by Suruthi Bala
For starters, Jones told his followers that he was the only truly heterosexual man on the planet, and that everyone else was secretly homosexual. In his book The Road to Jonestown, Jeff Guinn throws this particular statement made by Jones into question, by saying that most survivors of the cult knew “Jones had occasional sex with male followers, but never as often as he did with women.” So while Jones completely banned sex outside of marriage for his followers, he happily carried on satisfying all his own sexual desires with whomever he wanted. (Time for another Ding, ding, ding! cult bell—and this time it’s for sexual exploitation, which according to survivors, was absolutely rampant under Jones.)
But of course, as you would expect with Jim Jones, he didn’t miss an opportunity to claim that his insatiable prediction for consensual and non-consensual sex with his followers was all for the greater good. Despite being very obviously bisexual, he claimed that he was in fact disgusted by sleeping with men and that he only did it to help them feel truly connected to him—the almighty big man.
Jones’s control over his followers’ sexuality stretched to the extent that he didn’t even approve of sex within marriage for the purposes of reproduction. Instead, he preached that adoption was the only way forward. People who already had children were absolutely expected to bring them to the commune. Once there, the red flags started waving pretty fast, with parents forced to sign statements saying that they had molested their children. The Peoples Temple would then hold onto these “confessions” as collateral, you know, just in case anyone thought about leaving. (Is it even worth dinging the bell again?)
Along with isolation, fear, and intimidation—the usual cult tactics—Jim Jones also used a particularly maniacal method of manipulation to control his followers. Jones would speak openly about his obsession with the idea of people killing themselves, and also his deep concern that he’d be assassinated. Given his radical promotion of socialist ideals, it appears that Jones was convinced he was just as politically significant as Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He just needed everyone else to believe this, too. Because in the twisted mind of Jim Jones, for him to truly solidify his standing as a radical leader—one speaking the truth and being attacked by the capitalist system—someone had to have a pop at him.
In 1972, at a church picnic, it happened—Jim Jones was shot in the chest. This assassination attempt sent shockwaves through the Peoples Temple. Followers closed ranks—they viciously protected their persecuted leader, and crucially, they became terrified of the outside world. If you haven’t already guessed, this convenient shooting—that allowed Jim Jones to consolidate yet more power—was actually a setup. Jones knew how his people would react, and he was right. But even with his hold over his followers cementing daily, Jones could never be accused of complacency. He wasn’t about to relax, he needed to keep doubling down.
In the Peoples Temple, as in all cults, loyalty was of the utmost importance. In order to keep everyone in line and combat the risk of uprisings, Jones created a group within the cult called the Planning Commission. If these spies got so much as a whiff of someone even thinking about leaving the Temple, they would go straight to Jones. These suspected defectors would then be called out in front of the entire congregation, and quickly, these public shamings turned into public beatings, which were recorded on audiotape. In a particularly brutal incident, a congregant’s newly pierced ears were ripped apart, and the whole time Jones can be heard in the background laughing wildly.
Followers’ loyalty was also tested constantly in a variety of ways. Once, Jones gathered his closest confidants and hosted a little wine evening with them. After they had finished, he told them that they had all just drank poison; he wanted to see how they would react to “dying for the cause.” Jones was obsessed with what he called “revolutionary suicide,” and he wanted to root out anyone who didn’t have the stomach for it. That time he was lying, but we all know where this is headed…
The Utopia: Guyana
In 1974, somewhat out of the blue, Jones suddenly claimed that the US wasn’t ready for the Eden he had planned. He used some of the money he had been siphoning from his followers to buy a plot of land in the middle of the jungle in Guyana. To say this brand-new commune was remote would be a huge understatement; it was only accessible using a tiny jungle airstrip, or if you were feeling up to it, a 19-hour boat ride. But isolation is the name of the cult game and Jones told his followers that this land would become Jonestown—home of their new utopia.
Over the course of the next year, more and more members of the Temple were sent down to Guyana to help with construction. At first this migration was covert; members traveled from airports in different cities in groups of no more than three so as to not attract attention. But in 1977, when Jim Jones realized that he needed to get the fuck out of the US, the mass exodus began. The media were finally onto him after a group of former Temple members, led by Grace Stoen (who was the wife of Tim Stoen, a prominent cult member and Jones’s former chief legal adviser), had gone to the press with their stories of sexual abuse, violence, kidnapping, and fraud.
We think it’s safe to say that Jones saw this coming and that he knew that sooner or later he would need that jungle commune hideout far from the pesky, prying eyes of the American press. Jones managed to escape just in time; hours before the exposé hit the stands he was on his way to Guyana. Once there, Jones simply dismissed any negativity or pressure from the outside—be it from the press, cultists’ family members, or government bodies—as pure jealousy. With this move to the jungle, those in the Peoples Temple became even more disconnected from the outside world, not just physically, but from any source of information that was not Jones himself.
With the congregation now in Guyana, Jonestown began in apparent earnest. It was dubbed the “Peoples Temple Agricultural Project” and it was filled with rainbows, smiles, and dancing, but there were of course also huge sinister speakers set up everywhere that would blast Jim Jones’s apocalyptic warnings on a constant loop. These announcements would often run all night so that Jonestown members could “learn in their sleep.”
By this point, Jones had a life-threatening addiction to prescription drugs. He had swollen up like an amphetamine-addled blimp, and his speeches were starting to sound slurred. If anyone had any issues understanding him, though, it was OK because the Red Brigade—who were essentially the Planning Commission, but now with added guns—were there to help clarify things. And there’s nothing like a gun in your face to sharpen your comprehension skills.
But there were other issues starting to emerge. Jonestown, which was now home to almost a thousand people, had been built to support just four hundred people. The much-lauded agricultural project had also been a total failure, so food was rapidly running out. And in another twist of stupidity, what food was being produced wasn’t even being stored properly, and in the damp jungle climate the meager rations constantly got moldy.
The members of the Temple had always been hungry, but things were especially bad now. They were fed a tiny bowl of rice with milk, water, and a bit of brown sugar at 6 a.m. and that was it. With nothing more to fuel them, they had to spend at least 10 grueling hours working in the fields under the beating tropical sun. Anyone who complained would be reported straight to Jones himself—and given the growing viciousness of the public shamings, this made for some very compliant congregants indeed.
With these starving “zombies” stuck in the middle of a jungle in Guyana, too hungry, too scared, and too trapped to disobey him, we suspect that Jones perhaps started to feel somewhat dissatisfied. Maybe the thrill of the chase was over, or the shine from the control he had had worn off. As with other killers we have discussed so far in this book, dangerous people tend to continue to escalate their behaviors in order to get the same rush, so yet again, Jim Jones turned the abuse dial to an 11.
Jones started conducting a ritual called Peoples Forum three times a week. These events were an opportunity for congregants to show Jone
s how loyal and obedient they were, but of course, they were never able to keep him happy for long. Soon Peoples Forum nights would often turn into gladiatorial battles with violent confrontations and beatings. It was also during these public meetings that Jones would encourage/force his congregation to confess their deepest, darkest sins to him; again, like the signed child abuse “confessions,” these secrets would be saved and used later if needed.
Despite the danger and all the threats, some members did try to escape, but most of the time they were quickly caught by the armed guards and taken off to the “extra care unit,” where they were drugged and would usually only emerge weeks later, unable to speak. Incidents like these, although quickly “managed,” made Jones increasingly paranoid. He still hadn’t forgotten about the group of defectors who had gone to the press and denounced him back in the States. And they hadn’t forgotten about him, either—in fact the group of whistleblowers had actually grown in size.
Back in the US, the families of those in Guyana had banded together through their collective grief and fear. They were terrified because they couldn’t communicate with their loved ones at all and any miraculous letters that did arrive seemed highly censored and manipulated. Ex-members of the Temple were also starting to take notice; they knew exactly what Jim Jones was capable of, so they knew they had to ring the alarm.
Finally, after a great deal of lobbying and letter writing, the Federal Communications Commission in the US launched an investigation into Jonestown and its illustrious leader. The news reached Jim Jones through Angela Davis and other Black Panthers, who confirmed to the panicking cult leader that there was a “profound conspiracy against him.” This was an existential threat of epic proportions for Jones, and he needed to take radical action. So he kicked off a trial run of a six-night siege! That’s right—the thousand starving and brutalized members of the Peoples Temple were forced to do a week of apocalyptic role-play in preparation for some sort of invasion. It was during this live-action horror show that the Peoples Temple started its routine of infamous “white nights,” where members would practice committing mass suicide.
What we have to understand is that these “white nights” were the absolute pinnacle of Jones’s ideology—if they couldn’t live the way they wanted, then they wouldn’t live at all. As we saw earlier, Jones was obsessed with “dying for the cause.” He framed this as an act of protest he called “revolutionary suicide.” Anyone who wasn’t ready to die was a coward and a traitor.
Eventually, by the tail end of 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan agreed to take a delegation down to Guyana and meet Jim Jones to find out exactly what was going on down there. Ryan, his team, and some journalists arrived on November 17 and were met with a celebratory reception. Ryan was then given a tour of the impressive—if a little spartan—Jonestown Agricultural Project. All the Peoples Temple members even lined up to tell Ryan how very happy they were in the jungle.
That evening everyone gathered in the pavilion where they ate, drank, and made merry, although Jonestown survivors now say that there was a palpable tension in the air. This tension was broken, however, when Congressman Ryan stood up and said that he had been sent to find out about Jonestown and that “whatever the comments [back home] are, there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing to have happened in their whole lives.” This statement was met with thunderous applause.
Despite all the clapping, some members of Jonestown did want to get out, and one of them was a man named Vern Gosney. Gosney knew this might be his only chance, so he wrote a note asking for help and gave it to someone in Congressman Ryan’s group. Thankfully the team agreed to take Gosney with them, but they didn’t seem to understand the grave danger of what was happening. In fact, one of the journalists, Don Harris, NBC correspondent (and nominee for the Worst Decision Award 1978), so massively misread the severity of the situation that he actually handed the note to Jim Jones on camera and asked him why people were being held in Jonestown against their will!
A visibly startled Jones told Harris that this was all just a bunch of nonsense, and that anyone who wanted to go was free to do so. Following this revelation news quickly spread across the commune that Gosney was leaving on the plane with Congressman Ryan and his team, and it didn’t take long for others desperate to get the hell out of there to pipe up, too. Soon the number of those wanting to flee grew to more than 20.
In her book A Thousand Lives, Julia Scheeres notes that Jones was furious, but he knew that the way to get them all back on his side was to plead with his flock like a dejected child. Just like in an abusive relationship, the apology was just a manipulative tool used by the aggressor to pressure the victim into forgiveness—and it worked. Upon seeing Jones look a bit sad, the most heavily indoctrinated cultists started to do what they’d been trained to: protect Jones and the “heaven” he was building.
Then suddenly, in a wild act of desperation, one of Jones’s most loyal followers pulled a knife on Congressman Ryan. Clearly, realizing that they needed to get the fuck out of there as fast as humanly possible, Congressman Ryan, his team, and those he was taking with him made a break for it. An extra plane had been ordered for the escapees, and those brave enough to leave clambered into a truck and headed to the airstrip. But Jones wasn’t going to make things that easy. The hopeful escapees were horrified, but probably not shocked, to see a tractor pulling a wagon full of eight of Jones’s staunchest supporters hot on their tail.
Even from a distance it was clear to see that these men were armed to the teeth, and within moments the cultists in the wagon opened fire. In the shootout that followed, five people were killed, including the congressman. Back in Jonestown, a crisis meeting was already underway with Jones using what had just happened as fuel for his raging paranoia fire. He told the remaining residents of Jonestown that this was proof that the US government would never allow them to be happy; they just wanted to drag them all back to the capitalist nightmare of America and torture their children. It was very much a let’s-chuck-it-all-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of message, but it worked. Again. Resolutely, Jim Jones told his frightened congregation that there was only one way out. “If we can’t live in peace, we will die in peace.”
The End
We know more about the last hours of Jonestown than we do about any other cult, because Jones, ever the narcissist, was obsessed with recording everything. From the early days of his parish meetings in Indiana to the Peoples Forum get-togethers in Guyana, Jones recorded it all. Horrifyingly, we know exactly what happened next to those one thousand people. The recording of their final moments would go on to become known as “the death tape.”
It’s important to note that while Jones set in motion the final plan as a reaction to a catastrophic incident (I mean, they’d just murdered a US congressman!), nothing about the shitshow that was about to go down had been left to chance. The fact that there was enough cyanide to kill one thousand people already at Jonestown tells us that this had been Jones’s exit strategy for quite some time. It’s also worth mentioning that although Jones was in huge trouble, it’s highly likely that it never would have crossed his mind to turn himself in and deal with the consequences, or even to go on the run. Jones wouldn’t have been able to bear people finding out what a failure Jonestown had been.
Much like with the classic psychology of a narcissistic family annihilator, as described by Elizabeth Yardley, David Wilson, and Adam Lynes in their 2013 paper “A Taxonomy of Male British Family Annihilators,” Jones may have rationalized to himself that it was kinder to just kill his “family” than allow them to suffer on without him.
So, the cyanide was mixed with the Flavor-Aid, and Jones told his flock that their deaths would be painless and that there was no reason for them to be afraid. After this, the children were killed first, partly because they needed to be fed the poison and partly because once they were dead their parents were less likely to feel a need to live. Hundreds of tumblers of Flavor-Aid laced with cyanid
e were handed out to the children, and the babies who couldn’t quite hold a cup yet had it injected into their mouths.
Cyanide had a reputation for being a quick and painless way to go because of its rise to fame as the suicide pill of choice in WWII, but we now know that it certainly is not. Cyanide will take between two to five minutes to kill you, and during that time you are fully conscious and unable to breathe until you enter cardiac arrest. Hundreds of parents had to watch their children’s mouths fill with blood and vomit as Jones’s voice poured over the PA system telling them that they needed to die with respect.
After the last of the children were gone, the adults were next. Some were all too eager to end things, but we also know that not all of them willingly drank the cyanide. Some bodies were later found with abscesses where the concoction had been forcibly injected into them. As his followers collapsed to the ground writhing and convulsing in pain, Jones intoned over the jungle sound system: “How very much I’ve tried to give you a good life… but in spite of all I’ve tried, a handful of our people with their lies have made our lives impossible. No man takes my life from me, I lay my life down. If we can’t live in peace let us die in peace.”
Eventually the Guyanese army, realizing that something was very wrong, sent a group of helicopters to Jonestown. The smell of decomposing bodies on the floor of the jungle made it all the way up to the helicopters hovering hundreds of feet above. On the ground the army found 909 bodies scattered across the compound; chillingly, some of the corpses had been lined up in rows, like someone had been tidying up in the middle of the massacre. Of the almost one thousand bodies they found, three hundred were never identified; most of them were children.