Before heading to the jungles of Guyana to investigate living conditions in a town created by Peoples Temple founder Jim Jones in 1978, Jackie Speier wrote her parents a letter which she slipped into her desk drawer. his office.
“Mom and Dad, I love you,” Speier, now 74, read her note in an interview with USA TODAY. “If anything happens, be proud because my life has been full of the love you gave me. I have no regrets. My love, Jackie.
In a footnote, Speier, then a 28-year-old legal aide to California Congressman Leo Ryan, mentioned a $1,000 life insurance policy.
Ryan constituents have raised concerns about the makeshift dwelling nicknamed Jonestown. So Ryan, Speier, journalists and family members of more than 900 U.S. residents traveled to this country on the northern coast of South America, uninvited by the charismatic and erratic Jones. Their journey — and the poisoning of hundreds of members with a cyanide-laced fruit drink — is the focus of “Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown.” a National Geographic docuseries now streaming on Hulu. The three-part project includes interviews with Jonestown survivors, journalists who covered the trip, and Jones’ son Stephan, once a Jonestown resident.
After church members decided to flee Jonestown, other congregants targeted them at an airstrip, opening fire on defectors and visitors. Speier took refuge behind the wheels of an airplane and pretended to be dead. However, she was shot five times at close range. Five died on the tarmac, including Ryan. That same day, more than 900 citizens of Jonestown died under the Jones Emergency.
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“It’s hard to believe this actually happened,” Speier said. That “a member of Congress who was trying to protect his constituents would be shot as he was, that members of the press would lose their lives, that a number of us would be injured because there was a madman whose ego was not in check and who, like a megalomaniac, wanted everyone to suffer.
Who was Jim Jones, founder of Peoples Temple?
Jones founded the San Francisco-based church that performed acts of service throughout its community and welcomed members of all races. In 1974, he moved to an area of Guyana he nicknamed Jonestown, which he presented as an idealistic place to lead his church.
“What you see in the media about my father,” Stephan Jones says in the documentary, “anyone who hasn’t experienced the temple can’t help but think, ‘Why would anyone would he follow this guy? There must be something wrong with these people all along. Dad was sometimes dynamic.
Six-year member Grace Stoen says, “I’d do anything for Jim Jones anyway, at first. But over time, Jim began to behave strangely.
During a late-night meeting, she said she fell asleep and woke up to see Jones holding a gun to her head. “He said, ‘I love you very much, but don’t fall asleep because I’m going to kill you,'” she recalled.
“Much of my father’s madness was well hidden for years,” says Stephan, “but he was as crazy as anyone. »
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People held against their will in Jonestown
Stephan says once people arrived in Jonestown, his father confiscated their passports. They would need Jones’ permission to travel.
On the first night of Ryan’s visit to Jonestown, November 17, 1978, NBC reporter Don Harris received notes from two Jonestown residents saying they wanted to leave.
When Harris showed Jones a note, the preacher said, “People play games, my friend. They’re lying.” He insisted that people could come and go as they pleased.
Speier says she brought Ryan voters letters from their parents, but congregants didn’t want to interact with them. “They all almost seemed like automatons,” Speier told USA TODAY. “They were all young adults. They were all going to marry another member of the temple.
Temple members murder five people at Port Kaituma airstrip
The next day, 15 worshipers asked to leave Jonestown, according to the documentary. About thirty people, including Ryan, Speier, relatives of the members and journalists, waited anxiously on a tarmac for their return to the United States. Ryan waited, wearing a shirt stained with the blood of a temple member who had tried to stab him to death earlier in the day.
As the evacuees boarded, a caravan of armed men from the temple arrived and began shooting. NBC videographer Bob Brown killed; as did Ryan, NBC’s Harris, defector Patricia Parks and photographer Greg Robinson. The next morning, a Guyanese Army helicopter arrived and secured the runway. The survivors were flown to Georgetown, the capital, and then to Washington aboard a US Air Force plane.
The Jonestown massacre, hundreds of people were poisoned with cyanide
Back in Jonestown, Jones informed parishioners of the congressman’s death. He also told residents that the defectors were preventing the resumption of normal life. “There’s no way we can detach ourselves from what happened today,” Jones said in an audio recording. “If we cannot live in peace, then let us die in peace because we are not committing suicide. It is a revolutionary act.
A woman is heard pleading for the children’s lives, but Jones tells her icily: “It’s too late.” If you knew what awaited you, you would be happy to take over tonight. There’s nothing to die for, it’s just getting on another plane,” he said. “Stop this hysteria. Die with some dignity.
David Netterville, US special forces, said he found several victims “who could be said to have been held on the ground and either forced to drink (the poison) or hit with a syringe in the back of the head.” »
According to the documentary, at least 153 men, 452 women and 302 children died in Jonestown.
Jones died of a gunshot to the head.
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