THE JONESTOWN TAPES: Audio of the Final Hour When The Socialist Paradise Became Hell on Earth

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Today, The Jonestown massacre that resulted in the death of
more than nine hundred people in Guyana in November of
nineteen seventy eight is remembered in the popular imagination as
the time that gullible expats from the People's Temple cult
literally drank the kool aid and died simultaneously from cyanide poisoning.

(00:28):
It's a tale so bizarre that for many, the strangeness
of it almost eclipses the tragedy it baffles the imagination.
Nearly one thousand people were so enthralled by occult leader's
conspiracy theories that they moved to Guyana, isolated themselves on
a compound, then synchronized their watches, and, in unison, threw

(00:52):
their heads back and downed a poisoned kids drink. How
could so many people have lost their grip on reality
and why were they so easily dooped? The true story
answers those questions, but in stripping away the mystery, it
also brings the sadness of the Jonestown massacre to center stage.

(01:16):
While preparing for tonight's episode of Weird Darkness, I searched
for audio recordings of Jim Jones and the People's Temple
Cult that I could use to bring the story to
life a bit more. What I found was audio of
the final hour of the actual massacre itself. Be thankful
you didn't have to listen through all of it like

(01:38):
I chose to do. It's some of the most heart
wrenching stuff I've ever heard. Just the audio clips I
do plan on using in this episode are hard enough
to listen to. I'm Darren Marler and this is Weird Darkness.

(02:04):
Welcome weirdos. This is Weird Darkness. Here you'll find stories
of the paranormal, supernatural, legends, lore, crime, conspiracy, mysterious, macabre,
unsolved and unexplained coming up in this episode. Until the

(02:27):
September eleventh attacks on the US, the Jonestown massacre was
the greatest loss of civilian life as the result of
a deliberate act in American history. Will look not only
at the horrible events of the massacre itself, but what
life was like for those in the People's Temple cult
before the mass suicide took place. Plus, we'll look through

(02:50):
the eyes of the first responders who came upon the
grisly scene immediately after and how they dealt with the
horrors they stepped into bult your doors, lock your windows,
turn off your lights, and come with me into the
weird darkness. The people in Jim Jones' compound isolated themselves

(03:31):
in Guyana because they wanted in the nineteen seventies what
many people of the twenty first century take for granted.
A country should have an integrated society that rejects racism,
promotes tolerance, and effectively distributes resources. They believed Jim Jones
because he had power, influence, and connections to mainstream leaders

(03:54):
who publicly supported him for years, And they drank a
cyanide laced grape soft on November nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
because they thought they had just lost their entire way
of life. It helped, of course, that this wasn't the
first time that they thought they were taking poison for
their cause, but it was the last thirty years before

(04:19):
he stood in front of a vat of poisoned punch
and urged his followers to end it all. Jim Jones
was a well liked, respected figure in the progressive community
in the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties. He
was known for his charity work and for founding one
of the first mixed race churches in the Midwest. His

(04:39):
work helped desegregate Indiana and earned him a devoted following
among civil rights activists. From Indianapolis, he moved to California,
where he and his church continued to promote a message
of compassion. They emphasized helping the poor and raising the downtrodden,
those who were marginalized and excluded from society's prosperity. Behind

(05:03):
closed doors, they embraced socialism and hoped that in time
the country would be ready to accept the much stigmatized theory.
And then Jim Jones began to explore faith healing to
draw larger crowds and bring in more money for his cause.
He started promising miracles, saying he could literally pull cancer

(05:24):
out of people. But it wasn't cancer that he magically
whisked from people's bodies. It was bits of rotten chicken
that he produced with a magician's flare. It was a
deception for a good cause, he and his team rationalized,
but it was the first step down a long dark
road that ended with death and nine hundred people who

(05:47):
would never see the sunrise. On November twentieth, nineteen seventy eight.
It wasn't long before things began to get stranger. Jones
was becoming increasingly paranoid about the world around him. His
speeches began to reference a coming doomsday, the result of
a nuclear apocalypse brought about by government mismanagement. Though he

(06:10):
continued to enjoy popular support and strong relationships with the
day's leading politicians, including First Lady Rosalind Carter and California
Governor Jerry Brown, the media was beginning to turn on him.
Several high profile members of the People's Temple defected, and
the conflict was both vicious and public, as the traders

(06:32):
lambasted the church and the church smeared them in return.
The church's organizational structure ossified. A group of primarily well
off white women oversaw the running of the temple, while
the majority of the congregants were black. The meetings of
the upper echelons grew more secretive as they planned increasingly
complicated fundraising schemes, a combination of staged healings, trinket marketing,

(06:58):
and solicitous mailings. At the same time, it was becoming
clear to everyone that Jones wasn't particularly invested in the
religious aspects of his church. Christianity was the bait, not
the goal. He was interested in the social progress he
could achieve. With a fanatically devoted following at his back.

(07:19):
His social goals became more openly radical, and he began
to attract the interest of Marxist leaders as well as
violent leftist groups. The shift and a slew of defections,
defections in which Jones sent search parties and a private
plane to reclaim the deserters, brought the media down on
what was now being widely regarded as a cult. As

(07:43):
stories of scandal and abuse proliferated in the papers, Jones
made a run for it, taking his church with him.
They settled in Guyana, a country that appealed to Jones
because of its non extradition status and its socialist government.
Guyana's authorities wearily allowed the cult to begin construction on

(08:04):
their utopic compound, and in nineteen seventy seven the People's
Temple arrived to take up presidents. It didn't go as planned.
Now isolated, Jones was free to implement his vision of
a pure Marxist society, and it was a lot grimmer
than many had anticipated. The daylight hours were consumed by

(08:26):
ten hour workdays, and the evenings were filled with lectures
as Jones spoke at length on his fears for society
and excoriated defectors. On movie nights, entertaining films were replaced
with Soviet style documentaries about the dangers, excesses, and vices
of the outside world. Rations were limited as the compound

(08:48):
had been built on poor soil. Everything had to be
imported via negotiations on short wave radios, the only way
the People's Temple could communicate with the outside world. And
then there were the punishments. Rumors escaped out of Guyana
that cult members were harshly disciplined, beaten and locked in

(09:09):
coffin sized prisons, or left to spend the night in
dry wells. Jones himself was said to be losing his
grip on reality. His health was deteriorating, and by way
of treatment, he began taking a nearly lethal combination of
amphetamines anthenobarbital. His speeches, piped over the compound speakers at

(09:31):
nearly all hours of the day, were becoming dark and
incoherent as he reported that America had fallen into chaos.
As one survivor recalled, he would tell us that in
the United States, African Americans were being herded into concentration camps,
that there was genocide on the streets. They were coming
to kill and torture us because we had chosen what

(09:54):
he called the socialist track. He said they were on
their way. Jones had begun to raise the idea of
revolutionary suicide, a last resort that he and his congregation
would pursue if the enemy showed up at their gates.
He even had his followers rehearsed their own deaths, calling

(10:14):
them together in the central courtyard and asking them to
drink from a large vat he had prepared for just
such an occasion. It's not clear whether his congregation knew
those moments were drills. Survivors would later report having believed
they would die. When they didn't, they were told that
it had been a test, that they had drunk anyway

(10:36):
proved them worthy. It was in that context that US
Congressman Leo Ryan came to investigate what happened next wasn't
representative Leo Ryan's fault. Jonestown was a settlement on the
brink of disaster, and in his paranoid state, Jones was
likely to have found a catalyst before long, but when

(10:59):
Leo Ryan and showed up a Jonestown it threw everything
into chaos. Ryan had been friends with a People's Temple
member whose mutilated body had been found two years prior,
and since then he and several other US representatives had
taken a keen interest in the cult. When reports coming

(11:19):
out of Jonestown suggested that it was far from the
racism and poverty free utopia that Jones had sold as
members on, Ryan decided to check on the conditions for himself.
Five days before the Jonestown massacre, Ryan flew to Guyana
along with a delegation of eighteen people, including several members
of the press, and met with Jones and his followers.

(11:43):
The settlement wasn't the disaster Ryan expected. While conditions were lean,
Ryan felt the vast majority of cultists seemed to genuinely
want to be there, even when several members asked to
leave with his delegation. Ryan reasoned that a dozen defectsctors
out of six hundred or so adults wasn't cause for concern.

(12:05):
Jim Jones, however, was devastated. Despite Ryan's assurances that his
report would be favorable. Jones was convinced that the People's
Temple had failed the inspection and Ryan was going to
call in the authorities. Paranoid and in failing health, Jones
sent his security team after Ryan and his crew, who

(12:25):
had just arrived at the nearby Port Katuma airstrip. The
People's Temple force shot and killed four delegation members and
one defector, wounding several others. Leo Ryan died after being
shot more than twenty times. With the congressman dead, Jim
Jones and the People's Temple were finished, but it wasn't

(12:48):
arrest that Jones anticipated. He told his congregation that the
authorities would be parachuting in at any moment, then sketched
a vague picture of a terrible fate at the hands
of a deranged, corrupt government. He encouraged his congregation to
die now rather than face their torture. The audio of

(13:09):
Jones's speech and the ensuing suicide survives on the tape.
In exhausted, Jones says he sees no way forward. He's
tired of living and wants to choose his own death.
I tell you, I don't care how many screams you hear.
I don't care how many anguished cries. Death is a
million times preferable to ten more days of this life.

(13:33):
If you knew what was ahead of you, if you
knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to
be stepping over tonight. Die with a degree of dignity.
Lay down your life with dignity, don't lay down with
tears and agony.

Speaker 2 (13:46):
I tell you, I don't care how many dreams you hear.
I don't care how many anguish cries. Death is a
million times preferable to ten more days of this life.
If he knew what was ahead of you, if he
knew what was ahead of you, you'd be glad to
be stepping over tonight. Death. Death. Death is common to people,
and they's them all as they take death in their stride.

(14:06):
Let's be dignant, but that's the beig dignified.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
One woman courageously disagrees. She says she's not afraid to die,
but she thinks the children at least deserve to live.
The People's temple shouldn't give up and let their enemies win.
Jones tells her that children deserve peace, and the crowd
shouts the woman down, telling her she's just afraid to die.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
I wasn't speaking about that plane. I was speaking about
the plane for us to go to Russia. How I
mean to Russia. Do you think Russia's gonna want? No,
not gonna. Do you think Russia's gonna want us? It's
all this stigma we had. We had some value, but

(14:54):
now we don't have any value. Well, I don't see
it like that. I mean, I feel like that. As
as long as there's life, it's hope. That's my fate. Well,
something everybody dies someplace that hope runs down because everybody dies.
I haven't seen anybody yet didn't die. Not. I like
to choose my own kind of death for a change.

(15:16):
I'm tired of being tormented to hell, That's what I'm
tired of. I'm tired of it talking to people's lives
in my hands. And I certainly don't want your life
in my hand. But I'm gonna tell you, Christine, without me,
life has no meaning. Uh, I'm the best friend you'll
ever have. I want. I have to pay. I'm standing

(15:40):
with you, Jarra, I'm standing with those people. They're part
of me. I can detach myself. My journey says, detach
my stuff. No no, no, no, no no I never
detached my stuff from any of your troubles. I've always
taken your troubles right on my shoulders. And I'm not
gonna change that now. It's too late. I've been running
too long. Not gonna change now. I mean the next

(16:03):
time you'll get to go to Russia the next time around.
This is when I'm talking about the nows and the
dispensation of judgment. This is the revolutionary It's just this,
the revolutionaries toutside council. I'm not talking about steff stealth destruction.
I'm talking about what we have no other road. I
will take your your call. We will put it to

(16:25):
the Russians, and I can tell you the ands to them,
because I'm a prophet. Call the Russians and tell 'em
to see if they'll takers. I said, I'm afraid to die.
I don't think you are. I don't think you are.
But uh I look it out for babies, and I
think they deserve to live. I agree, you know, they just,
but also they deserve what's more, they deserve peace. We

(16:49):
all came here for peace, and we've have we had it.
No I tried to give it to you. I've laid
down my life. Practically, I've practically died every day to
give you peace, and you still not had any peace.
You look better than I have seen you in a
long while, but it's still not the kind of piece
that I wanted to give you. But is. The food
continues to say that you're winning when you're losing.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Then the group who killed the congressman return announcing their victory,
and the debate ends as Jones begs someone to hurry
the medication.

Speaker 2 (17:27):
Hurray, hurry my children. Hurry all I say, that's not
fam the hands of the enemy. Hurry my children, Hurry.
There are seniors out here that I'm concerned about. Hurry.
I don't want to leave my seniors to this. Mets
play quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly. The sisters' know you

(17:55):
no more pay now, no more pain, I said, aw,
no more pain. Jim Cobb is laying on the airfield
dead at this moment.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
Those administering the drugs, perhaps the detritus on the compound suggests,
with syringes squirted into the mouth can be heard on tape,
assuring the children that the people who have ingested the
drug aren't crying from pain. It's only that the drugs
are a little bitter tasting. Others express their sense of
obligation to Jones. They wouldn't have made it this far

(18:33):
without him, and they're now taking their lives out of duty.
Some clearly those who have not yet ingested the poison,
wonder why the dying look like they're in pain when
they should be happy. One man is grateful that his
child won't be killed by the enemy or raised by
the enemy to be a dummy. Jones just keeps begging

(18:56):
them to hurry up. He tells the adults to stop
being hysterical and exciting the screaming children.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
If you quit, tell them they're dying. If you adults,
who stop some of this nonsense?

Speaker 1 (19:07):
Adults, adults, adults, I call.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
On you to stop this nonsense. I call on you
to quit exciting your children when all they're doing is
going to quiet red. I call on you to stop
it now.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
If you haven't ever accept it all are we black? Proud?
And what are we now?

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Stop this nonsense. Don't tell you this done anymore.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
You're exciting your children. Jones asks for the vat with
the green sea, the vat with poisoned flavor, a drink
mix so that the adults, now that they have dosed
the children and the elderly and infirm, indorse themselves with.

Speaker 2 (19:45):
The green seas, and that with the green tea, and
please made here so the adults can be in egg.
You don't don't fail to follow my advice. You'll be sorry.
You'll be sorry that we do it, and that they

(20:06):
do it. Must trust you, m you have to step across.

Speaker 1 (20:12):
Jones continues to encourage his followers to partake, while a
pre recorded organ soundtrack plays in the background.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
I mean used to sing this world, this world's not
our home when it's sure as and what we were
saying it sure wasn't. Yeah, we doesn't want to tell
them me. All he's doing, if they will tell him,
is sure. These chare can Some people are sure, these
children of the relaxation of stepping over to the next plain.

(20:41):
So we set an example for others. We've set one
thousand people say we don't like the way the world is.
Stop take our life from us who lay it down.
We got tired and we didn't commit to it. Die.
We came in an act of revolutionary suicide, protesting the

(21:03):
conditions of an inhumane world.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
But soon the noise dies down, the crying of the
children stops, the murmurs fade away, and all goes silent
except for the organ, now a funeral song as everyone

(21:33):
breathes their last and then the audio ends. When the
Guyana authorities showed up the following day, they expected resistance
guards and guns and an irate Jim Jones waiting at
the gates, but they arrived on an eerily quiet scene.

(21:56):
All of a sudden, they start to stumble, and they
think that maybe these re illlutionaries placed logs on the
ground to trip them up, and now they're going to
start shooting from ambush. And then a couple of the
soldiers look down and they see through the fog and
they start screaming because there are bodies everywhere, almost more
than they can count, and they are so horrified. But

(22:20):
when they found Jim Jones's body, it was clear that
he hadn't taken the poison. After watching his follower's agony,
he chose instead to shoot himself in the head. The
dead were a grim collection. Around three hundred were children
who had been fed the cyanide laced Flavoride by their
parents and loved ones. Another three hundred were elderly men

(22:43):
and women who depended on younger cultists for support. As
for the rest of the people killed in the Jonestown massacre,
they were a mix of true believers and the hopeless,
as John R. Hall writes and Gone from the Promised Land.
The presence of armed guards shows at least implicit coercion,
though the guards themselves reported their intentions to visitors in

(23:06):
glorious terms and then took the poison, Nor was the
situation structured as one of individual choice. Jim Jones proposed
a collective action, and in the discussion that followed only
one woman offered extended opposition. No one rushed up to
tip over the vat of flavor aide wittingly, unknowingly, or reluctantly,

(23:27):
they took the poison. This lingering question of coercion is
why the tragedy is today referred to as the Jonestown massacre,
not the Jonestown Suicide. Some have speculated that many of
those who took poison might even have thought the event
was another drill, a simulation that they would all walk

(23:49):
away from, just as they had in the past. But
on November nineteenth, nineteen seventy eight, nobody got up again.
When Weird Darkness returns, we'll look further into the events

(24:11):
leading up to the massacre at Jonestown and what life
was like for those living in the People's Temple cult
before the terrifying events in November of nineteen seventy eight.

(24:39):
Chances are you've heard the saying don't drink the kool Aid, which,
contrary to popular belief, is technically incorrect since the victims
actually drank flavor Aid. The adage refers to Jim Jones,
a cult leader who gave his followers cyanide laced punch,
resulting in the mass burder suicide of more than nine

(25:00):
hundred people. The Jonestown cult started as the People's Temple,
in which Jim Jones preached racial equality and an end
to segregation, and even won awards for his civil rights work. However,
as jones teachings got out of hand by including fake
healings and violent outbursts, the People's Temple took a different turn.

(25:25):
Jones and his loyalists started Jonestown as a sort of paradise,
but this notion quickly fell apart. Dailey. Life in Jonestown
was not idyllic. The compound struggled to feed and house
the exodus of church followers, brutal beatings, disturbing suicide rehearsals,
and jones increasing paranoia compelled people to defect from the cult.

(25:50):
After hearing complaints from defectors, US representative Leo Ryan, accompanied
by twenty three others, traveled to Guyana to investigate. When
Ryan d attempted to rescue church members and bord a plane,
Jones unleashed gunmen on them. At this point, the mass
burder suicide began. Some alleged loyalists forcibly injected poison into

(26:11):
those who refused to drink the deadly punch. Jones himself
did not drink the flavor aid and died from a
likely self inflicted gunshot to the head. Despite Jones' sermons
about love, peace, and equality, Jonestown ended in death. Jones
and his loyalists served cyanide laced flavor aide to Jonestown's youth. First,

(26:37):
some adults orally administered cyanide filled syringes to children. According
to a survivor, many adults lost their will to live
after this incident. Tracy Parks, a survivor who was twelve
at the time of the mass suicide, claimed there was
child labour at Jonestown. After Jones's gunmen killed Park's mother,

(26:59):
she undersists hid in the jungles of Guyana while the
rest of Jones's followers drank the poison. The mass suicide
claimed the lives of nine hundred nine people, a third
of which were children. In two thousand and eight, CNN
learned Jones had started ordering and receiving shipments of cyanide
in nineteen seventy six, two years before the mass suicide.

(27:24):
The majority of Jonestown residents had yet to move to Guyana.
In nineteen seventy six, to legally buy cyanide, Jones secured
a jeweler's license, as jewelers could use cyanide to clean gold.
Six months before the mass burder suicide, Jonestown's doctor wrote
the following to Jones, Cyanide is one of the most

(27:47):
rapidly acting poisons. I would like to give about two
grams to a large pig to see how effective our
batch is. Jones' longtime shipments of cyanide are perhaps proof
that he was planning a mins suicide for years. The
suicide rehearsals, known as White knights prepared jones followers for

(28:08):
the actual mass murder suicide, which ultimately took place on
November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight. During White Nights, Jones would
shout through the loudspeakers that surrounded the Jonestown complex, White night,
White night. Yet to the pavilion, run, your lives are
in danger. Jones heightened his follower's sense of danger by

(28:30):
telling them how people were coming to murder them. Even worse,
Jones had armed people waiting in the jungle. To the followers,
these rehearsals seemed too real. However, it turned out the
guns for firing rubber bullets and it was all a
ruse to terrify the people who lived Jonestown. Next, Jones

(28:51):
brought out supposedly poisoned flavor aid for his followers to drink.
No one died during white Nights, as the drinks were
safe to consume. After the drill, Jones returned to the loudspeakers, saying,
now I know I can trust you. Go home, My
darlings sleep tight. Even before Jonestown, Jones had asked his

(29:15):
followers to drink what he claimed was poison. Survivor of
the Jonestown compound in Guyana. Terry buford O'Shea originally went
to Jones's camp after one of his followers found her
living on the streets. At the time, o'she was without
food or housing, so Jones's promise of equality sounded enticing,

(29:36):
but reflecting on the experience, o'she sees Jones as manipulative,
explaining he was very charismatic and attracted people who were fleeing, vulnerable,
or disenfranchised for whatever reason. Most of them were African American,
but there were also white people, Jewish people, people of
Mexican descent. There were religious Christians and Communists. If you

(29:59):
wanted religion, Jim Jones could give it to you. If
you wanted socialism, he could give it to you. If
you were looking for a father figure, he'd be your father.
He always honed in on what you needed and managed
to bring you in emotionally. Though the People's Temple preached
abstinence from drugs, leader Jim Jones reportedly disregarded his tenant

(30:20):
and abused substances. O'shee believes drug use may have contributed
to Jones' mental demise. O'Shea later discovered that Jones would
use drugs to manipulate his followers, explaining, we didn't know
he was a drug addict. Drugs were anathema at the temple.
We weren't supposed to do that kind of stuff. I
learned after the massacre that he drugged people on the

(30:42):
outpost there to keep them from trying to leave, to
keep them from trying to dissent, to control them in
different ways, all unbeknownst to the masses. The arrival of
US Representative Leo Ryan in Guyana reportedly instigated the mass
burder suicide of Jonestown residents. Ryan, then the state representative

(31:02):
of California, had received complaints about jones new settlement in Guyana.
Family members of Jonestown residence, and some of the Cults
defectors had notified authorities of the happenings at Jonestown. One
of those defectors was Deborah Layton, the sister of one
of Jones's most trusted cronies. Layton snuck away from the

(31:23):
compound in Guyana and went to the embassy to tell
officials about what went on at Jonestown. After listening to
many concerns and stories, Ryan and twenty three others boarded
a plane to the small South American country. Among the
twenty three people was Jackie Spier, who was then Ryan's
legislative council and later became a state representative of California.

(31:46):
Spire said that after waiting two days for Jones to
let them into the compound, they interviewed Jonestown residents and
witnessed seemingly normal behavior. However, a resident passed a note
to Don Harris, a reporter for NBC News who had
accompanied the congressman, saying that residents wanted to leave. Spier

(32:06):
describes this incident. Don comes over, hands us the note.
My heart sank. Everything those defectors said is true. Then
more people wanted to leave, and the whole thing exploded.
It was such a tinderbox of emotions and tension. It
became clear that one plane wasn't going to be enough.

(32:26):
The congressman decided he was going to stay behind and
take the next airlift out. It was so emotionally raw.
After US Representative Leo Ryan and his group attempted to
remove people from the Jonestown compound, Jim Jones sent gunmen
on an alleged tractor trailer to stop them. Ryan and
a few journalists and cult members were victims of the gunmen,

(32:49):
with ten others shot and assumed dead. Reports of Jones's
stockpiling weapons were accurate. Earlier that day, eleven people left
Joness Town in the morning. They had no idea of
the horror to come. Leslie Wilson was one of the eleven,
saying it was a sleeve camp run by a madman.

(33:10):
Though they had come to Jonestown expecting an egalitarian paradise,
the reality was dramatically different. Wilson called their thirty mile
trek to another town a walk to freedom. Laura Johnston Cole,
who survived Jonestown, said the Jones pointed a gun at
her when she fell asleep in a meeting. Jones' former follower,

(33:31):
Terry bufford O'Shea remembers Jones holding a gun at her
and at one point putting his hands around her neck,
saying he wanted to die while choking her. O'Shea recalled
the Jones would supposedly beat people for a range of infractions,
which varied in severity. The worst beating I witnessed was
when somebody was accused of being a pedophile. Jim took

(33:53):
hold of a rubber hose and proceeded in front of
others to beat this man's private parts to the point
where he was bleeding. I know pedophilia is horrible too,
but that was just cruel and totally abusive. There were
a number of beatings like that. They were really bad.
To faint himself. As a Jesus like character, Jones frequently

(34:14):
healed people at his services and claimed to cure cancer.
He also alleged he was a psychic who knew things
that had yet to happen. Laura Johnston Cole, who survived
the massacre, said that while she believed in Jones and
his healings at the time, she later learned the truth.
It turned out Jones had staged his antics and cult

(34:36):
members had helped set up jones psychic moments. Though these
allegations remained unproven, some believed the People's Temple were responsible
for as many as eight deaths prior to their relocation
to Guyana. In one such instance, a follower named truth
Heart had purportedly died of congestive heart failure, but her
death may not have been this clear cut. Some temple

(34:59):
members said Jones facilitated her death after she started to
disagree with him and expressed her desire to leave the cult. Supposedly,
Jones ordered a People's templed nurse to give Heart a
drug that could induce a heart attack. Jones then predicted
Hart's death as a show of his clairvoyant powers. In

(35:20):
two thousand and three, doctor Philip G. Zimbardo, a psychology
professor at Stanford University and the former president of the
American Psychological Association, revealed findings of his Jonestown research which
suggested that Jones could have learned some of his control
techniques from George Orwell's novel nineteen eighty four. During his

(35:41):
twenty five years of research and extensive interviews with Jonestown survivors,
Zimbardo found several remarkable similarities between Jones's methods and those
portrayed in nineteen eighty four. Orwell's idea of a big
brother may have existed in Jonestown, as Jim Jones made
cult members spy on each other. He used loud speakers

(36:02):
throughout the compound to continually broadcast his voice. Jones also
forced his followers to give him information that he could
later use against them, which is similar to what happens
to the main character in nineteen eighty four. The White
Knight suicide drills could also have a link to nineteen
eighty four. A line in the book says the proper

(36:23):
thing was to kill yourself before they get you. Many
who have read nineteen eighty four may remember new speak,
the propaganda language used in Oceania. The novel's fictitional dystopia,
Jones adopted an analogous measure by making his followers thank
him for food and work. Of course, the follower's actual

(36:44):
living conditions were far from luxurious. According Tozimbardo's research, Jones
commissioned a song that his followers were required to sing
at Jonestown about the advent of the year nineteen eighty four.
Jeff Garz, an investigative journalist and author of the book
The Road to Jonestown, Jim Jones and the People's Temple,

(37:06):
said in an interview, if Jim Jones had been hit
by a car and killed somewhere toward the end of
the nineteen fifties, he'd be remembered today as one of
the great leaders in the early civil rights movement. Jones's charisma,
along with his convincing blend of Christian and Marxist beliefs,
attracted many people to the People's Temple. The vast majority

(37:28):
of his followers were African American, as Jones aimed to
achieve racial equality and establish effective welfare programs. In addition,
the church had connections with the Nation of Islam and
the Black Panthers, and Jones worked to end segregation in
places such as restaurants and movie theaters. Jones also adopted
and raised children from diverse backgrounds. Jones initially imagined Jonestown

(37:54):
as a paradise free from the inequality and racial segregation
present in the United States. However, this was not reality
at Jonestown. Though many may connect a controversial news story
about the People's Temple with Jones's departure from California, the
reality is that Jones was planning to leave the state

(38:14):
for a while, but relocating the cult to Guyana was
not quick and simple. Followers needed vaccinations, passports, visas, and more.
The article, based on interviews with Jones's ex followers, may
have spurred more followers to go to Guyana than anyone
had expected. It's possible this mass influx of people almost

(38:36):
a thousand within two months of the article's publication, contributed
to Jonestown's problems. The People's Temple lacked housing and food
for the newcomers, since the original plan called for small
groups to go to Guyana after fifteen months of inadequate
food and shelter, which were the same conditions many followers
were trying to flee from In the United States, an

(38:59):
increasing number of people had become disillusioned with jones promised land.
The choice to settle the People's Temple in Guyana was intentional.
Jones needed an English speaking country with a large black
population and a socialist government. Aside from Guyana, Jones's other
option was Grenada. However, another party outbid the People's Temple

(39:22):
for the plot of land in Grenada, but Guyana benefited
from the deal with Jim Jones. The land the People's
Temple used was previously an area that prompted a conflict
with Venezuela. The Jonestown settlement gave Guyana an advantage when
it came to potential future conflicts with Venezuela. If Venezuela
decided to come after the land again, they had to

(39:43):
deal with nearly one thousand American citizens. After the massacre,
the bodies were transported back to the United States, but
some were unable to be claimed by relatives. Many people
at Jonestown had changed their names, and though some had
wrecked words of their real identities, not all did. Some

(40:04):
took on the last name Jones to show their loyalty
to Jim Jones, while others assumed traditional African names. This
was a popular practice among African Americans at the time,
independent of Jonestown, and the primary reason why many of
the Jonestown victims remain unidentified today. Others changed their names

(40:25):
to support the ideologies of Sheiko Ea and Lenin, the
former leader of the Soviet Union. Allegedly, Jim Jones outlawed
the name Linda after a woman with the name defected
and left the cult. However, it's unclear who, if anyone,
changed her name because of this decree. After the events

(40:55):
in Jonestown, the US military was sent in to clean up,
and with them both soldiers and first responders came upon
was worse than most any would see even in wartime.
The Jonestown massacre from the perspective of first responders, when
weird Darkness returns, a watch ticked on a dead man's wrist.

(41:38):
Another man looking at the body joked I guess it
sure does take a licking, but keeps on ticking. Humor
was critical in the situation. The men and women said
at the time that a joke, no matter how bad,
helped break the tension of their overwhelming task, the recovery
of hundreds of dead US citizens from a sweltering Guyanese jungle.

(42:02):
It may seem heartless or ghoulish to joke as hundreds
laid dead before you, but facing the largest such loss
of civilian American lives pre nine to eleven, humor was
just one form of self preservation. On November eighteenth, nineteen
seventy eight, willingly or unwillingly, the followers of the charismatic

(42:24):
Pentecostal leader Jim Jones drank cyanide laced fruit punch. Over
three hundred children were made to drink it, and syringes
full of the mixture were emptied into infant's mouths. Those
who didn't join Jones so called revolutionary suicide, were injected
with the poison. Others tried to run for the surrounding jungle,

(42:45):
only to be shot by one of Jones's armed guards.
All told, over nine hundred died that day. The US
tried to have the bodies interred on site, offering to
foot the bill for the Guyanese god government, but the
Guyanese government wanted no part in the burial, and families
of the dead wanted their loved ones returned. The military

(43:09):
was the only organization able to handle mass casualty recovery,
and Dover Air Force Base and Delaware was assigned receipt
of the dead. What happened there in the aftermath would
become one of the first records of how deeply first
responders can be affected by the trauma to which their
jobs exposed them. Loaded with waterproof canvas body bags and

(43:31):
coffin like metal transport containers, US military helicopters shuttled the
dead and recovery personnel alike between Guyana's capital and Jonestown,
Isolated deep in the jungle. Recovery workers would later report
that the staggering number of children they saw there was
the most disturbing thing they encountered. Can't sleep, reported one worker.

(43:54):
Cannot get the small children out of my mind. Society's
understanding of post traumatic stress disorder was limited in nineteen
seventy eight and associated almost exclusively with wartime experiences falling
under the umbrella of what was often thought of as
shell shock. Even less was known about the impact a

(44:15):
mass casualty recovery mission would have on first responders. A
smattering of studies had been done by the military on nurses,
for example, but the literature was sparse. Jonestown was different.
It involved the deaths of civilians and demanded the involvement
of a cross section of workers, from doctors and pathologists

(44:35):
to typists and the yeoman who cleaned the transport containers.
When the first one one aircraft touched down at Dover
on November twenty third, nineteen seventy eight, it carried the
remains of forty US civilians. The magnitude of the situation
was still unknown and grossly underestimated, so was the emotional

(44:57):
impact it would have on those left to deal with it.
Jim Jones had become a popular Pentecostal preacher in the
nineteen sixties, using a gospel of social justice and inclusion
to attract followers to his San Francisco based congregation, The
People's Temple. The one hundred or so followers he'd brought
west from his home in Indiana soon ballooned to a thousand,

(45:20):
even as his paranoia likewise, grew fed by his growing
dependency on pills. Jones staged fake faith healings to draw
more people to his church and consolidate his power. With
only a small circle of trusted faithful, he began referring
to himself as God. But in nineteen seventy seven, with

(45:42):
a damning article about abuses within the temple about to break,
Jones and nearly a thousand of his followers fled to
land the temple had previously purchased in Guyana. Less than
a year later, most of them would be dead. The
bodies that would need to be brought back totaled more
than nine hundred. Those bodies were taken to the base

(46:03):
mortuary for identification and in some cases autopsy. The remains
would eventually be stored on base and Hanger thirteen oh one.
At the time, Patricia Edwards had worked for seven years
as a civilian employee at Dover Air Force Base, where
she still is now at the time of this recording,

(46:23):
now working in the Airmen and Family Readiness Center. Back then,
Edward's job was to manage logistics. I had to recruit
individuals that would work in the mortuary environment and to
make sure that there was enough staff and administrators to
handle the Jonestown situation. She told me, I found out
about Jonestown like everyone else did back then, through the media.

(46:45):
She said. It was from those reports that Edwards and
her colleagues found out just how much of a job
they would have to do and quickly. What normally would
take about two to three weeks had to be done
in one Edwards said the base needed more people, not
just trained mortuary staff, but ancillary support staff. Tents were

(47:08):
needed for food service workers, administrative staff, and a legion
of typists. Edwards noted that this was before computers, so
every request had to be typed up and every person
coming onto the base had to be processed and credentialed individually. Basically,
she said, a base within the base had to be assembled. Eventually.

(47:30):
The Air Force did a study on the impact the
recovery had on personnel, military and civilians alike. The study
was simple, as there were no analogs to build from
and a dearth of information on the emotional impact on
recovery workers or secondary disaster victims. Its results, however, offer
a glimpse at just how complex the issue is. The

(47:53):
findings based on the recovery effort at Jonestown and Dover,
which are now posted on the Defense Technical Information Center website,
a searchable database dedicated to aggregating military, scientific and technological data,
live on in articles, disaster recovery textbooks, and military training guides.
It's difficult to convey to someone, the authors wrote in

(48:15):
the preface of the study, but a week in a
tropical environment can do to a dead human body. The
conditions at Jonestown were compounded by rain and staggering humidity.
Bodies bloat and change color, and are infested by insects.
Above all, the author rights, the overpowering and unforgettable odor

(48:37):
of just one body are beyond imagination. The study asked
first basic questions about age, race, marital status, and whether
military or civilian. Respondents were asked if they had any
exposure to human remains. None saw bodies and containers with
no odor. Only handled containers, handled body bags, or handled

(49:02):
human remains directly. The immediate emotional impact was what you
would imagine. Seeing three or four babies per body bag
kept workers up nights. Some were angry the military was
involved in recovering fanatics bodies at all. Some reported personal
growth from the experience, one person realized, as human beings,

(49:25):
you've got to give a dam By April of nineteen
seventy nine, more than three hundred bodies of those followers
had been claimed by family members, but at Dover Air
Force Base, over five hundred remained unclaimed and over two
hundred were decomposed past the point of identification. Many relatives

(49:46):
couldn't afford the military's transport fees nearly five hundred dollars
for a family to bring home a loved one for
private burial, even if they could have. No cemetery wanted
the remains. Communities didn't want to become pilgrimage sites for
Jones remaining US followers and draw unwanted attention and people

(50:08):
to their town. Eventually, a cemetery in Oakland, across the
bay from the temple's former home in San Francisco, agreed
to inter the remains of hundreds of the Jonestown dead.
Now decades later, there's a memorial to the victims of
Jonestown in Oakland. Commemorative events are scheduled where survivors and

(50:29):
family can gather in mourn. Moore is understood about the
people of Jonestown that they were overwhelmingly victims in Almost
everything has changed at Dover. The only remaining building from
the Jonestown time period is Hangar thirteen oh one. It
is now the Air Mobility and Command Museum, dedicated to

(50:52):
the history of airlifts and air refueling, the place where
old airplanes go if they're lucky. Patricia da Words is
still there assisting military families through Dover's Readiness and Resilience program,
but Jonestown is never far away. She said the experience
of dealing with the bodies shared by people working at

(51:13):
the base in the mortuary and the tense city created
and extended family, and that feeling endures too. One other
inescapable thing stays with her the stench. She says, I
will never forget the stench. Thanks for listening. If you

(51:43):
like the podcast, please tell someone about it. Recommend Weird
Darkness to your friends, family, and co workers who love
the paranormal horror stories are a true crime like you do.
All stories in Weird Darkness aren't purported to be true
unless stated otherwise, and you could find source links or
links to the authors in the shoes. Jonestown, modern history's

(52:03):
largest mass suicide was written by KELLN Perry for All
That's Interesting dot Com. Life in the People's Temple was
written by Bethelias for Ranker dot com, and The Shock
Felt by Jonestown's first responders was written by Andy Copsa
for Time dot Com. And now that we're coming out
of the dark, I'll leave you with a little light

(52:24):
Romans eight, verse thirty one, What then shall we say
in response to these things? If God is for us,
who can be against us? And a final thought from
Ralph Waldo Emerson. Finish each day and be done with it.
You've done what you could learn from it. Tomorrow is

(52:44):
a new day. I'm Darren Marler. Thanks for joining me
in the weird darkness.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}THE JONESTOWN TAPES: Audio of the Final Hour When The Socialist Paradise Became Hell on Earth

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Stuff You Should Know

The Joe Rogan Experience

All Episodes

THE JONESTOWN TAPES: Audio of the Final Hour When The Socialist Paradise Became Hell on Earth

On Purpose with Jay Shetty