Speaker 1: If you're going to Send Francisco or Seattle, you should
Speaker 1: come to our live shows.
Speaker 2: That's right, well done, Chuck. We are still selling tickets
Speaker 2: to our live shows on January twenty fourth and twenty
Speaker 2: six On January twenty fourth in Seattle at the Paramount
Speaker 2: Theater and on January twenty sixth in San Francisco at
Speaker 2: Sydney Goldstein Theater. Tickets are still available to come see us.
Speaker 2: Hats off to Portland for selling out our show at
Speaker 2: Revolution Hall already, and sorry to everybody who got shut out.
Speaker 1: That's right. So where can they get tickets at our website?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Stuff? Youshould do dot com.
Speaker 2: Yeah or linktree slash sysk.
Speaker 1: We'll see everybody.
Speaker 2: Then.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. The Three Amigos, the TWA Musketeers,
Speaker 2: the Trace Lay Chase, all that back together again in
Speaker 2: a brand new year four.
Speaker 3: That's right in our time. This is our first recording
Speaker 3: after our increasingly long Christmas break, which is just wonderful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like Jerry sucked us in that first
Speaker 2: week quite a bit. It was like a quasi work
Speaker 2: week that we weren't supposed to have, which I'm still
Speaker 2: a little mad about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but not recording. So it's a nice long break.
Speaker 3: But I always feel like we have to kick or
Speaker 3: at least I have to kick the rust off a
Speaker 3: little bit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure. I think we're gonna
Speaker 2: do great though, because it doesn't feel rusty. I'm sure
Speaker 2: we'll be rusty, but it didn't feel like we're going
Speaker 2: to be Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh can I say a quick thing too, Yeah, this
Speaker 3: is something that it didn't occur to me until we
Speaker 3: were on the break. Like we always like to thank
Speaker 3: people around the holidays for support and stuff, but I
Speaker 3: think we should specifically thank people who operate as our
Speaker 3: back getters and our quasi quality control people because all
Speaker 3: the time where we get letters from people that say
Speaker 3: like or emails that say, like, hey, you misspelled this
Speaker 3: word in the podcast release, but this one came out twice,
Speaker 3: or this ad is really offensive, so maybe you guys
Speaker 3: want to double check that, right, that kind of thing,
Speaker 3: Like it just feels good. People are always really kind
Speaker 3: and alert us to things that we should be paying
Speaker 3: attention to because sometimes things slip through, and I just
Speaker 3: want to say thanks for everyone looking out for us.
Speaker 2: Man, when did that occur to you? How long have
Speaker 2: you been hanging on to that one? Not?
Speaker 3: I mean it was over the break when I think
Speaker 3: we got a couple of things about either an ad
Speaker 3: or something, and I was like, you know what, we
Speaker 3: should thank people for getting our back and letting us
Speaker 3: alerting us to stuff.
Speaker 2: So that's what triggered at some emails. You didn't just
Speaker 2: like sit bowl up right in the middle of the
Speaker 2: nine I think, oh god, no, well that was nice.
Speaker 2: If you check. Yeah, we'll start adopting that at the
Speaker 2: end of the year the holidays or something like that.
Speaker 2: How about that.
Speaker 1: Nope, that's the only time we'll ever do it.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, cool, I'm fine with that too. So we're
Speaker 2: talking today about something I've been avoiding for a while.
Speaker 2: I started to look into this and start researching it,
Speaker 2: and I was going to suggest it a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, and I was like, this is one of
Speaker 2: the bleakest things that's ever happened outside of war in history.
Speaker 2: It's up there for sure, and it really sucks you
Speaker 2: in in the grimmest possible way when you have to
Speaker 2: like really dive into research because we're talking about Jonestown,
Speaker 2: and for anybody who's even everyone is at least passingly
Speaker 2: familiar with the word Jonestown, the name Jonestown. Yeah, or
Speaker 2: you might have heard, you know, the phrase drinking the
Speaker 2: kool aid, like you've really bought into something. You might
Speaker 2: even be brainwashed that came out of Jonestown, true or not.
Speaker 2: And when you talk about it though, it's not something
Speaker 2: you can talk about flip Ley, it's not something you
Speaker 2: can just kind of breeze through, Like you really have
Speaker 2: to get in there and understand what the heck was
Speaker 2: going on because it's such a bizarre, horrible event. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that it just really kind of sucks you in, and
Speaker 2: when you get in there, it really it's grim. It's
Speaker 2: a grim. It was a grim research event for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean it's so grim that a band named themselves
Speaker 3: after it with a pithy pun attached.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the great band names of all time,
Speaker 2: Brian jonesown Massacre Out.
Speaker 1: Did you think that is?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, I think it's a great I.
Speaker 1: Have a hard time with pun band names, especially the
Speaker 1: sort of beginning middle end ones.
Speaker 2: Like Kathleen Turner Overdrive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'm with you. I'm with you on the Kathleen Turner Overdrive.
Speaker 2: It's clever, but it's one of those ones you hear
Speaker 2: once and you're like, that's funny. I think the difference
Speaker 2: between those two bands, though, is the Brian jonesown Massacre
Speaker 2: act actually like hardcore musicians. Yeah, that have like a
Speaker 2: bleak enough outlook that they could take that that name
Speaker 2: and it's not just a like an elbow U in
Speaker 2: the ribs kind of joke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and Brian Jones like another classic musician, whereas Kathleen Turner.
Speaker 3: I love Kathleen Turner, but I don't know, it just
Speaker 3: seemed a little extra pick.
Speaker 2: You can't even play the spoons.
Speaker 1: Oh you kidding, She's a great spooner.
Speaker 2: Not only did Brian Jones saw Massacre name themselves that,
Speaker 2: they also have a song called the Ballad of Jim Jones.
Speaker 2: If you heard that, Oh no, it's it's they got harmonica.
Speaker 2: It's real kind of Bob dillany interesting. Uh, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: really something. It's something to go check out. I don't
Speaker 2: know if everybody's gonna like them, yeah, but some people
Speaker 2: probably won't.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we should also point out this is a
Speaker 3: you know, this is the stuff you should know, forty
Speaker 3: five ish minute overview, like this could be way way
Speaker 3: longer and multi episodes long if we really got into
Speaker 3: all the sort of ups and downs of Jim Jones
Speaker 3: through his odd life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good idea. I wonder if anyone's ever
Speaker 2: done a multi part of podcast time.
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought you were a big serious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally, I mean yeah, but I'm glad you
Speaker 2: said that because it is true, Like, there's a lot
Speaker 2: a lot about this and we'll try to get everything
Speaker 2: we talk about right though.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, And thanks to the grabster for the
Speaker 1: help on this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, way to go, Grabster. And we should
Speaker 2: probably say just a I don't even know if we
Speaker 2: need to give an overview of what happened, We could
Speaker 2: probably just jump in and start and talk about Jim Jones,
Speaker 2: the guy at the center of this whole thing.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, I think people get mad when we do that,
Speaker 3: assuming that people know. Okay, so maybe just the quickest
Speaker 3: of spoilers is that on November eighteenth, nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: more than nine hundred people died in Guyana at the
Speaker 3: hands of a sadistic cult leader named Jim Jones.
Speaker 1: And now we can start right.
Speaker 2: Well, the big twist to all that is he didn't
Speaker 2: personally kill them physically, he used his power to get
Speaker 2: them to kill themselves. It's as weird and twisted as that.
Speaker 2: So Jim Jones is the kind of person, or he
Speaker 2: was the kind of person who could actually make something
Speaker 2: like that happen. He was a very very rare individual.
Speaker 2: I've seen him diagnosed retroactively as psychopathic, and then I
Speaker 2: think his personality disorders got a little more nuanced. I've
Speaker 2: seen much more recently that he was a malignant narcissist.
Speaker 2: There was something wrong with that guy. Something was wrong
Speaker 2: with Jim Jones from start to finish, but it seems
Speaker 2: to have gotten way way worse over time. But one
Speaker 2: thing that he showed a real penchant for early on
Speaker 2: in life was preaching, not religion. He was not, it
Speaker 2: turns out, a religious person. He doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: believed in much of any of the stuff he was preaching,
Speaker 2: but preaching was his way of like funneling attention, adoration,
Speaker 2: money important to himself. He figured out very early.
Speaker 3: On Yeah, he was on record that he was not
Speaker 3: so into religion, even though he was tied to various
Speaker 3: churches over the years, including the one he started, the
Speaker 3: People's Temple, which we'll talk about in greater detail later.
Speaker 3: But one thing he was which is I didn't know
Speaker 3: a ton about the guy, sort of pre jonestown, and
Speaker 3: I was surprised to learn that he was a sort
Speaker 3: of a socialist slash communist, anti segregationist who actually did
Speaker 3: a lot of you know, I hate to characterize it
Speaker 3: as good work, but it was good work because it's
Speaker 3: you know, it's hard. He was such an awful human,
Speaker 3: but he led a lot of deep segregated his causes
Speaker 3: in Indiana very successfully for a number of years.
Speaker 2: I saw someone on Reddit say that had he died
Speaker 2: on the way to California, we would remember him today
Speaker 2: as one of the early civil rights leaders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's true.
Speaker 2: It is true, And I get what you're saying, your
Speaker 2: reticence to like praise him in any way, shape or form,
Speaker 2: But yeah, he definitely did walk the walk, like he
Speaker 2: fought for integration at a time when white people were
Speaker 2: not doing that. Jim Jones was white, we should say,
Speaker 2: but he mostly learned that he was best preaching generally
Speaker 2: toward black congregants mm hmm. And that that kind of
Speaker 2: just drove his desire to to integrate even further, so
Speaker 2: much so that as he got a little more power,
Speaker 2: one of the first things he did was become the
Speaker 2: kind of the civil rights zar for Indianapolis. And he
Speaker 2: actually it wasn't like just a label that he went
Speaker 2: around and introduced himself as he went to work and
Speaker 2: started integrating places in like penalizing places that hadn't integrated
Speaker 2: yet in Indianapolis.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Initially he was. He was involved with the
Speaker 3: Methodist Church. He was involved with them, even though they
Speaker 3: were not necessarily anti segregationists did not necessarily want their
Speaker 3: congregations to be of mixed race, but they were apparently
Speaker 3: supportive of his sort of socialist communist leanings. And this
Speaker 3: was in the very early nineteen fifties. And we should
Speaker 3: point out he was married by this point. He got
Speaker 3: married in nineteen forty nine to a woman named Marceline Baldwin,
Speaker 3: who was a hospital orderly and love bomber apparently, and
Speaker 3: a couple of years later they moved to Indianapolis, where
Speaker 3: that's when he got involved with a Methodist and you know,
Speaker 3: started sort of spreading his anti segregationist word.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So after I don't know what happened with the Methodist,
Speaker 2: but eventually they got sick of him and pushed him
Speaker 2: out of the church, and he moved over to evangelicalism. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what he called apostolic socialism. Because one of the things
Speaker 2: about him, not only did he figure out that preaching
Speaker 2: was a way to like attract people, he figured out
Speaker 2: that that religion was a way, it was like a
Speaker 2: trojan horse to get people to start thinking about socialism, right,
Speaker 2: because there's so many like parallels between you know, ideal
Speaker 2: socialism and Christian teaching. Ideal Christian teaching, I should say that,
Speaker 2: like it's it's pretty easy to get people who are
Speaker 2: already predisposed toward following Jesus and his Christian teachings to
Speaker 2: start thinking about taking care of your you know, fellow
Speaker 2: downtrodden humans too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3: And he would eventually get involved in like you were
Speaker 3: talking about, the evangelicism.
Speaker 2: Is that the word evangelicism, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And he would fall into fall into the camp of
Speaker 3: the Pentecostals, and even more so that was a group
Speaker 3: of I just call it, I guess Pentecostal Plus, which
Speaker 3: was the Latter Rain movement, and that was like they off,
Speaker 3: they spun it off from the Pentecostal Church because they
Speaker 3: were even more sort of out there than the Pentecostals
Speaker 3: were as far as like, hey, we get prophecies directly
Speaker 3: from God. Some of us have supernatural powers. They would
Speaker 3: use sort of sometimes good old fashioned traveling show vaudeville
Speaker 3: medicine man style stage magic to you know, look like
Speaker 3: they knew what they were talking about, and it was
Speaker 3: pretty out there. But he found that that was a
Speaker 3: pretty good audience for himself. And what he called I
Speaker 3: mean he basically said, you know, through the manifested Sons
Speaker 3: of God, which is a doctrine in the Latterine movement, like, hey,
Speaker 3: God picks out certain special people that he gives like
Speaker 3: basically the powers of Jesus Christ, and I'm one of them.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, this group of elites will prepare the world
Speaker 2: at end times for Jesus's return and they are essentially
Speaker 2: Jesus just divided up into different human forms. And Jim
Speaker 2: Jones is like, I'm one of those guys too, check
Speaker 2: me out. So that was like a weird, a weird
Speaker 2: way to go, but it was also sensible if you
Speaker 2: look at him from the lens of strictly a huckster
Speaker 2: who was taking advantage of people. Of course he's going
Speaker 2: to go into like I'm Jesus by the way, It's
Speaker 2: just it's just such a lazy way to take advantage
Speaker 2: of people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, like he was able to do that
Speaker 3: because like most cult leaders, he was very charismatic. He
Speaker 3: was also a strange person. Ed dug up this one
Speaker 3: story that I had never heard that at one point
Speaker 3: in his life he was like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna take place in a conversation with anyone unless
Speaker 3: I initiated. So literally, people would come up and address
Speaker 3: him and talk to him and he just wouldn't answer back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if they were really persistent, to be like, I
Speaker 2: can't hear you.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: It's a very strange thing, but just sort of an
Speaker 3: example of what an odd duck he was. A lot
Speaker 3: of people did find him sort of creepy and off putting,
Speaker 3: but he did have that charisma. You don't get cult
Speaker 3: followers unless you're a charismatic dude, and he was that.
Speaker 3: He you know, he had that jet black hair and sideburns.
Speaker 3: He had a sort of elvas sea look. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 3: put yep, which, by the way, is still a thing.
Speaker 3: I went to Memphis, which is, you know, where my
Speaker 3: mom grew up and where I used to go as
Speaker 3: a child with my mom and Emily and Ruby, and
Speaker 3: there are still those dudes walking around Memphis that are
Speaker 3: like in their seventies now and have these big sideburns
Speaker 3: and pompadors, like these sort of Memphis Mafia looking guys. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's really interesting. I was like, oh, wow, of course
Speaker 3: Memphis still has those guys, for sure.
Speaker 2: Where else are they going to go? What else are
Speaker 2: they going to do? Nothing? That's what they do. That's
Speaker 2: what you can do in Memphis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, anyway, he was one of those guys you know,
Speaker 1: later in life he was very well known for wearing
Speaker 1: those steel rim sort of squarish I guess there were
Speaker 1: sunglasses or were they also reading glasses.
Speaker 2: I think they were like early transitions lenses. It looks
Speaker 2: like almost they were just constantly in the in between state.
Speaker 3: Well, listen, we could debate Jim Jones's eye diagnosis all
Speaker 3: day long.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing they were reading glasses. Because I've read an
Speaker 2: account of him looking over them at in the room,
Speaker 2: so it probably was reading glasses.
Speaker 1: Which is also an intimidating move, I think for sure.
Speaker 2: I get also the impression that he was wearing those
Speaker 2: kind of in between sunglasses, because at some point in
Speaker 2: the sixties he started taking drugs. Maybe even earlier than that,
Speaker 2: but definitely by the sixties he was taking speed and
Speaker 2: then later on like sedatives and co eludes and stuff,
Speaker 2: and as the seventies started to wear on, he was
Speaker 2: really getting into those. So he probably needed those glasses
Speaker 2: on some days so that you couldn't see what his
Speaker 2: eyes looked like in the middle of the afternoon.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of elvis in this story.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: Should we take a break?
Speaker 2: For sure?
Speaker 1: All right, We'll be right back, everybody, all right.
Speaker 3: So Jim Jones has been sort of involved in several
Speaker 3: different denominations and churches, worn out as welcome in most
Speaker 3: of them, and eventually is like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 3: going to start my own church, which is step one
Speaker 3: if you're gonna form a cult. Actually that's not true.
Speaker 3: There are plenty of cults without churches, but that was
Speaker 3: his route and so he started the People's Temple in
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty five and was really successful with it. He had,
Speaker 3: you know, no trouble recruiting members, and by the early
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties he was so popular and he had such
Speaker 3: a following that he was able to continue his work
Speaker 3: desegregating businesses and you know other you know, this wasn't
Speaker 3: like a national movement. He kind of was one of
Speaker 3: those think local guys. M And like you mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty, the mayor of Indianapolis said, all right,
Speaker 3: you're the director of our Human Rights Commission, right, And like.
Speaker 2: I said, he took that and ran with it and
Speaker 2: started to really kind of rack up more and more interest.
Speaker 2: And I'm not exactly clear on some of the document.
Speaker 2: And you see about like his rise to power and influence.
Speaker 2: The early stuff takes places in like a traditional church.
Speaker 2: It looks like a church. You can tell it's a church.
Speaker 2: It's just you know, what do they call it. I
Speaker 2: guess charismatic churches where people are like dancing and everything
Speaker 2: and clapping and he's healing people. I'm not sure at
Speaker 2: what point it started. It could have been Indianapolis, it
Speaker 2: probably was, but he started to just say more and
Speaker 2: more like bizarre stuff over time. And one of the
Speaker 2: first bizarre things that he said that had a really
Speaker 2: big impact on the history of the People's Temple was
Speaker 2: that there was going to be a thermonuclear war on
Speaker 2: July fifteenth, nineteen sixty seven. The bombs were going to drop,
Speaker 2: I think, is how he put it. And he apparently
Speaker 2: got the six and the seven transposed, because what he
Speaker 2: meant was July fifteenth, nineteen seventy six, the bomb was
Speaker 2: going to drop. But he convinced his congregation, or a
Speaker 2: lot of his congregation I think at least a hundred
Speaker 2: families from Indianapolis to move to rural north northern California
Speaker 2: to basically set up a safe haven, a little kind
Speaker 2: of commune for the People's Temple. It was a It
Speaker 2: was his first really truly big show of power over
Speaker 2: other people's lives because just take just think about it
Speaker 2: for a second. You go to church, right and you
Speaker 2: go and you like listen to the sermon and everything,
Speaker 2: and you have probably like some friends at church or whatever,
Speaker 2: and then you come home and church is done for
Speaker 2: the week. For a lot of people, maybe you go
Speaker 2: one other day. That's about it. Imagine being so into
Speaker 2: church that you move your family across the country because
Speaker 2: your preacher is telling you there's going to be a
Speaker 2: thermonuclear war and we all need to go to northern California.
Speaker 2: That takes a real level of like intuitness that from congregants,
Speaker 2: And it was a real show of like faith in
Speaker 2: a test of faith for people, and he was very
Speaker 2: successful with it. And I think that did nothing but
Speaker 2: just embolden him further.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And by this time we should point out too
Speaker 3: that he had started quite a large family with Marceline
Speaker 3: at her suggestion, and apparently he was super into it
Speaker 3: as well. She wanted to have a rainbow family, so
Speaker 3: they adopted quite a few kids of all different you know,
Speaker 3: nationalities and ethnicities. They had one Native American child, they
Speaker 3: adopted several Korean kids, a black child. I believe one
Speaker 3: of his adopted daughters was killed by a drunk driver
Speaker 3: in fifty nine, and then they adopted her younger sister,
Speaker 3: which you know, is pretty amazing. And then they also
Speaker 3: had their sole biological child in nineteen fifty nine, Stephan
Speaker 3: Gandhi Jones, who you would if you look him up,
Speaker 3: you will see lots of he's very active in his
Speaker 3: you know, I was about to say his father's legacy today,
Speaker 3: but you know, not obviously supporting his dad's legacy. But
Speaker 3: like he you know, during the twenty eighteen commemoration of
Speaker 3: the Jonestown massacre, I guess, is it a massacre or
Speaker 3: just massive deaths?
Speaker 1: What would you even call that?
Speaker 2: It just depends on your perspective, But yeah, I think
Speaker 2: you could get away calling it a massacre for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he led that ceremony and also acknowledged that,
Speaker 3: you know, hey, listen, it's a can of worms that
Speaker 3: I'm doing this to begin with, and people have things
Speaker 3: to say about me or don't agree with certain things
Speaker 3: I say, then like let's please have that conversation.
Speaker 1: But he's he's pretty vocal and public to this day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he wasn't just a kid at the time, like
Speaker 2: toward the end of the People's Temple, he was the
Speaker 2: head of the security force. Yeah, at the time when
Speaker 2: they were in Guyana, which we'll talk about soon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in a really strange way, very brave for like
Speaker 2: showing his face in public as you know who he is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, another interesting thing happened that's pretty key to the
Speaker 3: story before he said, hey, everybody, let's move to California.
Speaker 3: He moved his just his family to Rio dationan Aire,
Speaker 3: Brazil because of this supposed impending nuclear disaster. And on
Speaker 3: the way there, he stopped in a country in South
Speaker 3: America called Guyana and just got a little taste of
Speaker 3: what life was like there, and that definitely planted a seed.
Speaker 3: So he's, I believe, in nineteen sixty four he's planning
Speaker 3: this move a couple of hours north of San Francisco
Speaker 3: to Yukia, California, and at that point he has already
Speaker 3: at least visited and preached in Guyana.
Speaker 2: Right, that's a great setup. So when he gets to Brazil,
Speaker 2: he's basically like left and taken his family, like you said,
Speaker 2: to get away from thermon nuclear war. But he's been like,
Speaker 2: but you guys, you know, you stay back here and
Speaker 2: keep the keep the temple going. Yeah, And apparently there
Speaker 2: was no one there with his strength or charisma, because
Speaker 2: the temple fell apart almost immediately, or it started to
Speaker 2: it threatened to. So just after even a couple of months,
Speaker 2: he had to go back and like get everything back
Speaker 2: in line and back in order, and ended up staying there,
Speaker 2: staying in California again for a while, I don't, I
Speaker 2: guess for several more years, I think. Do you remember
Speaker 2: when it was he moved to Brazil at first.
Speaker 1: He moved to Brazil in nineteen sixty three.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, so yeah, he came back. He came back
Speaker 2: to Indianapolis, I guess is what it was. This would
Speaker 2: have been pre California.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in California he found, you know, obviously northern California.
Speaker 3: He would find in the nineteen sixties quite a few
Speaker 3: people in that area that were into his message of socialism,
Speaker 3: pretty ripe for recruiting. And he would eventually move into
Speaker 3: San Francisco itself and did pretty well there, like so
Speaker 3: well that he had a lot of followers who had
Speaker 3: a lot of and had a lot of way or them.
Speaker 3: So local politicians started saying, hey, we need to get
Speaker 3: in line with this guy because he has a lot
Speaker 3: of influence at the voting booth. Like Harvey Milk and
Speaker 3: Mayor George Moscone were you know, like actively courting him.
Speaker 3: I think they named him, or at least the mayor
Speaker 3: named him chairman of the San Francisco's Housing Authority Commission.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he he basically took credit for Moscone's win
Speaker 2: as mayor. He barely eked out a victory, and Jim
Speaker 2: Jones had delivered several hundred, if not a couple thousand
Speaker 2: votes toward toward Moscone, and he said, you owe me.
Speaker 2: And he became the public housing director or a member
Speaker 2: of the board, and apparently just to kind of show
Speaker 2: his his influence in his cloud and how great he
Speaker 2: was at those housing meetings, his followers would come, members
Speaker 2: of the People's Temple would come and cheer him on
Speaker 2: and clap an applaud sometimes give him a standing over
Speaker 2: a when he would give a little speech about public
Speaker 2: housing or something like that. Was really weird. But by
Speaker 2: this time in San Francisco, late sixties, early seventies, like
Speaker 2: people like that were a diamond dozen.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was politically connected to people who are like this guy,
Speaker 2: like you said, he can deliver the goods. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: so much so that whenever there was like unfavorable press
Speaker 2: about him, and we'll talk about some of the stuff
Speaker 2: they were writing about him in a second, he could
Speaker 2: actually get it stifled. He had the connections to be like,
Speaker 2: this article's going to come out on me, can you
Speaker 2: make sure it doesn't come out, so he could stifle
Speaker 2: like dissent and oppress any outsiders who were criticizing him.
Speaker 2: So he was very powerful in San Francisco, and that
Speaker 2: was actually the reason he moved everybody to San Francisco.
Speaker 2: They went Indianapolis, to Yukaya, California, and northern California. He
Speaker 2: figured out that was like Hicksville, USA, and he couldn't
Speaker 2: actually develop any real power down there, so he moved
Speaker 2: the whole thing to San Francisco, set up the People's
Speaker 2: Temple in San Francisco, and essentially had what was a
Speaker 2: Pentecostal black congregation that so emphasized civil rights that they
Speaker 2: were just also bringing in tons of liberal, younger, middle
Speaker 2: class white people too who wanted to support that cause,
Speaker 2: who might have never been in a Pentecostal service in
Speaker 2: their life, and now all of a sudden, they're like
Speaker 2: singing and clapping and dancing. So he had all these
Speaker 2: different streams of people that he was just bringing in,
Speaker 2: bringing in, and eventually trapping in his church, the People's Temple.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's like, I love the grateful dead, but I've
Speaker 3: never handled a rattlesnake. This is amazing exactly so things
Speaker 3: are also you know, as this is going along, things
Speaker 3: are just becoming more and more culty. It was sort
Speaker 3: of a slow burn toward you know, fully fledged cult.
Speaker 1: But by this time he was, you know, right out
Speaker 1: of the playbook.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 3: And we have a you know a lot of cult
Speaker 3: content in our history, one on cults, one on deprogramming.
Speaker 1: I think we cover some other cults as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, specifically have surely, but I into mind.
Speaker 3: I mean Manson of course. Oh, but he is right
Speaker 3: out of the cult leader playbook. He's starting to isolate
Speaker 3: members from friends and family. He's starting to say, you know,
Speaker 3: when you join my church, you got to turn over
Speaker 3: all your possessions to us. They ended up having a
Speaker 3: lot of money. I saw one point towards the end
Speaker 3: they had like eleven million bucks in a bank account.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's like nineteen seventy eight money.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And he started, you know, doing that thing where you're saying,
Speaker 3: you know, outside people are going to want to pull
Speaker 3: you out of here, they're going to want you to defect.
Speaker 3: Your family might even he would spread lies about them.
Speaker 3: He would say he's getting prophecies that if you disobeyed
Speaker 3: and tried to defect, then you would suffer some kind
Speaker 3: of tragedy. So things are getting more and more and
Speaker 3: that's when, like you said, he started getting some press coverage,
Speaker 3: which I mean, what's really like one of the most
Speaker 3: astounding things about all this is so many cults you
Speaker 3: hear about after the fact, but this was actively going
Speaker 3: on and being reported on by the press like while
Speaker 3: it was happening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because he was getting like wild and bizarre and
Speaker 2: abusive enough toward his congregation that there were defectors. There
Speaker 2: were people who are like the what is this, I'm
Speaker 2: getting out of here, and they would go start to
Speaker 2: talk publicly about this. But yeah, he had enough clout
Speaker 2: to like get any real, real unfavorable coverage or any
Speaker 2: widespread unfavorable coverage stamped out. But one of the things
Speaker 2: you mentioned that I think he really started to ratchet
Speaker 2: up around this time was isolating his congregation by creating
Speaker 2: US versus them mentality, Yeah, and creating a siege mentality
Speaker 2: among the people who remember of the People's Temple, especially
Speaker 2: the hardest core members, that the US government wanted them
Speaker 2: shut down. People were spreading lies about them, Like if
Speaker 2: an article did get out, he could point to how
Speaker 2: this is like lies and propaganda against the People's Temple
Speaker 2: and use it as evidence about how there really was
Speaker 2: was a siege and at some point the People's Temple
Speaker 2: in San Francisco actually burned down. I saw that they
Speaker 2: think it was white supremacists. Jim Jones blamed it on
Speaker 2: the Nation of Islam. Somebody burned the temple down, and
Speaker 2: all that did was fee that paranoid sensibility that just
Speaker 2: isolated the members of the People's Temple even further and
Speaker 2: pushed them even closer toward Jim Jones, who just used
Speaker 2: stuff like that to his advantage at every turn.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was also like things got a little more
Speaker 3: violent and militaristic.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: He got his inner most circle together and named them
Speaker 3: the Planning Commission. They were his sort of in turn
Speaker 3: old security team and things. You know, he would start saying, Okay,
Speaker 3: you congregants have to have sex with each other. You
Speaker 3: congregants are getting married to one another. There were starvation
Speaker 3: diets that was forced to labor.
Speaker 1: Sometimes.
Speaker 3: You know, if a congregation member stepped out of line,
Speaker 3: they might be stripped and marched around in front of
Speaker 3: the other temple members. So things are full on swinging
Speaker 3: cults at this point when he is being written about
Speaker 3: in the press and like you said, getting most of
Speaker 3: it stamped out. But something happened in nineteen seventy three
Speaker 3: that like where the walls really started to close in
Speaker 3: on them, and that was a I mean, I guess
Speaker 3: sort of a sting operation. He was bisexual, that was
Speaker 3: not out, and in fact, later on in like sort
Speaker 3: of the the not the last days, but sort of
Speaker 3: while he was in Guyana and living there, which we'll
Speaker 3: get to, he told all the congregation, you're all homosexual,
Speaker 3: and I'm the only heterosexual here.
Speaker 1: So he made a big deal about that.
Speaker 3: But he was definitely bisexual because he would abuse both
Speaker 3: men and women within the temple, some accusations that they
Speaker 3: were under age, of course. And in late nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 3: in December, he was at a movie theater in Los
Speaker 3: Angeles and an undercover cop I read the police report,
Speaker 3: apparently Jones signaled to him like, hey, meet me up
Speaker 3: in the balcony, and the cop instead went to the
Speaker 3: bathroom and motioned for him to come in there. And
Speaker 3: when he got to the bathroom, Jim Jones pulled his
Speaker 3: pants down and started to masturbate in front of him.
Speaker 3: The cop left and had his partner come in there
Speaker 3: and arrest him, and he got out of it.
Speaker 2: He apparently I didn't see this anywhere, but Ed said
Speaker 2: that he found that his defense was that he was
Speaker 2: jumping up and down massaging his prostate, which was hurting
Speaker 2: him at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he had a doctor's letter, dude.
Speaker 2: I also saw that he just he uses political connections
Speaker 2: to get him out of it.
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard to tell what happened because the judge
Speaker 3: and I don't know, this seems weird. Maybe that kind
Speaker 3: of thing happened a lot though. The judge ordered the
Speaker 3: arrest records destroyed and then the file was sealed, So
Speaker 3: I don't think a lot of people really know exactly
Speaker 3: why he was released. But he had a doctor's note,
Speaker 3: and the doctor went to bat for him and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is what it might look like when
Speaker 3: he's trying to work up a urination in the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Right, just really just stay with me here, it said
Speaker 2: in the note.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So that was a big turning point, Like you said,
Speaker 2: that was December of nineteen seventy three, and Jim Jones
Speaker 2: started to get the message that the direction he was
Speaker 2: taking his congregation in was too bizarre for San Francisco,
Speaker 2: maybe even too bizarre for the United States. And he
Speaker 2: remembered Guyana at the time and sent some people down
Speaker 2: there to start scouting out and setting up a compound,
Speaker 2: a place, I guess, an additional place for the People's
Speaker 2: Temple outside of the oversight of the United States government
Speaker 2: and the United States press and all that. And while
Speaker 2: they were off doing that, there was something he did
Speaker 2: back in San Francisco that was enormously important, and I say,
Speaker 2: maybe we take a break and we'll come back and
Speaker 2: talk about.
Speaker 3: It our first cliffhanger of the year. That's right, we'll
Speaker 3: be right back.
Speaker 2: So nineteen seventy four he's sent some people down to Guyana, Guyana,
Speaker 2: to start setting up a new compound for the People's
Speaker 2: Temple down there.
Speaker 1: Socialist country, by the way, at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which makes sense because by this time Jim Jones
Speaker 2: has been identifying himself to his congregation as their socialist God.
Speaker 2: Over time, he slowly stripped away the concept that Jesus
Speaker 2: is God or that he was Jesus, and replaced himself
Speaker 2: to his followers as God. Like they started towards the end,
Speaker 2: following him as God, they called him Father, They called
Speaker 2: him Dad. He was very much like their religious figure
Speaker 2: on earth, way more than just their reverend or their
Speaker 2: pastor or even the head of their cult. Like he
Speaker 2: was a supernatural religious figure in the most ardent of believer's.
Speaker 1: Eyes, Elvis exactly.
Speaker 2: So he tries something with him that proved to be
Speaker 2: the first of a couple of attempts, or a couple
Speaker 2: of practice runs for what happened in Guyana in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: At the People's Temple, he handed out cups and he said, Hey,
Speaker 2: I know we all steer clear of alcohol me, but
Speaker 2: one of our vineyards has produced a really great wine
Speaker 2: and I want everybody to try it. So he passed
Speaker 2: out cups, made sure everybody tried the wine. He circulated
Speaker 2: among everyone as they were drinking it, and then after
Speaker 2: everyone had finished, he went back to the polepit and
Speaker 2: he said that was poisoned. You're all going to die
Speaker 2: in about the next ten minutes or something. We're all
Speaker 2: going to die together. And he gauged their reaction, and
Speaker 2: apparently the reaction was a combination between stunned silence and
Speaker 2: acquiescence like okay that there wasn't people screaming, people weren't
Speaker 2: running for the doors, nobody tried to beat him up
Speaker 2: or kill him. That was just he saw they would
Speaker 2: actually do this, like I think if I actually asked
Speaker 2: them to do it and didn't just trick them into it.
Speaker 2: And he said, I'm this is all just a test
Speaker 2: of your loyalty. You all passed way to go. But
Speaker 2: that was not the only time that he did that
Speaker 2: to those poor people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he started, Well, let's back up a set, because
Speaker 3: in seventy four is when about fifty temple members went
Speaker 3: to Guyana to start setting it up. And they did
Speaker 3: that for about three years, and a magazine article came
Speaker 3: out in New West magazine in nineteen seventy seven that
Speaker 3: really exposed him for what he was and he was like, okay,
Speaker 3: like the jig is up, I have to get out
Speaker 3: of here now. So he moved with his family to
Speaker 3: Guyana and apparently the facilities could only support about two
Speaker 3: hundred people. In May of seventy seven, six hundred more came,
Speaker 3: and then the ensuing months, another four hundred people came.
Speaker 1: A lot of these were kids.
Speaker 3: A lot of these people were elderly, or infirmed, and
Speaker 3: so there weren't enough people there to work and sustain it. Really,
Speaker 3: they worked twelve hours a day. The people that could work,
Speaker 3: it was brutal. When they weren't working, they were listening
Speaker 3: to his sermons and his lectures, they were watching Russian
Speaker 3: communist propaganda films, and abuse allegations started to come out,
Speaker 3: and he got super paranoid, and that's when he started
Speaker 3: leading more and more of those dry runs. He called
Speaker 3: them white Knights, where he would have these trial runs
Speaker 3: for mass suicide. Sometimes they would meet in the pavilion
Speaker 3: and his security team would like fire guns from the
Speaker 3: jungle over their heads. One of them lasted for six days.
Speaker 3: It was called the six day Siege. And they were
Speaker 3: just all these dry runs for killing themselves. And I
Speaker 3: think they just routinely got used to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but every time it was just a test of
Speaker 2: their loyalty. It was a drill to practice for when
Speaker 2: the United States military inevitably invaded, because that siege mentality
Speaker 2: had gotten even more paranoid. Apparently he was just off
Speaker 2: his rocker on speed. Would give hours and hours and
Speaker 2: hours long marathon sermons into the night. And you mentioned
Speaker 2: that the bulk of the building of Jonestown fell on
Speaker 2: the shoulders of like a not like a minority, but
Speaker 2: far fewer people than there were to support. So those
Speaker 2: people were working day and night and eating black black
Speaker 2: eyed peas and rice and bananas, and it is nice,
Speaker 2: but if that's all you're eating, and you're working hard
Speaker 2: labor hours and hours a day, and then when you
Speaker 2: get off of hard labor, you go sit and listen
Speaker 2: to an hour's long sermon till two am or three am.
Speaker 2: Then you have to get up at five or six
Speaker 2: the next morning and start all over again. Even the
Speaker 2: people who who were at Jonestown, who weren't like I
Speaker 2: would kill myself for Jim Jones believers were too tired
Speaker 2: and sleep deprived to give any kind of problems to
Speaker 2: Jim Jones in the direction he was taking everybody. So
Speaker 2: that was actually like part of the plan apparently, or
Speaker 2: at the very least it was a happy byproduct for
Speaker 2: Jim Jones that the people were either totally committed to
Speaker 2: him or they were so overworked and underslept that they
Speaker 2: just couldn't put up any kind of protest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So things are happening in Guyana at Jonestown. Finally,
Speaker 3: a you know press is still writing about this stuff
Speaker 3: back in the States, and in late nineteen seventy eight,
Speaker 3: a California Congressman named Leo Ryan, who had been following
Speaker 3: this story, and this is one of the more remarkable
Speaker 3: parts of this whole story. A congressman flew to Guyana
Speaker 3: with a small group like some NBC camera people and
Speaker 3: reporters and journalists and stuff on a fact finding mission.
Speaker 3: They actually went to the camp at Jonestown and met
Speaker 3: in the pavilion. While they were there, a temple member
Speaker 3: named Vernon Gosni passed a note to a reporter that
Speaker 3: was meant for Leo Ryan that said, please help me
Speaker 3: and my wife leave. They got out of there and
Speaker 3: took fifteen temple members that were defecting with them, and
Speaker 3: Jim Jones was like, they can go. It's fine. People
Speaker 3: are free to go if they want to. There was
Speaker 3: some brief incident with Ryan where he was held at
Speaker 3: nine point or there was an attempted stabbing. Things got
Speaker 3: pretty chaotic and they got the heck out of there
Speaker 3: and went to this airstrip. While they were waiting on
Speaker 3: their couple of planes to get ready, and the Red Brigade,
Speaker 3: which was the new name of his security team by
Speaker 3: this point, who were really really militaristic this point, showed
Speaker 3: up at the airfield and just opened fire on him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and just to kind of rewind for one second,
Speaker 2: when Leo Ryan showed up, he was showing up to
Speaker 2: investigate this cult that he'd heard nothing about, bad things about.
Speaker 2: But his reception and like the banquet that was thrown
Speaker 2: for him and the music that was played in the
Speaker 2: services that he witnessed were so enthusiastic and upbeat that
Speaker 2: he actually gave a speech to them saying like, it's
Speaker 2: very clear that for most of you, this is the
Speaker 2: greatest thing that's ever happened to you. And the place
Speaker 2: just erupts and like cheers. They've like won this guy over,
Speaker 2: like maybe they'll be left alone from now on, And
Speaker 2: it was like a jubilant You can tell Congressman Ryan
Speaker 2: is like into it too, He's like, this is great.
Speaker 2: And it goes from that to all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the truth of the matter is just kind of exposed,
Speaker 2: like a little rotten core of an apple that you
Speaker 2: thought was just totally bright and shiny, and it must
Speaker 2: have been stomach turning to have your perceptions just turned
Speaker 2: on end like that. When that note was handed to
Speaker 2: that cameraman Leo O. Ryan was like, oh, these people
Speaker 2: are totally brainwashed, and I was almost duped, and then
Speaker 2: it became tense. Then he was held at nine point
Speaker 2: and then he ended up dying on the airstrip.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Actually we did one on brainwashing too.
Speaker 2: We totally did. We also did one on roundabouts people
Speaker 2: who like roundabouts.
Speaker 3: So remarkably part of this exists on film. The NBC
Speaker 3: camera person Bob Brown was filming some b roll there
Speaker 3: when this shootout breaks out, and it wasn't much because
Speaker 3: he actually was shot and killed and his camera was
Speaker 3: shot up as well, so he only had a few
Speaker 3: seconds of this attack. But Ryan was killed, that cameraman
Speaker 3: Bob Brown was killed, NBC reporter Don Harris was killed.
Speaker 3: There was a photographer from the Examiner in San Francisco
Speaker 3: named Greg Robinson that was killed, and one of the defectors,
Speaker 3: Patricia Parks, was killed. And in the second airplane, this
Speaker 3: was a little cessna, so there weren't even that many
Speaker 3: people on it. There was a defector there that was,
Speaker 3: you know, pretending to defect, pulls out a gun inside
Speaker 3: that tiny plane and opens fire somehow doesn't kill anyone,
Speaker 3: he wounds three of them, and the people that survive
Speaker 3: like just you know, booked it into the jungle, and
Speaker 3: it is I mean, this is the beginning of a
Speaker 3: very quick end.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Two of the people who were attacked on the
Speaker 2: airstrip survived by pretending they were dead. Jackie Spear, who
Speaker 2: was Leo Ryan's assistant, and Steve Sung, who was a
Speaker 2: sound guy. I think for NBC, they pretended they were dead,
Speaker 2: and I think Jackie Spear said she was shot point blank,
Speaker 2: like they came up to make sure she was dead
Speaker 2: and didn't manage to kill her. I read, Chuck, this
Speaker 2: is really important. I read that they laid there that
Speaker 2: Jackie Spear reported laying there for twenty two hours before
Speaker 2: help came. Okay, so she's laying there pretending she's dead
Speaker 2: on the tarmac for twenty two hours and just put
Speaker 2: that in your bonnet and save it for like, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 2: twenty two hours after the attack, helped finally came for
Speaker 2: Jackie Spears.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Back at the temple, Jim Jones, he knows this is it.
Speaker 3: Like the walls have fully closed in, they've committed multiple
Speaker 3: murders here, and he knows there's no way out, so
Speaker 3: he's like, the military is going to be coming for us,
Speaker 3: the US military. Revolutionary suicide is the only way out.
Speaker 3: And there is a recording that's very disturbing, I mean,
Speaker 3: big trigger warnings.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to get too involved in it.
Speaker 3: It's called the Death Tape, but you can listen to
Speaker 3: the revolutionary suicide process unfold on this tape.
Speaker 1: Did you listen to it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I listened to the whole thing.
Speaker 1: I had to.
Speaker 3: Scrub through some of it because it's really hard to
Speaker 3: listen to. There are parts where people are standing up
Speaker 3: and saying, no, this is not what we want. There
Speaker 3: are people that are just unsure. There are and this
Speaker 3: is very triggering, obviously, but there were the sounds of
Speaker 3: children crying all over the place in the background, and
Speaker 3: a woman saying they're not in pain, it's just a
Speaker 3: bitter taste in their mouth, that no one's feeling any pain.
Speaker 1: And it's just.
Speaker 3: Incredibly disturbing and remarkable that this exists in the world
Speaker 3: and that you can listen to this. But then you know,
Speaker 3: at like the forty two minute mark, it just goes
Speaker 3: quiet and it's haunting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think from what I understand, it's really easy
Speaker 2: to take it like that's the end of Jones Town.
Speaker 2: But I believe what the death tape covers is the
Speaker 2: beginning of the whole thing. Yeah, the killing of the children.
Speaker 2: That's why you're hearing the children screaming. They're dying from
Speaker 2: being forced to drink cyanide, and they as it gets quiet,
Speaker 2: that's because the kids have died. It's just as eerie.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make it any less eerie. But apparently after
Speaker 2: that the tape runs out, is when the adults really
Speaker 2: started drinking. Because at the end he's like bringing the
Speaker 2: bring in the vat with the flavor ad in it
Speaker 2: so that the adults can start drinking. That's toward the
Speaker 2: end of the tape. But you mentioned somebody standing up.
Speaker 2: A woman named Christy Miller was the sole person who
Speaker 2: challenged Jim Jones directly. She went to the mic and
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, isn't there isn't there any other way,
Speaker 2: like you told us Soviet Union would take us. Is
Speaker 2: it too late for that? You know? As long, I think,
Speaker 2: she said, as long as there's life, there's hope, Like
Speaker 2: we shouldn't do this, and then she also said, I
Speaker 2: think the children would want to live, they should be
Speaker 2: able to live, and she ended up getting shouted down
Speaker 2: by other members, but she tried really hard, and apparently
Speaker 2: she was one of the people who was found at
Speaker 2: Jonestown later on with a puncture mark in her arm,
Speaker 2: and that she was probably killed, that she was murdered.
Speaker 2: She didn't she didn't drink the kool aid or the
Speaker 2: flavor aid herself. She was probably injected with cyanide, and
Speaker 2: that's almost certainly how she died. But she was extremely
Speaker 2: brave for trying to save all those people, and it
Speaker 2: was useless because Jim Jones knew there was no other
Speaker 2: way out for him. He was going to kill himself,
Speaker 2: and that he couldn't very well leave these people alive
Speaker 2: without him. And he specifically says, you're gonna do this,
Speaker 2: you want to do this. There's no life without me,
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna die, so we all need to die together,
Speaker 2: and he's encouraging them outright, encouraging them Chuck. On this tape,
Speaker 2: you can hear him how he gets them to take
Speaker 2: their own lives and kill their own children. It's like
Speaker 2: that's it went from like bleak research to just like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe this actually happened, Like my brain kept
Speaker 2: like repelling from wrapping itself around it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was, like I said, I couldn't even listen
Speaker 3: to it all the way through. I had to kind
Speaker 3: of just skip ahead. But you did mention, and this is,
Speaker 3: you know, this is the fact that most people know
Speaker 3: by now, because usually that guy at every party likes
Speaker 3: to point out that it was not actually kool aid drink.
Speaker 3: The kool aid has become a euphemism. But it was
Speaker 3: great flavor aid in fact, and it had a bunch
Speaker 3: of stuff in it. It had one, two, three, four, five, six,
Speaker 3: seven different you know, various sedatives and antipsychotics, and there
Speaker 3: was one malaria medication in there for some reason.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why.
Speaker 3: Valium, but cyanide was ultimately what you know, did everyone
Speaker 3: in And like you said, they killed the children first
Speaker 3: by putting it in a syringe and shooting it in
Speaker 3: their mouth, and then other people took it willingly, and
Speaker 3: then like you said, in the case of Christine Miller,
Speaker 3: that she was injected like other people were, obviously against
Speaker 3: her will. And a lot of people thought it was
Speaker 3: another White Night rehearsal, so they went along with it,
Speaker 3: maybe not knowing that they were really gonna die. And
Speaker 3: in the end, nine hundred and eighteen people died in Guyana,
Speaker 3: nine hundred and seven from the poisoning. Then Annie Moore
Speaker 3: and Jim Jones either killed themselves with their own gun
Speaker 3: or had one of the Red Brigade do it. Three
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Two hundred and seventy six of these victims
Speaker 3: were kids, and then there were people that went out
Speaker 3: into the jungle. Other people died later. There was this
Speaker 3: really sort of sad, bizarre story of this woman named
Speaker 3: Sharon Amos, who was a temple member who was in Georgetown, Guyana,
Speaker 3: who got the message that you need to kill yourself,
Speaker 3: and so she killed her two young kids and then
Speaker 3: her third, her twenty one year old daughter, Leanne Harris.
Speaker 3: Apparently they looked at each other and either slit each
Speaker 3: other's throats or their own throats. There were two other
Speaker 3: people in the bathroom, ten year old named Stephanie Brown
Speaker 3: and a forty three year old man named Charles Beekman.
Speaker 3: He was charged with her attempted murder because he cut her,
Speaker 3: but he told her, hey, I have to Apparently he
Speaker 3: was trying to help her live, and he said, I
Speaker 3: have to cut you to make it look real. And
Speaker 3: he got off on five years because she corroborated that
Speaker 3: story in court, so he didn't, you know, get a
Speaker 3: full conviction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of really weird, bizarre stories about
Speaker 2: you know, what people did when faced with this, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: One of the things from that tape. One more thing
Speaker 2: about the tape that really got me was there somebody
Speaker 2: like people were testifying. People were coming up and getting
Speaker 2: the mic and thanking Dad, thanking Jim Jones. For one
Speaker 2: guy goes, thank you, you know, Dad for giving me life,
Speaker 2: and then you know, as an afterthought, he's like and death.
Speaker 2: Like they were thanking him for this. Right. So one
Speaker 2: person came up to the mic and said, all you
Speaker 2: people along the way wall crying over there, this is
Speaker 2: not a time to be sad. This is this is
Speaker 2: something to be happy for. And the fact that there
Speaker 2: were people crying along the wall, to me, those were
Speaker 2: the people who who knew they didn't have any way out,
Speaker 2: not because you know, the US military was coming to
Speaker 2: kill everyone and torture the children, but because they the
Speaker 2: Jim Jones's people were not going to let them leave.
Speaker 2: It was either try to get away and be killed shot,
Speaker 2: or drink the kool aid yourself and be part of
Speaker 2: the revolutionary suicide. And they were scared to death. They
Speaker 2: didn't want to die. They were literally grieving their own
Speaker 2: death right before they died. And that was the choice,
Speaker 2: like you couldn't you weren't allowed to leave, you had
Speaker 2: to drink the flavorrate. But a couple of people did
Speaker 2: get away, these survivors who literally escaped the tent that
Speaker 2: the people were killing themselves in and got away and
Speaker 2: snuck off into the jungle. And those people are like
Speaker 2: really important sources of information for what happened because they
Speaker 2: saw people dying. They didn't leave right before they left,
Speaker 2: like during this whole thing, at the height of it,
Speaker 2: and they came back and they did all sorts of
Speaker 2: terrible things. They had to identify bodies, they had to
Speaker 2: they had to explain what was going on. They one
Speaker 2: guy is named Charles Clayton. He was a really important
Speaker 2: source for a lot of the documentaries. You'll see he
Speaker 2: slipped away and got away unnoticed, and that whole identifying
Speaker 2: the bodies thing. I know, I sound like I'm rambling
Speaker 2: but there's just so much to talk about, but we
Speaker 2: probably should should go to that part about the aftermath,
Speaker 2: because I mentioned that Jackie Spears was alone on the
Speaker 2: airstrip a couple miles away from Jonestown for twenty two hours,
Speaker 2: and the people of Jonestown killed themselves within an hour
Speaker 2: and a half maybe two hours of the fascination of
Speaker 2: Leo Ryan and those people. So that meant that that
Speaker 2: it was just as totally quiet, eerie village of the
Speaker 2: dead for a good twenty hours before any outsiders came
Speaker 2: in and saw what had happened.
Speaker 1: Terrible.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: It was horrifying?
Speaker 2: Yeah, still is so one more kind of like little
Speaker 2: add on. That was the worst civilian casualty of American
Speaker 2: civilians in history, and it's remained that way until nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. But the first responders who came, who had
Speaker 2: who were responsible for getting these Americans their bodies back
Speaker 2: home so that their families could claim them over the
Speaker 2: course of like a terrible week in the heat, in
Speaker 2: the storms and all that they were largely from the
Speaker 2: Air Force, and the Air Force conducted a study on
Speaker 2: how that experience impacted them, and it turned out to
Speaker 2: be the first study of how something like that, how
Speaker 2: first responders are affected by the things they see and
Speaker 2: have to do from you know, mass casualty events in history.
Speaker 2: And it really kind of created that whole field of
Speaker 2: study essentially, Oh wow, yeah, something else, you got anything else?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's one more odd little fact that you dug
Speaker 3: up that is fairly remarkable because the congress person Ryan
Speaker 3: who was sadly killed.
Speaker 1: That day, didn't his daughter end up in a cult.
Speaker 2: Not just a cult, the cult that was featured in
Speaker 2: Wild Wild Country, that Netflix documentary. She was a member
Speaker 2: of that cult and ended up being married by that
Speaker 2: guru in the ranch in Oregon a couple of years
Speaker 2: after her father died. And they actually had a bottle
Speaker 2: of champagne that said the guru, I can't remember the
Speaker 2: guru's name, can turn even grape kool aid into wine.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So they even made a joke about it at the wedding. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's nuts, man, I just thought that I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a fantastic nugget to end on.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Well, sin Chuck said that was a
Speaker 2: fantastic nugget. Of course, everybody. That means it's time for
Speaker 2: listener mail.
Speaker 3: All right, this is about the Christian heavy metal band Striper.
Speaker 3: Of course, what a better way to finish out this episode.
Speaker 3: Hey guys, grew up in the middle of the Canadian
Speaker 3: Prairies in the seventies and eighties and was fourteen when
Speaker 3: Striper's Soldiers under Command came out and fifteen when to
Speaker 3: Hell with the Devil hit me like a ton of
Speaker 3: bricks on this rock was built much of who I
Speaker 3: still am. I learned how to play drums along with
Speaker 3: Robert Sweet, but unlike Chuck, never had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: see them live, as they rarely played Canada. They broke
Speaker 3: up in the early nineties, and that I thought was that,
Speaker 3: even though they got back together in two thousand and five,
Speaker 3: I never managed to catch them live the few times
Speaker 3: they snuck across the border until that is this summer
Speaker 3: when I was down in Vancouver visiting the in laws
Speaker 3: and they were playing Seattle, and I drove the three
Speaker 3: hours to see them. It was an amazing show. They're
Speaker 3: no longer playing the giant stadiums, of course, but.
Speaker 1: I don't know if they ever played giant stadiums.
Speaker 3: But being able to stand ten feet from guitarist Oz Fox,
Speaker 3: who can still shred after all these years, was an
Speaker 3: amazing experience. They still got all the hair and vocalist
Speaker 3: Michael Sweet can still hit those high notes, though not
Speaker 3: as many as he used to. But after forty years,
Speaker 3: they are very very good at making music. They're doing
Speaker 3: an acoustic tour this year twenty twenty four, called to
Speaker 3: Hell with the Amps and they're kicking off, kicking it
Speaker 3: off down in Georgia playing Mad Life in Woodstock. I
Speaker 3: haven't heard of that venue, and this is a May thirtieth,
Speaker 3: and I bet Chuck would have a hell.
Speaker 1: Of a time.
Speaker 3: Who knows, they might even play a couple of songs
Speaker 3: he recognizes.
Speaker 1: That is from Trent. You gonna go and I don't know,
Speaker 1: only if you go with me?
Speaker 2: Oh boy, I wasn't expecting that. We'll see. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about it offline. That was Trent.
Speaker 1: Huh, that's Trent.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Trent. That was a great email. Appreciate
Speaker 2: the update on Striper And if you have one on
Speaker 2: the guy who did Life as a Highway, it turns
Speaker 2: out to be Tom Cochrane. I don't remember if you
Speaker 2: said that in the episode or not. We would see
Speaker 2: the right I would If you want to be like Trent,
Speaker 2: you can get in touch with us at stuff podcast
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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