The Jonestown Massacre, also known as the Jonestown tragedy, was a mass murder-suicide by members of the Peoples Temple cult at the behest of their leader, Jim Jones, that occurred on November 18, 1978. It is one of the the largest incidents of intentional civilian deaths in American history, an incident that killed 918 people, including the elderly and children, as well as several animals.
After cult members attacked Congressman Leo Ryan, who was investigating the cult, writes britannica.com, Jones implemented this suicide plan at the Jonestown complex. A fruit drink made of cyanide, tranquilizers and sedatives was administered to children and adult members, killing more than 900 people (including 300 under the age of 17), with Jones dying of a gunshot wound. Most of Jim Jones’ followers were African American.
Although the Peoples Temple was active in humanitarian causes in its communities, Jones’ treatment of its followers was often less than humane. Temple members were regularly humiliated, beaten, and blackmailed, and many were coerced or brainwashed into giving up their property—including their homes—to the church. Black members and members of other minority groups were threatened that if they left the Peoples Temple, they would be rounded up in government-run concentration camps. Family members were kept apart and encouraged to turn on each other. In 1977, after the press began to ask questions about Jones’ work, he moved with several hundred followers to Jonestown, a complex he had built in Guyana over three to four years.
Jim Jones (1931 – 1978), leader of the Peoples Temple cult between 1955 and 1978, before ordering his followers to commit mass suicide, had a controversial history. Jones opened his first parish in the mid-1950s in Indianapolis, initially unaffiliated with any particular denomination, his congregation, known (apparently) for racial integration, later becoming Peoples Temple. In 1960, Peoples Temple became affiliated with the Disciples of Christ, and Jones was ordained in that church. In the mid-1960s, Jim Jones moved with his followers to California, where he established the Peoples Temple. Although active in humanitarian causes, Jones subjected his followers to abuse, coercion and brainwashing. Members were humiliated, beaten, blackmailed and forced to surrender their property to the church. Black and minority followers were led to believe that leaving the community would send them to some kind of government-run concentration camp.
At some point, when the American authorities began to suspect the practices of Jim Jones, starting some investigations, the impostor moved (in 1977) to Jonestown, Guyana, taking with him hundreds of followers. The complex gave Jones autonomy, as local authorities had little control over Jonestown. In November 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan visited the community in Jonestown following reports of abuse within the cult. Some members tried to leave with Ryan. They survived the assassination attempts shortly before they left the compound, the vehicle continuing on its way with Ryan on board. The Temple members then launched an attack on the airstrip where Ryan and his company were to depart. Five people, including Ryan and three members of the media, were shot and killed, and 11 others were injured. Following the incident, Jones ordered a mass suicide using fruit drinks laced with cyanide as part of his “revolutionary suicide” plan. To those not in Jonestown, he radioed the order. In a first phase, the drink was administered to babies and children with the help of a syringe, and was then swallowed by adults. Those who changed their minds and no longer wanted to drink the killer cocktail were simply forced. Fewer than 100 people survived this massacre, most of whom managed to defect from “Jones’s camp of terror” that day.
A warehouse full of firearms, hundreds of passports (locked in a safe so people couldn’t leave) and $500,000 (plus millions more deposited in several foreign accounts) were found in Jonestown. After that event, the Peoples Temple effectively disbanded, with only one man, Larry Layton (cult member) being tried in the US for his involvement in the events of November 18, being found guilty of conspiracy and complicity in the murder of US Embassy official Richard Dwyer. Another man, Charles Beikman, who pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a young woman, served a five-year prison sentence in Guyana.
But what were the first impressions of those who arrived at the scene, immediately after the mass suicide took place?
“In November 1978, David Netterville, a special operations sergeant in the U.S. Air Force, had served nearly seven years in the military and had completed a tour of duty in Vietnam,” wrote National Geographic, “but nothing could have prepared him for what what he saw in Jonestown, a commune led by Jim Jones in the forests of Guyana”. The first interview he gave on this topic was given to National Geographic in a documentary called Cult Massacre: A Day in Jonestown. “It was unprecedented,” he said. “I was completely shocked to see the large number of bodies lying on the ground.” They were the ones to whom Jim Jones had promised a utopia, but who received death instead.
The bodies were recovered by the US Army, and over 400 unclaimed bodies were buried in a mass grave in Oakland, California.
“Arriving at Jonestown on November 20, Washington Post reporter Charles Krause did not immediately understand what the mass of colors on the ground combined with human bodies represented. They looked like confetti that had been thrown around them. But every one of those pieces of confetti was actually the shirt, the dress, or something, of a dead person.”
For those who arrived there in the first moments after the incident, the scenes and the atmosphere they encountered were horrifying, an experience that marked them for life.
Inert bodies of people of all ages, covered by hundreds of insects, a horrible smell that even reached the height of the helicopters flying over the area, a lot of paper cups from which the poisonous punch had been drunk, syringes… Images torn from a horror movie. To stop the stench of death, Netterville put a mask over his nose made of a pillowcase soaked in Old Spice lotion. “I haven’t used Old Spice since. I can’t stand his smell anymore. I will never be able to use it again.”
Some of the people who died holding their children. The animals were not spared either. Dogs were killed, and even a chimpanzee that the cultists had brought with them from California.
David Netterville and the team he was coordinating divided the area into sections so he could count the bodies. The first calculations were wrong, so they had to redo the counts several times, after they saw that there were dead even under some corpses.
Those who managed to escape death took refuge in a nearby village. One of the survivors, who had been sent on a mission before the massacre, took a suitcase of money to the Soviet Union’s embassy in Georgetown. His wife and child died, however. “After I saw what happened, I couldn’t even think anymore. All I could hear in my brain was: You can’t die, you can’t die, you can’t die, you have to live, you have to live, you have to live,” he said.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
