Jonestown: The Cult Massacre

Today we discuss the disturbing events that took place under the authority of Jim Jones of the People's Temple and the massacre that resulted in the deaths of over 900 individuals.

****Please be advised that not all content is appropriate for younger listeners. We urge listeners to regard the trigger warnings at the beginning of the video before continuing.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Crime and Passion, the channel where we deep dive into the dark and thrilling

(00:13):
world of true crime cases.
And also book reviews, mostly focusing on SMUT.
On Mondays we will turn up the heat with our candid reviews of the latest in SMUT, or any
genre.
And Thursdays we'll unravel the mysteries behind some of the most notorious crimes.
I'm Destinee.
I'm Allison.

(00:33):
So sit back, grab your popcorn, or your coffee, while we take you on this thrilling journey.
So today we are going to be talking about the Jonestown Massacre.
I'm going to go ahead and let everyone know this might be a long one.

(00:54):
There are many details on everything in this entire case.
And it might take a second.
I mean, the whole thing was pretty much documented.
100%.
Recorded.
Everything.
Including Jim Jones' life before.

(01:18):
Yeah.
So I want to start off by stating the trigger warnings, because there are a few.
We are going to be dealing with self-unaliving, animal abuse, child abuse, child-unaliving,

(01:41):
racism, and drug abuse.
So we're going to be hitting a few topics.
It's going to get dark.
Yes.
Needless to say.
Quickly.
So I kind of want to start off and tell you a little bit about Jim Jones, to kind of get

(02:03):
an idea of who he was and how he came to be the leader of the People's Temple.
James Warren Jones was his full name.

(02:24):
He was born on May 13th of 1931 to James Thurman Jones, who was a member of the Indiana branch
of the KKK, and Lynetta Jones, who was 15 years younger than James.
James suffered from breathing issues.

(02:45):
He developed, I guess you could say, as a result from being in World War II.
It was a chemical weapon attack that caused these injuries.
He would get military pension because of these injuries, but it wasn't enough to support

(03:07):
the family.
So they struggled quite often.
And he would take up odd jobs around the neighborhood, just like random things to kind of keep floating
and at least have enough to buy food.

(03:27):
So these lack of funds caused marital issues between Jim's mom and his father.
Sooner or later, the family was evicted from their home because of lack of funds.

(03:49):
And this was actually in the middle of the Great Depression.
It was a bad time for everybody at that time.
So, they moved, they purchased a small little house.
Most described it as a large shed or a shack.

(04:10):
They lived in the shack without plumbing or electricity, and they attempted to farm to
earn a living.
However, that didn't go very well because James, Jim's father, actually got sick and
I mean, everybody needs the head of the household to kind of keep farming moving at least.

(04:34):
I know any females can farm too, but...
I mean, back then it was wildly different.
Oh yeah, 100%.
The mom couldn't have just gone out and gotten a well-paying job.
It just didn't work that way back then.
So when the male falls in the household, the whole household just kind of falls with it.

(04:57):
Exactly.
Or the kids have to step up.
It is said that Linetta, Jim's mom, was said to have absolutely no maternal instinct at
all whatsoever.
She was not motherly in any way, and she often abused Jim because of this.

(05:24):
She didn't want to be a mom, so why?
Why would she?
She neglected her kid.
She neglected him to the point to whenever he started school, family members of the Jones,
which was his father's side of the family, threatened to cut Linetta off if she didn't

(05:50):
at least attempt to make a living.
So Jim's father's side of the family was actually helping pay for expenses.
Food, electricity, stuff like that.
Actually no, at this point they still did not have electricity.
So they were paying for food.

(06:11):
Yeah, they're still in the shack.
Jim's father's illness got worse, and this resulted in him being in the hospital quite
often.
And Jim was alone throughout a majority of his childhood because of this.

(06:31):
His mom neglected him, his dad was sick, so he had no one essentially.
This meant that Jim could do whatever he wanted to do.
So Jim decided he wanted to run the streets without any clothes on as a child.
You know, I actually knew a few kids like that growing up.

(06:55):
They just did not want to wear clothes.
I feel like at this point he's probably like 11 though.
He should probably be wearing clothes.
I mean if you don't have parents who give a crap, then you're especially going to do
what you want in order to get attention.

(07:15):
But the sad thing about it was that his aunts and uncles lived close by.
So they could have helped supervise him, but instead they just turned a blind eye.
Didn't care.
It's just awful.
The female residents that lived around him would actually help take care of him and feed

(07:39):
him and put clothes on him.
I mean somebody had to.
So strangers were taking care of this child.
It's just a sad situation.
Once he got older, he became like an avid churchgoer.

(07:59):
He really loved going to the Nazarene church.
And the pastor's wife, Myrtle Kennedy, took a special liking to Jim.
So she kind of mentored him in his religion.
I guess she's seen this kid is by himself, he has nobody.
I'm going to mentor him in the religion aspect at least.

(08:24):
And hopefully that can do something.
I mean you would think that would be like a very good transitioning point for his life
to get better.
You would think.
You would think.
You would think.
Just wait.
It's about to get worse.

(08:45):
So around the neighborhood, the kids didn't really like hanging out with Jim too much.
He was a odd child.
He would pick up roadkill.
It always comes back to roadkill.
Why does it always come back to dead animals?

(09:07):
Just wait until these next words come out of my mouth.
Oh dear god.
He would pick up roadkill and he would go to the local casket manufacturer and hold
funerals for this roadkill.
I mean he would also sometimes try and force the neighborhood kids to attend these funerals.

(09:32):
I mean like I feel like that could go one way or the other.
In my opinion, like either that could have been like the beginning of Jeffrey Dahmer
or it could have been somebody who wanted to pay respect to all manners of life.
Could have turned out to be somebody who really cared about all life.

(09:57):
Yeah, except...
It didn't.
Jim unalived a cat with a knife to hold a funeral for.
There it is.
Okay.
I back down.
Get no benefit of the doubt.
Take it away.

(10:19):
I give up.
Yeah.
Trademark right there.
I felt this was like a list.
Like it just keeps going.
He also claimed he had special abilities.
He was superhuman.
He could fly.

(10:39):
At what age though?
Because I...
I mean I was like 10 years old.
Making up like imaginary worlds.
Did you also jump off a roof to prove you can fly and break your arm?

(11:00):
No, but I did try to convince people that I was like a witch and that I could travel
to different realms.
I like 10.
I watched a lot of...
That's a childhood imagination.
I watched a lot of like Halloween town, okay?
Granted I didn't jump off of a roof though.

(11:27):
Other than hurting himself though, Jim would also put the other children into life threatening
situations and claim that he was guided by the angel of death.
Okay, yeah.
I didn't go that far.
Yeah.
So like basically he's saying if you die like I'll save you.

(11:47):
Like I'm special.
I'm superhuman.
Or at least that's what I got from it.
So he was trying to be God.
Essentially.
At 10.
He had a God complex at 10 years old.
Yes.
Oh good lord.

(12:10):
The churches he attended as a child claimed that he would make or pull, I should say pull
many sacrilegious pranks.
As in peeing in the holy water bottle or the bottle of holy water.

(12:30):
So replacing holy water with his pee amongst...
That's gross.
Many other things, he also made a statement saying that he was pretty much a prankster
at the church when he was an adult.
So their statements are pretty much backed up by Jim Jones.

(12:52):
I don't think replacing holy water with urine is a prank.
I think that's sacrilege.
Exactly.
Just saying.
Yeah.
He was pretty messed up from the beginning.

(13:13):
He would steal from the local stores.
He would greet friends and neighbors by calling them you dirty bastard or you son of a bitch.
I mean I use those phrases.
He did pick this up from his mother.
His mother was known to like to curse.

(13:34):
She would curse in public and would love the reactions that she would get out of people
when she did it.
This was a time that women weren't supposed to do that.
So she would cuss in public and everybody would clutch their pearls like oh my gosh.
I just love that saying.

(13:59):
Sorry.
But yeah so he did pick it up from somewhere.
Although when he did it his mother would beat him with a leather belt as punishment.
Do as I say not as I do.
Exactly.
Even though she was neglectful she still beat him with a leather belt because he cussed.

(14:25):
Like woman your son is doing a whole lot more worse stuff right now and you're worried about
some cuss words coming out of his mouth.
That's probably the only thing she actually caught him doing though.
True.
He was very intrigued by social doctrines.

(14:46):
This includes Hitler.
Oh now we get into the not so laughable stuff.
Yeah.
Jim was intrigued by social doctrines including Hitler.
He also claimed his hero was, and I'm sorry if I mispronounce this, Mao Zedong, a Chinese

(15:13):
politician.
Yeah.
Mao was not a good person.
He created things like the Great Leap Forward which was horrible for the Chinese people.
It caused the Great Chinese Famine which killed 15-55 million people.

(15:35):
Yeah.
And on top of that he started a cultural revolution that resulted in a widespread persecution
and suffering.
Just in case nobody knew who Mao was, he's not a great guy.
He's like the Chinese equivalent almost to Hitler.

(15:55):
Not a great guy.
Sounds kind of familiar though.
Yeah.
We'll know later on I guess where he got his ideas from.
So his role models are not good people at this point.
No.
Not at all.
Awful.
When World War II started, Jim gained a particular interest in the Nazi party.

(16:25):
He would act as a dictator over his peers and he would order them to goose step together
and if they didn't, he would beat them.
So he had a very dictator mindset from a very young age.

(16:47):
I mean that's who he was idolizing.
His role models were horrible people.
He would also give the Nazis to salute to any of the German soldiers that he had seen
traveling through town.

(17:10):
Because that's great.
Yeah.
We do have one positive trait from Jim Jones.
Oh yeah?
Yeah.
Actually.
It's hard to believe.
So he wasn't a fan of sports because he didn't like to lose.

(17:31):
So he didn't want to play.
So he would coach little league teams instead.
But he was disturbed by the treatment of African Americans at the baseball games.
So he stopped.
Okay.
That's a great attribute but at the same time he's doing the Nazi salute to German soldiers.

(17:57):
So what team is he on?
I think he knows.
His father was really high up in the KKK or had ties to the KKK.
Yeah I'm just really confused on what side he's...

(18:18):
I think Jim was confused too.
I think he just wanted everybody to like him.
He was like that kid that pretended to like everything so that he could fit in with any
crowd.
Exactly.
And since his father and his outlooks on race were completely opposite, this caused tension.

(18:44):
Jim actually stated how he hadn't talked to his father in many years because his father
actually forbade or forbode, I don't know which word to use.
I think it's forbode.
Okay.
Forbade.
He forbade.
That's the word.
Forbade, sorry.
He forbade Jim's African American friends from entering their house.

(19:11):
And so Jim just cut it off.
But again he was doing the Nazi salute and he idolized Hitler.
I don't understand.
I don't get it.
Hitler wasn't just like hating the Jews.
He hated anyone outside of his race.

(19:32):
The only thing he loved more than white people was drugs.
So I was actually wrong.
He did not stop coaching because of the treatment of the African Americans on the teams.

(19:52):
He was actually kicked out when, and this is where animal abuse comes in.
I just want to say that right now before I say this because it made me a little upset.
He was kicked out because he held a dog out of a window of a building and dropped it and

(20:14):
unalived it in front of the Little League players.
I mean what the hell?
I would have beat the hell out of him.
Right?

(20:35):
In 1948 his parents separated and then after a little bit more time they eventually divorced.
This meant Jim moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana and he graduated early in the same
year with honors.
He began working as an orderly at Richmond's Reed Hospital in 1946 and this is where he

(21:01):
met his future wife, Marceline Mae Baldwin.
She was a nurse in training.
She was a Methodist and Jim reluctantly agreed to go to church with

(21:25):
her.
But as attending church, he was also pressing Marceline to accept atheism.
When did he go from being in the Christian church to suddenly being an atheist?

(21:50):
This man flops back and forth so much in everything he does it's not even funny.
He can't make up his mind on anything.
Anything at all.
And you'll realize, like it gets like that even more throughout the entire story.
This man did not know what he wanted.
It's a ridiculous man.

(22:14):
And this is really messed up.
And this is emotional abuse.
I guess I probably should have added that into the triggers but since I'm saying it
now, before I state what he used to do, I feel like it's okay because at least I caught
it beforehand.
Jim used to test Marceline's loyalty by telling her her family or close friends had died.

(22:45):
And then would comfort her while she was grieving and then admit to her he was lying.
That's so sick.
Like absolutely sick.
Very demented.
Sadistic.
A loss like that, that's not cool.

(23:10):
That's sociopathic behavior.
Literally.
A little after, a few years after, probably about four years, they moved to Indianapolis
in 1951.

(23:30):
Jim would start taking night classes to continue his education and he eventually earned a degree
in secondary education in 1961.
He was 20 years old at the time and would attend meetings of the Communist Party in

(23:56):
1952.
This actually caused her FBI officials to harass his family because his wife would attend
the meetings.
So she was harassed, the son that they had was harassed later on.

(24:17):
He just caused problems for everybody, essentially.
In 1952, he announced to Marceline that they would all be becoming a special part of this
church because Jim was going to become the minister.

(24:41):
But he was an atheist.
I don't mean to laugh because this is all so freaking horrible but this guy is so ridiculous.
Just wait.
It is like everything that he does.

(25:05):
He's from one side to another.
He never stays with a thought.
He changes up so much.
The most wishy washy person.
Yes, I do not know how anybody depended on him.
And lots and lots of people did.

(25:28):
I keep laughing and I don't mean to laugh but it's tragic.
This whole thing is just absolutely horrible.
But he is insane.
He can't make up his mind.
Is he racist?
Is he not racist?

(25:49):
Is he an atheist?
Is he a Christian?
What is his political view?
He can't even make that up.
I think after him not talking to his father he stuck with the against racism.
That is I think that's pretty much the only thing that he stuck with was being against

(26:09):
racism.
I did.
I mean we love that but.
I did hear something in my part of looking into it and stuff that which we'll get into
more later.
But he did still hold on to discrimination.

(26:35):
Maybe not full out racism but he did still discriminate even later on.
The way I want to put this may not make any sense.
It was like hypocritical discrimination.
He was doing stuff and he was making his followers say that they were doing it and then he was

(27:01):
like discriminating against that.
I don't know what I read was he was calling people racial slurs like at the camps.
Oh yeah.
So we can get more into that later once we're there.

(27:25):
We're about to get into how it kind of all snowballed.
So in 52 he was brought on as a student pastor at the Somerset Southside Methodist Church.
That is a mouthful.
That is a name.
And so in 54 he was booted because he was caught stealing funds from the church.

(27:57):
Around the same time he was attending a Pentecostal church in the Later Rain Convention in Columbus,
Indiana.
Again, he can't even stick to a dominant denomination.
He can't and this is where it all started.
A woman at this church claimed to prophesize that Jim was a prophet with a great ministry.

(28:26):
And he was so overwhelmed by this he just accepted the call to preach and preached to
the crowd.
That was there.
So all of this happens because of one woman.
Yep.
He then convinced Marceline to join the Pentecostals.

(28:46):
I mean at least it wasn't... it's still within her religion.
Yeah, but still, like, she probably grew up Methodist.
You can't just make somebody change their beliefs because I know some of the beliefs
are different in each religion.

(29:08):
Yeah, but back then you followed your husband.
And if she was Methodist, it would say that very distinctly that she's to obey her husband.
Especially in that time it was taken very literal.

(29:31):
In 1955, the church that he was preaching at was highly against the Latter Rain Movement.
So they were against the original Pentecostal church that Jim attended.
So they assigned a new pastor.
Pastor.

(29:52):
Pastor.
There went that Southern accent right there.
I'm gonna go talk to the pastor.
The pastor to the new Laurel Street Tabernacle.
Oh my gosh, I'm getting total talk.

(30:16):
Okay, let's see if I can say this.
Church names are a mouthful though, to your credit.
They are.
Thanks for giving me an excuse.
That's what best friends are for.
The new pastor enforced a denominational ban on all healing revivals.

(30:39):
So healing revivals were a big thing in Jim's life.
He had attended many of them.
He liked them.
He thought they, he believed in them.
He wholeheartedly believed that whoever was standing up on that stage as a prophet was
healing these people.

(31:01):
The ban on the revivals led Jim to leave the Tabernacle and start a new church called Wings
of Healing.
So he started his own church, which he then renamed.
Of course he did, because the man can't make anything up.

(31:21):
He cannot make up his mind.
He's going to Peoples Temple.
And so this is the first time that we hear the name Peoples Temple.
At least it was simpler to say.
It's about the only good thing I'm going to say.
I was about to say that's the only simple thing that Jim did in his life.

(31:46):
That is the only good thing that is going to be said or anything about this.
This new church only attracted 22 people.
Jim felt the need for publicity and he began trying to get the word out about the Peoples

(32:06):
Temple to recruit new members.
The Independent Assemblies of God, IAOG, an international group that abided by the Latter
Reign Movement.
In 1955, Jim held his first meeting with William Brom, a healing evangelist and Pentecostal

(32:34):
leader in the Healing Revival, which was a part of the IAOG.
In 1956, Jim was ordained as an IAOG minister by Joseph Mattson Bowes.

(33:03):
Jim quickly rose to the top at this church and he hosted a healing convention to take
place June 11-15, 1956 at the Indianapolis Cattle Tabernacle.
So William Brom was known for announcing the names and addresses of the attendees at these

(33:38):
healing conventions.
Before he even called them up on stage and asked them any questions, he could tell them
why they were there and everything.
And then he would pronounce that they were healed.
Jim then started using this method.

(34:04):
Many of the attendants believed that Jim's performance showed that he had some kind of
supernatural gift.
And with Brom's endorsement, this led to the very rapid growth of the People's Temple.
And as to no surprise, to get under your skin just a tiny bit more, Jim renamed the church

(34:34):
to the People's Temple Christian Church Full Gospel to associate it with Full Gospel Pentecostalism.
I'm going to lose it on this guy.
He then later renamed it back to the People's Temple.

(34:57):
It remained that way until the end.
I'm not even going to say anything more about it.
About his wishy-washy-ness because oh my goodness, dude, make a decision.

(35:18):
William Brom in the Later Rain Movement promoted the belief that people could become manifestations
of God with supernatural gifts and also superhuman abilities.
So the thing that Jim has claimed to have since the beginning.
Also, real quick, I want to retract my, Jim please make a decision.

(35:49):
Because eventually he does make a decision that I am not okay with.
I'm going to retract that statement publicly.
He makes two.
He makes a lot of decisions.
The only decisions he makes are horrible.
So I'm retracting that whole thing publicly.

(36:11):
Quit making decisions.
That would have been the better thing to say.
Just stop making decisions period.
Just quit thinking.
Go home.
Sit down.
Don't come out.
Stay there.
So they believed that the manifestations beckoned the second coming of Christ.

(36:33):
So the end of the world.
They thought that all of these manifestations were just going to end the world.
It was believed that the people that had these abilities would usher in a millennial age
of heaven on earth.

(36:54):
Here is where you know it's a cult.
Yes.
This is where Jim got heaven on earth.
This is where it started.
That whole apocalypse, heaven on earth thing.
Yeah, that's-
Just back out when you hear it.
Yeah.
That is the moment you know you are in a cult.
If there's any kind of like-

(37:14):
Yeah, but it's time to turn around.
If there are any buzzwords of like apocalypse, heaven on earth, ascension, walk away.
Just book it on out of there because not going to be good for you.
Maybe report it.
I really wish these people would have known that.

(37:34):
Maybe report it to the FBI.
Jim obviously was very fascinated with the idea of being an usher to heaven on earth.
So he began to promote these ideas as his own.
And eventually the idea that he was actually a manifestation of God himself.

(37:58):
I knew that was coming.
I called it.
By the late 90s, he began to teach that he was-
Oh, I'm sorry.
I skipped back up.

(38:19):
So do keep in mind that this is in the late 90s though.
Because he eventually separated from the Laterane movement following a nasty disagreement with
Brawnham.
In this argument, it is said to have been about Brawnham's racial teachings or his very

(38:40):
vocal resistance and communism.
But also in this disagreement, Jim prophesied Brawnham's death.
He told him he was going to die.
I mean, if he was a racist, would that have been a huge loss?

(39:05):
Everybody that I'm talking about are not good people other than the victims.
Anybody that Jim was associated with was probably not a very good person.
Even some of the victims were heavily involved behind the scenes.
Yeah.
Very few of them, but some of them were-
The people closest to him.

(39:26):
Yeah.
So through the Laterane movement, Jim became aware of a person called Father Devine.
This was an African American spiritual leader of the International Peace Mission Movement.
They were often ridiculed by Pentecostal leaders because of Father Devine's claim to divinity.

(39:51):
This was Jim's first peace mission.
He then revisited Father Devine a little later.
This is when Devine became a large influence on Jim's ministry and how he taught everything.
Even the promotions for People's Temple were somehow based off of Father Devine.

(40:15):
Never had an original idea.
Never.
He slowly started parting from Pentecostalism and the Laterane movement.
He was trying to find an organization that was going to have an open mind to his idea
and his beliefs of the People's Temple.

(40:37):
Okay, so in 1960, the People's Temple joined the Disciples of Christ denomination.
Okay, I'm going to probably butcher this last name as well, but Archie.
Oh my goodness.
I want to say Almes.

(40:58):
It is I-J-A-M-E-S.
I feel like that may be right.
I'm just going to call him Archie.
If anybody knows how to pronounce this last name, it's spelled like I-J-A-M-S.
If anybody knows how to pronounce it, please let us know.

(41:21):
We are probably going to butcher a lot of names.
Definitely, and I want to apologize in advance for that.
It is not in any way disrespect.
We just truly don't know how to pronounce certain names.
So Archie was a big part of the Disciples of Christ.

(41:43):
If I can't read it right, I can't say it right.
Okay, so Archie was in the Disciples of Christ and assured Jim that the organization would
be tolerant of his political beliefs and everything.
And in 64, Jim was ordained.

(42:05):
In 1974 and 1977, the Disciples leadership received allegations of abuse at the People's
Temple.
Investigations were gone, like started and concluded, and there was no evidence of any
kind of wrongdoing.
So Jim and the People's Temple remained a part of the Disciples until the end.

(42:33):
And this is where we kind of go back to him not really liking racism.
Once the People's Temple really started getting going, Jim and his wife adopted, and I'm going
to say this how it was typed up, non-white children.

(42:53):
This is what he, this was in his words.
He referred to his family as a rainbow family, and they adopted their first child, Agnes.
She was Native American.
And then they adopted three Korean American children, Lou, Stephanie, and Suzanne.

(43:20):
They were also encouraging members of the People's Temple to adopt orphans that were
war ravaged in Korea.
I mean, he did one good thing.
Yeah, one.
He happened to do the one good thing that in that time, like nobody wanted to do.

(43:41):
Yeah.
It's not all the credit I can give him.
Sadly, in May, at five years old, Stephanie passed away.
Later, actually, I believe a month later after Stephanie's passing, Jim and Marceline had

(44:04):
their own biological child.
They named this child, Stefan Gandhi.
You have got to be kidding me.
Okay.
They then adopted another child.
This was an African American child.

(44:26):
They were the first couple to adopt an African American kid.
They named this child, Jim Jones Jr.
Bro.
And then they adopted another child.

(44:46):
This child was white.
His birth name was Timothy Glenn Tupper.
And his mother was actually a member of the temple.
Just real quick, a theory, not saying that this is what happened, or that this is what

(45:07):
this is, but he keeps doing things to get the attention of people.
Do you think that him adopting, as he liked to put it, non-white children was just his
way of going against the grain and getting publicity for his church?

(45:29):
It's a big possibility.
Because later on, or maybe a little before this, he, and you can actually see pictures
on Google, he advertised the church as a non-segregated church.
There were pictures of African American kids and Hispanic, I don't think there was Hispanic,

(45:52):
but maybe his, the children he adopted from Korea, he would use these pictures, I feel
like, to promote, to get a bigger following.
I feel like.
I mean, the more you seem inclusive, even back then, the more people you're going to

(46:14):
get.
Yeah, because they're like, oh, this person has an open mind.
There was even a woman who said in an interview that the reason she joined was because the
first time she went, it was just like a menagerie of different races coming together and she'd
never seen that.
And that's what made her keep coming back to the church.

(46:37):
But if he adopted these children to market his church, still ill intent.
I mean, granted, granted the kids got to go home for a little while, but I actually could
not find anything about the children's home life.
I could find, I think, three of the children were at the people's temple.

(47:04):
I'll be able to read it a little while later, but I could not find where all of his children
were during this time.
I don't know where the adopted children were, but his son has done like numerous interviews.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, like I said, I know a few of them.
But he doesn't talk about the time before Jonestown.

(47:25):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we have no idea.
Honestly, he could have been just like his mother for all we know.
He did say that I think the only comment that I caught that he said about his childhood
before Jonestown was that his father was an enigmatic man who was charming, but he also

(47:48):
had a temper.
And then he started to get weird.
That's what he had said was that his father started to get weird and the church started
to take a turn.
And this I think is where it takes a turn right here.

(48:09):
Probably.
In 61, Jim warned his congregation that he had gotten visions of a nuclear attack that
would wipe out all of Indianapolis.
Marceline then confided in her close friends that Jim had become intensely paranoid and

(48:30):
scared.
It is said that he may have been influenced by Bronham's prophecy in 61 concerning the
destruction of the US in a nuclear war.
And in 62, he read an Esquire magazine article that claimed South America to be the safest

(48:50):
place to live in the place in case of needing to avoid nuclear war.
So we know where this is going.
He instantly started searching for a site in South America to relocate to.
He stopped in Georgetown, Guyana on his journey to Brazil.

(49:14):
He held several revival meetings here and studied the economy, but found the language
to be a big barrier.
He was very careful not to portray himself as a communist.
So he essentially lied about who he was.

(49:34):
I would too if I was him.
Not a great person.
After not finding a suitable place to relocate, he kind of felt overwhelmed and he felt guilt
about leaving Indiana because they were struggling.

(49:56):
And due to a year of his absence, multiple people dropped out of the people's temple
and it dropped back down to 100 attendees.
This made him freak out a little bit.
And Archie let him know that if he didn't come back soon, the people's temple would
collapse and he would resign and leave.

(50:18):
Jim then reluctantly went back.
In December of 63, he returned to find them completely divided.
There were financial issues, low attendance, and this caused Jim to have to sell the church
building and move into a smaller one.

(50:40):
He then told his Indiana congregation that on July 15, 1967, leading to a new socialist
Eden on Earth, the temple would need to move to California to remain safe.
They then found a spot in California.
His family and 140 members moved and in 69, the temple grew to 300.

(51:04):
Why is there always a relocation?
He relocated a few times.
It's always a relocation with these cults though.
For some reason.
So he started getting bad press in 71 over his healing services.

(51:26):
A doctor actually did a investigation on Jim and claimed that Jim was full of quackery.
And then challenged Jim to give tissue samples of the material he had taken off of the people

(51:48):
or that had fallen off of the people that he healed.
This caused a lot of panic because obviously, you know, he was always panicked anyways.
But a good reason for him to panic is because he drugged a temple member named Irene Mason.

(52:13):
While she was unconscious, he broke her arm and when she had woken up, she was told she
had broken her arm when she fell and had been taken to the hospital.
He removed her cast in front of the congregation.
He did not break her arm actually.

(52:36):
He claims to have broken.
He claims that she broke her arm.
He placed a cast on it.
So he claims to have healed her, cuts off the cast and is like, look, her arm's not
broken.
Something else that, sorry, that just made me think about it, but something else the

(52:57):
son said was that there were people within the church that knew that these healings were
fake because some of the people that were claiming, like some of the people who were
claiming to get healed were in on it.
That's exactly what I was about to say.
Apparently the son knew, the biological son, he knew because he, there was one woman that

(53:21):
came up and he was like, no, you don't.
You're not sick.
I know you.
You're not sick.
But I mean, he was a kid.
He didn't really have a whole lot of choice, but to just go along with it.
And at that point he said his father had started to get volatile.

(53:43):
So nobody wanted to upset him.
Yeah.
He would make people put chicken gizzards in their mouth and cough it up when they were
healed and say it was cancer.

(54:04):
In December of 73, Jim was arrested because he was touching himself in front of a male
undercover LAPD officer at a theater in the bathroom.
The charge was dismissed and there were no details as to why.

(54:24):
And the George ordered any records to be destroyed.
In 73, sorry, that's so sketchy.
In 73, Jim and the Planning Commission planned to set up a plan to flee the US in a government

(54:51):
raid.
And when the raid was over, they were going to have a plan to get out.
The group decided on Guyana because Jim liked it so much whenever he had went in 63.
They unanimously decided to build a commune there.

(55:11):
In the summer of 74, land and supplies were purchased and Jim was in charge to see the
construction for homes, which were more like dorms, for the people, the members of the
People's Temple.
In the same year, in December, the very first group arrived.

(55:36):
Jim left to go combat negative press about the People's Temple and was trying to get
a bad article not published.
He failed and this article was published in March of 1977.
In this article, there were allegations of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse.

(56:03):
This led Jim to believe that he needed to permanently relocate South America.
This is whenever he started to convince all of the Temple members to relocate as well.
He told them that the commune would be paradise and that it would be a sanctuary.
They were finally convinced and made the move and after Jim would prevent any of them from

(56:28):
leaving.
Officially renamed Jonestown, which is a commune, there was a total of 50 members in the beginning
of 1977.
It wasn't fit to handle such a large income of settlers that were going to be there soon.

(56:51):
The buildings were falling apart, overgrown, just horrible living conditions.
Jim was told that the settlements could only hold 200 people and ignoring this, in 1977,
600 followers came and then another 400 arrived not long after.

(57:15):
He started to move his assets so he could sell off US property and believe it or not,
the People's Temple had $10 million in assets at this time.
Just to think that when he was a kid, he lived in a shack with no water and no electricity.
Really a shack and now he's got $10 million in assets at his disposal.

(57:43):
Despite the negative press that he had gotten on many occasions, Jim was still very highly
respected by people outside of the People's Temple.
This was due to him setting up a racially integrated church where 68% of the Jonestown
members were actually African American.

(58:08):
The first several months, the members worked 6-day work weeks.
This was from 6.30am to 6pm.
It was then shortened to 8-hour days for 5 days because of Jim's health and Marceline
taking over and managing the activities.

(58:33):
Recordings of the commune meetings would show how angry and hostile Jim would get with the
members that did not understand the message he was conveying.
In 77, Timothy Stowen and other temple defectors, they formed a concerned relatives group because

(59:04):
they had family members over there that they were not allowed to see.
These people were not allowed to return back to the US.
I also want to point out that the property that they were all staying at and that they
were building, he had speakers.

(59:27):
He had electricity put on this land and then he had speakers in every corner of this piece
of land so that all he had to do was get on the radio and he would talk to everyone.
Everyone had to hear him.
His son had mentioned in his interview that at first when everybody first got down there,

(59:52):
it was exactly what he had promised it to be.
It was a community where people helped each other, they loved each other.
But then when Jim Jones got there, it became, like you said, hostile.
But it was like almost 24-7 is what the sun said of his voice just ringing out through

(01:00:12):
the air.
He never stopped talking.
It drove people crazy.
But Timothy Stowen traveled to DC in January 1978.
He did this to visit with the State Department and members of Congress.
He wrote a personal, very detailed note stating that his brother was, or I'm sorry, his son

(01:00:36):
was at the People's Temple in Guyana, was not allowed to return home, and he was worried.
This aroused curiosity in the California Congressman Leo Ryan.
Leo actually wrote a letter on Stowen's behalf to the Guyanese Prime Minister.

(01:01:01):
And this is when the Concerned Relatives Group started a legal battle with the temple over
the custody of Stowen's son.
On April 11, 1978, the Concerned Relatives Group released a packet of documents, letters,
and affidavits to the People's Temple, members of the press, and members of Congress.

(01:01:25):
They titled this package, Accusation of Human Rights Violations by Reverend James Warren
Jones.
The family members were ready to go.
They were over it.
They wanted their family back.
But at this point, a lot of them were so brainwashed.

(01:01:48):
Not only that, but the armed guards that were walking around kind of made you scared to
say you wanted to leave?
Yeah.
In June 1978, Deborah Payton, a member who was able to escape six months before the massacre,
provided the group with everything they needed to know.

(01:02:12):
The fact that they were only being fed rice for breakfast, rice water for lunch, and rice
and beans for dinner.
They were all so severely malnourished.
It was horrible.
And they were working all the time.
The only ones that didn't have this diet were Jim and his selected few.

(01:02:37):
They worked a lot.
To paint a picture, this land that they got in South America, it was almost completely
undeveloped.
And they had the People's Temple come down with a few, maybe some locals, and build this
town.
But it wasn't like an actual town.

(01:02:59):
It was random buildings just built everywhere, but they were cheap and plain.
And there was, you had to travel hours to get to an actual city in South America.
They had close towns, but they didn't have much.
So they did pretty much all of their own farming.

(01:03:21):
Their clothing had to be washed by them by hand.
It was like living in the Stone Age.
And it was a community doing it with each other, which was supposed to be the appeal,
was that we all work together, we all put in our time, there's no money here, there's
no economy.
We just live, we put in our work, we help each other.

(01:03:45):
Sounds good in theory, but not when you're in South America in the heat, because most
of the buildings didn't really have air conditioning.
They had electricity, but it wasn't like modern age, like what we have in our houses here
today.
It was not a great place to begin with.

(01:04:10):
No.
So Jim's paranoia increased when he became fearful of a government raid.
This is when Jim installed the speakers and started what he called white nights.

(01:04:32):
These would be drills that he would put together under the pavilion at the people's temple.
And he would call out throughout the speakers, alert, alert, alert, to gather everybody under
the pavilion.
Armed guards with guns would surround the pavilion, and Jim would tell them that they

(01:04:57):
were surrounded by agents who were going to destroy them.
He would then have these guards go into the woods and start shooting to simulate an attack.
One drill lasted six days.
This shows you how far from civilization they were, because they could go out there and
shoot off machine guns and nobody came to check because that's how far away they were.

(01:05:24):
You couldn't hear, they were so far away you couldn't hear machine guns.
Isolated.
Very much.
This six day drill was known as the six day siege, and it was used often as a symbol of
the community spirit by Jim in a lot of his healing.

(01:05:53):
The drills were used to scare the members from wandering from the commune.
He was doing anything he could to keep these people from leaving.
There were two visits from the IRS and the US embassy in early of 78.
This made him even more convinced that there was going to be an attack.

(01:06:15):
In one White Knight drill in 78, he told his followers he was going to distribute poison
for everyone to ingest as an act of self-uneliving.
A batch of fruit punch was then served, and everyone who sat under the pavilion crying
was waiting for their death.

(01:06:38):
Something I found out, because you mentioned the fruit punch, but something I learned is
you know how people said all the time back when we were kids, don't drink the Kool-Aid?
It was flavor-aid.
What do you call it?
That saying came from this, because they were using actual Kool-Aid in these poisonings.

(01:06:58):
It was flavor-aid.
Jim Jones made sure to let everybody know that before he did this.
I don't know why that was important.
But that's where it came from.
Was this specific incident?
And then we turned it into a joke later on.

(01:07:18):
Like, huh, don't drink the Kool-Aid.
Yeah, people like to make jokes about pretty messed up stuff.
Well, I mean, me growing up, when we used to say it, we didn't know that it was about
a massacre that happened in the 60s.
We weren't aware.
We just heard somebody say it, and we were like, oh, don't drink the Kool-Aid.

(01:07:42):
Now that I know, I'm like, wrong trend.
Throughout these white nights, Jim had convinced his followers that the CIA was working to
destroy their community, and he believed that self-unalloying was the only means to escaping.

(01:08:04):
On two different occasions during the white nights, simulated mass unalloying, self-unalloying,
the defector, Deborah Layton, described these events in the affidavit.
Everyone including the children were told to line up.

(01:08:26):
As we passed through the line, we were given a small glass of red liquid to drink.
We were then told the liquid contained poison and that we would die within 45 minutes.
We all did as we were told, and when it came the time that we should drop dead, Reverend
Jones explained that the poison was not real and we had just been through a loyalty test.

(01:08:49):
He warned us that the time was not far off that it would become necessary for us to die
by our own hands.
Children.
Children.
So in 78, the community was going downhill even more, they were exhausted, overworked,

(01:09:10):
the conditions were completely deteriorated at the commune, they didn't have much food,
so meals were few and far in between.
Jim would make everybody spend all day working and not feed them, and then proceed to hold
sermons that would last hours.
So he was keeping these people up constantly.

(01:09:31):
He loved to hear himself talk, but I also think he knew sleep deprivation would make
them more susceptible.
So another way of Jim controlling was if he knew someone was planning an escape, he would
put a coffin shaped box several feet underground, put this member in this box, and have everybody

(01:09:53):
else berate them and insult them and just be rude.
Sadly, a majority of the members were elderly or minors.
And those who were not of working age were still required to work, so they found it really
hard to keep up and Jim started becoming very erratic with his orders towards these people.

(01:10:21):
He then began acting strange, staggering around, urinating in public, although that is said
to have been due to prostatitis for the short time nearing the end of Jonestown.
Jim started getting very sick.

(01:10:42):
Don't forget, he also had like a harem of women.
He had his wife, but then he also had young women like most cults do end up doing, and
he ended up having a harem of women.
He would choose a special woman to come and be by his side and join him in his marriage.

(01:11:06):
And there were quite a few.
I mean, per any cult leader.
They always have to and I don't understand why.
I just wanted to throw that out there because it hadn't been mentioned yet and they are
part of why what transpired transpired because they were in on it.

(01:11:30):
They planned it for and with him.
In 1978, Jim learned that he had a lung infection.
He told his followers he had lung cancer in an attempt to gain their compassion and raise
their level of support for him.

(01:11:51):
At this time, it's said that Jim was abusing quite a few drugs.
I mean with the erratic behavior, that makes sense.
And what he was taking.
Volume, quale lutes, stimulants and barbiturates.

(01:12:17):
Yeah, taking it all.
And the audio recordings actually prove the deterioration of Jim's health.
You can hear it happening.
Kind of like how you can tell in Van Gogh's portraits of himself.
You can see the slow decline in his mental health.

(01:12:38):
He complained of high blood pressure, small strokes, weight loss of 30 to 40 pounds in
the last two weeks of Jonestown.
Temporary blindness, seizures and in early November of 1978 while he was ill, he suffered
from grotesque swelling of his extremities.

(01:13:07):
He somehow got a little bit better by November, which was later in the month actually, because
this is when Leo Ryan led a fact-finding mission to Jonestown to investigate the allegations.

(01:13:30):
His group included an NBC camera crew and reporters of several newspapers.
They traveled by plane to port Kaituma and then they were transported to Jonestown on
November 17th.
So they were in Kaituma for a day and then were transported.

(01:13:51):
Wasn't also one of the defectors with them?
They take people with them.
I did not read that there was one that went with them.
There was a lady, either she had a family member in the commune or she used to be in
the commune, but she wasn't part of a newspaper or the camera crew.

(01:14:14):
She's who was like right there with Leo Ryan.
It was originally it was just Leo Ryan, his assistant and then this other lady.
I don't remember her name and I feel so bad for that.
I may have misread, but I thought it was she left with him.

(01:14:36):
I might have misread that, but I thought she left with Ryan or left after she didn't leave
with Leo after the fact.
No, the lady that I'm thinking of went on the plane down there with Leo.
Okay.
Their group included an NBC camera crew, several reporters from newspapers and a defector that

(01:15:05):
left People's Temple that was with Leo Ryan.
To correct myself.
I mean, it wasn't a correction.
It was just there was one person that I remembered that was somehow affiliated with the commune
at some point, whether it be by relative or herself, but she did go and she was part of

(01:15:31):
what happened.
So I wanted to make sure she wasn't forgotten.
Even though I forgot her name, I feel so bad.
It was probably the Deborah lady that I just read an affidavit from.
I think that was her.
I think that was her name, but I just I wanted to make sure she wasn't forgotten in it.
And the assistant.

(01:15:56):
Jim hosted a reception for the revival, the arrival of everyone.
And throughout the entire visit, the tensions were high.
And this caused multiple people to try and leave the commune.
Leo's group left on November 18th and he barely, barely avoided being stabbed by member

(01:16:21):
Don Sly.
The group then made it to.
The airport or it was an air strip.
Yeah.
This was like in a very small, small town outside of the commune and it was literally

(01:16:42):
just like a one plane landing strip with like a shack type building outside of it.
It wasn't anything big.
So they arrived to the airstrip with a few of the members that were able to escape and
Jim did nothing to stop them.

(01:17:03):
After this, Marceline told everyone to return to their homes and everything was fine.
During this time, this is when AIDS would begin preparing large metal tubs with grape
flavor aid poisoned with diphenhydramine, promethazine, chloropromazine, chloroquine

(01:17:33):
or chloro hydrate, diazepam and cyanide.
Honestly, where in the world did he get all of that?
I don't understand that part.
Like how was he even getting the drugs for himself?
Let alone all of that.
He claimed to be a jeweler and was having cyanide shipped to Guyana for like a long

(01:17:55):
time.
Yeah, that tracks that tracks.
He was playing in it the whole time.
So when the members of Leo Ryan's group arrived at the airstrip, armed guards from
Jonestown arrived and shot at them.

(01:18:17):
Instantly killing Ryan and four others.
And at the same time, one of the defectors, so one of the people that escaped, Larry Layton,
which would be Deborah Layton's husband, drew a weapon and started firing on members inside
the other plane.
One of the NBC cameramen was able to capture a few seconds of the shooting before he was

(01:18:42):
shot and unalived by the gunman.
Just a FYI on that part.
You can view the recording.
I mean, it doesn't show you everything, but it does show you some stuff.
There's a documentary on Hulu.
There's actually two that you can look up.

(01:19:03):
It's the Jonestown massacre.
But I mean, everything was recorded.
All of those like announcements and him talking over the intercom and all of the lectures
and like just pretty much everything was voice recorded and documented.
You can listen to all of it.

(01:19:24):
Which use your discretion because it's rough.
For sure.
Later that same day, Jim received words word that the guards had failed to kill everyone
in the Iran's group.

(01:19:46):
He then assumed that the escapees would inform the US and the attack would then happen on
the commune.
Which did in fact happen.
The people who ran, which also there were a couple of kids that were there as well and
they just ran into the woods.
They were injured living in the South American woods for an entire night by themselves.

(01:20:10):
Young kids.
Like 7 to 12 I think.
Horrible.
Oh yeah.
Jim then called all of the community to the pavilion and let them know that Leo Ryan was
dead and it was only a matter of time before the military came to kill them.

(01:20:33):
He told them that the Soviet Union would not give them passage after the airstrip shooting.
He also stated, quote, we can check in with Russia to see if they'll take us in immediately,
otherwise we die, unquote.
Then asking, do you think Russia's gonna want us with all this stigma?

(01:20:54):
This reasoning, Jim and several others argued that they should all commit revolutionary
self-unalloying.
Jim recorded the entirety of the death ritual on audio.
Cries and screams of children and adults can be easily heard throughout the recording.

(01:21:19):
You also hear Jim yelling at the members as well.
I'll get into that in a little bit.
And this is where it comes in to tell you where he was getting the cyanide from.
In 76 he got a jeweler's license and started getting shipments of cyanide.

(01:21:45):
In May of 78, the temple doctor wrote a memo test to try cyanide in pigs because their
immune systems are similar to humans.
I'm sorry, their metabolisms are similar to humans.
The drink mixture was then handed out to each and every member and if they denied the drink,

(01:22:05):
they were injected with cyanide through a syringe.
The crowd was surrounded by armed guards so if they tried to leave, they were shot.
Their choice was poison or getting shot.
Lose lose.
There were a couple people who managed to sneak out before, like right before all of

(01:22:31):
that started.
As soon as they heard that Leo was dead, there were a couple people who snuck out into the
forest and hid.
Which I think is wild.
For sure.

(01:22:51):
Ruletta Paul and her one year old were the first to ingest the poison.
A scape member, Odell Rhodes, claimed the child's mouth was filled with poison with a syringe
without a needle.
And then Ruletta then injected more poison into her own mouth.

(01:23:11):
According to Rhodes, after ingesting the poison, people were taken down a walkway that led
outside the pavilion.
Several temple members walked around in a trance and the majority silently waited for
their turn to die.
Over time, more and more members perished and the guards themselves were called in to

(01:23:33):
die by poison.
It's not clear if some of the members thought that this was just another drill from a white
night, but when they would cry, Jim would scream, stop these hysterics, this is not
the way for people who are socialist or communist to die.
No way for us to die.
We must die with some dignity.

(01:23:56):
He can also be heard saying, don't be afraid to die, adding that death is a friend.
He directed that the children be unalived first.
Then the adults, and after the children and adults were unalived.

(01:24:19):
The tape concludes with Jim saying, we didn't commit self-unaliving, we committed an act
of revolutionary self-unaliving, protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
All of that, all of that, completely unnecessary, honestly.

(01:24:45):
And I read about this one guy who managed to escape, Jim Jones let him leave during
all of this, because he was supposed to take a briefcase full of money to some guy to give

(01:25:10):
all of the church assets to the Communist Party.
He was donating everything to the Communist Party, and he entrusted this one guy to do
that.
And the guy was like, this is my chance, and as he was leaving, he saw his wife sitting

(01:25:30):
on the ground with their baby in their arms, and the baby was unalived.
Well, it was a young child, but it was unalived in her arms, and she had just ingested it
too, so she was convulsing and unaliving as he was walking by.

(01:25:51):
He stopped and held her for her final moments before he took the briefcase and ran and hid
in the woods.
He'd never met up with the Communist Party to donate the money, he just ran.
But he is one of the few survivors, maybe the only survivor after the attack started,

(01:26:16):
and he had to watch his child and his wife unalive in a very slow and painful way.
It's horrible.
Watching him do the interview had me emotional, because you could see the pain on his face

(01:26:37):
of him remembering it.
Yeah.
Something that would haunt him forever.
Jim's three sons were with the People's Temple basketball team in Georgetown, and this was

(01:27:01):
at the time of the poisoning.
They alerted the U.S. Embassy about the events that were going to be taking place, and they
weren't allowed back into Guyana due to the shooting that took place at the airstrip.
The boys then later returned to find the bodies of Sharon Amis and her three children, Leanne,

(01:27:22):
Krista, and Martin.
The Guyanese military arrived in Johnstown to find all of the deceased.
They organized an airlift to get the bodies out, and Jim was found on the stage of the
Central Pavilion.
He was resting on a deck pillow by his desk chair with a GSW to the head.

(01:27:52):
A pew to the head, I'll say.
Later on, his son, Stefan, speculated that Jim had someone else shoot him.
It was the last woman in his harem that was alive, is the suspect.

(01:28:14):
And they still don't know today if it was her or him, but it was one of them.
The autopsy report showed that Jim Johnstown's COD was self-unaliving.
He had extremely high levels of barbiturates.
The coroner said for any normal person, the amount of drug traces would have killed them,

(01:28:37):
but this shows Jim's tolerance to drugs.
The Johns brothers were kept under house arrest for five days, and Stefan was accused of the
involvement with the death and was placed in the Guyanese prison for three months.
After returning to the U.S., Jim Johns Jr. was placed under police surveillance for several

(01:29:01):
months.
Sadly, John Victor Stowen, Timothy Stowen's son, perished in Johnstown.
In a side note, Marceline directed that the Johns' assets be given to the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union.

(01:29:22):
The People's Temple Secretary had already made arrangements for $7.3 million, which
is $20 million as of 2020 currency, in temple funds to be transferred to the Soviet embassy
in Guyana.
Most of the money was held in a foreign bank account and transferred electronically, but

(01:29:43):
$680,000, which is $2,904,970 in 2020 currency, was held in cash and three couriers were hired
to transport the cash to the Soviets.
They were arrested before reaching their destination and claimed to have hidden most of the money.

(01:30:06):
And then, I'm going to end this with kind of after effects, people's opinions or reactions.
An American Christian leader denounced Johns as satanic and asserted that he and his teachings
were in no way connected to traditional Christianity.

(01:30:30):
In the immediate aftermath, rumors arose that surviving members of People's Temple in San
Francisco were organizing hit squads to target critics and enemies of the church.
Law enforcement intervened to protect the media and other figures who were reported
to be targeted.

(01:30:51):
The supporters of People's Temple, especially the politicians, had a difficult time explaining
their connections to Jones.
After a period of reflection, some admitted that they had been manipulated or tricked
by Jim Jones.

(01:31:13):
Since the Jonestown Massacre, a massive amount of literature and study has been produced
on the subject.
Numerous documentaries, films, books, poetry, music, and art have all covered or been inspired
by the events of Jonestown.
Jim Jones and the events at Jonestown had a defining influence on society's perception

(01:31:34):
of cults.
The widely known expression, drinking the Kool-Aid, developed after the events of Jonestown,
although the specific beverage used was flavor aid.
This story was just insane.

(01:31:56):
From start to finish, absolutely insane.
Since a young age, he was deranged and delusional.
Very much so.
There are... so I mean for anybody interested, you can watch these documentaries and a lot

(01:32:17):
of them be worn, do play the footage and the audio.
The Jonestown Massacre on Hulu, the one that... one of the ones that I watched, you do see
the cameraman at the airstrip until the camera and him are shot.

(01:32:41):
And they also play clips of the massacre happening.
So you will hear people unaliving gruesomely and him saying horrible things to these people
in their last moments, because he was not kind at any point throughout any of this.

(01:33:07):
So if you watch any documentaries, be warned, you likely will see the videos and hear the
audio.
If you're not okay with that, maybe just read about it.
There is a full length audio file that you can listen to the massacres.

(01:33:27):
After hearing the clips on Hulu, I couldn't.
And I'm not usually one to back down when it comes to that stuff, but to hear them in
the clips was horrible enough.
It was about 45 minutes to an hour long.

(01:33:47):
Allie, Allie listened to it.
Not all of it, but I did listen to some of it.
It's heartbreaking.
It's sickening.
And he got out so easy.
He took the easy way out.
Whether it was him or whether it was the last woman in his harem, he took the easy way out.

(01:34:15):
He didn't have to lay there and suffer for forever.
He was drugged up and went fast.
That was too good for him.
Mm hmm.
For sure.
And a lot of those people wanted to leave.
The majority of them did.

(01:34:38):
They were scared.
And a lot of people criticized them too.
Like, why didn't you just leave?
Why did they just leave?
The people who did try to leave got shot down at an airstrip.
How else are they supposed to run away?
I mean, what was he?
He was a governor, right?
I think Leo was a governor or a mayor.

(01:35:01):
He was, I think, an ambassador for California.
He was-
If I'm remembering correctly.
He was somebody of importance.
He wasn't just some random man that was leading a scavenger hunt.

(01:35:23):
He was a dude who was high up in power leading this rescue of these people.
And they were still gunned down.
So how else were they supposed to leave?
The people who did get away are lucky that they were able to get away.

(01:35:46):
They were so isolated.
Leo Ryan was a congressman.
He was a congressman.
I knew he was something.
But I don't know.
Like I hate when people make those comments because in the research for this, I saw that
comment a lot.
Why didn't they just leave?

(01:36:10):
A lot harder to leave, especially when you've been brainwashed to believe that it's all
okay.
People can sit there and say all day long that they would never let something like that
happen or whatever, but they prey on vulnerable people.
People who are lost.
It's not headstrong people that these cult leaders are preying on.

(01:36:33):
It's people who are alone, people who are addicts, in need, vulnerable people.
And also when you take into account a religious cult, anytime you mesh Christianity in with
a cult, you get this dynamic that you're not supposed to deny.

(01:36:56):
You are supposed to listen to your pastor, to your reverend, and not question their authority.
What they speak is true.
And so if you're thinking that your soul is dependent upon listening to this person, you
do what they say.
Yeah.

(01:37:16):
But Jim Jones also had their passports.
Oh yeah, he kept everything.
He kept them from leaving in any way possible.
And he claimed that they were able to leave at any point, but when they would ask for
their passports, he would go off.
Like there's a recording of it on the Jonestown massacre on Hulu.
You can hear him go ballistic in this recording.

(01:37:41):
So they were isolated.
If you let someone know they can leave, they don't feel like they have to at that point
because they're like, oh, I can come and go.
Yeah.
So he was telling them that they could leave to control them.
But when they actually wanted to leave and go somewhere, even just to go back to visit

(01:38:01):
their families because they were all uprooted, moved to another country in the middle of
nowhere.
Even if they wanted to go visit their family for the holidays, they couldn't.
They couldn't because if they asked, he would turn it around on them like a narcissist does
and guilt them into staying.

(01:38:24):
It just there, there was no way out.
And I hate when people say, well, why didn't you just leave?
Especially in this case.
Not that easy.
I hate that saying in any case, whether it's a cult or an abusive relationship, it's never
that easy.

(01:38:46):
I feel like in either situation, they can, they can find you.
They'll always, they'll always come back.
Overall, this was just an awful act by an awful man and there was no rhyme or reason
to it and no justice in it.

(01:39:07):
No, we can see from the beginning, he had issues.
Yeah.
It's always good to understand where their childhood starts.
Yeah.
Where it all really stems from.
But at the same time, there are plenty of other people who went through horrible things
who did not become big cult masqueras.

(01:39:32):
Or the cereal on a lava.
Yeah.
I mean, it's good to know like why they were the way they were, but it doesn't justify
it.
Never does.
Never will.
Yeah, never.
That's why their brains are just so interesting to me.

(01:39:55):
Like what makes them tick the way they do?
Yeah.
Are you born thinking that way or do you develop that thought process?
As always, thanks for listening to Crime in Passion and we'll see y'all on Monday when
we discuss our next book, Leather and Lark by Brynn Weaver.

(01:40:16):
Don't forget to check out our podcast channels for more of our true crime retellings.
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