July 16, 2025 • 40 mins
909 people, including 267 children, died by suicide or were murdered by cyanide injection on November 18, 1978, at "The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project", better known by the unofficial name "Jonestown" after the leader of the group, Jim Jones. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the group, how they ended up in the jungle of Guyana, and how most of the men, women, and children, died. Professor Morgan explains how Dr. William Eckert described the "smell of death" a mile away and 2000 feet in the air in a helicopter as he was arriving at the facility, what took place in identifying the dead, the condition of the bodies that were exposed to the elements, and what it would have been like for the victims who "drank the kool-aid". Oddly enough, the phrase "drink the kool-aid", referring to people blindly following leadership regardless of the truth, isn't correct. The people of Jonestown did not drink "Kool-Aid". They drank a cheap, knock-off version of Kool-Aid called Flavor Aid.
Transcribe Highlights
00:01.72 Introduction - environment
01:42.95 Jonestown "Don't Drink the Kool-Aid"
05:16.89 Remembering the reporting of Jonestown Suicide
09:41.90 Describing bloated bodies
10:34.71 What is left of Jonestown
12:18.99 Jim Jones cultivated political relationships
16:25.53 Jonestown was very isolated
20:06.23 Flies would be all over the scene
25:28.77 Have to determine how people were killed
29:54.63 Rep Leo Ryan killed at airstrip 6 miles from Jonestown
34:47.87 Jim Jones was not a "man of the cloth"
39:20.62 Value of Dark Tourism
40:25.99 Conclusion
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality times. But Joseph's gotten more, as you know.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm proud to say that I'm from Louisiana. I don't
live there now. I miss home, I miss my family
down there many days, but I have fond memories of
my childhood and early adulthood down there. I learned a lot.
The state taught me a lot. The environment taught me
a lot down there, particularly when it came to being
a death investigator. Nature's funny that way. It can teach
(00:32):
you things about life, even in the midst of horrible circumstances,
when you're observing all that remains.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Relative to death.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's a harsh environment, just like say a jungle, a
lot of humidity. Everything seems like it's wet because it
is most of the time, and it seems that it
consumes everything around it, whether it's vines or trees or
(01:09):
low growth scrub or just the animals that live there.
Everything over a period of time bends its knee to
nature in those wet environments, much like the jungle of Diana,
where several decades back, we had a horrible event that occurred,
(01:34):
an event that still impacts even our language today. Don't
drink the kool aid. But with that in mind, there
is now a company out there that wishes to take
people on a tour, a tour of a location where
(01:56):
one of the most disgusting and horrible events in human
history took place. I'm talking about the Jonestown Massacre. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. I came
across something on my newsfeed the other day that kind
(02:17):
of took me aback, and it was the fact that
there was an article that appeared in Rolling Stone and
let me see, I think I've got it here at
my fingertips. Yeah, this is actually on July the third.
Just to give you an idea. The title of this
thing is Jonestown Massacre site where over nine hundred people died,
(02:43):
opens to tourism. And I'm thinking, oh my lord, are
they actually serious? Are they actually serious? And apparently this
is it's not just the name of the company is
actually called of all things Wanderlust. This is falls into
(03:04):
a group a category of tourism that's called dark tourism,
and even things like you know, like concentration camps are
part of this world. You go to you go to
London and you know, Jack the Ripper tours have been
(03:28):
making the rounds for years and years in my hometown
of New Orleans. You know, one of the big visitations
that people always do, uh, is they want to go
seek out Marie Levoe's grave, the voodoo queen, you know
of New Orleans. They even had the album that came
out back I mean the song that came out back
in the fifties. But you know, Marie Leveau was She's
(03:53):
kind of a character. We're not talking about some kind
of disembodied spirit here. We're actually talking about a location
where over nine hundred people went at the urgings of
a man who claimed to be a man of God.
I'm doing air quotes and drugged them down there to
(04:17):
this location that I'll put it to you this way,
if I'm not mistaken. I think this is one of
the locations where the French Foreign Legion goes to do
jungle training. Probably that gives you how an idea of
how hostile this environment is. And these people lost their
lives down there, Dave, And now people want to go
(04:38):
and tour this location. It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I have mixed feelings about it. You know, that a
tourism thing, but if it prevents one person from following
a madman into the jungle again, Yeah, you know, I
guess there could be something good that could come out
of it. But I, like you, I remember the site
(05:04):
of this on the news. I remember the stories of hundreds,
and they were almost unbelievable. It's like because at first
it was Congressman Leo Ran murdered in South America. Nobody
knew where Guyana was. I did, okay, I didn't know
where Guyana was. And I remember hearing about it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Because I was a kid.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, but I remember hearing about, you know, this congressman
was killed, and that was the first thing, you know,
because and that there was a newsperson, a cameraman who
was also killed, and several others were killed. That was
what we heard about first. It wasn't the mass suicide
that we knew of right off the bat. The first
story was Leorian congressman murdered, you know, on a fact
(05:46):
finding mission. Because the people that were in this village
in Jonestown, which we had no idea what it was,
really a number of family members from Leo Ryan's home
district in northern California asked him please They had been
families have been asking local politicians for help for a
long time and they couldn't get any. Harvey Milk, who
(06:08):
was the superintendent of San Francisco or along those lines,
wrote a letter to President Carter in nineteen seventy seven saying,
Jim Jones is a good guy.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Leave him alone.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
You're hearing a bunch of lies from a defector, you know.
And it was from a man whose son was still
there with his wife. He was trying to get him out,
and they weren't getting help from local politicians. Leo Ryan
decided to go check it out, and he went down
there with his aid, and you know, he was then murdered,
and we know the aftermath. So I guess my thinking is, Joe,
(06:42):
and I was really curious when you brought this up,
because I did some researching on the article that Rolling
Stone has, and there are a number of different outlets
who have also reported on this dark tourism, and I wonder,
I guess you and I look at it because it's
contemporary to we remember Jonestown, We remember it. I don't
(07:03):
remember the reports of World War Two. I wasn't alive then.
I didn't hear those, so it's historical for me when
I see film being played of deliberation of some of
the concentration camps that you can find occasionally seeing those
old war pictures. But Guyana was on our television. I
remember seeing the helicopter or news covering you know, cruise
(07:27):
and seeing what we believe were bodies.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
They were bodies, And the thing about it is is
that these bodies when you see it from the air,
and I remember the day because this is kind of
how my brain works relative to the news. We never
really saw bodies as children in Vietnam, but we saw
those reports every single night. We saw the heros lifting off,
(07:51):
they're carrying wounded, or they're bringing in troops, and troops
are getting off of the heroes. And I remember because
my father was involved in Vietnam and during that period
of time. And I don't know if you recall this
because we were both kids during this period of time,
but they would they would, like Walter Cronkite, they would
(08:12):
put the numbers of dead on the screen and it.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Was a static, old graphic shots that they.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Would use in the news industry, and you'd see those
every now and then, but it was not really tangible,
you know, what I'm saying as a as a teenager
or a young teenager during this period of time, I
remember that aerial shot of this body, and then of
(08:38):
course I sought it out in magazines after that, because
I want, you know, the thing that you see.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
We didn't have video back then.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
We had the internet like we have it now.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We didn't even have VCRs. If you had a VCR
you were very wealthy, and we didn't have that and so,
and even if you did, you wouldn't have access to
the tape of so you catch a fleeting glimpse, you know,
when it was news at that particular time. But I
remember going back and look at those still frames like
in Time magazine or Life or one of those things,
(09:10):
and you couldn't really take the measure of it. In
my young brain, I couldn't, right, And so yeah, it
was it was striking that you could get daved. I
swear it looked like it looked like a lightning bolt
had descended from the heavens and everybody just kind of
(09:33):
dropped dead right where they were standing. Because you had
you had families, You had mamas with their kids. And
one of the things that I remember is they're laying abreast, okay,
like shoulder to shoulder, and some of these people are
laying face down on this hot and I remember the
soil is like this bright red clay and with greenery everywhere,
(09:57):
and you'd see parents like Huddler with their kids adjacent
to them, and you couldn't take the measure. And looking
back at those images now you can see all of
those bodies are bloated, every single one of them, and
being in that environment, it's not not surprising, not surprising,
that's at all.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
That's what I was going to ask you when you
first sent me the article, and I'm going, okay, I
can't even imagine what's left of Jonestown in Guyana, because
I thought the jungle would have swallowed it back up
by now. So in order to go in there and
to look over what was left, I don't know. I'm
(10:36):
curious now as to what's left because most of it
was built out of wood and bamboo and local things
they could get. They cut, you know, cleared the land.
But just as a quick heads up, it was reported
that it was a religious cult, an End of Time's
religious cult, led by Jim Jones, pastor reverend Reverend Jim Jones.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
That's what they called him.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah, yeah, and that's not actually the truth of the matter.
If you actually dig into it, and I encourage you
to do it. From a historical standpoint, you know, those
who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it.
These madmen exist in every community across America. There is
somebody who is leading people astray, and it can be
any number of ways. A lot of times God is
(11:15):
used as that conduit to lead people astray because people
are looking for something better than what they have. Most
of us know that you cannot be satisfied by money
and things. We're looking for something more, and it is
that that makes life worth living. It's the more. But
the thing is, there's always some con man waiting to
(11:36):
take your passionately held belief in helping your fellow man
and turning it around and stealing your heart and your life.
As it happened in Guyana, this man convinced people that
what they were doing was good. He convinced them and
then conditioned them. Jim Jones studied. He was He was
(11:58):
not an unlearned person. He knew what he was doing,
and he went and made it happen. He made Guyana happen.
Of course, they were being run out of northern California
because his cult was being looked into for the damage
it was doing to families and people. But he had
enough friends in positions of power. And I will tell
you that's one of the biggest fears of my life,
(12:19):
is that that'll happen again, Joe, if it might have
happened already and we just don't know it. But this
is the biggest, the biggest loss of life in our
American history because they were all I guess they were
all American citizens, they all came from northern California. But
other than nine to eleven, this was the biggest loss
of life in one day that we'd ever experienced as
a country.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, and I think that probably Americans looking back over
Tom you know, we can look at those horrible images
from nine to eleven and we can see those buildings
come crashing down. We can even see people throwing themselves
out of those buildings. But you're talking about thousands of
(13:00):
miles away in some isolated jungle where no one has
most of us have never even heard of it, where
you've got loved ones that have died that are littering
the floor of this jungle so called utopia. Down there
are we doomed to repeat this again.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I've had the.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Pleasure of working with some pretty cool cats over the
course of my career, and one of the most interesting
fellows I think I probably ever came across is a
guy named doctor Bill Eckerd. I caught him at the
end of his career. Doctor Eckerd was a rather renowned
(14:00):
forensic pathologist. I came across him because he had done
some of his time in New Orleans. He was a
He was quite the forensic pathologist of Galden to Nyu.
I think that he had paused for a period of
time to fight in World War Two. I'm not really
sure he but he had lived this kind of really
(14:23):
really interesting life, and one of the elements of it
was that he was involved in some of the examinations
involving Jonestown. And I've never been able to purely verify this,
but doctor Eckert had told a group of us at
one point in time we were gathered that he went
(14:45):
down to Guyana to Jonestown at the behest of the
State Department to do autopsies, and he had done autopsies
down there, and when you can you imagine doing an outdoor,
outdoor autopsy day on remains in that kind of hostile environment.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
You know what, I'm curious, Joe, because we know, we
know the type of atmosphere weather wise that they were
dealing with, and yet you mentioned that you could tell
that the bodies were bloated. We've got nine hundred men,
women and children, two hundred and sixty seven children, infants,
(15:32):
little kids, and they're all laid out, and I have
to wonder what was it like for those who because
all these bodies have to be identified, right, I mean everybody,
You have to identify who they are, how they died,
what killed them? How are you going to get And
it wasn't like they came in that night after it happened.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's been days.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, Just I think, even even about today's standards, to
try to get to this location, even the world current
contexts that we live in Nowaday, even if you and
I were to I don't know, I guess we would
maybe fly out of Atlanta and wind up going you know,
Lord only knows where. I don't know if we could
get a direct flight into Guyana out of Atlanta we'd
(16:15):
probably have to make several connections along the way, but
even when you land in the capital, then you have
to find a way to get out to this location
because it's truly isolated. And that's what that's what Jones wanted.
He wanted to be apart from this. But one of
the things that stands out that doctor Eckert hadn't mentioned
(16:35):
to me, and this really struck a chord with me.
I've been on the scene of multiple decomposing bodies at
one time and have approached say one stands out in
mind where I had a bunch of drug dealers that
were killed in a van where the windows had been
blown out, and the van had been sitting there for
(16:58):
months and no one had discovered the body and so months, yeah,
months literally, Uh, and they were uh, these guys were
Mexican nationals'll they forget And it was in a customized van,
It's a really nice van and they had been shot
and uh, seems like there were either four or five
bodies all stacked on top of one another in the
(17:20):
van and the windows were blown out, and it was
outside of a business park and a guy had walked
around a corner to take a smoke break and he
saw the van and walked over to it, and you know,
it's like, you know, took a couple of steps back
because the smell was so bad when I got there.
I remember I got within probably thirty feet of the
(17:42):
van and I caught a whiff at that point. Toime,
I've been around a lot of decomposed bodies. But back
to doctor Eckert, he said he flew in to the
location in a Huie in a Huey helicopter, which if
you don't know what a hue looks like, I think
v Atnam.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
You'll see it.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
You know, Fortunate Sons playing in the background. All right,
Creed its clear water Revival doors are open on the side.
And he said that even at like a two thousand
foot elevation, coming in across the top of the jungle,
they were like a mile two miles out, he could smell.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Death coming get a mile away, and you know, thousand,
two thousand feet up in the air, and smelling death
is not something that most of us can identify with in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
This kind of harsh environment. Dave, and I've stated this
before very plainly, but let me kind of reiterate this,
just as with all experiments that we that you might
conduct in a scientific environment, like in chemistry, for instance,
heat always speeds things up. Okay, you couple that with
(18:50):
this intense heat that they would have had in this jungle,
not to mention incredibly high levels of humidity as well,
and you will see these manifestations on the bodies relative
to you know, there were let me put it to
you this way. In these cases, you will see flies
(19:12):
begin to lay eggs on the deceased in this kind
of environment, potentially within the hour. Just let that sink
in just for a second. Have you ever been at
a picnic and you've been bugged literally bugged by a
bug a fly in your face? Like this, they're everywhere,
and so as the smell begins to kind of rise,
(19:33):
if you will, the alarms go off for these flies
and they come in from everywhere. You don't see them, okay,
but all of a sudden they're there. That's another part
of this horror show, if you will. You know, with
doctor Ecker, who was one of my mentors, you know,
mentioned as he came in on that huey he could
smell it. But you know when he would have landed here,
(19:55):
what's really fascinating is that as soon as he made
entrance into this area, there would have been swarms and
swarms of flies that were everywhere. They're lighting on everybody.
And as an old death investigator, that's one of the
things that used to actually unnerve me Dave about death investigation,
(20:16):
because you would have with decomps in particular, because you
would have flies that were feasting on the dead essentially,
and then they would light on you. They would fly
into your ears, your nose, your mouth, if you're talking
to somebody, you'll have because they're in this kind of
fever feeding frenzy as they're around there. And it's really
(20:39):
disgusting when you think about it. But when you take
this and you look at this exponentially, because we're talking
about nine hundred.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Bodies right right, you compound.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The situation with this, it's an absolute and utter nightmare.
The bodies in the jungle will not adjust to you.
You have to adjust to them, and you still have
to do a scientific examination despite how horrible this environment is.
You still have to make a determination about manner and
(21:12):
cause of death in each one of these cases. And
here here's something kind of fascinating. I was kind of
ruminating over this. When you think about this, uh, you know,
the the methodology that was applied here, this uh uh,
the cyanide uh that these people were subjected to and
(21:34):
that were essentially forced to drink.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I really wonder.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
What kind of markers they might have seen on the
bodies as well, not just what they're looking at toxicology wise.
I wonder from my perspective, and I hate that I
never picked doctor Eckert's brain about this, but did they
do blood draws on every single person there?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And then if they did, were they able to come
up with specific levels of toxicity? Because you know, you
can actually have you can actually have this stuff on
board in your system. It's a naturally occurring element and
it's you can actually have it on board, and there
(22:22):
are non lethal levels of it, okay, But once it
hits that lethal level, there's no you cannot unspin this
thing at that point in time, unless, of course, you've
got the necessary medical means that you're disposal on. Of course,
out in the jungle, you're not going to have that.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
And that was not their intent. Their intent was to die,
not to find a way to survive.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, And I've thought about this extensively. You know, back then,
I think that sinod was probably a bit easier to
get your hands on. Remember, we recently did we recently
did an episode relative to a jet and that was
(23:07):
the it was the ant poisoning that.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah using arsenic.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, arsenic, and so those elements within that particular brand
of ant poisoning, that brand still exists, but they don't
use arsenic anymore, Okay, Okay, So it's the same.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Thing with sinide. It may very well have been used
because it's used.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
In all for all manner things in the industrial world, metallurgy,
these things, uh, you know, and there's short term exposure
with low dosages where people that are mining the stuff.
Can you imagine working in a mine and you're subjected
to this where they're mining it out and you're absorbing
it through your skin, you're breathing it in, and they
(23:52):
get low doses. But if you hit somebody with a
high doses dosage of this stuff and they're contracting it
literally by ingesting it, and what a horrible set of circumstances.
You've got people having seizures, You've got people that are
having incredible gastrointestinal distress. There's vomiting going on, explosive diarrhea,
(24:14):
you know, I know that's horrible to talk about pounding headaches,
I mean blinding headaches. You've got rapid heartbeat, profuse sweating,
and then eventually seizures and coma and so you know,
and this happens with these levels. It happens very very quickly.
But my whole point, as I'm kind of holding forth here,
(24:37):
my whole point with this is that you still have
to I think that you would dishonor the memory not
just of the victims, but of those victims, but also
the victims of the Fact Finding Commission if you did
not do a deep dive. You know, they sacrificed their
lives here. Let's try to understand what was the mode
(25:01):
the modality of death here. You know, what are we
talking gunshot wounds? Are they inflicted by someone else? Are
they self inflicted? Is this poisoning?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I don't know?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
For all you know, you might have people that were
beaten prior to ingesting the stuff. So there's a lot
to pick through. And anytime you do these autopsies, and
I've never done an autopsy obviously in a jungle. I
have done an autopsy in a barn. Matter of fact,
a couple I did one in a barn, or assisted
(25:32):
with one in a barn. I've done a couple of
them in garages at funeral homes. Because the bodies were
so decomposed and it was in an outlying area, you
don't have access to the same tools. And when I
say tools, I'm talking about things like basic lighting. I
remember being in a barn and there were people, actually
(25:53):
it got close to dusk and there were police officers
there and they had flashlights out.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Uh yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, there was talk of you know, shining high beams
you know, into there. We were able to finish the case,
but you know, you you do every now and then
have to go into these austere environments.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Interestingly enough, doctor Eckert as a as an aside, Uh,
he was actually the person that participated in the exhumation
of Joseph Mingla.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Uh yeah, that he was. That he was who they
thought he was, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, exactly, and you know, so I was.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I was.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know, he was always kind of a hero to me. Uh.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
He probably worked a bit longer than he should, but
you know, a lot of friends. It's all forensic pathologists know.
But you know, when you look at a career like
his and these other story, you know, we've lost a
lot of a lot of that generation of forensic pathologists now.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And you and I have talked about that, Uh, those tales.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Have you know, if you don't, you don't keep it
up and continue to talk about what these people did.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's hard for me to imagine a forensic pathologist now
going into that kind of environment and working in that
austere environment like that. I guess they could, but you know,
when you have mass fautalities now they actually have. You
look at d mort teams, which is the disaster mortuary
response teams, they have portable morgus that literally you can
(27:24):
you can cut the ropes on if you will, and
the whole thing kind of deploys where there's a table
there and you've got all of your tools and all
of that stuff. So you can go to an event
like a plane crash and have everything souped and nuts
ready to rock and roll. That's not the way it
used to be. It's almost kind of a cowboy mentality,
you know, when you think about that, and then you're
(27:46):
you're expected to come up with your scientific findings. Uh uh,
and you had to do it in a in a
very huh I've used the word austere. You have to
do it in kind of a hostile environment. Can you
imagine having to do this and fighting flies the entire
time and any other kind of nasties that might be
(28:07):
emerging out of the jungle. And hey, you never know
who's out in the jungle that might be looking.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
At you as you're going through all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I guess looking back through you know, the veil of
time here. You people don't understand that that this they
call it an airports and landing strip, is essentially what
it is.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Dave. This thing.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
This thing's like six miles from the actual compound at Jonestown.
And my thought is is that this is an area
that you have to find if you're going to facilitate
bringing in fixed wing aircraft, if you're going to create
e this, you have to find the ideal location that's
absolutely any kind of rivers, ravines, or that's a flat
(29:06):
area that you can go in and plow down, you know,
all of the trees and then scrape this area and
make it at least suitable. And it rains so much too.
Can you imagine it'd be a muddy, bloody mess out there.
It's six miles from Jonestown. From there, they're they're having
to you know. You you've made an interesting point, Dave
(29:26):
about about the people that ambushed the party arriving on tractors, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
You know, we don't think.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
About traveling about on tractors, you know, but tractors many
times in this kind of environment, uneven roads, that sort
of thing that's really kind of the only way you're
going to get through.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
And they were, you know, towing a trailer behind them.
You know, that's still shocking to me. And I only
know that from the video the news the NBC news
guy when he fell over and his camera you can
pick it up where they're cut. You know, they're shooting
from the back of that trailer that's being toted by
the tractor. And that's where where where Congressman Leo Ryan
was killed at that airstrip. You mentioned it's six miles
(30:12):
from the Jonestown settlement, And I was because as you
were telling me about Eckhart going in, and that's still
shocking to me, Joe. I can't quite get past being
mile two miles out and smelling death. I know, the
smell of death is a very specific smell, but because
of the amount that we heard of in terms of
(30:33):
the bodies decomposing, I thought there must have been days
and days. But the reality of the situation was when
Leo Ryan was murdered six miles away from Jonestown, they
had radio traffic going from the Jonestown Temple with Jim
Jones to the Port Kartuma where the airstrip was, and
(30:55):
then they had contact with Georgetown, which was two days
trek up the river, but that's where Jones's sun was,
and the other basketball players from Jonestown they were playing
in a tournament, and so there was already the word
had gone out that they had had this revolutionary suicide.
But because they had faked it before and people had
(31:17):
left the camp, you know, they call them deserters, those
who escaped the camp did not immediately believe it was real.
They were like, yeah, we've done this before, you know,
White Knights, and we've done that, and so they did
get people out there.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's why I actually got there right away.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
They had people there the next day, within twenty four hours,
people run site identifying it. But you had to get
everybody there to do the work. And as you mentioned,
it's not like it is now. And I didn't think
about it, Joe. I wondered, what would happen going into
some nine hundred people are dead and we're not talking
about We're not talking about the army, We're not talking
(31:54):
about a military action where a lot was going on.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
These are civilians that took their own lives.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
You know, so that everybody understands. The actual capital is Georgetown,
and weren't there. I think I heard you mentioned that
there were suicides there as well.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
There were The Temple had an office in Georgetown staffed
by Sharon Amos, and because they did a lot of
work with the government anyway, Sharon Amos was a longtime
Jones loyalist. In the night of the November eighteenth, she
got a two way communication from Jonestown telling them telling
her to take revenge on the Temple's enemies and then
commit revolutionary suicide. Now, Sharon name has had three children,
(32:33):
a twenty one year old name Leanne, a eleven year
old name Christa, and a ten year old son named Martin.
When she gets this message from Jonestown to commit revolutionary suicide,
she escorts all three of her children into a bathroom
and then uses a knife to kill Christa and Martin,
but when she tries to slice her own throat, she
has trouble, and her twenty one year old daughter, Leanne,
(32:57):
actually helped Sharon Amos got her own throat when she
was deadly and killed herself. There were three individuals that
were shipped out of Jonestown at the time the mass
suicide took place. They were the sons of Jim Jones,
Jim Junior, Stephen and Tim. Those three young men actually
(33:20):
discovered the bodies of Sharon Amas and her children. That
was the shocking end in Georgetown.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You know, it's hard really to fathom this, you know,
and look, I mean, look, you and I think we
can both agree that that people are creatures of free will.
You know, you're you're going to do what you're going
to do. You know you're going to be responsible for
the choices you ultimately make. But you know, you had
(33:47):
said something that was kind of really penetrating.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
A little a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
You're thinking about these kids, you know, the kids. You know,
kids are not exercising free will. You know, we're not
going to go into a developmental lecture here about children
and these decisions of accountability and those sorts of things.
But when you begin to think about these little kids
that are there and they're being subjected to all of this,
(34:12):
they're being held against their will. And then you have
individuals the political class in America that you know will
blindly support this, and a lot of this would Jones,
I think goes back to the money that was throughout
his life, Dave, throughout his life that was handed out.
And of course the one thing, you know, we were
(34:33):
talking about flies flies earlier. The one thing politicians are
attracted to, just like flies.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Is money.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
You put the scent of money in the air and
they'll be attracted to it, and they'll say anything that
you want them to say. They're willing to look the
other way. I think about go ahead.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
The part still affects me and affected me when this happened.
Of being a man of faith, I was troubled by
what took place because it was positioned as a man
of the cloth led people astray using the Bible not
the truth. And I encourage you to look into that.
But it does happen, Joe, there are wolves in sheep's clothing.
(35:22):
And I think that's what all I can tell you
is that I'm a Christian and Jesus did not say
follow my followers, He said follow me. And if you
just consider that, I think of that with the Helbop
comment people, you know, I think of that every time
we have David Koresh at Waco. I think of those
types of scenarios where people put their trust in a
human being that they shouldn't be trusting. You can't trust man,
(35:45):
don't trust him you And that's what bothers me to
this day.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
It hurts my heart.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And you think about all that's left behind. But here's
I think, probably thinking about this UH and thinking about
what what remains and going back to this Wanderlust company
that is talking about laying out laying out to this
(36:14):
location as a spot for dark tourism. Look, you know,
I look, I have to say, Okay, as you well know,
and I talked about it. We did an episode on
the catacombs in UH in France, and look, I can
church that up all I want to. Okay, I can say,
you know, I went I went to the catacombs in
(36:37):
France as an academic pursuit and I took photographs while
I was down there, and I'm going to show them
in my class. Matter of fact, this fall, I'll be
using those photographs to talk in my Clandestine Graves class,
to talk about uh, you know, depositing of human remains,
skeletal remains. But let's face it, I was a tourists
(37:00):
in this world. That's that is a dark tourism sight.
The darkness that kind of fell over that landscape all
these decades ago. Now it it was really hard for
light to penetrate through that, I think, and still to
(37:23):
this day, you know, it still resonates with everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
There are a lot of other sites around the world
day that people visit.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
You know, I and I wonder, I wonder many times,
you know, what what's the purpose of going there? Do
you know that the Wuhan Lab now is is a
stop for dark tourism. Now you've got Joan, Yeah, you've
got Chernobyl of Fukushima, Japan.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I didn't have Nuture Noble.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeahchwitzschwitz is.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
And you know, I think when we talked about that earlier,
whether it was when we started or before off mic,
I actually see some value in Auschwitz of it being
a marker. I don't look at that as a dark try.
I look at that as if we do not maintain
Auschwitz and tell people that have there are too many
(38:25):
Holocaust deniers, and there will come another strain of people
to say six million Jews didn't die. There are way
too many people that say that out loud, and I'm
thinking these you know, that's the value in keeping that.
But again, is there a true value in keeping the
dark tour to Jonestown?
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I guess there is.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, I assume that there is. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I think that it would have to be shaped and formed.
You know, I think about Waco for instance, right, and
you have to imagine, Dave that these many years since Waco,
there are people that will drive way out in the
country because it's not actually Waco that it's in. I mean,
it's way outside of town. You have to be purposed,
(39:09):
you know, you don't wind up there by accident, you
know what I'm saying. There are people that purpose to
go there, and you know, if offered the opportunity, would
I go and see it?
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
So I think that some of it is akin to
you know, you can't turn your way, your eyes away
from a car accident when you're stopped in traffic and
you know you're you're cursing the fact that you know
you've got a thirty minute delay. But when you get
to the point where the accident is and they're using
(39:41):
hoses to wash the blood and the debris off of
the hot top out there, I don't know about all
the rest of you. I'm still looking. I'm looking to
see what happened. I want to know. And even after
all these years, as many times as I brushed up
against debt and worn witness to it, it's still there.
(40:02):
Maybe it's just part of our humanity. I don't know,
but this is certainly a dark chapter. It's certainly a
dark chapter, and I think that it needs to be remembered.
It needs to be remembered in the sense that people
can be influenced by one individual to do horrific things.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Backs.
Quality times. But Joseph's gotten more, as you know.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm proud to say that I'm from Louisiana. I don't
live there now. I miss home, I miss my family
down there many days, but I have fond memories of
my childhood and early adulthood down there. I learned a lot.
The state taught me a lot. The environment taught me
a lot down there, particularly when it came to being
a death investigator. Nature's funny that way. It can teach
(00:32):
you things about life, even in the midst of horrible circumstances,
when you're observing all that remains.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Relative to death.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It's a harsh environment, just like say a jungle, a
lot of humidity. Everything seems like it's wet because it
is most of the time, and it seems that it
consumes everything around it, whether it's vines or trees or
(01:09):
low growth scrub or just the animals that live there.
Everything over a period of time bends its knee to
nature in those wet environments, much like the jungle of Diana,
where several decades back, we had a horrible event that occurred,
(01:34):
an event that still impacts even our language today. Don't
drink the kool aid. But with that in mind, there
is now a company out there that wishes to take
people on a tour, a tour of a location where
(01:56):
one of the most disgusting and horrible events in human
history took place. I'm talking about the Jonestown Massacre. I'm
Joseph Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs. I came
across something on my newsfeed the other day that kind
(02:17):
of took me aback, and it was the fact that
there was an article that appeared in Rolling Stone and
let me see, I think I've got it here at
my fingertips. Yeah, this is actually on July the third.
Just to give you an idea. The title of this
thing is Jonestown Massacre site where over nine hundred people died,
(02:43):
opens to tourism. And I'm thinking, oh my lord, are
they actually serious? Are they actually serious? And apparently this
is it's not just the name of the company is
actually called of all things Wanderlust. This is falls into
(03:04):
a group a category of tourism that's called dark tourism,
and even things like you know, like concentration camps are
part of this world. You go to you go to
London and you know, Jack the Ripper tours have been
(03:28):
making the rounds for years and years in my hometown
of New Orleans. You know, one of the big visitations
that people always do, uh, is they want to go
seek out Marie Levoe's grave, the voodoo queen, you know
of New Orleans. They even had the album that came
out back I mean the song that came out back
in the fifties. But you know, Marie Leveau was She's
(03:53):
kind of a character. We're not talking about some kind
of disembodied spirit here. We're actually talking about a location
where over nine hundred people went at the urgings of
a man who claimed to be a man of God.
I'm doing air quotes and drugged them down there to
(04:17):
this location that I'll put it to you this way,
if I'm not mistaken. I think this is one of
the locations where the French Foreign Legion goes to do
jungle training. Probably that gives you how an idea of
how hostile this environment is. And these people lost their
lives down there, Dave, And now people want to go
(04:38):
and tour this location. It's kind of amazing.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
I think.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I have mixed feelings about it. You know, that a
tourism thing, but if it prevents one person from following
a madman into the jungle again, Yeah, you know, I
guess there could be something good that could come out
of it. But I, like you, I remember the site
(05:04):
of this on the news. I remember the stories of hundreds,
and they were almost unbelievable. It's like because at first
it was Congressman Leo Ran murdered in South America. Nobody
knew where Guyana was. I did, okay, I didn't know
where Guyana was. And I remember hearing about it.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Because I was a kid.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah, but I remember hearing about, you know, this congressman
was killed, and that was the first thing, you know,
because and that there was a newsperson, a cameraman who
was also killed, and several others were killed. That was
what we heard about first. It wasn't the mass suicide
that we knew of right off the bat. The first
story was Leorian congressman murdered, you know, on a fact
(05:46):
finding mission. Because the people that were in this village
in Jonestown, which we had no idea what it was,
really a number of family members from Leo Ryan's home
district in northern California asked him please They had been
families have been asking local politicians for help for a
long time and they couldn't get any. Harvey Milk, who
(06:08):
was the superintendent of San Francisco or along those lines,
wrote a letter to President Carter in nineteen seventy seven saying,
Jim Jones is a good guy.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
Leave him alone.
Speaker 4 (06:18):
You're hearing a bunch of lies from a defector, you know.
And it was from a man whose son was still
there with his wife. He was trying to get him out,
and they weren't getting help from local politicians. Leo Ryan
decided to go check it out, and he went down
there with his aid, and you know, he was then murdered,
and we know the aftermath. So I guess my thinking is, Joe,
(06:42):
and I was really curious when you brought this up,
because I did some researching on the article that Rolling
Stone has, and there are a number of different outlets
who have also reported on this dark tourism, and I wonder,
I guess you and I look at it because it's
contemporary to we remember Jonestown, We remember it. I don't
(07:03):
remember the reports of World War Two. I wasn't alive then.
I didn't hear those, so it's historical for me when
I see film being played of deliberation of some of
the concentration camps that you can find occasionally seeing those
old war pictures. But Guyana was on our television. I
remember seeing the helicopter or news covering you know, cruise
(07:27):
and seeing what we believe were bodies.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
They were bodies, And the thing about it is is
that these bodies when you see it from the air,
and I remember the day because this is kind of
how my brain works relative to the news. We never
really saw bodies as children in Vietnam, but we saw
those reports every single night. We saw the heros lifting off,
(07:51):
they're carrying wounded, or they're bringing in troops, and troops
are getting off of the heroes. And I remember because
my father was involved in Vietnam and during that period
of time. And I don't know if you recall this
because we were both kids during this period of time,
but they would they would, like Walter Cronkite, they would
(08:12):
put the numbers of dead on the screen and it.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
Was a static, old graphic shots that they.
Speaker 2 (08:18):
Would use in the news industry, and you'd see those
every now and then, but it was not really tangible,
you know, what I'm saying as a as a teenager
or a young teenager during this period of time, I
remember that aerial shot of this body, and then of
(08:38):
course I sought it out in magazines after that, because
I want, you know, the thing that you see.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
We didn't have video back then.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
We had the internet like we have it now.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
We didn't even have VCRs. If you had a VCR
you were very wealthy, and we didn't have that and so,
and even if you did, you wouldn't have access to
the tape of so you catch a fleeting glimpse, you know,
when it was news at that particular time. But I
remember going back and look at those still frames like
in Time magazine or Life or one of those things,
(09:10):
and you couldn't really take the measure of it. In
my young brain, I couldn't, right, And so yeah, it
was it was striking that you could get daved. I
swear it looked like it looked like a lightning bolt
had descended from the heavens and everybody just kind of
(09:33):
dropped dead right where they were standing. Because you had
you had families, You had mamas with their kids. And
one of the things that I remember is they're laying abreast, okay,
like shoulder to shoulder, and some of these people are
laying face down on this hot and I remember the
soil is like this bright red clay and with greenery everywhere,
(09:57):
and you'd see parents like Huddler with their kids adjacent
to them, and you couldn't take the measure. And looking
back at those images now you can see all of
those bodies are bloated, every single one of them, and
being in that environment, it's not not surprising, not surprising,
that's at all.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
That's what I was going to ask you when you
first sent me the article, and I'm going, okay, I
can't even imagine what's left of Jonestown in Guyana, because
I thought the jungle would have swallowed it back up
by now. So in order to go in there and
to look over what was left, I don't know. I'm
(10:36):
curious now as to what's left because most of it
was built out of wood and bamboo and local things
they could get. They cut, you know, cleared the land.
But just as a quick heads up, it was reported
that it was a religious cult, an End of Time's
religious cult, led by Jim Jones, pastor reverend Reverend Jim Jones.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
That's what they called him.
Speaker 4 (10:55):
Yeah, yeah, and that's not actually the truth of the matter.
If you actually dig into it, and I encourage you
to do it. From a historical standpoint, you know, those
who fail to remember history are doomed to repeat it.
These madmen exist in every community across America. There is
somebody who is leading people astray, and it can be
any number of ways. A lot of times God is
(11:15):
used as that conduit to lead people astray because people
are looking for something better than what they have. Most
of us know that you cannot be satisfied by money
and things. We're looking for something more, and it is
that that makes life worth living. It's the more. But
the thing is, there's always some con man waiting to
(11:36):
take your passionately held belief in helping your fellow man
and turning it around and stealing your heart and your life.
As it happened in Guyana, this man convinced people that
what they were doing was good. He convinced them and
then conditioned them. Jim Jones studied. He was He was
(11:58):
not an unlearned person. He knew what he was doing,
and he went and made it happen. He made Guyana happen.
Of course, they were being run out of northern California
because his cult was being looked into for the damage
it was doing to families and people. But he had
enough friends in positions of power. And I will tell
you that's one of the biggest fears of my life,
(12:19):
is that that'll happen again, Joe, if it might have
happened already and we just don't know it. But this
is the biggest, the biggest loss of life in our
American history because they were all I guess they were
all American citizens, they all came from northern California. But
other than nine to eleven, this was the biggest loss
of life in one day that we'd ever experienced as
a country.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yeah, and I think that probably Americans looking back over
Tom you know, we can look at those horrible images
from nine to eleven and we can see those buildings
come crashing down. We can even see people throwing themselves
out of those buildings. But you're talking about thousands of
(13:00):
miles away in some isolated jungle where no one has
most of us have never even heard of it, where
you've got loved ones that have died that are littering
the floor of this jungle so called utopia. Down there
are we doomed to repeat this again.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
I've had the.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Pleasure of working with some pretty cool cats over the
course of my career, and one of the most interesting
fellows I think I probably ever came across is a
guy named doctor Bill Eckerd. I caught him at the
end of his career. Doctor Eckerd was a rather renowned
(14:00):
forensic pathologist. I came across him because he had done
some of his time in New Orleans. He was a
He was quite the forensic pathologist of Galden to Nyu.
I think that he had paused for a period of
time to fight in World War Two. I'm not really
sure he but he had lived this kind of really
(14:23):
really interesting life, and one of the elements of it
was that he was involved in some of the examinations
involving Jonestown. And I've never been able to purely verify this,
but doctor Eckert had told a group of us at
one point in time we were gathered that he went
(14:45):
down to Guyana to Jonestown at the behest of the
State Department to do autopsies, and he had done autopsies
down there, and when you can you imagine doing an outdoor,
outdoor autopsy day on remains in that kind of hostile environment.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
You know what, I'm curious, Joe, because we know, we
know the type of atmosphere weather wise that they were
dealing with, and yet you mentioned that you could tell
that the bodies were bloated. We've got nine hundred men,
women and children, two hundred and sixty seven children, infants,
(15:32):
little kids, and they're all laid out, and I have
to wonder what was it like for those who because
all these bodies have to be identified, right, I mean everybody,
You have to identify who they are, how they died,
what killed them? How are you going to get And
it wasn't like they came in that night after it happened.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
It's been days.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, Just I think, even even about today's standards, to
try to get to this location, even the world current
contexts that we live in Nowaday, even if you and
I were to I don't know, I guess we would
maybe fly out of Atlanta and wind up going you know,
Lord only knows where. I don't know if we could
get a direct flight into Guyana out of Atlanta we'd
(16:15):
probably have to make several connections along the way, but
even when you land in the capital, then you have
to find a way to get out to this location
because it's truly isolated. And that's what that's what Jones wanted.
He wanted to be apart from this. But one of
the things that stands out that doctor Eckert hadn't mentioned
(16:35):
to me, and this really struck a chord with me.
I've been on the scene of multiple decomposing bodies at
one time and have approached say one stands out in
mind where I had a bunch of drug dealers that
were killed in a van where the windows had been
blown out, and the van had been sitting there for
(16:58):
months and no one had discovered the body and so months, yeah,
months literally, Uh, and they were uh, these guys were
Mexican nationals'll they forget And it was in a customized van,
It's a really nice van and they had been shot
and uh, seems like there were either four or five
bodies all stacked on top of one another in the
(17:20):
van and the windows were blown out, and it was
outside of a business park and a guy had walked
around a corner to take a smoke break and he
saw the van and walked over to it, and you know,
it's like, you know, took a couple of steps back
because the smell was so bad when I got there.
I remember I got within probably thirty feet of the
(17:42):
van and I caught a whiff at that point. Toime,
I've been around a lot of decomposed bodies. But back
to doctor Eckert, he said he flew in to the
location in a Huie in a Huey helicopter, which if
you don't know what a hue looks like, I think
v Atnam.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
You'll see it.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
You know, Fortunate Sons playing in the background. All right,
Creed its clear water Revival doors are open on the side.
And he said that even at like a two thousand
foot elevation, coming in across the top of the jungle,
they were like a mile two miles out, he could smell.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
Death coming get a mile away, and you know, thousand,
two thousand feet up in the air, and smelling death
is not something that most of us can identify with in.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
This kind of harsh environment. Dave, and I've stated this
before very plainly, but let me kind of reiterate this,
just as with all experiments that we that you might
conduct in a scientific environment, like in chemistry, for instance,
heat always speeds things up. Okay, you couple that with
(18:50):
this intense heat that they would have had in this jungle,
not to mention incredibly high levels of humidity as well,
and you will see these manifestations on the bodies relative
to you know, there were let me put it to
you this way. In these cases, you will see flies
(19:12):
begin to lay eggs on the deceased in this kind
of environment, potentially within the hour. Just let that sink
in just for a second. Have you ever been at
a picnic and you've been bugged literally bugged by a
bug a fly in your face? Like this, they're everywhere,
and so as the smell begins to kind of rise,
(19:33):
if you will, the alarms go off for these flies
and they come in from everywhere. You don't see them, okay,
but all of a sudden they're there. That's another part
of this horror show, if you will. You know, with
doctor Ecker, who was one of my mentors, you know,
mentioned as he came in on that huey he could
smell it. But you know when he would have landed here,
(19:55):
what's really fascinating is that as soon as he made
entrance into this area, there would have been swarms and
swarms of flies that were everywhere. They're lighting on everybody.
And as an old death investigator, that's one of the
things that used to actually unnerve me Dave about death investigation,
(20:16):
because you would have with decomps in particular, because you
would have flies that were feasting on the dead essentially,
and then they would light on you. They would fly
into your ears, your nose, your mouth, if you're talking
to somebody, you'll have because they're in this kind of
fever feeding frenzy as they're around there. And it's really
(20:39):
disgusting when you think about it. But when you take
this and you look at this exponentially, because we're talking
about nine hundred.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Bodies right right, you compound.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
The situation with this, it's an absolute and utter nightmare.
The bodies in the jungle will not adjust to you.
You have to adjust to them, and you still have
to do a scientific examination despite how horrible this environment is.
You still have to make a determination about manner and
(21:12):
cause of death in each one of these cases. And
here here's something kind of fascinating. I was kind of
ruminating over this. When you think about this, uh, you know,
the the methodology that was applied here, this uh uh,
the cyanide uh that these people were subjected to and
(21:34):
that were essentially forced to drink.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
I really wonder.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
What kind of markers they might have seen on the
bodies as well, not just what they're looking at toxicology wise.
I wonder from my perspective, and I hate that I
never picked doctor Eckert's brain about this, but did they
do blood draws on every single person there?
Speaker 1 (22:01):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
And then if they did, were they able to come
up with specific levels of toxicity? Because you know, you
can actually have you can actually have this stuff on
board in your system. It's a naturally occurring element and
it's you can actually have it on board, and there
(22:22):
are non lethal levels of it, okay, But once it
hits that lethal level, there's no you cannot unspin this
thing at that point in time, unless, of course, you've
got the necessary medical means that you're disposal on. Of course,
out in the jungle, you're not going to have that.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
And that was not their intent. Their intent was to die,
not to find a way to survive.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
Yeah, And I've thought about this extensively. You know, back then,
I think that sinod was probably a bit easier to
get your hands on. Remember, we recently did we recently
did an episode relative to a jet and that was
(23:07):
the it was the ant poisoning that.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yeah using arsenic.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
Yeah, arsenic, and so those elements within that particular brand
of ant poisoning, that brand still exists, but they don't
use arsenic anymore, Okay, Okay, So it's the same.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
Thing with sinide. It may very well have been used
because it's used.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
In all for all manner things in the industrial world, metallurgy,
these things, uh, you know, and there's short term exposure
with low dosages where people that are mining the stuff.
Can you imagine working in a mine and you're subjected
to this where they're mining it out and you're absorbing
it through your skin, you're breathing it in, and they
(23:52):
get low doses. But if you hit somebody with a
high doses dosage of this stuff and they're contracting it
literally by ingesting it, and what a horrible set of circumstances.
You've got people having seizures, You've got people that are
having incredible gastrointestinal distress. There's vomiting going on, explosive diarrhea,
(24:14):
you know, I know that's horrible to talk about pounding headaches,
I mean blinding headaches. You've got rapid heartbeat, profuse sweating,
and then eventually seizures and coma and so you know,
and this happens with these levels. It happens very very quickly.
But my whole point, as I'm kind of holding forth here,
(24:37):
my whole point with this is that you still have
to I think that you would dishonor the memory not
just of the victims, but of those victims, but also
the victims of the Fact Finding Commission if you did
not do a deep dive. You know, they sacrificed their
lives here. Let's try to understand what was the mode
(25:01):
the modality of death here. You know, what are we
talking gunshot wounds? Are they inflicted by someone else? Are
they self inflicted? Is this poisoning?
Speaker 1 (25:10):
I don't know?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
For all you know, you might have people that were
beaten prior to ingesting the stuff. So there's a lot
to pick through. And anytime you do these autopsies, and
I've never done an autopsy obviously in a jungle. I
have done an autopsy in a barn. Matter of fact,
a couple I did one in a barn, or assisted
(25:32):
with one in a barn. I've done a couple of
them in garages at funeral homes. Because the bodies were
so decomposed and it was in an outlying area, you
don't have access to the same tools. And when I
say tools, I'm talking about things like basic lighting. I
remember being in a barn and there were people, actually
(25:53):
it got close to dusk and there were police officers
there and they had flashlights out.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
Uh yeah, wow.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, there was talk of you know, shining high beams
you know, into there. We were able to finish the case,
but you know, you you do every now and then
have to go into these austere environments.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (26:14):
Interestingly enough, doctor Eckert as a as an aside, Uh,
he was actually the person that participated in the exhumation
of Joseph Mingla.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Uh yeah, that he was. That he was who they
thought he was, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:31):
Yeah, exactly, and you know, so I was.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
I was.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
You know, he was always kind of a hero to me. Uh.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
He probably worked a bit longer than he should, but
you know, a lot of friends. It's all forensic pathologists know.
But you know, when you look at a career like
his and these other story, you know, we've lost a
lot of a lot of that generation of forensic pathologists now.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
And you and I have talked about that, Uh, those tales.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Have you know, if you don't, you don't keep it
up and continue to talk about what these people did.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
I don't.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
It's hard for me to imagine a forensic pathologist now
going into that kind of environment and working in that
austere environment like that. I guess they could, but you know,
when you have mass fautalities now they actually have. You
look at d mort teams, which is the disaster mortuary
response teams, they have portable morgus that literally you can
(27:24):
you can cut the ropes on if you will, and
the whole thing kind of deploys where there's a table
there and you've got all of your tools and all
of that stuff. So you can go to an event
like a plane crash and have everything souped and nuts
ready to rock and roll. That's not the way it
used to be. It's almost kind of a cowboy mentality,
you know, when you think about that, and then you're
(27:46):
you're expected to come up with your scientific findings. Uh uh,
and you had to do it in a in a
very huh I've used the word austere. You have to
do it in kind of a hostile environment. Can you
imagine having to do this and fighting flies the entire
time and any other kind of nasties that might be
(28:07):
emerging out of the jungle. And hey, you never know
who's out in the jungle that might be looking.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
At you as you're going through all of this.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
I guess looking back through you know, the veil of
time here. You people don't understand that that this they
call it an airports and landing strip, is essentially what
it is.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Dave. This thing.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
This thing's like six miles from the actual compound at Jonestown.
And my thought is is that this is an area
that you have to find if you're going to facilitate
bringing in fixed wing aircraft, if you're going to create
e this, you have to find the ideal location that's
absolutely any kind of rivers, ravines, or that's a flat
(29:06):
area that you can go in and plow down, you know,
all of the trees and then scrape this area and
make it at least suitable. And it rains so much too.
Can you imagine it'd be a muddy, bloody mess out there.
It's six miles from Jonestown. From there, they're they're having
to you know. You you've made an interesting point, Dave
(29:26):
about about the people that ambushed the party arriving on tractors, right.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
You know, we don't think.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
About traveling about on tractors, you know, but tractors many
times in this kind of environment, uneven roads, that sort
of thing that's really kind of the only way you're
going to get through.
Speaker 4 (29:49):
And they were, you know, towing a trailer behind them.
You know, that's still shocking to me. And I only
know that from the video the news the NBC news
guy when he fell over and his camera you can
pick it up where they're cut. You know, they're shooting
from the back of that trailer that's being toted by
the tractor. And that's where where where Congressman Leo Ryan
was killed at that airstrip. You mentioned it's six miles
(30:12):
from the Jonestown settlement, And I was because as you
were telling me about Eckhart going in, and that's still
shocking to me, Joe. I can't quite get past being
mile two miles out and smelling death. I know, the
smell of death is a very specific smell, but because
of the amount that we heard of in terms of
(30:33):
the bodies decomposing, I thought there must have been days
and days. But the reality of the situation was when
Leo Ryan was murdered six miles away from Jonestown, they
had radio traffic going from the Jonestown Temple with Jim
Jones to the Port Kartuma where the airstrip was, and
(30:55):
then they had contact with Georgetown, which was two days
trek up the river, but that's where Jones's sun was,
and the other basketball players from Jonestown they were playing
in a tournament, and so there was already the word
had gone out that they had had this revolutionary suicide.
But because they had faked it before and people had
(31:17):
left the camp, you know, they call them deserters, those
who escaped the camp did not immediately believe it was real.
They were like, yeah, we've done this before, you know,
White Knights, and we've done that, and so they did
get people out there.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's why I actually got there right away.
Speaker 4 (31:33):
They had people there the next day, within twenty four hours,
people run site identifying it. But you had to get
everybody there to do the work. And as you mentioned,
it's not like it is now. And I didn't think
about it, Joe. I wondered, what would happen going into
some nine hundred people are dead and we're not talking
about We're not talking about the army, We're not talking
(31:54):
about a military action where a lot was going on.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
These are civilians that took their own lives.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
You know, so that everybody understands. The actual capital is Georgetown,
and weren't there. I think I heard you mentioned that
there were suicides there as well.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
There were The Temple had an office in Georgetown staffed
by Sharon Amos, and because they did a lot of
work with the government anyway, Sharon Amos was a longtime
Jones loyalist. In the night of the November eighteenth, she
got a two way communication from Jonestown telling them telling
her to take revenge on the Temple's enemies and then
commit revolutionary suicide. Now, Sharon name has had three children,
(32:33):
a twenty one year old name Leanne, a eleven year
old name Christa, and a ten year old son named Martin.
When she gets this message from Jonestown to commit revolutionary suicide,
she escorts all three of her children into a bathroom
and then uses a knife to kill Christa and Martin,
but when she tries to slice her own throat, she
has trouble, and her twenty one year old daughter, Leanne,
(32:57):
actually helped Sharon Amos got her own throat when she
was deadly and killed herself. There were three individuals that
were shipped out of Jonestown at the time the mass
suicide took place. They were the sons of Jim Jones,
Jim Junior, Stephen and Tim. Those three young men actually
(33:20):
discovered the bodies of Sharon Amas and her children. That
was the shocking end in Georgetown.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
You know, it's hard really to fathom this, you know,
and look, I mean, look, you and I think we
can both agree that that people are creatures of free will.
You know, you're you're going to do what you're going
to do. You know you're going to be responsible for
the choices you ultimately make. But you know, you had
(33:47):
said something that was kind of really penetrating.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
A little a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
You're thinking about these kids, you know, the kids. You know,
kids are not exercising free will. You know, we're not
going to go into a developmental lecture here about children
and these decisions of accountability and those sorts of things.
But when you begin to think about these little kids
that are there and they're being subjected to all of this,
(34:12):
they're being held against their will. And then you have
individuals the political class in America that you know will
blindly support this, and a lot of this would Jones,
I think goes back to the money that was throughout
his life, Dave, throughout his life that was handed out.
And of course the one thing, you know, we were
(34:33):
talking about flies flies earlier. The one thing politicians are
attracted to, just like flies.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Is money.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
You put the scent of money in the air and
they'll be attracted to it, and they'll say anything that
you want them to say. They're willing to look the
other way. I think about go ahead.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
The part still affects me and affected me when this happened.
Of being a man of faith, I was troubled by
what took place because it was positioned as a man
of the cloth led people astray using the Bible not
the truth. And I encourage you to look into that.
But it does happen, Joe, there are wolves in sheep's clothing.
(35:22):
And I think that's what all I can tell you
is that I'm a Christian and Jesus did not say
follow my followers, He said follow me. And if you
just consider that, I think of that with the Helbop
comment people, you know, I think of that every time
we have David Koresh at Waco. I think of those
types of scenarios where people put their trust in a
human being that they shouldn't be trusting. You can't trust man,
(35:45):
don't trust him you And that's what bothers me to
this day.
Speaker 3 (35:49):
It hurts my heart.
Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yeah it does.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
And you think about all that's left behind. But here's
I think, probably thinking about this UH and thinking about
what what remains and going back to this Wanderlust company
that is talking about laying out laying out to this
(36:14):
location as a spot for dark tourism. Look, you know,
I look, I have to say, Okay, as you well know,
and I talked about it. We did an episode on
the catacombs in UH in France, and look, I can
church that up all I want to. Okay, I can say,
you know, I went I went to the catacombs in
(36:37):
France as an academic pursuit and I took photographs while
I was down there, and I'm going to show them
in my class. Matter of fact, this fall, I'll be
using those photographs to talk in my Clandestine Graves class,
to talk about uh, you know, depositing of human remains,
skeletal remains. But let's face it, I was a tourists
(37:00):
in this world. That's that is a dark tourism sight.
The darkness that kind of fell over that landscape all
these decades ago. Now it it was really hard for
light to penetrate through that, I think, and still to
(37:23):
this day, you know, it still resonates with everyone.
Speaker 1 (37:28):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
There are a lot of other sites around the world
day that people visit.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
You know, I and I wonder, I wonder many times,
you know, what what's the purpose of going there? Do
you know that the Wuhan Lab now is is a
stop for dark tourism. Now you've got Joan, Yeah, you've
got Chernobyl of Fukushima, Japan.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
I didn't have Nuture Noble.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeahchwitzschwitz is.
Speaker 4 (38:04):
And you know, I think when we talked about that earlier,
whether it was when we started or before off mic,
I actually see some value in Auschwitz of it being
a marker. I don't look at that as a dark try.
I look at that as if we do not maintain
Auschwitz and tell people that have there are too many
(38:25):
Holocaust deniers, and there will come another strain of people
to say six million Jews didn't die. There are way
too many people that say that out loud, and I'm
thinking these you know, that's the value in keeping that.
But again, is there a true value in keeping the
dark tour to Jonestown?
Speaker 3 (38:44):
I guess there is.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Yeah, I assume that there is. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (38:48):
I think that it would have to be shaped and formed.
You know, I think about Waco for instance, right, and
you have to imagine, Dave that these many years since Waco,
there are people that will drive way out in the
country because it's not actually Waco that it's in. I mean,
it's way outside of town. You have to be purposed,
(39:09):
you know, you don't wind up there by accident, you
know what I'm saying. There are people that purpose to
go there, and you know, if offered the opportunity, would
I go and see it?
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Maybe?
Speaker 2 (39:20):
So I think that some of it is akin to
you know, you can't turn your way, your eyes away
from a car accident when you're stopped in traffic and
you know you're you're cursing the fact that you know
you've got a thirty minute delay. But when you get
to the point where the accident is and they're using
(39:41):
hoses to wash the blood and the debris off of
the hot top out there, I don't know about all
the rest of you. I'm still looking. I'm looking to
see what happened. I want to know. And even after
all these years, as many times as I brushed up
against debt and worn witness to it, it's still there.
(40:02):
Maybe it's just part of our humanity. I don't know,
but this is certainly a dark chapter. It's certainly a
dark chapter, and I think that it needs to be remembered.
It needs to be remembered in the sense that people
can be influenced by one individual to do horrific things.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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