Jim Jones: The Peoples Temple (Part II)

Port Kaituma Airstrip shootings

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

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

Mass murder in Jonestown

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

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

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

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

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

Death

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

Sexuality

Jones married Marceline Baldwin in 1949. He began his first affair in 1968 with a woman named Carolyn Layton whom he was with until the end. Another woman he became closest to was Maria Katsaris. Their relationship began in 1974 and she was also one of his mistresses until the end. He also had many other mistresses during the 1970s, both before the move to Jonestown and while living in Jonestown. The book The Road to Jonestown by Jeff Guinn states: "Jones had occasional sex with male followers" but "never as often as he did with women." It states he was most likely bisexual, but his main physical and sexual attraction was towards women.

On December 13, 1973, Jones was arrested and charged with lewd conduct for masturbating in a movie theater restroom near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles.  The decoy was an undercover LAPD vice officer. Jones is on record as later telling his followers he was "the only true heterosexual."

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

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

Family aftermath

Marceline

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

Surviving sons

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lew, Agnes, and Suzanne Jones

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

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

John Stoen and Kimo

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

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

In popular culture

Documentaries

Jonestown: Mystery of a Massacre (1998)

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006)

Jonestown: Paradise Lost (2007)

CNN Presents: Escape From Jonestown (2008)

Seconds From Disaster, episode "Jonestown Cult Suicide" (06x01) (2012)

Witness to Jonestown (2013)

Jonestown: The Women Behind the Massacre (2018)

Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2018)

605 Adults 304 Children (2019), a short documentary filmed entirely by The Peoples Temple at Jonestown

Television

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), fact-based miniseries. Powers Boothe won an Emmy for his portrayal of Jim Jones.

American Horror Story: Cult (2017)

Jonestown: Terror in the Jungle (2018), a forthcoming documentary produced for Sundance TV.

"Very Scary People", 'Jim Jones: Unholy Massacre' (01x06) (2019)

Film

Guyana: Crime of the Century aka Guyana: Cult of the Damned (1979), fictionalized exploitation film (depicted here as "Reverend James Johnson")

Eaten Alive! (Italian: Mangiati vivi!) is a 1980 Italian horror film (depicted here as "Jonas," leading a cult in the jungles of Sri Lanka instead of Guyana).

The Sacrament (2013), a found-footage horror film (depicted here simply as "Father"; in addition, Jonestown has been renamed "Eden Parish")

 Jonestown (2013), an independent short film which dramatizes the last 24 hours in the lives of Jim Jones (played here by Leandro Cano) and The Peoples Temple Church through the eyes of a reporter.

The Veil (2016), a supernatural horror film (depicted as "Jim Jacobs")

Fiction

We Agreed to Meet Just Here, by Scott Blackwood. Kalamazoo, Michigan: West Michigan University Press, 2009.

Children of Paradise, by Fred D'Aguiar. New York: HarperCollins, 2014.

Jonestown, by Wilson Harris. London: Faber and Faber, 1996.

Before White Night, by Joseph Hartmann. Richmond, Virginia: Belle Isle Books, 2014.

White Nights, Black Paradise, by Sikivu Hutchinson. Infidel Books, 2015.

Beautiful Revolutionary, by Laura Elizabeth Woollett. Scribe, London. 2018.

Music

Ballad of Jim Jones by the Brian Jonestown Massacre, available on Thank God for Mental Illness (1996)

Carnage in the Temple of the Damned, by Deicide, available on Deicide (1990)

Guyana (Cult of the Damned) by Manowar, available on Sign of the Hammer (1984)

"A Lilac Harry Quinn" by Half Man Half Biscuit (1981)

Hypnotized, by Heathen, available on Victims of Deception (1991)

Jimmie Jones, by The Vapors

Jonestown, by The Acacia Strain, available on Wormwood (2010)

Sects by French band Trust, also covered by American thrash metal band Anthrax

Jonestown, by Concrete Blonde, available on Mexican Moon (1993)

Jonestown, by Frank Zappa, available on Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger (1984)

Koolaid by Accept, available on The Rise of Chaos (2017)

Last Call in Jonestown, by Polkadot Cadaver, available on Last Call in Jonestown (2013)

Reverend by Church of Misery, available on Early Works Compilation (2011)

Ultraviolence (song) by Lana Del Rey

La Dee Da by Foo Fighters from the album "Concrete and Gold" (2017)

1998 TRUMAN by Brockhampton from the single "1998 TRUMAN" (2018)

Jonestown (interlude) by Post Malone from the album Beerbongs and Bentleys (2018)

Leaders (feat. NAV) by Lil Uzi Vert from the album Eternal Atake (2020)

Poetry

 Bill of Rights, by Fred D'Aguiar. London: Chatto and Windus, 1998.

The Jonestown Arcane, by Jack Hirschman. Los Angeles: Parentheses Writing Series, 1991.

 Jonestown Lullaby, by Teri Buford O'Shea. Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2011.

Jonestown and Other Madness, by Pat Parker. Ithaca, N.Y.: Firebrand Books, 1985.

 I. at Jonestown, by Lucille Clifton. Next. Brockport: BOA, 1989.

Theater

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