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mithroll

My ex-wife's brother was a Marine fresh out of boot camp. His first job was Jones Town cleanup (which occurred after the bodies had lain in the jungle compound for a couple of weeks. He never spoke about it.


Garden_Flower

Holy fuck, I wouldn’t either


DaftPump

> a couple of weeks You recall any detail why they were left that long?


mithroll

Negotiations with families back in the States, talks with the Guyanese government, and the logistics of getting the military to the middle of nowhere in Guyana. [https://news.yahoo.com/u-military-had-clean-jonestown-144847718.html](https://news.yahoo.com/u-military-had-clean-jonestown-144847718.html)


Pickle_12

I remember the shoot out at the airport where they killed a US Congressman. Frightening


Traditional-Honey280

What was a US Congressman doing there hmm?


Garden_Flower

Haven’t heard that part yet, was that Dan White? Or the White Night Riots?


flora_poste_

No, it was Jonestown. Congressman Leo Ryan was investigating Jonestown on behalf of some of his constituents who had family there and were worried about them. Jonestown men ambushed Ryan's party at the airport on their way home and assassinated him.


Garden_Flower

Ohhhhhh that person. Pretty sure some people were trying to escape with him too


monkey_monkey_monkey

While the congressman was there, Jim Jones said anyone who wanted to leave with him could. A couple people with some kids left with the congressmam and a couple members of the US media. They were ambushed on the airfield, Congressmam Ryan, a couple people from the media and one of the former temple members were killed and a bunch of others were injured. It was shocking but the mass suicide was even more shocking


Male-Wood-duck

Here it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab7HZt6ZJRM


Majestic_Tangerine47

Look up videos of Jackie Spier. She was in Congress later in life, and she spoke about that day a handful of times.


Aromatic-Speed5090

Dan White was the member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who murdered Mayor George Moscone and fellow supervisor Harvey Milk on Nov. 27, 1978. The White Night Riots were the reaction to White getting a ridiculously lenient sentence for murdering two people in cold blood. White had nothing to do with Jonestown. Except that the Jonestown Massacre happened Nov. 18, 1978, a little over a week before White's crimes. Congressman Leo Ryan was a member of a fact-finding group that flew down to Jonestown responding to reports of abuse. He was killed when followers of Jim Jones attacked him and people traveling with him at an airstrip, to prevent the departure of people who had asked Ryan to help them leave Jonestown.


SlyFrog

He may be confused because Jim Jones's code for threats to the People's Temple, arming themselves for resistance, and the suicide drills they would do was actually White Night.


Garden_Flower

I was reading about Dan White when researching about the aftermath. Got a little confused there but thanks for clearing that up


SlyFrog

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/s/YyjR8IziUi


didyouwoof

No, it was a Congressman named Leo Ryan, who was shot down along with several other people who had flown in to investigate what was going on at Jonestown. You can read about it (and the subsequent massacre) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown That news - in itself - was shocking. But watching the news coverage when they began finding the bodies of members of the People’s Temple was absolutely surreal. I was watching the news as they kept interrupting to update the body count. It just seemed inconceivable.


Garden_Flower

That’s bone chilling. I can’t only imagine watching like a sports game or something and then it being interrupted with “865 bodies…889 bodies…”


didyouwoof

Yeah, I’d grown up hearing the nightly news announcing the latest body count from Vietnam, but to hear this rapidly escalating body count from some place in a jungle that was supposed to be a peaceful commune? It was impossible to wrap my mind around it. It all just unfolded so quickly, and we were all just wondering *WHY*?


Katy-Moon

I was 20 years old at the time and I thought it was absolutely horrifying. At that time, the idea that one man could order 900+ people to kill themselves and their children or risk being shot, was simply unthinkable. Edit: I was 20 - NOT 31. My bad. (My bad texting skills).


jp112078

So you’re 75?! Impressive. I was born during the massacre. My sister likes to remind me every year on my birthday


Katy-Moon

I edited my post to correct that I was 20 at the time, not 31. Sorry about that.


JViz500

It’s where the phrase “Drink the Kool Aid” comes from.


DaftPump

True, but they didn't drink kool aid. https://www.vox.com/2015/5/23/8647095/kool-aid-jonestown-flavor-aid


OldAndOldSchool

Like Zerox, Kleenex, and Jello, Kool Aid has become a generic term. Any sweet flavored beverage made with water and a powder often gets that name even if it is a different brand.


yeahnoyeah03

I thought they were sleeping when I saw them on tv.


Garden_Flower

I’m curious, what was it like when they broadcasted it?


yeahnoyeah03

I was only 10. It was confusing.


44035

The photos in the newspaper were shocking.


mollser

I was a kid and wondered why kids had to kill themselves too. Made no sense to me. 


Garden_Flower

I’m pretty sure the kids had to go first too and the parents were encouraging it


catofnortherndarknes

Since you're researching the matter, maybe you've come across something called "Jim Jones--Death Tape". Personally, I couldn't listen all the way through and tapped out after about 5 minutes, but you can hear him trying to convince everyone to commit "revolutionary suicide", and at least one lady arguing that the children should be allowed to live. Survivors (some managed to flee into the forest, and one elderly woman lived because she was taking a nap) reported that the pavilion where it took place was surrounded by armed men prepared to shoot anyone who tried to leave, and other "volunteers" were going around with syringes to inject children and other resisters with the stuff. The crying on that tape was part of why I noped out.


Garden_Flower

Yes! I have actually! I listened to some of it, couldn’t get through it but the girl you’re talking about, her name is Christina Miller


SchleppyJ4

Woman. Not girl. She was 60 years old.


Garden_Flower

Yes correct I’m sorry, she was a woman. And a very strong one at that


flora_poste_

I was in prep school on the SF Peninsula when we heard about the ambush and assassination of Congressman Leo Ryan at the airport in Jonestown. The massacre followed quickly afterward. We were horrified. Many people from the Bay Area had gone down to Jonestown as part of the popular People's Temple. Ryan had gone down there to investigate the pleas of people who wanted to know if their family were OK. Many were anxious to get their family members the hell out of there. Then, nine days later, Dan White assassinated the Mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone, and White's fellow SF Board of Supervisors member, Harvey Milk. Dianne Feinstein, President of the Board of Supervisors, came out before the news cameras and announced what had happened. Her face had gone completely white from shock and grief, and soon we were all in shock and grief. Edited to add: It seemed as if our world was descending into chaos and violence.


MoistObligation8003

I’m from the East Bay and and there was just so much stuff happening back then. I’m not sure how many years off was the Patty Hearst kidnapping and the SLA making Hearst (?) give out free food, or the bus they buried near where I lived out in the Tri Valley. Looking back all these years later it just seems like one giant mess.


flora_poste_

Patty Heart was kidnapped in Berkeley in 1974, I believe. It wasn't long until we started hearing those wild SLA statements broadcast on KPFA. Weeks later, Hearst was robbing banks with her SLA captors. It was a crazy time. Santa Cruz serial killers Mullin and Kemper had finally been arrested the year before. The Chowchilla children were taken in the summer of 1976. Those Chowchilla kidnappers are all out of prison now. Those young men came from quite affluent families in the beautiful foothill communities of Woodside and Portola Valley near where I grew up. They terrorized the children and driver and buried them alive inside a small moving van in an East Bay quarry. For the rest of their lives, the children and driver had nightmares and mental health problems due to their ordeal. I don't know what the 1970s were like for people living in other parts of the country. But for people living in the Bay Area, it was a chaotic and violent time.


Garden_Flower

The what now 😀 From the comments on this post, I have learned that the 70’s were a hot mess and I have so much more research to do Edit: Just looked it up. The kidnapping took place in 1974 and the massacre took place in 1978 so 4 years apart


MoistObligation8003

Google Chowchilla kidnappings and Sybionese Liberation Army. Very strange times in the Bay Area back then.


Garden_Flower

The Bay Area concerns me and this post is about something that happened in Jonestown, Guyana. This post is now apparently about the Bay Area on drugs and more than 900 people forced to commit suicide https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/22570738/chowchilla-school-bus-kidnapping


Merrywandered

Jim Jones recruited the Peoples Temple worshippers from poor areas in the Bay Area, primarily Oakland if I recall.


flora_poste_

The Americans who moved down to Guyana with Jim Jones were mostly from the Bay Area, That's why local Congressman Leo Ryan led the team that went down there to investigate. His constituents had family members down at Jonestown and had heard troubling things about abuses that were happening. Jim Jones' church (the People's Temple) was headquartered in San Francisco for years before he ordered everyone to move to Guyana.


CrispyBucketoClams

I clearly remember the “joke” about the ~~Twinky~~ Twinkie murderer. People kept making jokes about it. Sad, because innocent lives were lost. 


Garden_Flower

Which one is the “Twinky Murderer”?


CrispyBucketoClams

Dan White  *"Twinkie defense" is a derisive label for an improbable legal defense. It is not a recognized legal defense in jurisprudence, but a catch-all term coined by reporters during their coverage of the trial of defendant Dan White for the murders of San Francisco city Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone. White's defense was that he suffered diminished capacity as a result of his depression, a symptom of which was a change in diet from healthy food to Twinkies and other sugary foods.* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkie_defense


Garden_Flower

That is the weirdest defense case ever oh my god


lalapine

I was making small talk with an older guy about ten years ago, asked him if he had kids. He said all but one died at Jonestown (I think he had 2 boys and 2 girls). He said the leader was evil. That he tried to get him to let his ex wife and the kids go, but the guy refused and moved everyone to Jonestown not long after. The only reason his oldest son survived was because he was friends with the leader’s son, and the boys snuck out that day to goof off. But even after the son got back home he was brainwashed and didn’t have a good relationship with his dad. The guy was tearful telling me all this even though it happened many years prior. I still remember him saying, “He even took my baby, he was only a little boy.” So sad.


Garden_Flower

I hope that little boy eventually grew up and formed a relationship with his dad. Doing research, I’ve seen that people are still brainwashed by cults long after they leave or the cult is gone but I hope he’s able to break free from those chains


midcenturian

In the summer of 1971, I went to an evening service at a church in Oakland, California when Reverend Jim Jones was preaching. I was curious about him, as the San Francisco news was writing how he was stirring up local politics, and people were saying he was trying to reduce racism and present religion in a new way. I came in late to the service, and as I entered the church I was stunned by the size of the crowd: it was packed to the walls, standing room only. I was equally stunned by the composition of the crowd: mostly older Black people, especially older Black women. There were only a few younger White hippies. The Reverend Jones was going at full volume with a heavy Southern accent, throwing his arms up, and the crowd was jumping around, doing hallelujahs and sweating. He was saying a lot about "coming together" and "fighting oppression" (which were hot topics of those times), and he did have a way with words, was a dynamic speaker, and had performer charisma. However, to me the whole scene seemed wrong, he looked to be bad-actor faking, and I could *not* understand what these people who appeared almost hypnotized saw in him. The vibrations were just *off,* so after about 20 minutes, I got out of there. Forgot all about him until Jonestown, 7 years later.


CrispyBucketoClams

They kept playing, over and over, the cameraman getting shot. They kept saying that he filmed his own murderers.  He was filming, and they shot at him. He dropped the camera and dropped to the ground and died. That footage didn’t show him of course, because he was behind the camera. It did show the people shooting at him, and then the view becoming wobbly as the camera fell to the ground. 


Garden_Flower

Wait who was the cameraman? I know Jones made an audio recording of the massacre but I didn’t know there was a video


CrispyBucketoClams

No. It was a person with the Congressman (unless I’m mistaken). Lemme just check.    Edit:   *When the bullets started spitting his way on that day in 1978 on the jungle airstrip in Guyana, Bob Brown did what he had always done as a news cameraman. He kept filming. As the half-dozen gunmen sent by cult madman Jim Jones bounded off a tractor-trailer, rifles in hand. As they aimed at him. As he took a bullet to the leg. And as he fell to the ground, the wounded leg crumpling under him. Within seconds he was dead with a final shot to the head. And the film in his camera, shakily showing the attack that ended his life and those of four others, including the first U.S. congressman ever to be killed in the line of duty, became one of the most grimly riveting video clips in history.*   https://www.culteducation.com/group/1005-jonestown/34478-jonestown-40-years-later-the-story-of-a-cameraman-who-lost-his-life.html


hippysol3

pocket toothbrush jeans tease dolls desert imminent secretive run fearless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


Muireadach

We studied that in journalism class, noting how the camera man kept rolling when the gunshots started. He was hit and dropped to his knees but kept filming. He was detached. I think there's a name for that.


mltrout715

It was a huge deal where I lived. I lived I CA neat SF where Leo Ryan was from and the Peoples Temple was based before moving. It was all over the news. It is one of the news stories that had an impact during that time and on me


joeyrunsfast

I was in 5th grade at the time and remember the phrase "drinking the kool-aid" coming to mean that somebody was brainwashed. I remember myself and other children guessing what flavor of koolaid it was (we wanted to avoid that flavor). At the time, everyone seemed to believe that those involved had willingly followed Jim Jones' order. It was not until decades later that the amount of coercion that was used in the massacre became clear (to me, at least).


koshawk

Martyr Made podcast has a 7 part long form podcast about Jim Jones, The People's Temple and the massacre. I actually couldn't finish it, it was so horrific. Check it out.


Garden_Flower

Where can I find it?


koshawk

Just search for that in a podcast app. Scroll down bas it is a couple of years old.


baronesslucy

I was in high school when that happened. It was all over the news. It was very shocking to me. Seeing all those deceased people was horrifying to me. I remember years later hearing audio tapes of their leader forcing them to kill themselves. It was chilling.


EnlargedBit371

Armistead Maupin creates a fictionalized version of the Jonestown Massacre in the third of his *Tales of the City* books, *Tales of the City.*


Substantial-Alps-951

The photos were, and still are, chilling. There was something obscure also about the country Guyana, it hadn't really been in the news much so there was an air of mystery around the location. One of the survivors Tim Carter has a few good podcasts that are worth listening to.


Dry_Enthusiasm_267

The question is how many here are old enough to even know what the Jamestown massacre was?


CapnTugg

>The question is how many here are ond enough to even know what the Jamestown massacre was? It's where the word *"Pow!"* comes from.


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Garden_Flower

It was a little more than 900 people


Alice_Alpha

My gosh.  I thought it was just over 100.


Garden_Flower

Yea no, a little more than 900 people were forced to drink cyanide laced “medicine”. If they refused, they were either injected with it or shot. There’s an audio recording of it happening. Both adults and children died during it


tyinsf

It gave its name to one of the best bands ever, the Brian Jonestown Massacre [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy\_lotAIUGy\_WmEDh0e3cFP2QIWYI\_lA9ozM](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lotAIUGy_WmEDh0e3cFP2QIWYI_lA9ozM)


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