The Jonestown massacre left nearly a thousand people dead... but it was the horrific scene afterwards that many people will never be able to forget.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00The Jonestown Massacre left nearly 1,000 people dead, but it was a horrific scene afterwards
00:05that many people will never be able to forget.
00:09Jim Jones started the People's Temple in Indiana in 1954. Back then, his mission was to preach
00:14racial equality. But by 1965, when he moved the temple to the Bay Area, Jones had declared
00:20himself God's prophet, and was obsessed with the nuclear war he, as a prophet, saw coming.
00:26Some people see a great deal of God in my body. They see Christ in me, a hope of glory."
00:34Jones' delusions grew, as did his congregation, and by 1974, he'd leased land in Guyana with
00:40the intention of creating a utopian community far from the U.S. He called it Jonestown and
00:45sold the idea to his flock as an escape from persecution and enslavement.
00:49"...where we wouldn't have to pay rent, all the food we needed, our medical would all
00:55be taken care of."
00:57It was an escape, all right.
00:59Jones and hundreds of his followers disappeared seemingly overnight, just as a number of former
01:03congregants began talking to the media about Jones' less-than-stellar behavior. Their stories
01:08included incidents of coercion and control, drug use, sexual abuse, and off-the-charts
01:13paranoia.
01:15Life in the Jungle only fed into Jones' delusions and bad behavior. Only now, he was basically
01:20the ruler of a small country of his own creation, far from society's prying eyes. Jones used
01:25every technique in the book to bend church members to his will, including psychological
01:29conditioning, brainwashing, through humiliation, starvation, and more. He even conducted suicide
01:35drills.
01:36"...he called it a white knight, a revolutionary suicide."
01:40Then, on November 14, 1978, concerned Congressman Leo J. Ryan left on an official fact-finding
01:46visit to the commune. For Jones, this was the last straw. Ryan and four others were
01:51murdered at an airstrip by a People's Temple death squad. And later that day, the suicide
01:56rehearsal became real.
01:59It was two days before first responders arrived to recover and identify the bodies. In the
02:04meantime, the corpses had been left in the open, exposed to jungle heat and humidity.
02:08You'd expect vultures and other scavengers to feed on the remains, but they didn't, possibly
02:13because most of the victims died by drinking cyanide, which did nothing to slow the process
02:18of decay. By the time the U.S. military personnel arrived, bodies were in advanced states of
02:23decomposition. When time asked civilian responder Patricia Edwards about her most enduring memories
02:28of Jonestown, she replied,
02:30"...the stench. I will never forget the stench."
02:34Jones heavily abused drugs, notably amphetamines and sleeping pills. He scored by using his
02:39followers' prescriptions or persuading sympathetic health care workers to smuggle pills for him.
02:45Ironically, People's Temple members were forbidden from recreational drug use. After the tragedy,
02:50a massive stockpile of drugs was recovered from the commune's warehouse, including, according
02:54to The New York Times, 11,000 doses of Thorazine. There were no records or other clues as to
03:00who was getting these drugs.
03:03"...there were beatings. People were abused and belittled, and many were drugged toward
03:10the end."
03:11By the time the drugs were recovered, investigators knew that Jones had used them to sedate and
03:15control church members who wanted to leave.
03:19Perhaps the most disturbing record of the Jonestown massacre is the so-called death
03:22tape, a recording of Jones' final words to his congregation as they died around him.
03:28Jones manipulates a crowd to do his bidding, as a few People's Temple members try to escape
03:32and hundreds around them die excruciating deaths.
03:35"...lay down your life with dignity. Don't lay down with tears and agony."
03:40The tape may have been intentionally left behind as a record of what Jones called an
03:44act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world. According
03:49to Rolling Stone, only two goodbye letters were recovered. One was unsigned, but attributed
03:54to commune teacher Richard Tropp. In his final message, he falsely absolves Jones of blame
03:59for the murder of Congressman Ryan, and tries to paint the mass death as idyllic.
04:03"...I can't help but say that none of this would have been possible had it not been for
04:09Jim Jones."
04:11Not everyone who survived Jonestown is convinced Tropp wrote that letter, though.
04:15One of the survivors, Tim Carter, told Rolling Stone that he saw Tropp arguing against Jones'
04:19planned suicide up until the last minute. He told the outlet,
04:23"...the words that were in that seemed very peaceful and very accepting and very kind
04:27of pro-everybody dying. That's not where Dick was coming from."
04:32Investigators quickly pushed back against the idea that Jonestown was a mass suicide.
04:37Guyanese authorities told The New York Times that they estimated only 200 of the 911 victims
04:42willingly drank the cyanide-laced flavor aid, and survivors have often described Jonestown
04:47as a mass murder. In fact, armed guards surrounded the congregation, preventing anyone from escaping
04:52with their lives. And the children, who couldn't have understood or consented to what they
04:57were doing, were killed first.
04:59"...These people never had a chance. They've been victims of racism, they're victims of
05:06poverty."
05:07Nevertheless, at least one survivor, Odell Rhodes, told authorities that, at first, most
05:12people took the cyanide willingly, and that it was only when people began to die that
05:16the remaining church members were forced to drink at gunpoint. But syringes were found
05:21during the recovery process, and several bodies had injection marks, suggesting that at least
05:25some victims were injected with poison rather than willingly drinking it.
05:30Out of the nearly 1,000 people Jones brought to Jonestown, only 85 survived the massacre.
05:36Jones' son Stephen survived because he was away playing basketball, and that day Jones
05:40sent three men to the Soviet embassy with millions in cash and gold, inadvertently sparing
05:45their lives. Others, like Larry Layton, were at the airstrip engaged in a deadly gun battle
05:50with Congressman Ryan's delegation. In fact, Layton was the only person tried and convicted
05:55for the Jonestown deaths.
05:57A small handful of survivors simply ran for it, including 22-year-old Leslie Wagner-Wilson
06:01and her son. She expected to be shot at any second.
06:05"...Everyone can look up and see us walking. And I was just shaking. I was so, so frightened."
06:13Katherine Hyacinth Rash hid under her bed in the infirmary, telling IndyStar,
06:17"...I remember those babies marching past our place with little paper hats on, wearing
06:22sunsuits, and matching shorts and tops. It's enough to make you scream your lungs out,
06:27thinking of those babies dead."
06:29And finally, Grover Cleveland Davis, who was hard of hearing, slept through the whole thing.
06:34He later came out of his hut to find everyone either dead or disappeared.