The Jonestown Massacre

Join Kelli as she explores the worst mass-murder suicide in history. Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple cult, brought more than 900 of his followers to a remote agricultural compound in the Guyanese jungle. As he started to lose control of his followers, and with the government investigating allegations of abuse, he directed (and in some cases forced) them to drink a cyanide-laced punch. In one day, 918 people were killed.

Intro and Outro music credit: Nedric

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Sources referenced:

The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple by Jeff Guinn
Jonestown: Paradise Lost (documentary)

Transcript

The Jonestown Massacre

Intro
Welcome to A Popular History of Unpopular Things, a podcast that makes history more fun and accessible. My kind of history is the unpopular stuff - disease, death, and destruction. I like learning about all things bloody, gross, mysterious, and weird. Today, we’re going a bit heavy on the death. We’re going to learn about the biggest mass murder-suicide in history.

A quick trigger warning for this episode - there are mentions of suicide, murder, and generalized violence. I mean, assume violence for most of my podcast, but today’s episode may be particularly triggering.

So have you ever heard the phrase “drink the Kool-Aid?” Well, for those of you who haven’t, it’s an idiom that means to buy into an idea or a system. It gets thrown around a lot, but it’s usually meant as a negative thing. Here’s an example. Let’s say your friend started to get super involved in conspiracy theories, like believing that we never landed on the moon back in 1969. They get really excited about showing you quote-unquote “proof” about how it was all government lies, it was all made up, it was filmed in a Hollywood studio, etc., etc. They end up becoming a full-blown conspiracy theorist. You might say that your friend has drank the Kool-Aid; they’ve bought into this idea and thrown themselves wholeheartedly at it.

Have you ever wondered where this phrase came from?

Well, it first appeared in 1968 - Author Tom Wolfe wrote a book called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” which was all about Ken Kesey and his bus full of drugged-up pranksters. Kesey and his followers would throw parties where they would lace Kool-Aid with LSD, then settle in for a psychedelic experience. And if the name Ken Kesey sounds a bit familiar, you might recognize one of his most famous books - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - which was turned into a brilliant film in 1975 starring Jack Nicholson.

So. In The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ken Kesey unsuccessfully tries to stop someone with mental illness from “drinking the Kool-Aid,” literally in this case, because they would likely have had a bad psychedelic experience. So there you go. Drinking the Kool-aid.

And while Ken Kesey, the birth of the Hippie movement, and his Magical Mystery Tour bus are fascinating, that’s not why we’re here today.

The phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” is most associated with the events that happened on November 18th, 1978, when 918 people died in a mass murder-suicide in Guyana. 918 people.

So in today’s episode, I want to go over the history of the Jonestown Massacre. First I’ll spend a decent chunk of time introducing you to Jim Jones, the cult leader responsible for this horrible act, and his church-turned-cult. We’ll understand how he amassed a following, what he wanted to do with it, and how that eventually led to over 900 people dying in Guyana, a South American country north of Brazil boarding the Caribbean Sea. Let’s get started.

Jim Jones’ Childhood
Jim Jones grew up in a small town in Indiana. From a young age, Jones took a liking to religion - his first experiences were in the Nazarene Church. But before long he wanted to check out the other denominations in town - Methodists, Quakers, and the Disciples of Christ among others. He joined them all, getting baptized in the ones that required it. He would hop from Church to Church to catch multiple services each Sunday.

Now one thing that is clear from his childhood, which will be super relevant to our story, is that he loved ordering people around. And he would do things to get attention from a large audience, like giving funeral services to roadkill. When WWII broke out, Jim had his younger cousins pretend to be the Nazis, when everyone else took the side of the Allied Powers. He would make them practice goose-stepping, you know, that super exaggerated walk where the legs swing up to an almost 90 degree angle. If they messed up, he’d hit them on the back of the legs with a stick. He liked controlling people in this way - stories to reel them in, then fear and discipline to keep them in line.

Curiously, from a young age Jim was fascinated by Hitler and the Nazis. He was intrigued by Hitler’s determination to take power and liked how his speeches were full of charisma. He was interested in how Hitler had millions of followers that were afraid of him and willing to do anything he said. As Jeff Guinn writes in his book, The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and the People’s Temple, quote, “when Hitler committed suicide in April 1945, thwarting enemies who sought to capture and humiliate him, [Jim Jones] was impressed.” End quote. This book is a fascinating and very well-researched history, by the way, so I’ll link it in the podcast description. Now considering how this tale ends, with a mass murder-suicide, it’s really interesting to know that Jim Jones admired Hitler’s suicide in the face of capture. He ended up doing the exact same thing but forced over 900 people to go out with him.

So we’re dealing with someone who is keen on religion and likes to control people. Jim was able to marry those two things together when a Pentecostal Church opened up in town.

Now let me give you some quick context on the Pentecostal Church. Something that sets the Pentecostal Church apart from other Christian denominations is that it encourages its followers to speak in tongues.

So here’s a fun new vocab word for you - glossolalia. It means “speaking in tongues.” Those speaking in tongues will say things that sorta sound like speech. It doesn’t actually have to be words, though. For Pentecostalists, speaking in tongues is a way to commune with God.

So for fun, I went searching for a video on Pentecostalists speaking in tongues. After falling down THAT rabbit hole for far too long, I found one that shows a bunch of kids at a service. They’ve all got their hands up in the air, saying a prayer. Then a woman comes in and tells the kids, and I’m quoting from the video here, “If you don’t open your mouth, the Holy Spirit can’t talk. Alright, now I want everyone to raise your hands and we’re gonna pray in tongues. Hallelujah, let’s do it!” And then she devolves into not-English words just flowing out of her mouth. If you’ve never seen it before… iiiiit’s something else.

Pentecostalists believe that speaking in tongues like this is a divine language unknown to us. Some will drop to the floor and writhe around, feeling the divine spirit within them. As Jeff Guinn writes in his book, quote,
“People in [Jones’ town] have never seen anything like it, folks actually dropping down on the floor, rolling around, babbling gibberish. It was wonderful entertainment.” End quote.

Pentecostalists also practice divine healing, which is probably a bit easier to figure out from the name alone. It’s also practiced by way more people than speaking in tongues is. With divine healing, the preacher will pray and gesture, sometimes touch, parts that need to be healed. Through them, the divine will heal the afflicted.

This is much more common than you might think. Has anyone ever asked you to pray for someone to get better? Yeah. That’s a form of divine healing. 

Now back to Jim Jones. Jim clearly took to the Pentecostal Church. He would often attend services and would marvel at how the preacher would jump around, yell, howl, and dance. It was much more exciting than normal church services. He was probably equally as impressed at how the people responded to their preacher and did what he was doing - now that was power. Through his words and actions alone, the preacher commanded his flock. That’s something Jim Jones had sought to do for his entire childhood.

An interesting side to Jim - unlike many others in Indiana in the post-war 40s, he was not racist. He would go to the local “city,” the slightly larger town of Richmond, and preach to Black workers dealing with racism. He would say things like “everyone is equal in God’s eyes” and “it’s wrong to look down on someone for the color of their skin.” And like, yeah. Duh. We live in 2023. But for his time, this was almost… revolutionary. And he was very genuine in these beliefs. Despite all the horrible things he ended up doing, he did set out with the intention to help people and promote equality.

In his senior year of HS, Jim Jones joined the Christian Fellowship Youth at his school, where they would debate how to live Christian lives. They all agreed that the best way to practice Christianity was to mandate compassion and equality for all. They called it Christian communism - each according to ability, each according to need. They didn’t share this with anyone else, though, because of the times.

It was the beginning of the Cold War. For those of you who slept through this part of social studies, the anti-Communist sentiment was everywhere. Perhaps Joseph McCarthy rings a bell? Hollywood blacklists? Anyone suspected of being a communist was shunned and sometimes put on trial. So for a bunch of teenage Christians in Middle America, telling people they advocated for communism would not have gone over well. They didn’t believe governments should take over and tell people what they had to do for everyone’s benefit. They just wanted a Christian life where people shared amongst themselves and were considered equals.

During HS, Jim Jones met his future wife, Marceline. They both worked at the local hospital and had similar dreams of Christian service. Jim wooed Marceline and the two were married on June 12, 1949. They moved around a bit as Jim went to college and tried to figure out his future career, but ultimately they ended up in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis
Over time, Jim’s beliefs about equality and peace only deepened. He told Marceline that he didn’t believe in her God, because a loving God wouldn’t let his people be so miserable. Jim’s religious beliefs had, by this point, fully merged with his socialist ideals.

In Indianapolis, Jim would attend gatherings of communists and communist sympathizers. He’d bring Marceline along, too, where she was exposed to ideas like how the government was actually responsible for people’s poverty. These ideas were new to her, and they intrigued her. But Jim had already felt this way; he wasn’t learning anything new. He attended the meetings to study the speakers - he paid attention to how they spoke, their mannerisms, the way they got the crowd to buy into these radical ideas. Much like his childhood fascination with Hitler, and how he was swayed by the Pentecostal preachers speaking in tongues, Jim Jones was taken in by how well-spoken these communists were. He continued to attend these gatherings.

Around this time, Marceline was encouraging Jim to attend her Methodist Church. They had just put out a new missive pushing for equality between all races, getting rid of poverty, free speech, prison reform… all the things that Jim Jones believed in. He saw in this Methodist Church what he had already experienced in himself - religion infused with what he considered socialist ideals. He decided to become a Methodist minister.

While working on this new career path, he would bring Marceline to Black churches. He wanted to show her how the people jumped, danced, called out, and genuinely enjoyed being in church. It was far removed from the stuffy white churches that she was used to. These churches were also much more welcoming - Jim Jones and his family were never shunned or given the side eye for being the only white family there. They were accepted. Jim made friends with just about everyone.

When Jim was eventually hired on as a student pastor for a Methodist Church, he used the pulpit to preach his ideas about equality and those elements of what he and his high school friends called Christian Communism. Unfortunately for him, the Methodist preachers didn’t like him rocking the boat. Services were too strict for his liking compared to the Pentecostal ones of his childhood, or the more predominantly African-American church services he frequented on the weekends.

So instead, he was drawn to the revival circuits, where preachers would go about the country relating their personal experiences with God and religion. Jones watched these men and learned from them about what worked and what didn’t work in getting people to listen and also fork over their money. He also learned how to do divine healings. He reflected on this, saying, quote,
“If these sons of bitches can do it, then I can do it too. And I tried my first act of healing. I don’t remember how. Didn’t work out too well. But I kept watching those healers… I thought that there must be a way that you could do this for good, that you can get the crowd, get some money, and do some good with it.” 

He eventually got very good at this revival-circuit style preaching. People heard all about Jim Jones and would start coming out to see him. Before long, he had gathered a respectable following. He put on a good show. He left the Methodist Church for good and instead pursued his own Church, one that was racially integrated and espoused his socialist ideas.

He called it Community Unity.

It was relatively successful - he had amassed a small but loyal following and was making a difference - one elderly black woman was having trouble getting the electric company to turn on her lights, so with his congregation one Sunday he wrote a letter and sent it in on her behalf - the company came and fixed the lights. People were happy that he wasn’t just talk - he was doing things to actually help people. But Jim Jones wanted more, and he dreamed bigger than his small church in Indianapolis.

Jim Jones wanted power over people, and he wanted a following, so he could push his socialist agenda and have people live life the way he envisioned. Building up his new church was the best way for him to do that.

So he went back into the revival circuit, but this time as a preacher on his own accord. He brought in a lot more money this way - money he planned to use to get a bigger building for his Community Unity church. He was pretty successful. Marceline boasts that one night, over 1000 people stayed to listen to Jim Jones on the circuit. He started to grow his membership, having to perform increasingly bombastic healings to assure people that he had real power and that they should follow him. He likely used plants among the crowd - some of his more devout followers who already believed in him, and didn’t mind lying to everyone else when Jones magically healed them of cancer or blindness.

He eventually purchased a larger space for his Church, and he renamed it - it was briefly known as the Wings of Deliverance, but he settled on Peoples Temple. No apostrophe in peoples, by the way, because an apostrophe signifies ownership. There was no ownership in his view of a socialist world.

He continued to build the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, expanding his business dealings so he could bring in more money. For example, he opened up what he called The Free Restaurant, where anyone could go and get a free meal, not just the poor or homeless. He would also collect and distribute secondhand clothes there. He would take out radio ads telling Indianapolis all about it, encouraging them to donate by reminding them that the Bible tells them to feed the hungry and clothe the naked. It worked, and the Peoples Temple continued to grow, both in size and reputation. But Jim Jones still wanted more.

He had heard about a preacher named Father Divine who believed he was God. Father Divine lived in a mansion in Philadelphia, and Jim Jones went to visit and learn. What he saw intrigued him - Father Divine had a staff of women worshipping him. He built communal housing where people lived together and shared everything. He had plans to build a farm to feed his followers so they’d be self-sustaining. This gave Jim Jones ideas.

When Jones returned to his congregation, he encouraged his followers to call him Father the way that Father Divine’s followers did for him.  He also learned from Father Divine that having enemies, whether real or imagined, was a good way to recruit and keep followers - there needed to be an us vs. them dynamic. And though the Peoples Temple didn’t really have any enemies at this point, much of Jim Jones’ black congregation certainly did - they were living in 1950s America. Jim Jones would later use this to his advantage.

Now one of Jim’s biggest character flaws was his paranoia. Jim was super paranoid about people leaving the Temple. He worked hard to build bonds with his followers so they wouldn’t leave him. He expected his congregation to attend every Sunday service, show up to extracurriculars, do volunteer work, and follow his socialist principles… they had to live their lives according to Jim Jones.

Jones would also encourage them to watch each other and report any transgressions. Members who didn’t follow his expectations were put through “corrective fellowship” sessions where they would be criticized by other members of the church. He used embarrassment and shame to keep them loyal and submissive.

Now if people left the Temple, Jim Jones would track them down and hound them with letters, phone calls, and random visits. He would harass people. Jones would tell them that it wasn’t just what he wanted, but what God wanted. Jeff Guinn puts it best in his book - “to challenge Jim Jones was to challenge the Lord, and God would respond accordingly.”

It also didn’t help that rival churches in Indianapolis were critical of Jones and his methods. They said he spoke too much about socialism, and not enough about Jesus. Jones was infuriated by this; he didn’t like ANYONE questioning his methods. He had to be in control, and his word was gospel. He would rail against these other churches in his sermons - remember, it’s us vs. them.

Soon enough, Jim Jones started claiming that people were trying to assassinate him for his beliefs on socialism and integration. He even faked a shooting at his house one time to build this narrative. He liked scaring his congregation - fear was a powerful motivator, and something he learned from an early age would keep people in line.

By the end of 1961, he was telling his congregation about a vision he had about nuclear holocaust - that they would soon be under attack, and Indianapolis and everyone there would be killed. Remember, dear listeners, that this all happening during the Cold War when a potential nuclear war was a legitimate fear. Jim Jones played on this fear to get what he wanted. And what he wanted was to move the Peoples Temple out of Indianapolis.

So although he was working to improve and grow his church, and also integrate the city, he decided that he wanted to move his congregation. It was a strange move, considering the effort he had put in to growing the Peoples Temple. But I think he wanted a greater challenge - he wanted to bring his ideas to a bigger and wider audience, and he felt like he could do that elsewhere. But at the same time he also wanted a display of loyalty - if his flock willingly left Indianapolis with him, it would prove they were loyal. Above all things, Jim Jones wanted to be in control. He could control his people if he took them far away from their families and the social systems they operated in.

So Jim Jones went about searching for a new home for his Church. Somewhere away from prying eyes, perhaps outside the US. He traveled to many places looking for a new home but found that Guyana might be the best place. It just wasn’t the right time yet.

Oh, quick tangent here - you know I love my tangents! Have you guys ever read the book The Mosquito Coast, or maybe seen the film by the same name? It stars Harrison Ford as a dad who is certain that nuclear war is happening, and America is doomed, and he needs to get his family out of the US before it all explodes. He takes them to a remote corner in the Honduran rainforest - the province of Mosquitia. It’s an empty, poverty-stricken, and desolate place. But the Dad loves it and sets about getting locals to follow him and help him build his dream property. I think it was also a two-season series on Apple+, but I heard that didn’t do too well and got canceled.

So anyway, this is exactly what Jim Jones did. Built himself a private, isolated little community in the middle of the jungle to escape the US and the imagined enemies there. I bet the author of that book, written several years after the Jonestown mass murder-suicide, was heavily influenced by Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple. Huh.

Anyways, back to the story.

I’m skipping over a bit of Jim Jones’ escapades in trying to find a suitable home for the Peoples Temple. He spent a good chunk of time, just about two years actually, trying to make Brazil work, as he had once read in a magazine that Belo Horizonte, Brazil, was a top ten place to survive a nuclear holocaust. But Brazil didn’t end up working out for various reasons, chief among them the fact that Jim Jones wasn’t with his congregation back in Indianapolis. Without Jones’ socialist rhetoric or his mystical healing presence, the church started to lose members and influence. Jones wasn’t around to guilt them or coerce them into staying. So eventually Jones has to return home to sort things out. It was right after JFK’s assassination in 1963, so he used that event to justify his return - America was clearly falling apart, and the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis needed him. He couldn’t return as a failure - he needed to return as a hero.

But when Jones returned, he noticed that the church he had more or less abandoned for two years was falling apart, and his usual techniques weren’t working in bringing people back. Enthusiasm for the Peoples Temple was dying off. Jim Jones was losing his power, and also his illusion of power - fewer people showed up to his Sunday services, which made him look bad.

So, he had to make even bigger waves to intrigue people again. He started to claim that he was God. No, really. He dismissed the idea that God is a being in the heavens looking down on Earth - instead, God was a mind or spirit that could choose a host here on Earth through which he could send his blessings. You already know that Jim Jones claimed to be that host.

Now did he actually see himself as God’s vessel on Earth, or was he making this up to control people? Who knows. I imagine a bit of both.

But Jim Jones knew that his power over Indianapolis was fading, so he decided to pick up and move out West to California. He thought that if he could relocate, he could gain new social and political influence. He would bring his loyal followers with him to help get the process started - at that point, there were about 100 to 150 left.

After some reconnaissance, he settled on Ukiah in Northern California in the Redwood Valley. He began moving things over in 1965.

California, Here We Come
Using fear, coercion, guilt trips, and emotional manipulation, Jim Jones managed to convince 90 people to follow him West. Once he established the church there, another 50 or so joined him.

But not long after they relocated, Jim Jones realized that the people in and around Ukiah were not excited to have them there. Small-town racism was strong, and the people were not happy about Jim Jones swanning in with his socialist ideals and integrationist beliefs. To keep his people from moving back to what was a much more comfortable life in Indianapolis, he resumed his fear-mongering about imminent nuclear war and how they would die if they returned. Jim Jones was realizing that the move to California might have been a mistake. He quietly began sending his most loyal followers out on reconnaissance missions to find another new home.

But in the meantime, Jim Jones worked to win over the locals. He made donations to charities, organized meetings with elected officials, and put out good press in the local newspapers. This is where Jim Jones was at his best - since childhood, he had always known how to win people over with praise, appreciation, and an uncanny ability to mirror their own personalities, which made his targets like him even more. It was how he was able to get so many people under his control.

Jones grew a new follower base using his old tricks from the circuit days of seemingly performing miracles. In reality, he was orchestrating things to make it look like he had the divine spirit within him. But it worked anyway, and membership steadily grew. The Peoples Temple did outreach missions to cities in California where there were more instances of racism, but also a larger Black audience - remember, Jones had built his church up by connecting with Black communities that suffered from the racism of white America.

Just like he did in growing his first Church, Community Unity, he led exciting sermons that drew people in, then helped them with their daily problems. Temple members helped new prospective members with annoying paperwork, or getting welfare and disability, or helping them find nursing homes for their aging parents. They wrote letters like they did back in Indianapolis. With these actions, the new California-based Peoples Temple started to grow its black population again.

Small-town Ukiah was less than thrilled at this new influx of people, particularly the growing Black congregation, but Jim Jones used that to his advantage - it was once again us vs. them. The more people hated on Jim Jones and harassed its members, the more the man could capitalize on this fear to bring his people closer together. By 1969, four years after they arrived, the Peoples Temple had been reborn anew - the influx of new members meant more money, with which Jim Jones built housing and donated to charities, thus increasing his membership even more. Things were looking up.

But as he continued to grow the Peoples Temple, his paranoia grew as well. His other moral failings started to come out as well. He ended up gaslighting his wife by insinuating that she couldn’t satisfy him anymore, so he took a lover. A younger lover. And he worked his wife so that she agreed with it and apologized to him for not satisfying him enough. Ugh. There ended up being more and more women, and some men. So many that he asked a follower to schedule them so he knew which person he’d be sleeping with each night. What a scumbag. At least one girl was underaged. He would frame sex as something good for them - he was helping them, empowering them. In reality, he was using it as a form of power over people. He was using it for control.

He also started putting his socialist values into practice with his congregation. Anything they had that he considered an excess, like TVs, furniture, and jewelry, was to be given to the Peoples Temple. They would be sold at Temple-run second-hand stores, and any profits belonged to Jim Jones. Any extra pennies they had over what they needed were expected to be given to the Church.

Soon enough, there were Temple churches in other cities - there were branches in LA, in San Francisco, Bakersfield, Sacramento, Santa Rosa, and Fresno. For years, throughout the 70s, Jim Jones was doing circuits again, bringing in more and more members, and raising tons of money. He resumed doing divine healings while preaching equality and socialist principles like helping each other out. He used all his public speaking skills and charisma to win over his audiences, and he drew hundreds of people out to see him at each event.

Despite the growing number of followers, he had tight control over them, making them live a socialist life where everyone shared equally - they gave everything they had to the Peoples Temple, and the Temple in return would give them a home, usually in communal housing, a job, and whatever they needed to live. Food was simple - oatmeal, peanut butter sandwiches, vegetables… there was no excess, there were no luxuries.

As the Temple grew, Jones started to emphasize security. It was that paranoia again, coupled with his desire to have control. He was constantly warning people of attacks on them because of their socialist beliefs; remember, this was his way of scaring them into submission. He would use some of his more trusted members to be security - they were always around, always watching. And soon enough they’d be armed.

People started to lose their time as well as their money and possessions. Jones would tell them that they needed to spend all their free time furthering the cause. They should do what Jim Jones and the Temple told them to do. Jones said of his congregation, “keep them poor and keep them tired, and they’ll never leave.”

Alcohol, tobacco, and drugs were forbidden. Sexual relationships were discouraged, though he knew he couldn’t stop them outright, so he tried to control who should be sleeping with whom. Basically, anything that would distract his people from the mission, from the Temple, or from Jim Jones himself were considered bad things. None of these rules applied to Jim Jones, of course. Don’t forget he was having multiple extramarital affairs with a lot of his members.

The Peoples Temple was… a lot. Jim Jones was working hard to amass power and be in control, but he was also genuinely trying to help people. He was sincere in his belief that everyone is equal and should be treated as such. He didn’t want to see people suffer, or starve. So he barely slept and worked around the clock to do all these things he wanted to do - help people and build a huge empire through which he could be all-powerful. The pressure was a lot to deal with. So, despite forbidding them for his followers, Jim Jones turned to drugs to cope.

From around 1971 onwards, Jim Jones was regularly using amphetamines, tranquilizers, and other pills to either give him more energy or chill him out so he could rest. With his power and influence, he had no trouble getting drugs. But the more he worked, the more drugs he took. The more drugs he took, the more addicted he got. He had mood swings. Random fits. His eyes were permanently red and watery, so he took to wearing dark sunglasses everywhere he went. All the time. And all of this, of course, made his paranoia even worse.

Paranoia, by the way, is a classic side effect of amphetamines. And he already suffered from it before the drugs!

Jim Jones started telling his people that the government was listening in on them - that Nixon and the FBI were planning on infiltrating the Peoples Temple because they were afraid of their socialist values. Members were put on constant alert, and Jones encouraged them to report suspicious behavior immediately - even from people within their own congregation.

Jones would bring up how the US government tried to assassinate Castro, which was true, by the way. But then he’d say how maybe JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. were also killed by the government. So if those great men were targets, he would be as well! Remember that Jones has basically likened himself to God by this point. He was sure that the government hated the Peoples Temple and their mission to lead a more egalitarian life. So, he increased the number of his armed security guards.

Jim Jones continued his downward spiral as the Peoples Temple grew larger. His dubious methods of controlling people were starting to get out. A reporter named Lester Kinsolving for the San Francisco Examiner started to poke around - as soon as the Peoples Temple got wind of this, they starting sending in letters praising Jim Jones and their organization. But for a reporter, this only make him more curious - it was clear to Kinsolving that something weird was going on.

Kinsolving did some digging around. The result was a series of eight articles exposing Jones’ frauds, how he duped people into joining the Temple, and the violence he used to keep people in line. It was bad press. So, Jones did what he does best - he schmoozed with the newspaper heads and organized protests outside their headquarters. Only half of the 8 articles were printed.

Though in the end Kinsolving’s reporting didn’t do as much damage as Jones feared, it certainly did a number on Jones and his mental state. It also brought more unwanted attention to the Peoples Temple.

Though Jones was using drugs to regulate his stress levels, he also started getting violent and abusive with his members. There are lots of stories here, many of which aren’t appropriate for this podcast. But let’s say that Jim Jones was out of control, and taking it out on his members. Some of his devout, loyal followers too - ones that were part of his inner circle. There was physical violence, humiliation… all sorts of stuff. Things that, if they were to get out to the general public, would involve an investigation into the Peoples Temple. He’d likely get arrested.

But his followers just… went along with it. By this point, they were so hooked on Jim Jones and his cult of personality that they didn’t dare speak out. Whether that was because of blind loyalty, or because they feared him, we don’t really know. But the abuse continued.

If he suspected his members of being too bourgeois, so exhibiting non-Socialist values like coveting things and engaging in luxuries, he would publicly humiliate them at Sunday services.

Eight college-aged members left at one point, writing a letter pointing out Jones’ hypocrisies, which only infuriated Jones more. For example, they mentioned how Jones tried to prevent them from having sex, but engaged in gratuitous sex himself with whoever he wanted, daily. Hypocrisy. Jones didn’t take well to the defectors, and only tightened his control of the rest of the congregation. But unlike past defectors, Jones didn’t chase these kids down.

Things were getting pretty dicey in California, so Jones unveiled his next big move. He told his congregation in a sermon, quote,
“I know a place where I can take you, where they’ll be no more racism, where there’ll be no more division, where there’ll be no more class exploitation. I know just the place. Oh, yes I do.”

He called it the promised land.

People’s Temple Agricultural Project
It was twelve years earlier that Jim Jones and his family first visited Guyana. He earmarked it as a potential place but had thought Brazil would be better. He spent those two years in Brazil and couldn’t make a name for himself, but then had to return home to try and salvage his Indianapolis-based church. As we now know, that didn’t work, and he eventually moved to California. But in 1973, with everything going on, the political situation worsening, and defectors threatening to expose what was really going on in the Peoples Temple… Jim Jones and his inner circle agreed to set up an agricultural and rural development mission in the rainforest of Guyana.

It was officially called the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, but colloquially, or, more commonly known, as Jonestown.

But why Guyana? It wasn’t the place twelve years ago when Jones first toured it. He saw potential when he visited the capital of Georgetown, but decided it wasn’t ready. So what changed?

Well, Guyana had since elected a socialist president. Jim Jones liked this. He also liked the general makeup of the population - there was a diverse mix of races in Guyana - white British settlers, indigenous Americans, and generations of Africans and Indians bought over by the slave trade and British colonialism. Its national language was also English, which helped Jones make arrangements with the government there.

The location they chose was incredibly isolated. It was 5 miles from the nearest airstrip and town, called Port Kaituma, and that airstrip was already pretty isolated in the jungle. Most Guyanese people live on the coast, so there were few communities in the interior. Jones liked this - fewer people to snoop around his property, and more control over his congregation.

He didn’t plan for everyone to move all at once. He wanted to build the community up first, then bring over his most loyal followers. The main church would still be in California, but slowly Jones would move people over to Jonestown. This would be helpful especially if things got bad for him - he would have an escape.

So, after schmoozing the right politicians in Georgetown, Jim Jones managed to get a piece of land in the jungle.

An initial set of Peoples Temple pioneers began work clearing a path to their new site, then setting up the commune. It was pretty grueling stuff - they suffered from sunburns, bug bites, worms that burrowed into their feet from the soil, foot fungus, skin ulcers, and then your usual set of issues that come with building - cuts, scrapes, and pulled muscles. It was intensely hot and humid. For most, this would be a grueling task. But the pioneers were proud of their work and believed strongly in this socialist  mission - they were going to create a paradise here in the jungle, away from Capitalist America, and away from the threats their leader Jim Jones told them existed there - nuclear war, assassinations, the whole lot.

Back in California, Jim Jones was feeling pretty good. He had money, power, and was living out his socialist agenda. His people were building Jonestown in the Guyanese jungle. Any bad press about the Peoples Temple had died down. But despite all this, he was acting increasingly more erratic in public.

On December 13th, an off-duty LA policeman was watching Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Brilliant, classic film. During the movie, a man motioned for him to come over. The cop went outside into the nearest bathroom, and the man followed. He exposed himself to the officer and started to, uh, pleasure himself. The cop, of course, immediately arrested the man - it was Jim Jones.

Jones was charged with lewd conduct.

He worked overtime to get his people to cover this up. He pressured the judge into destroying the court records. Jones was terrified about this leaking to the press - if they found out, they would investigate more, and it would only cause problems for the Peoples Temple.

Jones was panicking, so he started to test his people’s loyalty. He wanted to make sure that they would follow him to the end - death, if that was necessary. Here are some of the things he said over various sermons. Quote,
“If [the government] comes for one of us, [they’re] coming for all of us. I love socialism, and I’d die to bring it about. But if I did, I’d take a thousand people with me. A good socialist does not fear death. It would be the greatest reward he could receive.” End quote.

Jones would frequently tell stories during his sermons about mass suicides, insinuating that the act sent a message of defiance. He believed mass suicides made martyrs. One night, he allowed everyone to drink some wine - a rarity, for he forbade alcohol. Once everyone had some, he told them it was laced with poison, and all of them would die within the hour. Only one person freaked out and tried to run. The rest stayed seated and discussed dying, reflecting on how they could no longer help raise the children in the Temple communally, or no longer carry out the socialist agenda they all believed in. Jones only told them the wine wasn’t poisoned when 45 minutes or so went by. He called it an ultimate test of their loyalty. This was not the only time he did this.

After having had enough of Jim Jones’ increasingly erratic and chaotic moves, two prominent inner-circle Temple members defected. They legally changed their names and fled. Once they knew they weren’t being watched, they spoke with government officials and told them about what was happening at the Peoples Temple. More people defected over the ensuing years. Some concerned parents of Temple members brought the issue to their local California Congressman, Leo Ryan, who promised to look into the Peoples Temple when he could.

Jim Jones was growing more erratic by the day. His sermons were… bizarre. I’ll paraphrase some of the things he talked about.
He called himself a liberator while, using more foul language, said that God always messed things up.
He claims in another life that he witnessed a drugged-up, still living Jesus taken off his cross by loyal followers - apparently he moved to India and shared his teachings there.
He described himself as an alien who was the greatest being on his home planet, and he was the only one who could escape and come to Earth.
See what I mean? He was losing it.

In 1977, a story came out titled “Inside Peoples Temple” and man was it damaging. It exposed many of the problems in the Temple - the beatings, the violence, the coercion, all of it. It seems that a lot of those defectors who had talked to the government had also spoken to this reporter. The article ended with reasons why Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple should be investigated.

In response, Jones fled to Guyana in May 1977 with his family and over 600 loyal followers.

White Night
Life in Guyana was difficult, but the people worked hard to make it a socialist paradise. Jonestown wasn’t equipped for the 600 or so people that migrated with Jones, let alone the 900+ that ended up down there in total. Before the big move, there were only 5 permanent residents responsible for getting it ready. Now the numbers swelled beyond capacity and there were issues with food and water. But they worked through it and tried to make this agricultural project a success.

Unfortunately, Jim Jones didn’t get any less erratic. If anything, his continued drug use along with perceived threats to the Peoples Temple made him more paranoid.
 
Like the poison wine incident, Jones continued to test his loyal followers with “White Nights.” They were drills, conducted in the middle of the night, where the community would meet at the pavilion, a central meeting place big enough for everyone to gather. Armed guards would always surround the congregation, so there was nowhere for anyone to go. Or run. Or hide. Jones would rant and ramble, which was now becoming his standard form of preaching.

Sometimes, he would have his guards hide out in the jungle and shoot their guns. Jones would tell his people that the government was finally here, that they were under attack. More fear tactics.

Other times, he would have them drink fruit punch that he said was laced with poison. Each member drank the punch, then waited for death. In many of these white nights, he would only tell his people that it was a test after they had all done it. He wanted to keep everyone scared. It was his way of controlling people, a technique he first started using all the way back when he was a kid in Indiana.

On two different White Night gatherings, the group voted to perform revolutionary suicide, and they would simulate and rehearse it. Jim Jones was getting them ready. I’m sure none of them doubted that he would do it one day. Or perhaps, to them, that it would one day be necessary.

One of the future defectors wrote the following of these practice mass suicides, quote:
“Everyone, including the children, was told to line up. As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink. We were told that the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes. We all did as we were told. When the time came when we should have dropped dead, Rev. Jones explained that the poison was not real and that we had just been through a loyalty test. He warned us that the time was not far off when it would become necessary for us to die by our own hands.” End quote.

By 1978, things at Jonestown were deteriorating. Jim Jones was also getting sick - he was habitually taking valium, quaaludes, barbiturates, and stimulants.
Valium treats anxiety and muscle spasms, and it acts as a sedative.
Quaaludes are also sedatives. If it sounds familiar… it’s what Bill Crosby used on the women he abused.
Barbiturates are used to treat seizures because they help stop convulsions, but they also act as sedatives and can help treat anxiety.
The stimulants, of course, did the opposite of all that - they gave him energy and pumped him up.
He usually had all of these in his system. All the time.

His health was starting to go downhill, quickly. In the last two weeks of his life, he was suffering from temporary blindness, convulsions, and swelling in his extremities. He looked as sick as he felt.

But things would get worse for Jim Jones and his socialist commune, because Representative Leo Ryan finally made good on his promise to the concerned parents to find out what was happening in the isolated jungles of Guyana.

The Arrival of Congressman Ryan
On Tuesday, November 14th, Congressman Leo Ryan arrived in Guyana to investigate allegations of abuse. Some relatives came with him - they were concerned about their sons, their daughters, their grandchildren who were all caught up in Jim Jones’ cult of personality. Congressman Ryan promised them that if their loved ones wanted to leave Jonestown and come home, he would make it happen. He promised to bring home anyone who wanted to leave.

Jim Jones, of course, saw Congressman Ryan as a threat. And to an extent, he was. He was a threat to the stability of Jonestown, because if anyone left, or if the Congressman gave a bad report on what he saw, it could potentially expose all of the things Jim Jones was doing. And while many of the people moved there with the promises of working towards a socialist future, working for a cause they believe in, they were, in reality, stuck in the clutches of a cult leader drunk on power.

Jones did everything he could to keep the Congressman from coming, but he was ultimately persuaded to let him in. Jones spent two days coaching his followers on what to say and how to say it to make sure none of the outsiders were suspicious. The plan was for Congressman Ryan to fly to Port Kaituma on Friday, November 17th, conduct whatever interviews he wanted, stay overnight, then leave the next morning. The whole affair would be over, and Jim Jones could go back to controlling his people in his jungle compound, hopefully with the US government off his back.
 
So on Friday, November 17th, Congressman Ryan, some reporters, a handful of his staffers, and some of the concerned relatives flew to Port Kaituma. When he arrived at Jonestown, Congressman Ryan went straight into work mode and demanded to speak with Jim Jones.

Now Jones had put his people to work. The whole place was cleaned, inside and out. A big group meal was planned and there was live music - it was like a party in paradise. Leo Ryan and the reporters set about talking to the people.

Now most fell in line and had only good things to say about Jim Jones, their Jonestown settlement, their socialist mission, and life in Guyana. But a few took this opportunity to try and find a way out. One man, Vernon Gosney, slipped a reporter a note, asking for them to get him and another member out - they wanted to escape, but knew they would be shot by the armed guards if they tried to leave. Because that was the truth of it - these people were prisoners, even if they didn’t know it. Jim Jones had led them to the jungle and never intended on letting them leave alive.

Gosney later said the following in a documentary called Jonestown: Paradise Lost. Quote.
“I think it’s difficult to express to people who don’t have this kind of experience, that ‘oh, well, why didn’t you leave? It’s so horrible, it’s so terrible, how could you put yourself in that position?’ When actually we were working for a cause that we believed in. It’s like taking people to the limit, and then moving that line, and then moving that line, and wanting so desperately to believe in the dream and not seeing that the dream has become a nightmare.” End Quote.

We would expect Jim Jones to do something about this potential defector immediately. Had the Congressman not been there, Jones would probably have had one of those sessions where Gosney was humiliated and beaten in front of everyone. But Jones didn’t react.

The next morning, knowing that things would come to a head, eleven people slipped out of Jonestown at dawn. They figured that Jones would be so busy with the Congressman that he wouldn’t notice - and they were right. They managed to escape just in time.

Congressman Ryan prepared to leave that morning after breakfast. He and the reporters did some more inter views and gathered up any Jonestown settlers who wanted to leave - in all, 15 people wanted to leave with Congressman Ryan and head back to the US. With the 11 who escaped earlier that day, it was 26 defectors in total. About 2% of the Jonestown population.

Jim Jones saw the writing on the wall. He saw this as the beginning of the end of his socialist experiment. If 26 people were willing to leave, more would follow. He would lose control. He would lose his power. The only things he really wanted in life.

As the fifteen were packing up and getting into the truck, Congressman Ryan was having a chat with some people in the pavilion. From behind, someone attacked Congressman Ryan and held a knife to his throat. But the attacker hesitated, and the man was pulled away before he could kill Congressman Ryan. Sure, nobody wanted the defectors to leave, nobody wanted Congressman Ryan to go home and potentially make things worse for Jonestown… but murdering him here like this was not gonna happen.

Jones didn’t have much to say about the attack. The only thing he asked the Congressman was whether this incident would change things. It was the only thing Jones cared about at this point. He didn’t want to lose control.
 
But as it turns out, Jim Jones did want Congressman Ryan dead.

The 15 defectors, the Congressman, and the others who came with him to Jonestown left on truck convoys. They got back to Port Kaituma and started loading up on planes. Suddenly, a truck filled with seven or eight of Jonestowns’ armed guards pulled up and started shooting. Five people were assassinated. 

Congressman Leo Ryan, Photographer Greg Robinson of the San Francisco Examiner, Cameraman Bob Brown of NBC, Reporter Don Harris of NBC, and defector Patricia Parks were all murdered at Port Kaituma by Jim Jones’ men.

The rest were either injured, or escaped in the chaos, but survived.

But because some survived, Jim Jones knew it was over.

November 18th, 1978
Jones sent his contingent at Georgetown a radio broadcast - You’re going to meet Mr. Frazier. It was code, of course. It meant that it was time for everyone to die.

Sharon Amos, one of his most devout and fanatic followers, was in charge of the Georgetown house. She took her two small children and 21-year-old daughter Liane upstairs. First, Sharon killed her young kids with a kitchen knife. Then, Liane helped Sharon slit her own throat before taking her own life.

At around 4 pm, a meeting was called in the pavilion at Jonestown. It had been a stressful day for everyone, so they weren’t surprised that Father wanted to give a lecture. As the congregation started to gather, some of Jones’ inner circle were inside preparing some grape Flavor-Aid, a kool-aid knockoff. Into this mix they added tranquilizers and potassium cyanide.

Potassium Cyanide is incredibly toxic. It’s also really bitter tasting. Apparently. Within a few minutes of ingesting it, you’ll lose consciousness. Your brain will stop functioning. You may start convulsing as this happens. The cause of death is cerebral hypoxia; essentially, the brain is deprived of oxygen and dies.

Cyanide, in capsule form, has been used as a method of committing suicide for a long time. Many of Hitler’s allies, including his long-time girlfriend Eva Braun, committed suicide in this way. It works incredibly quickly and efficiently.

As he watched it being mixed into the grape flavor-aid, Jim Jones was only concerned about making it taste less bitter so his followers could get it down easily.

Once the mixture was complete, Jones came out to the pavilion and began to speak. Since all of Jones’ sermons were recorded at Jonestown, we know exactly what he told his people. In fact, his final sermon was 45 minutes long. I’ll give you some excerpts of this final speech, because, again, it’s pretty long. Quote:

 “I have loved you, how very much I have tried my best to give you the good life. In spite of all that I’ve tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our life impossible… It was said by the greatest of prophets, from time immemorial, “No man takes my life from me, I lay my life down.” …The worldly kingdom suffers violence and the violence is triggered by force. If we can’t live in peace then we must die in peace.

So my opinion is that we be kind to [the] children and be kind to seniors… take the potion … and step over quietly because we are not committing suicide. It’s a revolutionary act. We can’t go back. They won’t leave us alone. They’re now going back to tell more lies which means more Congressmen. And there’s no way, no way we can survive.

But to me death is not a fearful thing, it’s living that’s treacherous. I haven’t seen anybody yet that didn’t die. And I’d like to choose my own kind of death for a change. I’m tired of being tormented to hell, that’s what I’m tired of. [I’m] tired of people’s lives in my hands and I certainly don’t want your life in my hands… without me, life has no meaning. … I’m the best friend you’ll ever have.

I tried to give [peace] to you. I’ve laid down my life, practically, I’ve practically died every day to give you peace … and you still do not have any peace. You look better than I’ve seen you in a long while, but it’s still not the kind of peace that I want to give you.

It’s all over, all over … please get us some medication. It’s simple, it’s simple, there’s no convulsions with it, it’s just simple, just please get it before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid to die. This is a revolutionary suicide. This is not a self-destructive suicide. So they’ll pay for this. They brought this upon us and they’ll pay for that. I leave that destiny to them.

Take our life from us, we laid it down, we got tired. We didn’t commit suicide. We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.” End quote.

And those were the last recorded words of Jim Jones.

His people brought out those vats of grape flavor-aid spiked with potassium cyanide. First, they gave it to the children. Just babies who didn’t know anything other than life in the Peoples Temple. And as the kids were screaming, the adults were reassuring everyone that things were fine. You can actually hear this on the tape - the children were dosed as Jim was rambling on. You can hear the screaming in the background. The recording actually captured the mass poisoning in progress. It’s known as the death tape.

In some cases, they had to use needleless syringes to inject the poison into the children’s mouths. Some were restrained to do this.
 
After the children were dosed and started dying, the adults were next. Some willingly drank - after all, they were nothing if not loyal to Jim Jones. They had practiced this before during White Nights. Some had been through this back in California with the wine incident. And even though they knew it was real this time, they didn’t hesitate.

Others did hesitate. They didn’t want to die. They figured they could carry on their socialist mission somewhere else, where they couldn’t be found. But the armed guards surrounding the pavilion wouldn’t let them leave. Syringes with needles were brought around with the cyanide-laced flavor-aid, and those who didn’t drink willingly were injected with the poison. It was either that, or be shot to death.

 And as they waited to die, members walked around in a trance. Parents watching their children die in front of them became panicked. Once most of the congregation was dead, the guards were called in to drink.

Jim Jones didn’t drink the poison, though he did die that day. He was found sprawled out on the pavilion stage, amongst his people, with a gunshot wound to the head. It does not appear self-inflicted; he likely had one of his guards pull the trigger. He couldn’t face what he asked, and in many cases forced, his own people to do.

Most of the people who were in Jonestown died. One woman, 76-year-old Hyacinth Thrash, slept through the event. She awoke to find everyone she knew, her whole Temple family, dead in a heap around the pavilion. Others survived - some were in Georgetown playing basketball against the Guyanese national team. On this team were two of Jim Jones’ sons. There were also the defectors with the Congressman, 14 of which survived, and the 11 who snuck out that morning. But in all, including the assassinations, 918 people died that day. 276 of them were children.

After hearing about the assassination at the airstrip, the Guyanese Defense Force figured out that something went down at Jonestown. They arrived the next morning and expected to find an angry and defiant Jim Jones, ranting about government invasions on his socialist paradise. Instead, they stumbled upon what would be forever known as the Jonestown Massacre.

Outro
Thanks for joining me for this episode of A Popular History of Unpopular Things. My name is Kelli Beard, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the story of the Jonestown Massacre. Thank you for supporting my podcast, and if you haven’t already checked out my other episodes, go have a listen! 

One of my favorites is episode 9 on the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster, the worst nuclear accident in history. I also recommend episode 11 on the Andes Flight disaster, where a plane carrying Uruguayan rugby players crashed high in the mountains of the Andes, and the survivors had to resort to cannibalizing their dead friends to survive. 

Be sure to follow my podcast, wherever you listen, so you know when new episodes are dropped. And stay tuned to get a popular history of unpopular things.