S03E11: PEOPLES TEMPLE (AKA JONESTOWN) (CULT MINISERIES, PART III)

Katie: Coming up on this episode of Crime Family.

Yeah. It doesn't hit you until you can actually hear the real people's voices, and the screams is what really gets me. "After Jim told him that he had poisoned them all, nobody got up and yelled at Jim, no one tried to get help. We all just kind of sat there and waited to die." Jim told them directly that they were never getting out of there alive.

And it's kind of crazy when you think about it. Cause a lot of these people just kind of stood in line waiting for their cup of Kool-Aid that they knew was going to kill them. The outcome of his cult resulted in the most deaths at the hands of a single person in modern history. And just to be warned like it is very, it gets distressful in some parts.

Stephanie: That was so creepy.

AJ: So creepy.

Katie: Hey, everyone. Welcome to crime family. I'm Katie. And I'll be your host today. And I'm here with my brother and sister, AJ and Steph. This is part three of our four part cult mini series. And I wanted to talk today about one of the most famous cults in history, just because I feel like we couldn't do a cult discussion without talking about Jim Jones.

So what do you guys know about Jim Jones off the top of your head or what comes to mind first when you hear the name Jim Jones?

AJ: When I think of cults, it's one of the first one that pops into my mind. Like I definitely know a bit about it and I know how important it is in the discussion of cults, but I wouldn't know, like the nitty-gritty details or anything. So there's probably going to be a lot of stuff you talk about or touch on that I'll be hearing for the first time. So I'm excited for that.

Stephanie: When I think of called cess, the first one, I think of, I mean, I don't know everything about it, so maybe I'll learn something new today.

Katie: When I think about Jim Jones, especially after doing some of this research, some of the words that come to mind are he's very smart, he's driven. He was charismatic. He was a leader, delusional, he was evil and he was a mass murderer. So to this day, aside from wars and terrorist attacks, the outcome of his cult resulted in the most deaths at the hands of a single person in modern history. So that's huge.

So a little bit about Jim Jones. He was born James Warren Jones and his parents were Lynetta and. James. He was born on May 13th, 1931 in Crete, Indiana, and his family didn't have a lot of money when he was born, even though they did work hard. His father, John had a lung condition, which made him very ill. It made it hard for him to work. He was a disabled world war one veteran, who was exposed to chemical weapons and that resulted in chronic lung issues. When the couple lost their farm due to financial trouble, they moved closer to town, but they were very much seen as outsiders in the small town of Lynn, Indiana and for the most part, Jim Jones had a very lonely childhood. He was an only child and his mom worked a lot, but she really wasn't very interested in him and his father was too ill to really spend any real time with him. And so he didn't have the nurtured upbringing that children should have. When he was young he met a lady named Myrtle Kennedy, who was very religious and she kind of took him under her wing and she took him to her church. Myrtle was known in the community for trying to recruit people to her church by promising them prosperity in the next life. And so this is probably where that seed was planted for Jim about deep religious values and the afterlife ideologies. And that's kind of where he found his community. He felt like he finally fit in, in the church community. So even as he grew up, Jim was still a bit of an outsider. He was fascinated with death. He always dressed very formal while other kids were dressing in jeans and t-shirts, he always had on suits almost. And he was very disapproving of the other kids when they would drink and smoke and dance. And he always had a Bible on him. And so, I mean, this isn't really, it's not something that really stands out as sinister or way out there. He was just very much trying very hard to follow the rules and be accepted by whoever, God, I guess ,society, authority. When he moved to Richmond, after his parents got divorced, he got a job at a hospital as an orderly, and he met a woman named Marcelline or Marcy and they got married. So I guess one thing that you can commend Jim Jones for was that he was very much against racial segregation. When much of the people in his life at the time were not. So this was like the sixties and there was still segregation happening. And there were still separate facilities designated for black people and white people. And the church that him and his wife attended, they did not allow black people. And they were very much disapproving of interracial marriage, and even though Jim was not married to a black woman, he was very much, you know, against being against that. And he eventually joined a church where he was the only white person in attendance, and he loved the singing and the dancing that took place at these churches much more than the boring ceremonies that he was used to. Jim Jones, when he got into preaching, he was very much into preaching racial, social and gender equality in a time where that was very much not the norm. And later down the road, Jim even eventually adopted children of various races and he called themselves the rainbow family. And one of his sons named Steven Jones says that he himself didn't like the term rainbow family and he had a suspicion that all of Jim's adoptions were mostly for show to kind of emphasize that he was a good person and to continue to gain attention. And it was very much to kind of show his acceptance of everyone and show that he was such a loving person to the outside world. And Steven says that his father's thirst for attention got worse and worse over the years and the more he got attention, the more he needed it. And so kind of having this rainbow family was one way that he got that attention. So Jim started attending revival meetings where preachers could preach however they wanted. And they had lots of freedom to kind of tell the gospel in their own way. And he also noticed that the most popular preachers made the most money and so that was kind of very alluring for him. He wanted to get into this kind of work. And so to prepare for that, he would go around to smaller meetings around his community, he would talk to people and he would memorize their faces and memorize their ailments. And he had a kind of a photographic memory. So he had that advantage so he could remember people and he was figuring out what worked and what didn't work when he was trying to build a name for himself as a preacher and a healer. So he was able to go up on stage and he was able to remember and just call out people by name and remember their ailments. And so people watching would think that the Lord was just telling him all this information, because he knew this stuff about these people that they thought were just randomly being called out from the audience. And he happened to know all of their conditions and he knew their names cause he could remember all that kind of stuff. And so he decided to get into healing rituals. And do you guys know what I mean when I say healing rituals? Like what comes to your mind when I say that.

Stephanie: I remember like I used to watch these commercials, these church, things, these infomercials. They used to come on TV and these preachers would be on stage and these people would come up who had a disease or whatever, and he'd do something and the disease would go away or something like that. That's what I think of when I think of healing, like these kind of ridiculous things that you would see on TV or a church program or something.

AJ: When I hear it, I think more like, I don't know. I always think of like a Shaman or something or some faith healer person, yeah. Healing somebody like in a crowd of people or something, but that's the first thing that came to my mind, but I'm sure I'm way off.

Katie: Yeah. Well, it's funny that you say that stuff because when I was looking into this, that's what I pictured too, and for some reason I do remember watching whatever channel it was on, but it was sort of this like healer on TV. And like, it was super weird because he'd be up there on stage and then there'd be like this old poor, like sick woman come up. The healer would basically like shove her down to the ground and then she would like stand up and she'd be healed. So it was like that kind of thing and this one happened just to be very aggressive.. But I remember even thinking back then, like, this is a little bit ridiculous.

AJ: Were they like reenactments or were they live like real people doing it?

Stephanie: They were live. Church shows are live programs on TV.

Katie: Yeah. Well, I don't know if they're alive, but they were recorded and that's what they would do. This preacher, he'd be like yelling to God or something. And he would touch them and they'd shake sometimes. They'd fall on the ground, they'd be crying and then they'd get up and they'd be healed. And that's exactly what these healers are doing and Jim Jones was getting involved in that. The things that I've seen, that he wasn't as dramatic, but he would sometimes just have to touch them or they would have to like reach out and he would reach out and say a couple words and they'd be healed. So yeah, it was kind of that kind of thing going on.

Stephanie: I mean, believe what you want to believe. We're just here to say our opinions. We're not like bashing church people.

Katie: Yeah, it just seemed a little bit over the top. And I mean, if these healers were real, why don't they heal everybody? Why aren't people lined up and everyone after another is just getting healed if it was true. And I guess, yeah, I guess I was just going to say that, and people will think that if they're don't get healed is because they don't believe, or they're not big enough believers. So I mean, believe whatever you want. That's just my opinion on the subject. Anyway. So like I was saying, Jim was of course, very smart and he knew that people would eventually catch on to what he was doing. And some of the regulars that would come to a show, he figured that if he just kept doing the same thing with the same people, every time that they were going to know something was up. And so he actually hired plants to put in the audience, like people that he had paid and so that he would have something different to show his audience, and one person had a broken leg and supposedly had to go to the hospital. And then the next day he brings her up and he heals her. They remove the cast and she's able to run down the aisle, her legs not broken anymore. But apparently though what had actually happened was that they had drugged that woman and they put a cast on her leg, and when she woke up, they told her that she had fallen and broke her leg. And so when they took off the cast and she could run, she was probably genuinely surprised because she had no recollection of what had actually happened. He also claimed to heal people with cancer and he would have someone come up on stage from the audience and, you know, he would do his thing, and then that person would leave, they would go to the bathroom and then they would come back saying that they had coughed up their cancer. And what they really had was gross, rotten chicken or meat in their hands, that you know, that had been allowed to rot for a couple of days so it was really gross. And he said, "I coughed up my cancer and now I'm cancer-free", and people fell for it. And they were amazed that, you know, Jim Jones could heal these people. It was stuff like this that led to at least one case that people know of, of a follower who actually did have cancer. And she actually did go into remission and she credited that to Jim. But when the cancer returned, she said that it came back because she didn't believe enough. And that if she just poured all of her energy into supporting Jim, that he would heal her again. So instead of getting treatment, getting help, she just believed in Jim Jones and she actually died of cancer. So Jim Jones became very popular with these healing speeches and rituals, and a large part of his audience were the poorest population in the communities. He didn't discriminate and so he had both black and white followers, and he wanted to abolish racism and he wanted to help the homeless and the needy. And so this is where that trend that we see in cults comes in. It starts out as something positive, something even revolutionary to try and help the people. And so at this point, people were ditching their regular churches and they were starting to attend Jim's ceremonies. And he became the minister of his own church at age 25 and he called it "The People's Temple." One of the interesting things about Jim Jones and "The People's Temple" is that there's actually a lot of footage out there, like real footage. He did a lot of recordings, tape recordings, and there's lots of video from the media and videos from other people out there in the cult. There's lots of real footage, when you watch documentaries, that's kind of alarming. There's video of him, he's almost treated like a rock star in these churches. Someone would announce, "Your Reverend Jim Jones", and then hundreds of people would be clapping and cheering as he walked down the aisle. So it was that kind of thing and he just loved the power. So Jim quickly realized that he was not going to get the notoriety that he wanted by staying in Indianapolis. And so he decided to move to California, but he didn't just go on his own. He convinced 140 people from his church to get up and move with him. And so in 1965, this big group headed to Redwood Valley California, and he recruits hundreds more people in California. And this is where he starts to move away from his religious teaching and starts to move into teachings about socialism. The definition from the Oxford Dictionary is, "a social organization, which advocates at the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." It's very similar to what you would probably see in a commune I'm guessing. And it's like a step in the direction of communism. So basically just everyone would be the same, have the same and no one would be better off than anyone else. And this is kind of the ideal society for a lot of people.

AJ: The Children of God cult, like, didn't the leader of that one studied socialism, right?

Katie: Yeah.

AJ: Similar.

Katie: It is yes, a lot of similar things happening, I think, between the two of them. And yeah, so in California, he does have the means to create almost a little commune type setup. And with that comes the expectation that the members of his church, The People's Temple will give up everything to be a part of his community. And he has many of his followers working hard constantly, and he even says," if you keep them poor, keep them tired, they'll never leave." He started to disapprove a family relationships and he would separate kids from their parents and then would ask that everyone call him Father and that they would call his wife, Marcy Mother. So yeah, very "Children of God" vibes happening. Jim had this facade that he was a family man, which wasn't true because he started having relationships with multiple women while he was married. And yeah, so obviously Jim needs more money as his following increases, and so in 1972, he gets a bunch of Greyhound buses and just goes into the cities recruiting people and literally picks up people in these busses and takes them back with him. He says, "Just get on my boss and I'll take you to the promised land." That's how he recruits a lot of people, and these people would donate money to help the cause. But of course he accepted everyone, so even people that didn't have anything to give were welcome as well. And so of course, all the while he is lying to everyone, he disapproves of sex because he says that everyone should just be using all of their energy for helping the greater good, yet, like I said, he has multiple mistresses. He wears sunglasses all the time because he took amphetamines and other drugs constantly, and so his eyes were always red and puffy, but he says he wore them because it was dangerous for people to look directly in his eyes because it would burn them because he had so much power from the holy spirit within him or something crazy like that. And yeah, of course, and there were all these fake healing rituals he had going on and he also had a church newsletter that he used to spread propaganda to all of his followers to make them wary of outside authority. So people became paranoid and scared with everything that he was preaching. And to kind of further his point that he is kind of a prophet, all of a sudden, while everyone's out one afternoon eating a meal, there are gunshots and he ends up bleeding. But then later in the day, he has no wounds. He has no blood. And he's told everyone that he's healed himself and people believed it. And they accepted that he was kind of greater than human and then they were on the move again. And again, the temple moved to San Francisco, which was a big city in 1972 to gather more people. And so it really is like this traveling commune, he's taking all the people with him. So all these people are following him around that kind of shows their devotion to him. So as we discussed in previous episodes, things always get worse and worse in a cult. Things typically start out very idealic and people are happy thinking that they are doing something good, and "The People's Temple" is no exception. Things slowly start to get worse, and Jim Jones had a very severe way of disciplining people. If people disobeyed or broke the rules or talked back to him, they would get severe beatings and even whippings. For entertainment, Jim orchestrated boxing matches that were not fairly matched and one opponent would be expected to just kind of stand there and take the beating from another person. And Jim watching people get beaten, I think this really shows how disturbed Jim really was. He would laugh as people did what he told them and allowed themselves just to get beat up basically. And also he would make people sign things, murder plans and confessions, or even blank pieces of paper, so that if anyone tried to leave he would kind of have this thing to blackmail them into staying, because he basically has a confession that they signed. And if people did want to leave, he took it very personal and he made it difficult for people to leave. He threatened people's lives by saying that they'd be tracked down and killed if they ever left. So the few people that actually did get away, they were never just, "yeah, sure, see you later", it was very much "we are going to chase you down." And people were scared when they did leave. Scared for their life. He had a group of his closest followers, and one day he sat them all down and he gave them all some wine to drink. After they all drank it, he said that they had all been poisoned and they had an hour to live, and one of the members who lived through all of this, his name was Tim Carter, he recalls that after Jim told him that he had poisoned them all, nobody got up and yelled at Jim, no one tried to get help. They all just kind of sat there and waited to die until he told them that, "oh, that was just a test to see how they would handle death. And Tim says that he kind of rationalized this as Jim teaching them about their own morality, and that's why he didn't kind of click in for him that something was wrong, very wrong with Jim and that he needed to get out of there. It was kind of, "Oh, this is just another kind of weird teaching from Jim". This should have been a red flag right there, but however, it was not. Jim Jones knows that his time is running out where he can continue to get away with all of these messed up things that he is doing, and he feels like he needs a place away from modern society, away from authorities and where he can achieve even greater power over the people. And some people that had actually escaped, were starting to talk to the media, and Jim was starting to get a little bit scared and paranoid. He had a little bit of political clout at the time in some areas, and so he knew if all this came out about what was going on, that it would make him look really bad and that his followers would maybe stop believing in him. And so at this point, this is where I think when most, a lot of people think about Jim Jones and "The People's Temple", they also think of Jonestown. And this is where Jim Jones makes the move to Guyana, South America in 1973. So it's basically like the middle of the jungle and he sends a few of his people, sends a crew over early to kind of clear cut a patch of the jungle and build a little commune, build some houses. They build like a little school and just anything that you'd need for a basic community. And that's how Jonestown was established, right in the middle of this jungle, and it was surrounded by 160 miles of jungle. There was no really workable roads. You either had to fly to get there or take a 19 hour boat ride along the river to get into Georgetown, which was the capital of Guyana and the biggest city around. And so this was very isolated from everything and everyone. He convinced a lot of his people to follow him out there. And he was recruiting people all along and by the end of it, he had over 900 people that agreed to leave everything behind and start over in his very basic community that he had built. So people were emptying their bank accounts, signing everything over to Jim as they didn't need any of that in their new community, their new life. Everyone believed that they were going to Guyana, going to Jonestown to a supposed paradise. And so they all hopped on a plane. A lot of them took their kids and that's where they went. And I mean, the people that you think, like what is up with these people, that they would do something like that. But a lot of these people just wanted a better life. And so during this time in America, that's when there was a lot of counterculture movements happening. It was like the hippie flower power kind of unconventional religious groups, and there was a lot of demand for alternative and more spiritual social order. And so this is exactly the kind of thing that "The People's Temple" was offering. And so a lot of people just thought that this was the best thing for them. You got to think, like at this time it was a lot of people that were very poor. They were oppressed. There's a lot of racism. So going somewhere where they were completely free of all that, and everybody was equal, you know, probably did seem like a paradise in their minds.

AJ: It's just kind of one of those things. It's like, it sounds too good to be true. It's like, where's the catch. There has to be a catch somewhere.

Katie: Yeah, definitely. And some of the people that survived or people that had traveled over there that I'll get into later had said that was actually very impressive, what they had done, basically in the jungle that they had clear cut and set up this community. They had a little school, there was clinics for when you got sick, like there was houses and lots of people in one house, but I mean, it was very impressive what they had made for what it was. I wouldn't say it was a paradise, but if it was, if you did want to get away from, you know, an abusive racist government, then yeah, it was probably very tempting. Like you just said, it was not a paradise. People got there and they realized they had to work very hard. There wasn't enough food for everyone and so people were always going hungry. They were tired. They were scared. Some people wanted to leave almost immediately, and Jim very much started to lose himself in Jonestown. And some people attribute that to the fact that he was out of the limelight. There wasn't media around all the time. He wasn't going out to political and social gatherings like he was used to. It was all the same people all the time so that's like the same 900 or so people so there wasn't anybody else new around that he could impress. And so he got heavy into drugs and he was passed out a lot of the time and he had set up a loudspeaker so that he could make announcements to the whole commune at the same time. And he would constantly just like talk and yell over this loudspeaker. He would have slurred speech, he wouldn't make any sense. Just making announcements.

AJ: It's kind of like the guy from last week, in Synanon. He would just had their own radios system that he would just kind of go on and just rant or talk about people he hated or whatever, so the people could just listen to, listen to him directly. So similar.

Katie: Yeah, and talked about stuff that probably wasn't even true anymore because they didn't have TV. They didn't have radio. They didn't have any contact with anybody on the outside. So he could say whatever he wanted and people had to take it for, you know, take his word on it. And a lot of them did. So the people that lived there, they could send out letters to their family, but they were of course monitored. And they were only allowed to say things like, "oh, we love Jonestown. We never want to leave", and that kind of thing. Punishments were very severe for people that even thought about leaving. A lot of them said that conspiring to leave was punishable by death. And some said that Jim told them directly that they were never getting out of there alive. So people, a lot of people just accepted that this was their life. And like I said, there really was nowhere to go. They were so isolated. It was miles to any other kind of civilization. Some of the punishments, he even had this thing that he called the box which was basically a hole in the ground with a covering on the top where he would stick people in as a punishment. So that's terrifying. Just think you're in this little hole with the top for hours, overnight, all day, however, he felt it was necessary. And yes, like I was saying before, even if people did want to leave, like they had no passport as well. So if they did get anywhere, they had no way to prove who they were. They didn't have any documentation to travel. So they were very much stuck there.

AJ: So how did they get in the first place because they moved all to this other country. Right?

Katie: Yeah. So they all, I mean, some of them didn't have passports, but they, Jim and his crew arranged for everyone to have a legal passport so they could all legally leave and then they just got their passports taken away once they got there. It wasn't like a weird thing that all these people had traveled without a passport, because they all did have one at one point, but they weren't allowed to keep it. Back in San Francisco, family members and exmembers of the cult, they formed a coalition of concerned relatives. That's what they called themselves. And these were the people that had attempted to contact their family members in Jonestown, but they weren't getting any response. Or they felt out with the response that they were getting was just very coerced or, you know, something was not right. And a woman named Grace had escaped, but she had made the decision to leave her son there because there was no way that she could get out with him. And her son was now in Jonestown and she was trying to get custody of him and there was an arrest warrant out for Jim by the Guyanese government. And Jim used this kind of to tell his followers, that the government was coming for their children, and so he had prepared them all to fight back and they were ready for days. They would all stand guard with weapons, any weapons that they could find like shovels and rakes, and some of them had guns. The guards had guns and they were all just kind of standing for six days straight waiting for anyone that tried to come and take their kids away. When really, it was just about this one custody battle for this one woman's son who she actually never got back. And somehow he eventually convinces the government or the authorities to drop his arrest order, and so that's that. Any thoughts at this point so far?

Stephanie: It's crazy how the cult that AJ did last week and the one I did the week before that, I just find it so crazy how they're so similar in how they recruit people and how people can just follow their lead. And I don't know, I just find it so crazy.

AJ: When you were describing the part where he would just basically go and be like, come with me in this van, and it's like, this is similar to mine last week too when they approached that woman on the beach and she ended up voluntarily just going with them on a trip to Northern California. It's so weird to think how similar so many of the tactics are between all of these cults and also the part where you mentioned that he told them all that he had poisoned them and they had an hour to live and they were just basically fine with it. They didn't freak out. They didn't do anything. To me, that's so crazy this total mind control. It's like, I don't want to get to the point where somebody could tell you that and you would just not hate them or not call the police or, you know what I mean? Like to be so content, is very bizarre.

Katie: Yeah. It's crazy. Like what were they thinking in that moment? For me, if you ever got out of that situation, thinking that you're going to die, you wouldn't put yourself in that situation again. So, and of course it's easy for me to say this, us looking back, but if someone ever did that to me, I'd be out of there. I wouldn't be around them to allow them to kind of do that kind of thing again, but that's just not where their head was at. And they took it as just a lesson, I guess.

AJ: That, and also I think too, like, yeah, we said it before in other episodes. We obviously have, none of us have been in a cult and I think it's weird. I'm sure those people, in other situations when they weren't around him or they weren't under his influence would have peaced out and gone the other way if somebody told them that, you know what I mean? Like one and done. But I also wonder too sometimes if it's like, if it's about the specific person, like, I wonder if those same people could follow with another leader, or if it was something about him specifically that drew them to him, or if it was just, you know, any of these cult leaders could go up to them and they would have the same effect on them. Like, I wonder if it's the people or it's that particular person at that particular time in their life or whatever, you know, and they kind of exploit it. I am curious. I would be curious to sort of know that.

Katie: A lot of the cult leaders have kind of the same characteristics where they're very charismatic. They're very, you know, delusional to the point where they can convince people that they're a prophet and they're always very religious. And so, but there probably is something about certain people that they do end up following. And especially for Jim Jones, I think because just of what he said he was standing for to kind of get rid of racism and things like that. That was kind of very important to people. But, I mean, I feel like a lot of people, anyone could have come up to them with similar values and they'd be like, yeah, let's go. And I think it was kind of sad to think that these people, their lives were so bad and they were treated by society so rough that any thing was kind of better than their lives now. And it means some of them in Jonestown kind of, this is better. I think a lot of them,, at least some of them thought that Jonestown was better than the life that they were living in America. So that is kind of another really sad aspect of it.

AJ: Yeah. And also I think too, it could kind of speak to, you know, us saying we've never been in that situation. So I guess maybe it's, you know, it's a privilege for us to not have had such horrible experiences that that seems enticing, you know, whereas some of these people, it's like all this stuff you're describing in this cult sounds horrible. And obviously, I guess they didn't know the extent of it where they joined it, but the little bits that they did know still seemed better than their current life situation.

Katie: Yeah. So, I mean, we can sit here and talk about it. In reality, I mean, we've never been oppressed. We've never been a victim of racism or lived in poverty or had chronic pain or a terminal illness. And so I think if you're in those situations and there's a little spark of hope somewhere, you are going to grab onto that. If there's nothing else that you think can help you. And so when you're in that desperate situation, you're much more vulnerable. And of course, people like Jim Jones know that, and that's why they prey on these kinds of people.

AJ: They might be more willing to overlook some of the red flags that come up where it's like, you know, it sounds so perfect and they hear what they want to hear. So any other sort of red flags in any other person might be like, you know, that might scare them off, with as these people that he's sort of recruiting kind of overlooked that

Katie: Yeah exactly. It's either I take a chance with something that could be better or I stay in this miserable situation, so you can kind of see why that it would be enticing and yeah, so that's really tragic.

Okay. So yeah, back to what I was saying, that the coalition for concerned relatives, they got a Congressman named Leo Ryan involved, and he was known for going out and investigating these kinds of situations, trying to expose injustices, like humanitarian efforts. And so he decided to take a trip to Jonestown because the people in this group, the concerned relatives were saying that their family members were being held against their will. They wanted to leave, but they couldn't. And so Congressman Ryan went out there and visited "The People's Temple. Him and a group of the concerned relatives, and even some of the people that had left the cult had decided to go on this trip with him out to Jonestown. And I think a lot of them are going out there to try and convince their relatives to come back with them. And congressmen Ryan was saying that anyone that wanted to come back was welcome to come back with him. So it was kind of like a rescue mission as well. So of course they told Jim Jones that they were coming out to visit and he refused at first, but eventually he kind of had to allow them in because everyone was kind of like," What are you hiding?, Why can't we come and see you? If this is all, everything it's cracked up to be, why can't we come and talk to you?" And eventually he was just like, "Fine, you guys can come." But he got all of his followers ready. Everyone rehearsed what they were to say if anybody asked them about their time in Jonestown and how they felt. And so there are videos of people going around asking these people what they feel about Jonestown and they are very much saying that they love it there. They never want to leave. It's the best thing that happened to them. And so it was that kind of thing happening. Very much like the "Children of God", like we talked about before. So yeah, everyone at first was saying that they didn't want to leave because you could tell that there was just that tension that if anyone did say anything, that they would be severely punished if they actually said they wanted to leave, but then they didn't get to. And so everyone was scared to even say anything, but a small group of people decided that they were going to tell Congressman Ryan that they wanted to leave. And so they all had to kind of convince each other and bolster each other up to say that they needed to do this. They had a right to leave and that their only chance was to really ask for his help and they had to rally together to get their courage. They had to do it in secret because they couldn't let too many people in on their plan. And when Ryan was around talking to people, of course, like I said, everyone was saying that they were happy, they didn't want to leave. And they are having a party that night for Ryan and all of the people that had come with him just to kind of show him how happy it was and what a great place it was to live. There was dancing and they were singing and there was a live show. There was music. Lots of food. So it looked like everyone was having a good time. And so that group had made a plan that a member named Vernon Gosney was going to hand the congressmen, a note saying that he wanted his help to help him get out of here. And he had listed a few other names as well, but he had to do it in secret so that of course, Jim wasn't aware. Congressman Ryan had come with members of the press. There's people from NBC news. He had come with other people, his assistant Jackie. And so he wasn't sure who Ryan even was, but he ended up passing the note to the wrong person, but it was a member of the crew that of course was going to help him anyway. But when he tried to pass it to him, the note fell to the floor and a little kid sees it and he calls him out and he's like, he's passing notes, cause that's obviously you're not allowed to do that. But Ryan had, because being a Congressman, he was very confident that he is untouchable because in most cases you can't kill a congressman, so he was very much, you know, nothing's going to happen to you while you're with me, you're safe. And so he didn't feel as scared as he should have and he even told out in the open that he'd gotten a note from people saying they wanted to leave. And he agreed that anyone that wanted to leave was coming with him. So this is when they kind of realized that it was true, that people will were being held against their will and that they were scared to admit that they wanted to leave. And so once that small group of people said they wanted to leave more people did start to come forward. There was a group of about like 15 people eventually that said they wanted to get out of there. Like the members of the cult, of course knew what kind of danger they were in, but Ryan and his group, maybe weren't so certain. And they were saying, "Everyone's going to get out of here in the morning." But they were like, "No, we actually have to get out of here now. It's very dangerous." And he's like, "Well, there's no plane, we can't." So they actually did have to stay the night and when they were trying to leave, that's when a huge monsoon came in and there was the, the road was all muddy and so the truck with all these people couldn't even leave right away. So it was like, they said, it was like a evil had like swept into Jonestown because they were actually leaving, but there was still something stopping them. And at this point things have gotten very chaotic. Once the word got out that people were leaving, people started whispering and people were, other people were scared to say anything. They knew that Jim was, you know, probably pissed. He was furious, but he was keeping his cool cause he didn't want, you know, members of the media to see how unhappy he was about this. A couple of members that had been with Jim from the beginning, that had been with him for decades, were saying that they wanted to leave. And so Jim was not happy. He was not having this. I mean, it's really sad. There's a video of all this. And some people want to leave, but their partners didn't want to leave, but they had kids and so they can see them yelling because partners that are staying or trying to keep the kids, the people that are trying to leave or trying to take the kids with them. So they're fighting about who's going to get the kids and yeah, it's just really sad and chaotic. And so, like I said, up to around 15, 20 people were preparing to leave. They all got on this truck and right before they were about to leave congressman Ryan was going to stay behind to try and recruit more people, to leave, to talk to them, to get the courage up, to say that they wanted to leave too, because he really wanted to get as many people as he could out of there that really wanted to leave. But a man named Don came up and attacked Ryan with a knife and he did stab him, but a group of people got him off of the congressmen and he wasn't fatally wounded, but he realized that, you know, I can't stay and try and gather more people, so he hopped on that truck too, and got the hell out of there. He kind of realized that maybe him being a Congressman and his political powers with the US really didn't mean anything to these people. They kind of had their own rules. And if they, you know, they obviously wanted him dead and they weren't scared to tell him that. They weren't scared to even attempt it. So he started to not feel as safe now as he originally thought that he was. Once they finally did get on the road, they're on the way to the airstrip, there's a man in the group named Larry Layton, and he hopped on the truck at the last minute. And others were very wary of him because he was one of Jones's most devoted followers. And so they're kind of like, "Look out for him because there's no way that he actually wants to leave." So everyone was very uncomfortable with this guy being there. So a few minutes after that truck full of people that wants to leave leaves the compound, a tractor with about six or seven people from Jonestown, all armed with big guns, they take off after the truck as well. And so when they get to the airstrip, they have two planes waiting for all the people and everyone's trying to get out of the truck cause they're all in the back of this big truck. They get out of the truck and they're starting to get organized, get on the plane and the tractor pulls up and just opens fire on the group. They shoot and kill some of the members that are trying to leave. They shoot some of the crew that is with congressman Ryan. Larry Layton starts shooting some of the people as well on the plane. And there's people lying on the ground dying. They're pretending to be dead. Others are fighting with Larry for their lives. And some people are hiding in the grass. Some people run into the jungle and Congressman Ryan actually is killed. One of the gunmen comes around for all the people that are laying around by the planes. He actually goes and shoots them all in the head just to make sure that they are dead. So anyone that was, if they were pretending they are now dead. And the only people that survived were people that actually could get up and run into the jungle.

AJ: But so what happened to those people who ran off into the jungle? Like, did they go back or did they find some other way to escape?

Katie: So, of course a lot of them waited until they figured out that the gunmen had left. Of course those guys just hopped back on their tractor and went back out to Jonestown. One guy who survived everything comes out, and by that time, the Guyanese officials had shown up and they had gone looking for people that may have survived. So they had gone out into the jungle and they did bring a lot of the people, it wasn't very many of them, I mean, I'm, I'm thinking like three or four people that escaped and they brought them back to safety. So some of those people actually did survive. They went to the hospital. Congressman Ryan's assistant, named Jackie, she was like a political figure as well, actually survived. So some of them did kind of escape very narrowly. During all of this, like hell breaking loose at the airstrip, hell is also breaking loose in Jonestown as Jim is now realizing that there's nothing he can do to kind of come back from this. He knows that he can't go back to America. He's going to be arrested there. He knows that the authorities are going to be investigating Jonestown very shortly, especially since, you know, they've just killed a US Congressman. So he makes this big announcement and he's kind of gathering everyone into this pavilion. And he's saying that the government's coming to attack them. They're going to take their kids and torture them. And he's saying that if they can't live in peace then they all have to die in peace and he's calling it revolutionary suicide. He's saying that somebody else shouldn't take their life. They should die in dignity and just take it themselves. A couple people are able to flee into the jungle. One elderly lady hid under her bed, but when you think about it, all these people are in this pavilion and there's armed guards with big guns all around it so they can't leave even if they wanted to, you know, they're very much trapped. And so, obviously Jim has been planning this. He's probably just been waiting for the right time and realized that this is it because they had lots and lots of Kool-Aid ready and with a mixture of cyanide and Valium and tranquilizers all in this big concoction. And, you know, he was saying that everybody needs to drink this. We're all going to do a big revolutionary suicide. Of course, there's lots of kids and they they're ready for this. They have syringes to pass around to people so they can squirt this mixture into the baby's mouths. And he's explaining that it's a very peaceful way to die, even though that's not true, like it is a very horrible way to die. And, you know, he's saying that the kids and the babies will drink the Kool-Aid first and then the parents will follow. And it's kind of crazy when you think about it, cause a lot of these people just kind of stood in line, waiting for their cup of Kool-Aid that they knew was going to kill them. A lot of people of course questioned it to like, why do the kids have to die? I feel like they deserve to live. And he's saying that because they killed the Congressman that the army is coming. Like I said, they're going to torture the kids and he's saying the kids do deserve to live, but they also deserve peace. And the only way they're going to get peace is if they die. And so can you think about this? A lot of parents willingly gave their kids this poisonous Kool-Aid, but a lot of people, you know, didn't want to die. They weren't accepting this. They didn't want to go that far with Jim Jones. They had actual syringes where they would hold people down and inject them with this cyanide Kool-Aid mixture. So Marcy Jones, who was Jim Jones' wife, she did not agree with killing all the kids so she was freaking out telling him to stop. She was protesting and he ordered that she be held down and she was held down until all the kids were dead. So she couldn't save any of them. It's reported that after the last child died, she just went and got her cup and drank it and killed herself. So, I mean, just think about this whole situation. When you look at, like they have videos and documentaries and pictures of the people just lined up. So just think about this. This is like over 900 people, around 300 kids, all just dead laid out around this compound. A lot of them got sedatives and tranquilizers, so they probably just very calmly laid down cause a lot of them, they're all like face down, just like in rows. And some of them are like holding hands, they're hugging each other. And so it was very much like accepting that this is what's happening right now. And it doesn't, it doesn't happen very quickly because Cyanide slowly suffocates you. It prevents the blood from absorbing oxygen, so you basically suffocate from the inside and it's not instant. It happens like over minutes, like 10 minutes even. So it's a very scary, painful way to die. So one of the survivors named Tim describes the scene that day and he's saying that people and kids are screaming, some are screaming because they're scared. Some are screaming because they're in pain and dying and you know, he can't get that image and that sound out of his head. Throughout all of this, Jim Jones is recording and he's talking to his followers. And the last tape that he makes is about 45 minutes long and it's called the death tape and you can get copies of that and you can listen to it on YouTube. I'm actually gonna send you guys the link to listen to one little short clip. And yeah, so this death tape was recording for 45 minutes and it was Jim Jones talking to the people, convincing them to drink the Kool-Aid and hear kids screaming in the background. Some people are talking and they're thanking Father for the opportunity and that they're proud to die with all of them. And in the beginning, it's very loud. You can hear people talking and screaming and there's just chatter. But then as it gets closer to the end, the very end it's completely silent, just this ominous music playing, and there's nobody talking, nobody screaming or anything. So it's very, very disturbing. Okay. Yeah. I'm just going to play a little clip from this 45 minute death tape, they call it, and just to be warned like it is very distressful in some parts.

Stephanie: Not sure. I want to hear this.

Jim Jones: " Be patient, be patient. Death is, I tell you, I don't care how many screams you hear. I don't care how many anguish cries, death is a million times preferable to 10 more days of this life. If you knew what was ahead of you, if you knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to be stepping over tonight. Death death, death is common for people. They take death in their stride. Let's be dignified, let's be dignified.. If you'll quit tell them they're dying. If you had done it like you were supposed to, to stop some of this nonsense. Adults, adults, I call on you to stop this nonsense. I call you to quit fighting your children, when all they're doing is going to a quiet rest. I call on you to stop this now if you have any respect at all. Are we black proud or what are we? This is nonsense. Don't carry this on anymore. You're fighting my children. All over and it's good. No, no sorrow that it's all over. I'm glad it's over. Hurry. Hurry my children. Hurry. All I did that sounds fun to handle the enemy. Hurry my children. Hurry the seniors out here that I'm concerned about. Hurry. I don't want to leave my seniors to this mess. Like quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. Pain now .No more pain. I said no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield dead at this moment. With all of the moments that he 'd come over and kill me if his sons wouldn't stop him. These, these are people who are peddlers of hate. All we're doing is laying down our life. We're not letting them take our life, we're laying down our life. Picking their lives. We just want peace."

Speaker 1: "Hello. I'd like to say is that my, um, my so-called parents is filled with so much hate and treachery. I think you, you people out here to think about how your relatives was and be glad about that the children are being laid to rest. And I'd like to say is I thank dad for making me strong to stand with you all and make me ready for it."

Jim Jones: "All you're doing, all you're doing is taking a drink to take, to go to sleep. That's what death is, sleep. Whatever. I'm tired of it all."

Speaker 2: "He could have ever done the most loving thing all of us could have done. And it's been a pleasure walking with all of you in this revolutionary struggle. No other way I would rather go then give my life for socialism, communism. I think that very, very much."

Stephanie: That's creepy.

Katie: So yeah, that's very, it really is difficult to listen to. You can listen to the whole thing on YouTube if you want. But I think that clip kind of shows you, it kind of brings everything to reality. Like these are real people. That's Jim Jones' voice, convincing them, telling them, you know, keep your emotions down. You're just going to sleep, like that kind of thing. So it's very, very disturbing and yeah, it's hard to listen to.

AJ: That was so creepy. It was so .Creepy the way he's talking, it sounds very much, I'm not equating the two things, but it sounds very much like it's a church service. Like he's talking like a pastor talks to like the church, right? Like just the way that you see like those evangelists on TV, like that's kind of the way he's, he's talking and you can, the fact that you can hear the children in the background crying. It's so eerie. And then the music playing at the end like that. I had no idea that this tape existed of this. I didn't know there was like actual footage of this happening.

Stephanie: That's what I can't get into my mind right now is all I could hear the children in the background. I wasn't really listening to him talking. I was like, all I could hear was the children in the background. And then him saying, keep the children quiet or something like that. Like tell them to go quicker.

AJ: Yeah, it's so crazy. It's like, we're not letting them take our lives, we're laying down our lives. Like it's, it was so weird. And who was that woman talking, like that woman who comes in and just starts preaching to everyone too?.

Katie: Yeah, I think it just, a lot of the followers is kind of like their last word that they want to say that they're thankful to Father. It's very, it is very disturbing. It's very sad. And yeah, like the way he talks.

Stephanie: Thankful for what?

Katie: That he...

Stephanie: Killing him?

Katie: I think it was.

AJ: Did them a favor. Don't they like, they think that he's saving them from this horrible fate of these people who are gonna come and kill all their children or something.

Katie: Yeah. And it's like the revolution that he started with this new, like the Jonestown whole thing. They're thankful for that. And that they're all going to die together in this revolutionary suicide. We'll never know the actual numbers of who committed suicide willingly and who was kind of forced and murdered, cause a lot of them did get injected against their will. And so that's, it's just terrifying to think of, as when you listen to that, you know, like you can actually like the reality of it comes, you know, flooding into your brain.

AJ: We'll link the full thing in the show notes for anyone who wants to hear the full 45 minutes.

Katie: And yeah, so, like I said, over 900 people, I think it's the exact number is 918 people, including 300 kids drank the cyanide Kool-Aid that day, November 18th, 1978. And all of them died. When authorities found them, they were all lined up, scattered around the pavilion. A lot were holding hands or embracing each other. So it's just a horrific scene. And one thing to note, Jim Jones likely seeing how awful it actually was to die that way he died of a bullet to the brain and people are even saying that he didn't even shoot himself, he had to get somebody else to do it for him. So...

AJ: Coward.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Katie: Oh yeah. Definitely. At least he went down with the ship with everybody, but I mean, you know, he couldn't bear to go the way that he forced them to. So that's very disturbing as well. Even today, when you hear, I don't know if you guys hear the term, like don't drink the Kool-Aid. Where it's like, people are saying you don't follow the crowd, don't listen to the leader. That's where that came from. This Jim Jones massacre. And so, yeah, that's the story of Jim Jones.

AJ: I remember at the beginning of this, I said, I might learn something new and I definitely did. I didn't know there was like actual, real life recording of not just of him, but of the actual moment when he's killing all these people or they're killing themselves. And also the fact that it's 45 minutes long and it's, it's crazy. And also like, I guess in a way, like, I mean, even though it's horrific that it's on tape, like in a way maybe it's good that it was recorded because maybe people would never really understand how horrifying or horrible it was. I mean, I guess just saying it, you can get that sense, but you don't really quite understand. Like, I don't know. I feel like when you were talking about it, like yeah, it was one thing, but to actually hear it for yourself is it makes it all the more real.

Katie: Yeah. It doesn't hit you until you can actually hear the real people's voices and the screams. It's what really gets me.

Stephanie: Yeah. I only got like two minutes into that section, and I couldn't listen to it anymore. I don't know how anyone could sit there for 45 minutes and listen to that.

AJ: I don't know. I might, I'm very intrigued but...

Stephanie: I am too but I couldn't listen to more than two minutes of it. I don't think I can make it 45 minutes, but I am intrigued to see how it's like the whole thing.

Katie: Yeah. It's disturbing. And like I said, there is lots of actual footage of Jim Jones and their followers out in Jonestown and even before that, in like his, when he's preaching. There's lots of recordings out there. So if you ever want to go like a deep dive into Jim Jones, then it's all out there and it's very disturbing. So...

AJ: Something else I learned was I thought, for some reason I thought the Jonestown cult was longer ago. I thought it was like the 1800's or like the early 1900's. I didn't know it was like the sixties and seventies, because I always thought it was sort of regarded as one of like the first cults, but I feel like the Charles Manson stuff was before this, cause that was like the sixties, I feel, so like this happened in 78. They all killed themselves and like that tape and stuff. But for some reason I had in my mind that like, it was the initial cult to like the first one on record or something, but obviously not.

Katie: No, it definitely wasn't the earliest.

Stephanie: I thought, to be honest with you, I thought Jim Jones was still alive and I thought he was in prison. But apparently I'm totally wrong.

Katie: No, he killed himself on that day too or had somebody kill him.

AJ: You know, some of these people, you mentioned that, I can't remember what his name was, but somebody survived it, and I also saw like, in the related videos of that YouTube video I watched, some other survivors talking. So how did they survive? Did they just refuse to take the Kool-Aid or did they leave before maybe that happened?

Katie: In the documentaries, it kind of shows he's making this one last, I think the code is like "White Night" or something is like the code that he's saying, like, that must mean like emergency or something. He's like "White Night, White Night" over the big loud speaker, and so that brings everybody into this pavilion place. And that's where they have everything set up and the guards are all around. They can't leave. Once they get there, they're kind of stuck. But people that did escape, some people that did make it out into the jungle, I think maybe before all this happened, they kind of knew shit was going down and they just ran for it, into the jungle.

AJ: Okay. So they weren't, they weren't survivors of that actual day in that pavilion?

Katie: Well, no, not in the pavilion. Some of them knew like something was going down and they were like, we have, it's a 30 mile walk to the closest little town. And so they just kind of left. There's actually one, I think one survivor that was in the pavilion and he actually managed to escape while the guards were preoccupied with something else that was going on and he managed to run. So that might be the only survivor from the pavilion itself. Like I said, there was one woman that hid her under her bed the entire time. And then when she finally emerged, everybody was dead. And one of the elite, which was the closest one to Jim, a couple of members took him aside or somebody took him aside and they gave him this big suitcase of money and it was like, "Go bring this to the Russian government, and you can keep as much as you need and just go have a good life," and he was like," okay, I'm getting out of here." And that's how he survived because they kind of let him do this one last mission. But they were like, if they catch you, then you have to kill yourself. He's like," okay," but he just left. So that's how he kind of got out. And they interviewed these people in the documentary called "Jonestown, Terror in the Jungle." So that's where a lot of these people and even Jim's sons survived it as well. So there's a couple of them that are interviewed in this as well. They were in Georgetown when this all went down and so they survived. But yeah, just a handful of people get out of there out of the, out of the over 900 people. That's a massive amount of people to just a lot of them just lined up to drink the Kool-Aid and a lot of them were murdered. So very, very scary.

AJ: That's so crazy. It's so crazy. It's even crazier than I even remembered or the little bit I knew, I didn't even know the extent of it.

Stephanie: Yeah. I thought it was like a mass suicide, which technically it is.

AJ: Well technically it is.

Stephanie: They died, but he didn't actually physically kill them himself.

Katie: Yeah. A lot of people say it was obviously, it was a mass suicide. Most people say it was just mass murder because these people didn't have a choice. They had to drink the Kool-Aid or they were going to be injected or shot. So it was murder in that way. But some people are saying that some people did it willingly.

Stephanie: You can call it suicide, call it murder. It still was an awful thing to happen. And I'm disgusted by it, to be honest.

AJ: Yeah. I mean, I guess technically it's murder. I mean, he's forcing them to do it. They had no way out, like they couldn't really not do it, I feel, so it's murder even though he didn't technically administer it.

Katie: Well, yeah, I think it is murder even for the people that did it "willingly" because a lot of them were convinced that it was either this or they'd have to go back to a life that was worse than death. So he convinced them of that. So, and it's sad that they believe that a lot of them came from a really bad situation. So them thinking they have to go back there is worse is very sad to start with. So.

AJ: Wow, that tape is whack. That's crazy. I'm still like, yeah.

Katie: Yeah. When I discovered that, it took me a little while to recover after listening.

Stephanie: Did you listen to the whole thing?

Katie: No, I couldn't listen to it. I kind of like skipped around, cause I mean, yeah, it's just, you would never be able, I don't think you could just sit there for 45 minutes straight and listen to it. It's just too distressful.

AJ: I feel, I mean, I felt like you kind of get the gist. Like I listened to a couple of minutes and I get the gist of what the whole thing is, even though I am intrigued.

Stephanie: Yeah. I mean, I got a minute and a half in and I'm like, yeah, this is not for me to know.

Katie: I mean, yeah, it is Jim talking that preachy voice, telling everyone to calm down and like, they're just going to go to sleep and, you know, don't get too wound up about it. And I think that's why he knew people were going to react like that and that's why there was like the sedatives and tranquilizers mixed in so that they probably did drink it and were calm and just kind of like laid down to die rather than flip the hell out. Very disturbing, very sad. But it is an iconic cult that you kind of have to talk about if you're going to discuss cults. Like the ultimate deadly cult to this day. So, I hope no one ever tops it, cause I mean, that's bad as it is, so let's just leave it, like that's the worst worst cult..

AJ: Wow. Yeah.

Katie: So that's it for this episode, join us next week for part four of our cult miniseries. This will be our final episode of the mini series. And we'll see you next week. You can find us on all the social medias on Facebook @ crime family podcast, Instagram @crimefamilypodcast , Twitter @crimefamilypod1, and you can email us crimefamilypodcast@gmail.com and check out our website crimefamilypodcast.ca. You can even leave us a voicemail if you want to hear your voice on the podcast, perhaps. So see you next time. Bye everyone.

Stephanie: Bye.

AJ: Bye.