1980 essay entitled, "The Downfall of Jim Jones" which details and explains the material in this article and much more. It may be found at the San Diego State University, Jim Jones Institute, website, and at the California Historical Society in San Francisco.

By March, 1977, Dave's private investigation was doomed to be discovered by the Jones gang. This transpired as follows. Dave was sympathetic with the American Indian Movement (AIM). When he saw a newspaper picture of Dennis Banks, an Indian leader, with Jim Jones, he wanted to meet Banks to inform him that Jones was a bad guy who could only hurt the Indian movement. Such a meeting took place on the night of March 22nd at a house in El Cerrito, California. At that meeting David told Banks all about the fake healings, child abuse, thefts, and other crimes committed by Jim Jones. Unfortunately, since Banks and the poor Indians were receiving money and food from People's Temple like welfare, they did not believe David Conn. Instead, Dennis Banks betrayed David. He told Jim Jones that David was out to get him, that he had information about Jones' fake healings and crimes obtained from defectors, and that Dave was passing this information on to federal agents, reporters, and a government attorney. In his sworn Declaration of September 6th, 1977, Dennis Banks stated that David "...then asked me to make a public denunciation of Jim Jones" and that "if I made such a denunciation, the rulings on my extradition (to South Dakota) would go in my favor." Banks' sworn statement concluded: "This was to me a threat, and obviously blackmail." David denies these statements of Dennis Banks.

When Jim Jones learned about David Conn and discovered that defecting members were giving David details about his nefarious deeds and criminal activities, Jones panicked. Fear gripped Jones when he heard from Dennis Banks that David Conn was talking to a Treasury Agent (T-Man), a reporter, and a government lawyer about him. What to do?

First, Jones sent Temple members to spy on David and his ex-wife, Donna Conn, who lived in Oakland, California. Though divorced, Dave and Donna remained friends and David visited her frequently, often taking his friend Larry Litke with him. Larry and Donna were also friends. Jones' spies hid under Donna's house and overheard the conversations going on above between David, Donna and Larry, sometimes talking about Jim Jones, (See "The Downfall of Jim Jones," pages 15–16). This spy activity was confirmed by Mark Lane, an attorney for Jim Jones, in his book, The Strongest Poison, at pages 234–7. Lane got this spy information from Jones and some of his Temple aides.

Unfortunately for Jones, his spies mistook Larry Litke for Michael Prokes, a good friend of Jim Jones and a top official in People's Temple. Prokes was a former television reporter and the current Public Relations man for Jones. The spies were sure they recognized Prokes' voice, but wondered why he was in Donna's house with David. They thought, perhaps, Prokes was on special assignment to gather information for Jones.

Jones was dumbfounded at their report, for he had not sent Prokes to the Conn house. The spies assured him, though, it was Michael Prokes. While attorney Lane knew about the spies, he did not know about the mix-up (Litke for Prokes). Appearances can be deceiving, though, for the voice they heard was not Michael Prokes, but the voice of Larry Litke. Prokes was never in Donna's house and Dave, Donna, and Larry have never met Michael Prokes.

Jim Jones believed Michael Prokes was a traitor passing info on to David Conn. Jones decided not to tell Prokes about this, but instead decided to spy on him. After the Jonestown Massacre, Prokes committed suicide without ever knowing Jim Jones suspected him to be a traitor.

By now trepidation and paranoia took over Jones and he decided it was time to leave the country and take his flock to Guyana. That Jones feared and hated David Conn is evidenced by his own newspaper, the People's Forum. For example, the October 1977 edition of said paper states that David Conn "has been actively involved in a scheme to destroy the Temple for several years." It further states that David is a "close friend" of two defectors who were "prominent in leveling charges against the Temple," namely "Elmer and Deana Mertle (alias Al and Jeannie Mills)." Another edition of People's Forum actually names David Conn as "Public Enemy No. 1".

At a press conference on September 8th, 1977, Charles Garry, another attorney for Jim Jones, alleged that David Conn tried to bribe Dennis Banks to publicly denounce Jones. Mr. Garry also alleged that Davvid Conn was leading a conspiracy to destroy People's Temple and Jim Jones.

Further evidence of Jim Jones' concern about David Conn is contained in FBI phone transcripts of things Jones said about David in FBI wiretaps of Jones in 1977 and 1978. For example, in the FBI transcript labeled "Q981", Jones refers to David Conn as "madder than, uh, the March Hare" and then Jones added that "old Mr. Conn's got his shit together better than the rest of 'em, because he's thinking well." In "Q284" Jones talks about "the conspiracy that started with George Klineman the Nazi and (David) Conn the Nazi, connected with Treasury Department, in the earliest days with the San Francisco and Los Angeles police departments." In "Q805" Jones admits he doesn't know "what would possess a man" like Conn to spend six years investigating him. Jones also stated that "the thing that really disturb is, that he was trying—would not take you (Lee Brightman) to this Treasury Agent, uh, but instead (insisted) on taking. De-Dennis" Banks. Later Jones added, "Well this is really frightening, uh, that a man (David Conn) will go to that extent, it really is a, a frightening thing."

The FBI was on to Jim Jones, but they did not understand him like David Conn did. David even predicted the mass suicide and mass murder at Jonestown, Guyana, days before the event on November 18th, 1978, according to the sworn Declaration of Larry Lee Litke, dated July 10, 2019, and according to other witnesses named in this aforesaid edition (E2) of "The Downfall of Jim Jones", at pages 22–5, and according to the written statements of George and Mary Souza, dated July 16th, 2019, a retired teacher and nurse.

Jonestown's formation and operation

Jonestown

Georgetown

Kaituma

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Peoples Temple Agricultural Project ("Jonestown", Guyana)

Jones had started building Jonestown (formally known as the "Peoples Temple Agricultural Project") several years before the New West article was published. It was promoted as a means to create both a "socialist paradise" and a "sanctuary" from the media scrutiny in San Francisco. Jones purported to establish it as a model communist community, adding that the Temple comprised "the purest communists there are." He did not, however, permit members to leave Jonestown.

Religious scholar Mary McCormick Maaga argues that Jones's authority decreased after he moved to the isolated commune because he was not needed for recruitment and he could not hide his drug addiction from rank and file members. In spite of the allegations prior to Jones's departure, he was still respected by some for setting up a racially mixed church which helped the disadvantaged; 68 percent of Jonestown's residents were black. Jones started to propagate his belief in what he termed "Translation" once they were in Jonestown, where he and his followers would all die together and move to another planet and live blissfully.

New children

Jones claimed that he was the biological father of John Victor Stoen, although the birth certificate listed Temple attorney Timothy Stoen and his wife Grace as the parents of the child. The Temple repeatedly claimed that Jones fathered the child in 1971 when Stoen had requested that Jones have sex with Grace to keep her from defecting. Grace left the Temple in 1976 and began divorce proceedings the following year. Jones ordered Tim to take the boy to Guyana in February 1977 in order to avoid a custody dispute with Grace. After Tim himself defected in June 1977, the Temple kept John Stoen in Jonestown. He also fathered Jim Jon (Kimo) with Temple member Carolyn Louise Moore Layton.

Pressure and waning political support

Further information: Timothy Stoen and Peoples Temple in San Francisco

Rev. Cecil Williams and Jones protest evictions at the International Hotel in San Francisco, January 1977

In the autumn of 1977, Tim Stoen and others who had left the Temple formed a "Concerned Relatives" group because they had family members in Jonestown. Stoen traveled to Washington, D.C. in January 1978 to visit with State Department officials and members of Congress, and he wrote a white paper detailing his grievances against Jones and the Temple. His efforts aroused the curiosity of California Congressman Leo Ryan, who wrote a letter on Stoen's behalf to Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham. The Concerned Relatives also began a legal battle with the Temple over the custody of Stoen's son John.

Most of Jones's political allies broke ties after his departure, though some did not. Willie Brown spoke out against enemies at a rally that was attended by Harvey Milk and Assemblyman Art Agnos. On February 19, 1978, Milk wrote a letter to President Jimmy Carter defending Jones as "a man of the highest character", and he claimed that escaped Temple members were trying to "damage Rev. Jones's reputation" with "apparent bold-faced lies". Moscone's office issued a press release saying Jones had broken no laws.

On April 11, 1978, the Concerned Relatives distributed a packet of documents, letters, and affidavits to the Peoples Temple, members of the press, and members of Congress which they titled an "Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Rev. James Warren Jones". In June 1978, escaped Temple member Deborah Layton provided the group with a further affidavit detailing crimes by the Temple and sub-standard living conditions in Jonestown.

Jones was facing increasing scrutiny in the summer of 1978 when he hired JFK assassination conspiracy theorists Mark Lane and Donald Freed to help make the case of a "grand conspiracy" against the Temple by U.S. intelligence agencies. Jones told Lane he wanted to "pull an Eldridge Cleaver", referring to a fugitive member of the Black Panthers who was able to return to the U.S. after repairing his reputation.

Visit by Congressman Ryan and mass suicide at Jonestown

Congressman Leo Ryan was shot and killed on Jones's orders as he and others attempted to leave Jonestown, Guyana in November, 1978.

In November 1978, Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to Jonestown to investigate allegations of human rights abuses. His delegation included relatives of Temple members, an NBC camera crew, and reporters for various newspapers. The group arrived in the Guyanese capital of Georgetown on November 15. Two days later, they traveled by airplane to Port Kaituma, then were transported to the Jonestown encampment in a limousine. Jones hosted a reception for the delegation that evening at the central pavilion in Jonestown.

The delegation left hurriedly the afternoon of November 18 after Temple member Don Sly attacked Ryan with a knife, though the attack was thwarted. Ryan and his delegation managed to take along 15 Temple members who had expressed a wish to leave, and Jones made no attempt to prevent their departure at that time.

Port Kaituma Airstrip shootings

As members of the delegation boarded two planes at the airstrip, Jones's armed guards, called the "Red Brigade," arrived on a tractor and trailer and began shooting at them. The gunmen killed Ryan and four others near a Guyana Airways Twin Otter aircraft. At the same time, one of the supposed defectors, Larry Layton, drew a weapon and began firing on members of the party who had already boarded a small Cessna. An NBC cameraman was able to capture footage of the first few seconds of the shooting at the Otter.

The five killed at the airstrip were Ryan; NBC reporter Don Harris; NBC cameraman Bob Brown; San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson; and Temple member Patricia Parks. Surviving the attack were future Congresswoman Jackie Speier, then a staff member for Ryan; Richard Dwyer, the Deputy Chief of Mission from the U.S. Embassy at Georgetown; Bob Flick, a producer for NBC; Steve Sung, an NBC sound engineer; Tim Reiterman, a San Francisco Examiner reporter; Ron Javers, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter; Charles Krause, a Washington Post reporter; and several defecting Temple members.

Mass murder in Jonestown

Houses in Jonestown, Guyana, the year after the mass murder-suicide, 1979

Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown, 304 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around the settlement's main pavilion. This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life (murder + suicide, though not on American soil) in a deliberate act until the September 11 attacks. The FBI later recovered a 45-minute audio recording of the suicide in progress.

On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union, with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would not take them after the airstrip murders. The reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring against the Temple, that men would "parachute in here on us", "shoot some of our innocent babies" and "they'll torture our children, they'll torture some of our people here, they'll torture our seniors". Parroting Jones's prior statements that hostile forces would convert captured children to fascism, one Temple member states "the ones that they take captured, they're gonna just let them grow up and be dummies".

With that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the group should commit "revolutionary suicide" by drinking cyanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid. Later-released Temple films show Jones opening a storage container full of Kool Aid in large quantities. However, empty packets of grape Flavor Aid found on the scene show that this is what was used to mix the solution, along with a sedative. One member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape.

When members apparently cried, Jones counseled, "Stop these hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity." Jones can be heard saying, "Don't be afraid to die", that death is "just stepping over into another plane" and that it's "a friend". At the end of the tape, Jones concludes: "We didn't commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world."

According to escaping Temple members, children were given the drink first by their own parents, families were told to lie down together. Mass suicide had been previously discussed in simulated events called "White Nights" on a regular basis. During at least one such prior White Night, members drank liquid that Jones falsely told them was poison.

Death

Following the mass murder-suicide, Jones was found dead on the floor; he was resting on a pillow near his deck chair, with a gunshot wound to his head that Guyanese coroner Cyrill Mootoo stated was consistent with suicide. His body was later dragged outside for examination and embalming. The official autopsy conducted in December 1978 also confirms his death as a suicide. Jones's son Stephan believes his father may have directed someone else to shoot him, but that is speculation. An autopsy of Jones's body also showed levels of the barbiturate pentobarbital, which may have been lethal to humans who had not developed physiological tolerance. A sign could be seen hanging above Jones's deck chair. Jones had borrowed a quote from George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Sexuality

Jones married Marceline Baldwin in 1949. He began his first affair in 1968 with a woman named Carolyn Layton. He also had many other mistresses during the 1970s; before the move to Jonestown and while in Jonestown. The book The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn states: "Jones had occasional sex with male followers" but "never as often as he did with women." It states he was most likely bisexual, but his main physical and sexual attraction was towards women.

On December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with lewd conduct, masturbating in a movie theater restroom near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. The decoy was an undercover LAPD vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers he was "the only true heterosexual", but at least one account exists of his sexual abuse of a male member of his congregation in front of the followers, ostensibly to prove the man's own homosexual tendencies.

While Jones banned sex among Temple members outside marriage, he voraciously engaged in sexual relations with both male and female Temple members. Jones, however, claimed that he detested engaging in homosexual activity and did so only for the male temple adherents' own good, purportedly to connect them symbolically with him (Jones).

The International Peace Mission movement leader Father Divine was one of Jones's sources of inspiration.

Family aftermath

Marceline

On the final morning of Ryan's visit, Jones's wife Marceline took reporters on a tour of Jonestown. Later in the day, she was found dead at the pavilion, having been poisoned.

Surviving sons

Stephan, Jim Jr., and Tim Jones did not take part in the mass suicide because they were playing with the Peoples Temple basketball team against the Guyanese national team in Georgetown. At the time of events in Jonestown, Stephan and Tim were both nineteen and Jim Jones Jr. was eighteen. Tim's biological family, the Tuppers, which consisted of his three biological sisters, biological brother, and biological mother, all died at Jonestown. Three days before the tragedy, Stephan Jones refused, over the radio, to comply with an order by his father to return the team to Jonestown for Ryan's visit.

During the events at Jonestown, Stephan, Tim, and Jim Jones Jr. drove to the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown in an attempt to receive help. The Guyanese soldiers guarding the embassy refused to let them in after hearing about the shootings at the Port Kaituma airstrip. Later, the three returned to the Temple's headquarters in Georgetown to find the bodies of Sharon Amos and her three children. Guyanese soldiers kept the Jones brothers under house arrest for five days, interrogating them about the deaths in Georgetown.

Stephan Jones was accused of being involved in the Georgetown deaths, and was placed in a Guyanese prison for three months. Tim Jones and Johnny Cobb, another member of the Peoples Temple basketball team, were asked to go to Jonestown and help identify the bodies of people who had died. After returning to the United States, Jim Jones Jr. was placed under police surveillance for several months while he lived with his older sister, Suzanne, who had previously turned against the Temple.

Chaeoke Jones, Lew Jones, and Terry Carter Jones. Father, mother, and child all died in the mass suicide.

When Jonestown was first being established, Stephan had originally avoided two attempts by his father to relocate to the settlement. He eventually moved to Jonestown after a third and final attempt. He has since said that he gave in to his father's wishes to move to Jonestown because of his mother. Stephan Jones is now a businessman, and married with three daughters. He appeared in the documentary Jonestown: Paradise Lost which aired on the History Channel and Discovery Channel. He stated he will not watch the documentary and has never grieved for his father. One year later, he appeared in the documentary Witness to Jonestown where he responds to rare footage shot inside the Peoples Temple.

Jim Jones Jr., who lost his wife and unborn child at Jonestown, returned to San Francisco. He remarried and has three sons from this marriage, including Rob Jones, a high-school basketball star who went on to play for the University of San Diego before transferring to Saint Mary's College of California.

Lew, Agnes, and Suzanne Jones

Lew and Agnes Jones both died at Jonestown. Agnes Jones was thirty-five years old at the time of her death. Her husband and four children all died at Jonestown. Lew Jones, who was twenty-one years old at the time of his death, died alongside his wife Terry and son Chaeoke. Stephanie Jones had died at age five in a car accident in May 1959.

Suzanne Jones married Mike Cartmell; they both turned against the Temple and were not in Jonestown on November 18, 1978. After this decision to abandon the Temple, Jones referred to Suzanne openly as "my damned, no good for nothing daughter" and said she was not to be trusted. In a signed note found at the time of her death, Marceline Jones directed that the Joneses' funds were to be given to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and specified: "I especially request that none of these are allowed to get into the hands of my adopted daughter, Suzanne Jones Cartmell." Cartmell had two children and died of colon cancer in November 2006.

John Stoen and Kimo

Specific references to Tim Stoen, the father of John Stoen, including the logistics of possibly murdering him, are made on the Temple's final "death tape", as well as a discussion over whether the Temple should include John Stoen among those committing "revolutionary suicide". At Jonestown, John Stoen was found poisoned in Jim Jones's cabin.

Jim Jon (Kimo) and his mother, Carolyn Louise Moore Layton, both died during the events at Jonestown.

In popular culture

Documentaries

• Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre (1998)
• Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)
• Jonestown: Paradise Lost (2007)
• CNN Presents: Escape From Jonestown (2008)
• Seconds From Disaster, episode "Jonestown Cult Suicide" (06x01) (2012)
• Witness to Jonestown (2013)
• Jonestown: The Women Behind the Massacre (2018)
• Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2018)
• 605 Adults 304 Children (2019), short documentary filmed entirely by The Peoples Temple at Jonestown

Television

• Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), fact-based miniseries. Powers Boothe won an Emmy for his portrayal of Jim Jones.
• American Horror Story: Cult (2017)
• The Simpsons episode #191 "The Joy Of Sect" features a Jones-like cult: "The Leader" claims to be building a spaceship to take adherents to the planet "Blisstonia".
• Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2018), a forthcoming documentary produced for Sundance TV.
• "Very Scary People", 'Jim Jones: Unholy Massacre' (01x06) (2019)

Film

• Guyana: Crime of the Century aka Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979), fictionalized exploitation film (depicted here as "Reverend James Johnson")
• Eaten Alive! (Template:Lang-it) is a 1980 Italian horror film (depicted here as "Jonas," leading a cult in the jungles of Sri Lanka instead of Guyana).
• The Sacrament (2013), a found-footage horror film (depicted here simply as "Father"; in addition, Jonestown has been renamed "Eden Parish")
• Jonestown (2013), an independent short film which dramatizes the last 24 hours in the lives of Jim Jones (played here by Leandro Cano) and The Peoples Temple Church through the eyes of a reporter.
• The Veil (2016), a supernatural horror film (depicted as "Jim Jacobs")

Fiction

• We Agreed to Meet Just Here, by Scott Blackwood. Kalamazoo, Michigan: West Michigan University Press, 2009.
• Children of Paradise, by Fred D'Aguiar. New York: HarperCollins, 2014.
• Jonestown, by Wilson Harris. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.
• Before White Night, by Joseph Hartmann. Richmond, Virginia: Belle Isle Books, 2014.
• White Nights, Black Paradise, by Sikivu Hutchinson. Infidel Books, 2015.
• Beautiful Revolutionary, by Laura Elizabeth Woollett. Scribe, London. 2018.

Music

• Ballad of Jim Jones by the Brian Jonestown Massacre, available on Thank God for Mental Illness (1996)
• Carnage in the Temple of the Damned, by Deicide, available on Deicide (1990)
• Guyana (Cult of the Damned) by Manowar, available on Sign of the Hammer (1984)
• "A Lilac Harry Quinn" by Half Man Half Biscuit (1981)
• Hypnotized, by Heathen, available on Victims of Deception (1991)
• Jimmie Jones, by The Vapors
• Jonestown, by The Acacia Strain, available on Wormwood (2010)
• Sects by French band Trust, also covered by American thrash metal band Anthrax
• Jonestown, by Concrete Blonde, available on Mexican Moon (1993)
• Jonestown, by Frank Zappa, available on Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger (1984)
• Koolaid by Accept, available on The Rise of Chaos (2017)
• Last Call in Jonestown, by Polkadot Cadaver, available on Last Call in Jonestown (2013)
• Reverend by Church of Misery, available on Early Works Compilation (2011)
• Ultraviolence (song) by Lana Del Rey
• La Dee Da by Foo Fighters from the album "Concrete and Gold" (2017)
• 1988 TRUMAN by Brockhampton from the single "1998 TRUMAN" (2018)
• Jonestown (interlude) by Post Malone from the album Beerbongs and Bentleys (2018)
• "Jim Jones" by SKYND (2019)

Poetry

• Bill of Rights, by Fred D'Aguiar. London: Chatto and Windus, 1998.
• The Jonestown Arcane, by Jack Hirschman. Los Angeles: Parentheses Writing Series, 1991.
• Jonestown Lullaby, by Teri Buford O'Shea. Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2011.
• Jonestown and Other Madness, by Pat Parker. Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1985.
• I. at jonestown, by Lucille Clifton. Next. Brockport: BOA, 1989.

Theater

• The Peoples Temple. Written by Leigh Fondakowski, with Greg Pierotti, Stephen Wangh, and Margo Hall. Premiered in 2005.

See also

• List of people who have claimed to be Jesus
• List of Buddha claimants
• Messiah complex
• The Sacrament, a fictional film compared by some critics to events that occurred at Jonestown
• David Dick, CBS News correspondent who covered Jonestown
• Marshall Applewhite
• Heaven's Gate (religious group)

Further reading

• Chidester, David (2004). Salvation and Suicide: Jim Jones, the People's Temple and Jonestown (Religion in North America) (2nd ed.). Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21632-8.
• Flynn, Daniel J. (2018). Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days that Shook San Francisco. ISI Books. ISBN 978-1610-171519.
• Hall, John R. (1987). Gone from the Promised Land. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-0-88738-801-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hutchinson, Sikivu (2015). White Nights, Black Paradise. Infidel Books. ISBN 978-0-692-26713-4.
• Klineman, George; Butler, Sherman (1980). The Cult That Died. G. P. Putnam's Sons. ISBN 978-0-399-12540-9.
• Layton, Deborah (1998). Seductive Poison. Anchor Books. ISBN 978-1-85410-600-1. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Levi, Ken (1982). Violence and Religious Commitment: Implications of Jim Jones's People's Temple Movement. Penn State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-00296-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Maaga, Mary McCormick (1998). Hearing the voices of Jonestown. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 978-0-8156-0515-7.
• Naipaul, Shiva (1980). Black & White. London: Hamish Hamilton. ISBN 978-0-241-10337-1.
• Reiterman, Tom; Jacobs, John (1982). Raven: The Untold Story of Rev. Jim Jones and His People. E. P. Dutton. ISBN 978-0-525-24136-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Rolls, Geoff (2014). Classic Case Studies in Psychology (3rd ed.). Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-90961-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wessinger, Catherine (2000). How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate. Seven Bridges Press. ISBN 978-1-889119-24-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• The Jonestown Institute
• FBI No. Q 042 The "Jonestown Death Tape", Recorded November 18, 1978 (Internet Archive)
• Transcript of Jones's final speech, just before the mass suicide
• Jonestown Audiotape Primary Project: Transcripts
• Biography of Jim Jones Encyclopædia Britannica
• The first part of a series of articles about Jim Jones published in the San Francisco Examiner in 1972.
• History Channel Video and Stills
• Isaacson, Barry. From Silver Lake to Suicide: One Family's Secret History of the Jonestown Massacre
• Mass Suicide at Jonestown: 30 Years Later, Time magazine
• Jonestown 30 Years Later, photo gallery published Friday, October 17, 2008.
• Rapaport, Richard. Jonestown and City Hall slayings eerily linked in time and memory Both events continue to haunt city a quarter century later.
• Maurice Brinton. "Suicide for socialism?" Brinton's analysis of the bizarre mass suicide of a socialist cult led by American Jim Jones in Jonestown, Guyana, which discusses the dynamics of political sects in general.
• Nakao, Annie.The ghastly Peoples Temple deaths shocked the world. Berkeley Rep takes on the challenge of coming to terms with it.
• American Experience documentary, "Jonestown: The Life And Death Of Peoples Temple", shown on PBS
• Jonestown: 25 Years Later How spiritual journey ended in destruction: Jim Jones led his flock to death in jungle by Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Thursday, November 12, 1998.
• Utopian nightmare Jonestown: What did we learn? Larry D. Hatfield, of The Examiner staff, Gregory Lewis and Eric Brazil of The Examiner staff and Examiner Librarian Judy Canter contributed to this report. Published Sunday, November 8, 1998.
• Jones Captivated S.F.'s Liberal Elite: They were late to discover how cunningly he curried favor by Michael Taylor, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. And [Haunted by Memories of Hell ] by Kevin Fagan, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Thursday, November 12, 1998. Both stories were included in the first of a two-part series.
• The End To Innocent Acceptance Of Sects Sharper scrutiny is Jonestown legacy by Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle religion writer. And Most Peoples Temple Documents Still Sealed by Michael Taylor and Don Lattin, San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. And Surviving the Heart of Darkness: Twenty years later, Jackie Speier remembers how her companions and rum helped her endure the night of the Jonestown massacre by Maitland Zane, San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Published Friday, November 13, 1998. All stories were included in the second part of a two-part series.
• Inside Peoples Temple Marshall Kilduff and Phil Tracy, Used by permission of authors for the San Francisco Chronicle. Published Monday, August 1, 1977.
• Jonestown: Dismantling the Disinformation Laurie Efrein Kahalas, an 8+1⁄2-year member of the Peoples Temple who was living in the Temple building in San Francisco when tragedy struck. Published April 8, 1999.
• The Downfall of Jim Jones by Larry Lee Litke. Published at The Jonestown Institute. Originally published 1980.
• The Freedom Abusers Thomas S. Szasz, Inquiry (magazine), February 5, 1979.
• Jim Jones at IMDb