The Jonestown Massacre Was So Much Worse Than You Realize
In 1978, more than 900 people drank cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid under the orders of Peoples Temple leader Jim Jones. It's tempting to write off the massacre as the work of one man. But the popular account masks a more complicated — and disturbing — reality.
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00:00Drinking the Kool-Aid is a popular idiom used today, often in a political context, but it
00:05has a dark, dark origin to the phrase. You might think you know the story of Jim Jones,
00:09but the popular account masks a more complicated and disturbing reality.
00:14Jim Jones ran the People's Temple from San Francisco, but the history of the church is
00:17a bit complicated. After starting in Indianapolis and traveling down to Brazil for a time, the
00:22main takeaway is that Jones always had one target per parishioners, or minorities. According
00:27to New West Magazine, he mobilized San Francisco's African-American community in a crucial swing
00:32block. He was so powerful that few dared challenge him at the time, and he became what New West
00:36called one of the most politically potent religious leaders in the history of the state.
00:40A guy like my dad found out what you wanted to hear and see and showed it to you.
00:47In 1977, when the State Department seemed poised to intervene in a child custody case
00:51relating to Jonestown, San Francisco's politicians and local radicals leapt to defend Jones.
00:56Angela Davis asked the San Francisco D.A. to drop all investigations into Jones,
01:01claiming his detractors wanted to stop his work for social justice. In a letter to then-President
01:05Jimmy Carter, California State Assembly member and future San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown called
01:10Jones,
01:11"...a rare human being and a leader of the first order."
01:13Did his message at the time resonate with you?
01:15Yes. Yes. Yes. No isms. No sexism, racism.
01:19Even San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk begged Carter not to unleash the State Department on
01:24Jones. Had Jones not received so much protection from these people, as well as others like Mayor
01:29George Moscone and Governor Jerry Brown, People's Temple might have been investigated in 1977,
01:34before it managed to flee to South America. Even there, it seems Jones expected the city
01:38to defend him. In a tape recorded just before the massacre, Jones said,
01:42"...the people in San Francisco will not take our death in vain, you know."
01:45While Jonestown was portrayed as a multiracial utopia, the reality more closely resembled a
01:50Soviet labor camp. What's often overlooked is that Jones was an admirer of communism,
01:55and his political ties were with the far left. Thanks to the survivors of the massacre,
01:59America learned how Jones mentally broke his followers through a combination of food
02:02deprivation, humiliation, and punishment straight out of the USSR and communist China.
02:07"...Jones was fascinated by Hitler."
02:10Jonestown survivor Eugene Smith wrote in a Newsweek op-ed that,
02:13even when the cult was still in the U.S., Jones kept an iron grip.
02:17If you broke the rules, Jones dressed you down in front of everyone else.
02:20You didn't defend yourself. You just took it.
02:23Additionally, the residents were encouraged to criticize themselves to Jones, whether in
02:26person or in writing — a practice that was nearly identical to communist Chinese
02:31struggle sessions, meant to keep potential defectors in line. Life wasn't much better day to day.
02:36"...I mean, I've never been on a plantation, but, my God, it was a plantation. And he was the master."
02:43Work consisted of eight- to 12-hour days in the jungle, with most meals consisting
02:47mainly of rice. Jonestown's inhabitants were kept on a low-protein diet,
02:52no doubt to keep them weak and pliable. What they were fed was a daily diet of propaganda
02:56about America's impending collapse and how bad life was elsewhere — kinda like North Korea does today.
03:02Among the worst forms of psychological torture Jones employed was the infamous White Knight.
03:07This was Jones' way of sounding the alarm when he claimed the commune was about to come under attack.
03:11According to Smith, everyone would run to the pavilion and Jim Jones would talk and prophesize
03:16and go off on his rants and raves for hours and hours, like strung out.
03:20"...Dad, like any good demagogue, would conjure up fear."
03:24Survivors gave varying descriptions of White Knights, but they were undoubtedly a form of
03:28manipulation. The meetings, apart from depriving people of sleep, kept everyone in a heightened
03:32state of stress regarding the possibility of the Guyanese army invading the commune
03:36and slaughtering the inhabitants. This reinforced people's loyalty to Jones,
03:40who promised protection but expected everyone to be ready to die for the cause.
03:44They practiced this, too. A handful of White Knights were described as mass suicide rehearsals,
03:48the grim foreshadowing of the massacre that occurred in November of 1978.
03:53While San Francisco Democrats ran cover for Jim Jones, California Democratic Congressman
03:57Leo Ryan broke ranks with his party to investigate. After New West magazine published a damning
04:02article regarding abuse in Jones' cult, the People's Temple moved to Guyana, where members
04:06were reportedly forbidden to leave. Ryan went there to investigate and lost his life as a result.
04:11Before we go any further, we need to briefly explain the geography of Guyana.
04:14Jonestown is about 140 miles outside of the capital city of Georgetown,
04:18in the middle of the jungle. The nearest airport is 60 miles away,
04:21on what is mostly a dirt road over uneven terrain. So Jones chose this location to make it very hard
04:27to get in and out of his utopia, and that played to his advantage. Accompanying Ryan was journalist
04:32Tim Reiterman, who published his experiences in the San Francisco Examiner in 1978.
04:36Reiterman said Jones carefully choreographed the visit to make Jonestown look like a thriving
04:41settlement.
04:41Whatever the comments are, there are some people here who believe that this is the
04:44best thing that ever happened to them in their whole life.
04:46But the charade collapsed when two members handed Ryan a note begging the congressman
04:50to save them. At least 14 more joined them in their attempt to escape, something Jones wouldn't tolerate.
04:55What is your wish today?
04:58To go back home.
04:59Go back home?
05:00And where's home?
05:01U.S.
05:01Before the group even left Jonestown for the airport, things got very dicey. A few church
05:06loyalists inspected the trucks carrying the fleeing members, and that culminated with
05:09Congressman Ryan having a knife held to his throat. Cooler heads prevailed, and they all
05:13thought they were in the clear to return to the U.S.
05:16Unbeknownst to Ryan, however, a member of Jones' Red Brigade, Larry Layton,
05:20had joined the defectors as a saboteur. After arriving in Port Katuma for their flight home,
05:24Layton signaled to a handful of men in a tractor who'd been following the party.
05:28I turned to Larry Layton, I said, they're killing everyone, they're killing everyone.
05:32And then he shot me three times, point blank.
05:35In the resulting firefight, Ryan and several others were killed. In 1986,
05:40Layton would be the only person convicted for the killings.
05:43Speaking to a packed house at Lincoln Land Community College in 2014, People's Temple
05:48Financial Secretary and Jonestown survivor Deborah Layton declared,
05:51Nobody committed suicide at Jonestown. It was a massacre.
05:54I mean, it was like 900 people, so no, it wasn't all suicide.
05:59With those words, Layton busted Jonestown's most enduring myth — that it was history's
06:03largest mass suicide. In a 2021 Time magazine article, Odell Rhodes, who survived Jonestown,
06:09agreed. Although some followed Jones' order, 300 children and infants were forced to drink
06:13the cyanide-laced Flavor-Aid. And yes, it wasn't even Kool-Aid, it was the other brand of sugary
06:18drink. If the kids weren't willing to sip the poison, their mothers were ordered to squirt
06:22the drink into their mouths with a syringe. The gruesome scene haunted witnesses for years,
06:26with one worker writing,
06:27Can't sleep. Can I get the small children out of my mind?
06:30This is a beautiful place here, and it's fun over here. It's really good.
06:35As for the adults who didn't want to go along with the plan? Jones had a solution for them,
06:39as well. Rhodes said he saw them herded back to the pavilion at gunpoint and coerced into
06:43drinking the poison. According to a Guyanese pathologist, up to 90 percent of Jonestown's
06:48victims were forcibly injected, shot, or strangled. So yes, Jonestown was really a mass murder.
06:54Among the few who definitively died by suicide was Jones himself. According to a Washington
06:58Post interview with his son Steven, Jones was too prideful to let anyone else kill him.
07:03Despite the fact that the People's Temple drew its membership from the poor echelons
07:06of American society, the group itself was far from poor. Jones' well-funded operation
07:11had around $27 million in total assets. These included $7 million in cash,
07:16stashed away in Venezuelan and Panamanian bank accounts. According to The New York Times,
07:20the members of the People's Temple left all the liquid assets to the USSR, with the explanation,
07:25"...we, as communists, want our money to be a benefit for help to oppressed peoples all
07:29over the world, or in any way that your decision-making body sees fit."
07:33The Times report drew heavily on the activities of Jones loyalist Maria Casares,
07:37who was tasked with organizing the delivery of some of the funds to the Soviet embassy
07:41and the Guyanese capital. She visited Panama and Venezuela several times,
07:44suggesting she was Jones' primary financial go-between with the banks. Jones' wife Marceline
07:49left another note transferring money in Canada and the Bahamas — again, a sign that the cult
07:54was far from poor. It doesn't appear the USSR ever received the money, and Moscow refused
07:59to comment on the matter. While most of the Jonestown Massacre took place in the commune,
08:03a second, smaller massacre was taking place at the People's Temple headquarters in the
08:07Guyanese capital of Georgetown, at the hands of Jones loyalist Sharon Amos.
08:11According to her nephew August and his mother Robin, Jones ordered cult members at the
08:15Georgetown headquarters to kill themselves, but most of them refused. Amos, however,
08:19chose to carry out a horrific act on Jones' order with fellow cult member Charles Baikman.
08:24She took her three children to a bathroom where she did the unspeakable.
08:27We're not even going to speak it. Let's just say that she was loyal to Jones through and through.
08:32Ten-year-old Stephanie Brown, who was supposed to be killed by Baikman, survived. Baikman only
08:36cut her superficially to make it seem to Amos that he had carried out Jones' orders.
08:41In doing so, he saved her life. At Baikman's trial, he received a reduced sentence of five
08:45years on an attempted murder charge thanks to his refusal to kill the girl.
08:49Why did the Guyanese government allow Jones and the People's Temple to settle there in the first
08:53place? The answer was political expediency, despite the flashing red warning signs that
08:58Jones wasn't all he claimed to be. In the 1970s, Guyana was a poor,
09:01underdeveloped country covered in inaccessible jungle. According to San Diego State University
09:05professor Khalil Muhammad, Guyana wanted foreigners with a socialist bent who were
09:09willing to develop the interior, and a mostly Black, ostensibly Christian movement seemed like
09:13the perfect way to get it done. The idea was all the more attractive due to Guyana's conflict with
09:17Venezuela over the Essequibo region. Jones would settle the borderlands,
09:21strengthen Guyana's claims to the area, and make it economically viable.
09:24He used his money to bribe police, army personnel, and officials to look the other
09:28way when reports of abuse surfaced, setting the scene for November 1978. After the tragedy,
09:33the Guyanese government, possibly aided by the United States, went into cover-up mode.
09:37As an attorney, I've got to question how thorough their investigation is,
09:42or how thorough that trial is. According to the testimony of Dr. Leslie Mutu,
09:46the pathologist assigned to the case, there was evidence of forcible injection and gunshot wounds
09:51on the vast majority of the bodies. That evidence was buried to make it look like a mass suicide.
09:56These are the bodies of unidentified children. In place of names, just numbers on the boxes.
10:02The People's Temple was around 70 percent African American in 1978,
10:06when the Jonestown Massacre occurred. Many followed Jim Jones because, at one point,
10:10he seemed like the real deal, seeking to turn Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s
10:14I Have a Dream speech into reality. In this aspect, the People's Temple did well.
10:18Anyone was welcome there, including mixed-race couples whose marriages
10:21were illegal in many states until 1967. When Jones moved operations to San Francisco,
10:26his mostly Black congregants saw him as their fighter in City Hall and in Sacramento.
10:31All lies.
10:32None of it was true. I mean, he sold us a bill of goods.
10:36In the end, this is perhaps the saddest part of the Jonestown saga. Was Jones the real deal
10:41who went mad with power, or was he always a manipulative sociopath? Survivors' accounts
10:45suggest the latter, meaning that Jones took advantage of some of America's most vulnerable
10:49and isolated. But to what end? Jones would have said it was for the revolution, but his bank
10:54accounts suggest it was the same old, same old — money, power, and control over his fellow man.
11:01He would have said it was for the revolution, but his bank accounts suggest it was the same
11:03old, same old — money, power, and control over his fellow man.