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(church bell ringing)
DEBORAH LAYTON: Nobody joins a cult.
Nobody joins something they think's going to hurt them.
You join a religious organization,
you join a political movement, and you join with people
that you really like.
JIM JONES, JR.: I think in everything
that I tell you about Jim Jones, there's going to be a paradox--
having this vision to change the world,
but having this whole undercurrent of dysfunction
that was underneath that vision.
JIM JONES: Some people see
a great deal of God in my body.
They see Christ in me, a hope of glory.
(applause)
He said, "If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend.
As you see me as your father, I'll be your father."
He said, "If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."
KRISTINE KRAVITZ: Jim Jones talked about
going to the Promised Land, and then,
pretty soon, we were seeing film footage
of Jonestown.
JONES: Rice, black-eyed peas,
Kool-Aid.
KRAVITZ: We all wanted to go.
I wanted to go.
GRACE STOEN: Peoples Temple truly had the potential to be
something big and powerful and great.
And yet, for whatever reason,
Jim took the other road.
JACKIE SPEIER: On the night of the 17th, it was still
a vibrant community.
I would never
have imagined that 24 hours later
they would all be dead.
I vividly remember the first time that I met Jim Jones.
My sister Carolyn had invited my parents
and my younger sister and I to visit her in Potter Valley.
We came, and there was this strange man
in her house, and her husband wasn't there.
Annie and I were sent out to go on a walk.
When we came back, something had happened.
Something terrible had happened,
because everyone had red eyes except for Jim Jones.
We didn't really get the story
until we were in the car going home.
He was carrying on an adulterous relationship
with my sister.
And because his wife
couldn't relate to him as a wife,
that Carolyn had taken over that role.
Everything was plausible, except in retrospect,
the whole thing seems absolutely bizarre.
(piano playing)
♪ Welcome, welcome, all of you... ♪
♪ ♪
JANET SHULAR: The first time I visited Peoples Temple,
I drove at the urging of a friend,
a coworker, to Redwood Valley.
♪ Welcome, welcome, all of you... ♪
We all got suited down, neck-tied and everything.
And, you know, and we were sharp.
As soon as I walked in to the San Francisco Temple,
I was home.
♪ Welcome to you. ♪
CHILDREN: Welcome! (applause)
CLAYTON: I was one of those kind of guys
that, um... I used drugs.
I was an alcoholic.
I drunk alcohol and stuff like that.
And-and all these people that were, like, my age,
(laughing): they were clean.
WOMAN: Before I came here, I was taking LSD, marijuana,
every type of dope you can imagine.
Without our pastor Jim Jones to teach me the right way,
I would not be in college right now.
CLAYTON: And for me,
that was like, "Wow, man, I liked that!"
Thank you very much. Thank you.
(applause)
HUE FORTSON, JR.: It was an interracial group.
The choir was interracial, and they used to sing this song:
♪ Never heard a man speak like this man before ♪
♪ All the days of my life ever since I been born ♪
♪ I never heard a man speak like this man before. ♪
After they sang one or two songs,
the whole place was lit up.
♪ Something got a hold of me ♪
♪ Oh, yes, it did ♪
♪ I said something ♪ ♪ Something ♪
♪ Got a hold of me ♪ ♪ Got a hold of me ♪
♪ Don't you know... ♪
GARRETT LAMBREV: The Peoples Temple services,
they had life, they had soul, they had power.
We were alive in those services.
♪ Oh... I tell you that ♪
♪ Something ♪ ♪ Something ♪
♪ Got a hold ♪ ♪ Got a hold ♪
CLAIRE JANARO: I would be up jumping in the balcony and clapping my hands.
♪ Something ♪ ♪ Something ♪
If you came in as a stranger and didn't know anything
about the politics, you were thinking
you were entering an old-time religion service.
♪ 'Cause my heart wasn't right ♪
♪ Can't forget it ♪
♪ Something ♪ ♪ Something ♪
FORTSON: By the time Jones did
come out to do his speaking,
the-the table had already been set.
JONES: I represent divine principle,
total equality, a society where people own all things in common,
where there is no rich or poor,
where there are no races.
Wherever there's people
struggling for justice and righteousness, there I am!
And there I am involved.
(applause)
NEVA SLY HARGRAVE: What he spoke about were things
that were in our hearts.
The government was not taking care of the people.
There were too many poor people out there.
There were poor children.
JONES: The world is like a human family.
The little child may not be able to go and draw a paycheck,
but the father guarantees the child care.
The grandmother may not be able to work anymore,
but the father and mother
guarantee her the right to live.
LAYTON: Every, single person felt that they had a purpose there
and that they were exceptionally special.
And that is how he brought so many young college kids in,
so many older black women in,
so many people from diverse backgrounds
who realized that there was something bigger than themselves
that they needed to be involved in
and that Jim Jones offered that.
♪ Tell you that ♪
♪ Something ♪ ♪ Something ♪
♪ Got a hold of me ♪ ♪ Got a hold of me... ♪
CLAYTON: I went home, told Mom,
"You know what-- this is the right church for me."
It was the next week
that I became a member of Peoples Temple.
♪ I went to a meeting last night ♪
♪ But my heart ♪
♪ But my heart wasn't right ♪
♪ Can't forget it... ♪
JIM JONES:
PHYLLIS WILMORE-ZIMMERMAN: I grew up with Jimmy Jones.
We started first grade together.
My brothers used to go over to Jimmy's house
and hung around his barn,
which was where he played.
CHUCK WILMORE: From the time I was five years old,
I thought Jimmy was a really weird kid.
There was something not quite right.
He was obsessed with religion. He was obsessed with death.
WILMORE-ZIMMERMAN: My brothers came back with stories of him
conducting funerals for small animals that had died.
A friend of mine told me that he saw
Jimmy kill a cat with a knife.
Having a funeral for it was a little strange.
Killing the animal was very strange.
WILMORE-ZIMMERMAN: Jimmy's father did not work, did not have a job
and was a drunk.
Jim's mother had to work
in order to support the family.
And he was kind of left to his own devices.
Kind of the kid
who ran wild in the street, you know what I mean?
Listen, he was in a dysfunctional family.
(laughing)
We got a nice name for it now.
But when you live in a dysfunctional family,
you think it's normal.
("I'm A Soldier" by The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi)
♪ I'm a soldier ♪
♪ In the army of the Lord... ♪
JOHN HALL: In Lynn, Jim Jones
looked for community and couldn't find community
in Lynn as a town--
which had a population of, what, a thousand people.
But he did find community
in the Pentecostal Church.
♪ Soul has been converted, I feel all right ♪
TIM REITERMAN: He saw that they were
a surrogate home.
He saw that the preachers were like father figures
to their congregations.
And that role represented
power over the lives of your congregation.
♪ In the army of the Lord ♪
♪ Oh, yeah ♪ ♪ In the army... ♪
JOHN R. HALL: Jim Jones started out
on the revival preaching circuit
learning the ropes of being a preacher,
and once he started doing that,
it became clear that he could get a following.
The first time I met Jim Jones was Easter 1953.
My mother-in-law, Edith Cordell, had a monkey
and it hung itself, and she wanted to replace the monkey.
So she looked in the Indianapolis Star
and in that Indianapolis Star
was Jim Jones's ad that he had some monkeys to sell.
So it was through that that she met Jim Jones
and came back saying
that he had invited her to church this next Sunday.
(Jones preaching enthusiastically)
Didn't make no difference what color you were.
It was everybody welcome there in that church,
and he made it very plain from the platform.
We had some people that disagreed with Jimmy
that got up in the audience and said they disagreed with him.
They did not like this integration part
of the services.
We did ask people to leave the church one night
because of that.
JIM JONES, JR.: I was the first Negro child
adopted by a Caucasian family in the state of Indiana.
Jim and Marceline actually went to adopt a Caucasian child.
The story goes that I was crying real loud,
and it drew attention for Marceline to come over,
and, uh, once she picked me up, I, uh, stopped crying.
My family was a template of a rainbow family.
We had an African American,
we had two American Asian
and we had his natural son, homemade.
REV. GARNETT DAY: Jim was, uh, breaking new ground
in race relations at a time when the ground was still pretty,
uh, hard against that.
Jim Jones was, uh, hated and despised by some people,
particularly in the white community.
There had been pressures on him to leave Indianapolis.
He thought that Indianapolis was too racist of a place
for him to-to, um, to be and he wanted to take his people out.
REBECCA MOORE: California is perceived to be a very progressive state.
This would be the place to implement
the dream of racial equality,
not Indianapolis, which seems hopeless,
but California, which seems to be the Promised Land.
He chose Ukiah in northern California,
about 90 miles north of San Francisco,
because there was an article in Esquire magazine
that said that Ukiah was one of the nine places in the world
that, in the event of thermonuclear attack,
people would survive.
EUGENE CORDELL: I told Edith, "If you follow Jimmy
to California, you're crazy."
So what did Jimmy do, but took her to a psychiatrist
and sent me a certified letter
that she is of sound mind and she is not crazy.
I was there the afternoon that Edith drove away.
I didn't know I'd never see her again.
JIM JONES, JR: The move to California was really fun.
There were about 12, 15 cars
driving across United States and making that journey
to a place none of us knew,
you know, uh, none of us could even imagine.
We were going to California, our new world.
CLAIRE JANARO: When I saw Redwood Valley,
I couldn't believe my eyes because it was like a paradise.
It was rural. It was green.
Uh, there were grapevines everywhere,
and I fell in love.
I said, "This has got to be a perfect way to live."
(chicken squawking)
JIM JONES: We started with about 141 people,
and from that we've grown to a very thriving congregation.
We have about every level of society,
all socio-economic income strata,
professional down to the ordinary field worker,
field labor.
Really, it's beautiful to see that all these divisions
have been broken down, not only race,
but any differences of economic position.
JOYCE SHAW-HOUSTON: The focus of Jim's message
was the, uh, taken from the Bible
where Jesus, in his earliest days, uh,
told people to sell all things and have all things in common.
Jesus Christ had the most revolutionary teachings
to be said in the sense that he said to feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, uh, take in the stranger,
minister to those, the widows
and afflicted in their suffering.
And we feel that no one really tried Christianity
too effectively in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
DEBORAH LAYTON: The membership increased substantially
as he procured more and more Greyhound buses,
and, uh, fixed them up,
and every summer he began this cross-country tour.
CLAIRE JANARO: The purpose of the bus trips
was to spread Jim's beliefs about socialism
and the world and how we can live a better life
and about an integrated lifestyle.
But behind that,
I think it was to gather more members for the Temple.
♪ As pilgrims here ♪
♪ We sometimes journey... ♪
BRYAN KRAVITZ: I decided not to go to Vietnam, and I was just at the point
of what am I going to do with myself.
I heard Jim Jones was going to be coming to Philadelphia
and coming to Benjamin Franklin High School.
And I went Wednesday night, and I listened to him
and I was impressed
by how it was such an interracial group
and people were really happy.
Who else is going to stand and look you in the face and say,
"Come, and I'll give you a job.
"Come, and I'll give you a home.
Come, and I'll give you a bed."
"But I've got nothing but a pension."
"Go and leave your pension behind."
Who else will tell you that?
Who'll tell you, "I'll put you on that bus tomorrow"?
BRYAN KRAVITZ: I heard Jim Jones talking about equality among races,
what it's like in living in California,
in the Redwood Valley, the good works that they're doing--
things that like I wanted to get in involved with,
but didn't even know where to make an entrée,
and all of a sudden the answer was there.
JIM JONES: Somebody is going to get on the freedom train
in Philadelphia.
He was there for three evenings, and the third evening,
I went off on the bus and came to California.
♪ Surely ♪ ♪ Surely ♪
♪ He's able ♪ ♪ He's able ♪
♪ To carry... ♪
When I joined Peoples Temple in the spring of 1966,
there were exactly 81 members.
Five years later, an extended family of 80 people
had become an organization of thousands.
♪ He's able ♪ ♪ Clouds may gather ♪
♪ All around you... ♪
REBECCA MOORE: Peoples Temple really was a black church.
It was led by a white minister,
but in terms of the worship service,
commitment to the social gospel, its membership,
it functioned completely like a black church.
He talked black. He really understood it.
He understood how it was to be treated differently.
And that's from his roots coming out of Lynn.
When people heard Jim, they didn't look upon him
as being a white preacher, you know.
People didn't look at Jim as being white.
He was not white.
He was just their preacher.
You going to go to Texas with me when I have that campaign?
I was just wondering whether I could go or not.
(laughs)
I would love to go.
Why, of course, you'll go. You went to Mexico with me.
DEBORAH LAYTON: As older people joined,
it took a year or so and he'd convince the people
that he was doing so much in the community
and so why not, rather than just tithe your 20%,
why not sell your home, give the money to the church?
And that is what people began to do.
JIM JONES: Now in this church,
what have we done in a short time?
We have four senior citizen homes
that are the most innovating,
the most beautiful you want to see.
MIKE TOUCHETTE: They had their own rooms.
They had every need taken care of.
They had their food provided.
They were well looked after.
JIM JONES: Now, my home is stone block
and there's not a piece of new furniture in it.
But our senior citizen homes, they're elegant.
And that's beautiful.
JOHN R. HALL: They were giving their life's money
and savings to the church, but in exchange,
the church was agreeing to take care of them in the community,
not just in a nursing home.
♪ Surely ♪ ♪ Surely ♪
♪ He's able ♪ ♪ He's able ♪
♪ To carry you through... ♪
Well, it got to the point where there were so many duties
in the Temple that some people had to become full-time.
So when you were full-time Temple,
you worked about 20 hours a day.
My week kind of ran like this.
I'd work my regular job on Mondays,
you know, 8:00 to 5:00.
Then I'd work on files...
There were people who ran rest homes.
There were animals to be taken care of.
There were the publications.
Everybody had a job.
Wednesday night we'd have a meeting in Redwood Valley,
and I'd go to the meeting till probably 10:00 or 10:30.
We turned our paychecks over every time we got paid.
And then we got an allowance-- five dollars a week.
And Friday I'd go to work, and I'd get off of work,
and I'd hop on the bus or drive the bus to San Francisco.
If I had to go to the doctor, it was taken care of.
If I had to go to the dentist, it was taken care of.
If I needed clothes, that was taken care of.
And often on Saturday night,
we'd have planning commission meetings
until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning.
We would always try to let each other know the next day,
"Well, how long did you sleep?" "Oh, I slept two hours."
"You only slept two?
Well, I slept a hour-and-a-half."
And then Sunday we'd have a Sunday morning service,
and then around 1:00, hop on the buses, drive up,
drop people off in San Francisco and drive up to Redwood Valley.
The longest I ever stayed awake was six days,
and that's with no coffee, no nothing.
It changed over the years, but it was always busy.
Being in an environment where you're constantly up,
you're constantly busy and you're made to feel guilty
if you take too many luxuries like sleeping...
you tend to not really think for yourself,
and I did allow Jones to think for me
because I figured that he had the better plan.
I gave my rights up to him, as many others did.
(applause)
Edie...
fingers, are your fingers numb...
in your right hand?
Reach the fingers out that are bothering you.
(building applause)
Now is the pain gone?
(shouting and cheering)
FORTSON: There was a senior citizen, and we nicknamed her Power.
He would have her to come up in the midst of one of his meetings
and she used to say, "The man got pow...er.
The man got power, y'all."
And the whole place would just go wild.
JIM JONES: Take your glasses off.
Let's just dare in our faith.
Now...
look at my face.
I love you.
The people love you.
Most importantly, Christ loves you.
What do you see?
One finger.
One finger!
(cheering and applause)
NEVA SLY HARGRAVE: One of the most incredible healings to me
was this little old lady, and she was in a wheelchair.
Jim said, "Darlin', you know, today is your day.
We're going to... you're going to get healed today."
He said, "We're going to...
"we're going to heal those legs of yours.
You're going to walk again."
And the whole auditorium went totally crazy.
(cheering)
JIM JONES: Come forth, my dear.
Stand up.
Take that step. - (cheering)
Bless your heart.
Take that step.
HARGRAVE: And she takes this real slow, shaky step.
She said, "I can feel it."
He said, "Yes, I know you can feel it.
Now take your other leg and do it."
And so another real slow, shaky step
and he says, "Now I want you to walk toward me."
Move forward.
Move forward, darlin'.
You can do it.
HARGRAVE: And she starts taking forward steps.
And pretty soon she is walking.
And she starts walking up one of the aisles.
(cheering and shouting)
And pretty soon she's running.
Well, by this time the whole congregation's running down
these aisles with us.
We're all just running around the aisles,
just hoopin' and hollerin' up a storm.
Later I found out that this person
that I had seen healed
and cried with was really one of the secretaries made up
to look crippled and blind.
♪ Never shalt forget what He's done ♪
♪ For me ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ What He's done for me ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ What He's done for me ♪
♪ Oh, oh, oh, oh ♪
♪ What He's done for me ♪
♪ I never shall forget what He's done for me. ♪
DEBORAH LAYTON: For those people that hadn't grown up in the Apostolic world,
Jim would say, you know, "I know this is different for you,
"but for people to come from extremely religious backgrounds
"so that I can bring them forward to the message
"that's so important for all of us today and that is activism,
then I need to speak on each person's level."
He said, "A lot of you people, you Christian people, coming in,
you're so hung up on this Bible."
He said, "This black book has held down black people
for the last 200 years."
He said, "But I'm going to show you
this has no power."
So he leaned way back like a football player and he flung it.
And when he flung it and let it go,
the place got dead quiet-like.
And he waited till it hit the floor... pow.
When it hit the floor, he stood and he looked back and forth.
He said, "Now, did you see any lightning come from the sky
and strike me dead?"
FORTSON: And he said, "What you need to believe in is what you can see."
He said, "If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend.
"As you see me as your father, I'll be your father,
for those of you that don't have a father."
He said, "If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior."
He said, even so, "If you see me as your God, I'll be your God."
♪ I never ♪
♪ Never heard it ♪
♪ Heard a man ♪
♪ Heard ♪
♪ Speak like this man ♪
♪ Before... ♪
JANET SHULAR: People lifted Jim to a level of adoration
because many believed
that he had healed them of cancer.
Many believed
that he had saved their son or daughter
from an automobile accident.
There were many reasons
for many people to admire, love, excuse,
overlook much of what Jim did.
♪ People... ♪
TIM CARTER: I had been in the Temple for just a few months.
I was sent backstage in Los Angeles to...
to get something for somebody-- I don't remember what.
And Jones happened to be coming out of his room
and he said, "Hi, Tim, how are you doing?
"How is it going?
How do you like everything so far?"
"And, oh, I like it a lot.
And, you know, it's really it cool."
I don't remember exactly.
And he reached up and kind of patted the back of my neck
and he said, "I'll fuck you in the ass if you want."
And I just kind of stammered, uh,
"No."
You know? "No."
And he said, "Well, you know, if you ever want that, that's okay.
You know, just let me know and we'll do that."
JOYCE SHAW-HOUSTON: Jim said that all of us were homosexuals,
everyone except... he was the only heterosexual on the planet.
And that, um, the women were all lesbians
and the guys were all gay.
And so anyone that showed any interest
in sex was just compensating.
What he explained to each of us and in sermons,
was that sexual relationships were very selfish
and they took away from the focus of the church
and that was to help others.
Jim was not celibate.
Nobody knew that until perhaps it was their time to find out
what he spoke from the pulpit wasn't
what he... he did behind the scenes.
FORTSON: I remember one night, um, one of the brothers
had stood up and said,
"You know, I think,
"everybody that wants Father to screw them in the butt,
you need to take a enema first."
I'm telling you the truth, man,
I'm telling you the truth.
And then the question went on,
"Well, how many of you in here have had him to do that?"
And it, whether they were lying or just following suit,
hands of the men just went up around the room.
And I'm sitting there petrified 'cause I'm, like,
"Is this what it's leading to, that I'm supposed to get to?"
And I'm thinking, "Hmm."
But I played it off like, okay, I'm being cool.
Okay, if that's where they at, that's not where I'm at.
'Cause I'm thinking, I...
My wife, I'm happy with my wife, you know...
With this sleep I'm not getting
I'm not getting enough anyway.
GRACE STOEN: One of the powerful things that Jim used to keep us
to not think was that we were never really allowed, um,
to speak with one another.
I'd look around and I'd say, "Am I the only one
that feels this way?"
I learned eventually not to, um, not to say anything to anyone.
JONES: We had a lady who visited us
a week ago here and was speaking to one at the door,
and she was a member of a prominent church,
a pastor's wife, and she said,
"I think that the poor should be made to control
how many children they bring into the earth."
You remember?
PEOPLE: Yeah.
Some leading scientists say,
"We have to have euthanasia."
Oh, no, oh, no.
Who's going to decide who and when a person's going to die?
We must never allow that because this is the kind of thing
that ushers in the terror of a Hitler's Germany.
We must not allow these kind of things
to enter our consciousness.
(cheering and applause)
JIM JONES, JR.: My father used to tell me
that people's lives, 60% of people's lives were made
on emotional decisions.
Make your decisions, 60% of your decisions,
based on logic, fact, or reason,
and allow emotion to be the secondary motivator.
And, um, we were Star Trek fans, he and I were Star Trek fans,
and he used to always say,
"Just vulcanize yourself. Just vulcanize yourself."
SHAW-HOUSTON: We were celebrating New Year's Eve.
There were about 120 people.
Jim started talking about our cause
and he said,
"This punch is going to be passed out to everybody here."
We all drank our punch and then he said,
"You just drank poison.
And we will all die right here in the church together as one."
The women were just screaming, "Oh, no, my baby, my baby!"
and others just sat there
and all of a sudden, Jim says,
"That wasn't poison you drank."
SHAW-HOUSTON: Jim said that this was a test of loyalty.
He just wanted to see if we were truly committed to our cause,
and that was how we would show it.
SHULAR: Well, it wasn't about our loyalty,
because we were demonstrating loyalty all the time.
Coming there, being there in the meetings, sitting, listening,
you know, supporting, working.
And I thought it had a lot more to do
with Jim's sense of...
rehearsal.
Did he feel like he was potent and, and omnipotent enough
to really get people to kill themselves when he said so?
And that frightened the hell out of me.
Jim Jones, I think, realized that ultimately
Ukiah was not the sort of climate
where Peoples Temple would thrive.
He wasn't going to be gaining large numbers of members.
He couldn't declare himself to be a socialist God openly,
certainly, in a city like Ukiah.
MARSHALL KILDUFF: In San Francisco, Jones walked in on a sort
of a wild kind of party
where there was a lot of new faces and new sources of power.
And there was a sort of feeling that smaller groups,
neighborhood groups, activist groups had a bigger chance.
REBECCA MOORE: I think the early '60s had been a time of great optimism.
There was a belief that we could change the world
through social movements.
With various assassinations, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers,
Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy...
there was definitely a feeling of hopelessness.
The message of Peoples Temple was, "No, the dream is alive."
VERNON GOSNEY: If you had a demonstration
in San Francisco and you wanted some people to show up,
Jim Jones... the Peoples Temple
could be there in 20 minutes with hundreds of people.
And we would be enthusiastic.
There was an attitude of "we can change the world."
And that's what we wanted to do.
These people would be on time.
They'd be polite and nice.
They were a span of ages, a span of races.
They were tailor-made for a political rally.
To a politician, it was like a birthday cake times 12.
You have managed to make the many persons
associated with Peoples Temple part of a family.
If you are in need of healthcare, you get healthcare.
If you're in need of legal assistance of some sort,
If you're in need of transportation, you get that.
And that's the kind of religious thing
that I'm excited about
and have some respect for.
When vice-presidential candidate Walter Mondale
came to San Francisco,
Jim Jones was part of the entourage
that boarded his private jet.
When Rosalyn Carter came to San Francisco,
she gave Jim Jones a private audience.
Jim Jones had political power that few people,
let alone preachers, could have imagined.
VERNON GOSNEY: Jim Jones represented the Peoples Temple
as a progressive movement that was threatened--
that there were outside forces
who didn't want us to do what we were doing,
and it was the government.
The government was infiltrating
and wiretapping and trying to kill people
or assassinate people.
That's what was happening.
FORTSON: He was always paranoid that someone
was going to get in and try to kill him--
that they had two people
that had dedicated their lives
that they were going to jump in front of Jones
and take the bullet
kind of like the Secret Service, so to speak.
Jim started changing a lot in the '70s.
He was taking drugs.
I think he said it was his kidneys at the time.
And he was getting more and more paranoid.
Incredibly paranoid.
There was always threats.
Always, always, always, always threats.
They were there.
They were just about to try to destroy us
if we weren't always vigilant about our movement.
There was a fire in the San Francisco Temple.
The Temple was burned down
and had to be rebuilt.
The fire proved they are out to get us.
They so don't want us to do what we're doing.
They've burned down the Temple.
They'll do anything to keep us from doing what we're doing,
so we have to be even stronger.
JIM JONES: What about the fact that the Ku Klux Klan
has increased 100 times in its membership?
Where? Not Mississippi, I'm talking about New York state.
It's the church's duty
to have a place of protection for its people.
LAURA JOHNSTON KOHL: December of '75,
90 of us went by plane into Guyana and saw
where we were building the community there.
JIM JONES:
TIM CARTER: What I saw that creation
as being was building a city where we could move
and raise our children
outside of the oppression and the racism
of the United States of America.
When I first went into Jonestown,
it was just a footpath in the rain forest.
We had Indians in front of us with machetes,
and we had Indians behind us with machetes.
300 miles into the jungle,
we literally built a city in the middle of the jungle,
in the middle of nowhere.
Hello, family.
It's been a... it's such a joy and great pleasure
being here because of Father's love.
We are trying to make, and we are making, a place of refuge
for all of you here.
There is no... nothing at all that I would...
that I have any holdings there.
I do not want to go back
in any way, shape or form to the States.
I love it here and this is the place
where all of you are going to be.
KRISTINE KRAVITZ: Pretty soon we were seeing film footage
of the first crew that went down there.
♪ We are all a happy family... ♪
We all wanted to go. I wanted to go.
It looked like... like freedom.
♪ God loves us every one ♪
♪ We're a happy family ♪
♪ Yes, we are. ♪
(laughing)
Now will each of you give a very fond embrace,
a salutary kiss or greeting to your neighbor
and let's fill this atmosphere
with warmth and love.
LAURA JOHNSTON KOHL: We thought of ourselves as one big family
that did handle our own discipline.
I was in a lot of the meetings where...
people were spanked or beaten, and I...
I was slapped once also in a public meeting.
People were brought up front and asked...
had to tell who they had slept with
and who they had sneaked off to a restaurant with.
There wasn't a week that went by
that I wasn't called up on the floor
because of my behavior, because of my attitude.
"Stanley Clayton, up, front, center."
JANET SHULAR: He would ask people,
"What do you think we ought to do with 'em?
You think he ought to get a good boxing?"
And then he'd get
a resounding roar, "Yes!"
You might fight five people in one night.
Well, you know, you're very tired!
I've seen situations where
they actually knocked the person out
and actually took water
and threw water back on him, woke him up,
and whooped him some more.
I had welts really bad,
and when I went to work the next day,
one of my employees noticed the welts when I sat down.
And I just broke down and told her.
She didn't even know I was Peoples Temple.
And she called the manager of the station up
and they talked to me about leaving.
I couldn't say good-bye to my son or my husband
because at that point it was like the Gestapo.
The families were turning in each other.
If I had said good-bye, one of them would have reported me.
JOYCE SHAW-HOUSTON: It's kind of like when you get married and you have this ideal.
And, you know, you're in love,
and then the honeymoon wears off and reality sets in
and most people, once the going gets rough,
don't jump out immediately.
LAURA JOHNSTON KOHL: In one planning commission meeting,
Jim was getting notes, kind of love notes,
from one of the members on the planning commission.
FORTSON: Jones is sitting there calmly and so another lady said,
"Well, I don't know why you keep doing that.
What makes you think you've got something that he wants anyway?"
And so another woman says, "Well, you know what?
"You ought to just take off your clothes
and show him what you got. You ain't got nothin'."
And so by this time they looked back to Jones
and so he looks over his glasses
and he nods with approval.
"Yeah, that's a good idea."
JUANELL SMART: She was to be totally naked and she was down to nothing
but her skin, not even any shoes on,
you know, no bra, no panties, no nothing.
Then they begin to say what her breasts looked like,
her stomach, butt, vagina, you name it.
Everything they could think of, they were saying.
By this time her face is red;
her body's almost red from embarrassment;
and I noticed something.
Jones was sitting looking over his sunglasses,
but he had a smile on his face like he's really enjoying
this woman being torn down.
I have a conscious memory of sitting there
thinking to myself, "This is wrong."
And I didn't do a damned thing
to stand up and say, "This is wrong."
It's like a child in a dysfunctional family.
On a certain level it's normal, you know?
I just kind of took everything in stride.
But then we felt like we had gotten involved
and gotten in so deep that...
it was actually no way out.
I had traveled on Bus 7, which was Jim's bus.
And he sat down next to me.
And I was sitting there and I thought,
"That's weird.
It smells like alcohol next to me."
And he leaned over and he said,
"Do you know what you do to me?"
He had informed me that I was to come in--
on Bus 7 there was a room in the back
...for just him.
He had books. He had a desk. He had a bed.
When everyone got off the bus at the rest stop,
I went into his little room and I sat there and waited for him.
And finally, he opened the door,
and without any talk or anything,
he just pulled down his pants,
and, um...
and had sex with me.
And as I lay there frightened,
um, not sure what to do,
and as I shivered, he'd say to me,
"This is for you. I'm doing this for you, Debbie."
I'm Senator Moscone. How are you?
Very good to see you, too.
MARSHALL KILDUFF: Well, in 1975, it was a mayoral election in San Francisco:
a conservative candidate
and a liberal candidate,
George Moscone.
Jones had several hundred people
who would go door to door election day.
Instead of a group that might give you 20 or 30
of these people or 100, you had 300 or 400.
God bless you for being here and let's go on and win.
JOHN R. HALL: The Moscone election was very close.
The margin of victory was probably no more than 4,000.
So you had to credit
a big chunk of decisive votes to Peoples Temple.
REBECCA MOORE: The reward for the election of George Moscone
was the appointment of Jim Jones as chairman
of the City Housing Authority.
DEBORAH LAYTON: What was once a really boring meeting
all of a sudden became like really interesting
when Jim Jones became the head of it
because we all came down on the buses, and we were instructed
that when Jim came in we stood
and when he left or spoke, we'd stand and clap.
The sheer staginess, the controlled atmosphere
that sort of enclosed this guy
made him so unusual, so different than the norm,
that it made me, uh, very curious.
My biggest problem was getting somebody to sort of talk to me
about the church in kind of conversational terms.
STOEN: I had become friends with some of the various defectors,
and one of the defectors told me
that she was going to speak publicly about Jones.
And I said to her, I said, "Well, if you're going
"to speak publicly, I'm going to speak with you.
I'm not going to let you do this alone."
KILDUFF: I finally heard
from some ex-members who heard I was interested
in writing a story about the Temple
for New West magazine, and they took a chance.
They called me and some of them said, you know,
"You don't know nothing about the church.
Wait till I tell you what I went through."
LAYTON: Before the article was going to break,
Jim convinced the publisher that she needed to read it to him.
He was on one phone and I was on... taping the other end of it
while somebody else listened on another one.
Jim didn't understand
that there was no way he could talk her down
from whatever this article was going to say.
And as she continues to read this article,
he's looking around the room at about five of us
and you could tell that he's becoming more and more anxious
and, you know, his mouth becomes dryer and dryer.
And he realizes that this article is going
to be hugely damning.
And it was midway through it,
he mouths to all of us in the room, "We're leaving tonight."
They flew out to Guyana
six hours before that article was going to hit.
REITERMAN: When Jim Jones decided that there was
too much pressure, too much trouble
to stay in San Francisco, he ordered the move to Jonestown,
and it happened almost overnight.
People were being taken to airports.
There were people who were packing their belongings
and leaving their homes
with virtually no explanation to their family members
as to where they were going or why they were going.
Fred Lewis came home and found that his wife had taken
their seven children and gone to Guyana,
along with all their possessions.
EUGENE SMITH: My wife had gone over three months prior,
and I was waiting on pins and needles
and I was talking to her probably twice a week
on the ham radio, and Leona Collier came up and said,
"Okay, Eugene, it's your time. You're going over."
Coming into Jonestown, you see a guard at the front gate
and you're all excited, you're going down this road.
The trailer comes to a stop
and then you can see the wooden pathway
that leads to the pavilion.
And you're just-- you want to run,
but, you know, you just try--
"All right, I'm going to be cool."
And just as you reach the edge of the pavilion,
people started rushing you that you knew.
You know, my wife was there.
Haven't seen my mother in over a year or so.
And I'm just hugging people, and it's like I have arrived
and everything is going to be okay now.
I have never been so totally happy or fulfilled in my life.
I can't begin to describe it.
You could sit here and talk all day long
and no words could describe the peace, the beauty,
the sense of accomplishment and responsibility
and camaraderie that's here.
It's, it's overwhelming. It really is.
You can't describe it.
You know, it was just such an exciting time.
Everything was new and unique and...
and, uh, just fun.
You know, we just had fun with it as it grew.
I just loved that we created what we ate,
that we did all these jobs.
POP JACKSON: What you think about your friends
back down in the States?
You think they should be here?
Well...
Do you want to share with them this morning?
Speak up! - I wished I could...
Well, can you do it? share with them...
Would you do it? But they won't listen to me.
Won't listen to you, huh?
JIM JONES, JR.: When you don't have anything, you own Jonestown.
You are part of Jonestown.
You were a shareholder of Jonestown
if you were African American.
It gave the opportunity
to really be a part of creating a utopia.
♪ Tell me why, tell me why, tell me why, mmm... ♪
♪ Why can't we live together? ♪
♪ Tell me why, tell me why, mmm... ♪
♪ Why can't we live together? ♪
♪ Everybody wants to live together ♪
♪ Why can't we live together? ♪
STEVEN KATSARIS: I think that Jim Jones took his group down there
because he was afraid to face the publicity
and answer the questions here in this country.
I don't think that he feels confident
having people talk to their relatives.
I think the only way he can survive and sustain
what he started is to isolate all his followers
from this country and from their families.
KILDUFF: The Concerned Relatives were the ex-members
who wanted other family members still in the church
to know they could leave.
They wanted them to feel that there was an outside world,
that Jones was wrong about telling people
they could never leave the church
and that they would be treated badly in the real world.
MOORE: The Concerned Relatives prompted FCC investigation
of Peoples Temple.
They organized letter-writing campaigns
to public officials, to members of Congress.
They were incredibly effective in mobilizing government
and media interest in Peoples Temple.
He was talking integration; he was talking helping people.
He was talking better this and better that.
REPORTER: What about now? What's your impression now?
Um, my impression now: that those are fronts for him.
Um, I think he's gone crazy.
SMITH: When Jim Jones wasn't there,
things tended to be a little bit lighter.
You know, people would be dancing or singing.
There would be music in different cottages.
But when Jones was present, it was very, very dark.
It was almost like a dark cloud.
LAYTON: In Jonestown, there was a speaker system
and only Jim spoke on it.
And it went 24 hours a day and he would tape himself.
So in the middle of the night, all through the night,
his voice was talking to you.
JIM JONES: The United States is calling for the removal
of all blacks and Indians.
So is England.
They want to have their immigrant black,
Indian population removed in six months.
KOHL: We had no other radio or TV or communication with parents
or any kind of, you know, uh, update that could show us
really that there's a whole other thing going on
besides what Jim was interpreting for us.
JIM JONES: I make my stand clear.
Give us our liberty or give us our death.
VILCHEZ: No matter where you were, you could hear.
You could hear it in--
in your, in your bunk at night.
You could hear it when you're in the outhouse.
You could hear it when you were working in the field.
You... you could hear it all the time.
JIM JONES: At least on those terms,
we choose our death and no one chooses it for us.
Don't try to take any of our children.
MOORE: There was this pervasive sense of being under attack
in Jonestown.
He told them
that things were just getting worse in the United States.
They couldn't go back home.
And not only that,
but these forces were traveling to Guyana to destroy them there.
KOHL: Over the summer of 1978,
all of us noticed that Jim was...
seemed to be getting sicker.
His harangues over the loudspeaker
were getting more and more frantic
and really just sounding more and more insane.
FORTSON: He had gotten to the place that even
his voice was becoming slurred, and he said it was
because the nurse was giving him the wrong medications.
But yet and still, every day it was getting worse and worse.
LAYTON: Every night at some point, his voice would come
over the loudspeaker and he'd say,
"I'm sending somebody out tonight,
"somebody you know, somebody you trust,
"and they're going to act like they want to leave,
but this is a loyalty test and you need to turn them in."
GOSNEY: A father would turn in a son.
A husband would turn in a wife.
A small child would turn in a parent.
There was no freedom to express to one another what was going on
because everything was suspect.
The most forbidden thing to express was to leave.
JIM JONES, JR.: He had a real issue with separation.
People could not leave him.
He took it as a betrayal to the cause and to him personally.
WOMAN: He said, "I really want to get away from here
and by Christmas I will be gone."
JIM JONES: By Christmas, do you want to be gone?
MAN: Yeah, well...
JIM JONES: By Christmas, do you want to be gone?
By Christmas, do you want to be gone?!
MAN: I would ask you, "Could I go home
and make a trip to see my people?"
JIM JONES: I have the power to send you home by Christmas,
but it's not on Trans World Airlines!
It's blasphemy!
It's blasphemy to talk about going back
when you have not been given any approval.
Do you want to go home?
MAN: No.
JIM JONES: Well, then, be seated and shut your mouth
and don't be in my face anymore.
JACKIE SPEIER: Congressman Ryan was unique in the political sphere.
He had this hands-on approach to legislating.
He just didn't take no for an answer.
So when he was in the State Assembly,
he went to Folsom State Prison and spent a week
as an inmate to understand the prison issues and prison reform.
He became concerned because a number of residents
in San Mateo County had become members of the Peoples Temple,
and family members started contacting him,
concerned about their whereabouts
and concerned about whether or not
they were being held against their will.
The word we were getting was
that there was an armed encampment.
It was enough for the congressman to say,
"You know what? I want to go find out for myself."
GOSNEY: There was a lot of preparation for Congressman Ryan's visit.
There was all these different scenarios
that were presented.
He wasn't going to let him in; he was going to let him in.
We were going to wait for them to come in
and we were going to kill them all when they came in.
SPEIER: I was very fearful about making the trip.
I had a copy of the Congressman's will
and placed it in a particular drawer in my desk,
just in case.
STEPHEN SUNG: We flew in sometime in the afternoon,
about 6:00 p.m.
We saw this beautiful sign,
"Welcome to Jonestown."
REITERMAN: As we approached Jonestown,
it was spartan, but...
very impressive.
How could you not be impressed that
out of the jungles of Guyana they had carved out a community?
They had crops growing.
They had cabins.
They had a little medical clinic,
a little day care area.
Flour, rice,
black-eyed peas,
more peas.
They have different containers around the place.
We couldn't go through all the tremendous inventory
they built up-- Kool-Aid.
'cause when the world... ♪
When Ryan came, he came on a Friday night
and, um, we put on a reception for him.
CARTER: The songs that we sang
that night, it was people saying,
"This is who we are and this is what we are about."
♪ That's the way ♪
♪ Of the world ♪
♪ Hearts of fire ♪
♪ Create love desire... ♪
SPEIER: It was a vibrant community.
I would never have imagined
that 24 hours later those people would be dead.
♪ Future disappears... ♪
♪ Oh, with love desire ♪
♪ Takes you high, takes you high, takes you higher ♪
♪ To your throne, you belong ♪
♪ That's the way... ♪
Everything up to that point was...
was good.
Everybody was thrilled that Ryan was thrilled.
He just kind of praised us.
RYAN: I think that all of you know that
I am here to find out more about...
questions have been raised about your operation here,
but I can tell you right now that from the few conversations
I've had with some of the folks here already this evening,
that whatever the comments are, there are some people here
who believe that this is the best thing
that ever happened to them in their whole life.
(cheering)
CARTER: That response to him was spontaneous.
It was loud. It was emotional.
(cheering and applause)
What I was feeling was this is
an opportunity that I can vocalize
how much I believe in what we are doing here.
The reporter next to me said,
"I've never felt anything like this before."
And that's because he hadn't felt anything like this before.
(cheering and applause continue)
I actually felt pretty good overall.
This went probably as well as it possibly could go so far.
GOSNEY: When Congressman Ryan came,
I wanted to pass him a note that said,
"Help us get out of Jonestown."
When one of the reporters
was walking around towards the edge of the pavilion,
I stuck the note in the fold of his arm
and it fell to the ground.
And so I picked up the note and I gave it back to him
and I said, "You dropped something,"
and this little boy about nine years old started saying,
"He passed a note! He passed a note!"
Don Harris, who was the NBC reporter,
came up to me and Congressman Ryan
and handed us these two notes
from people that wanted to leave.
So at that point we knew
that something was very, very wrong.
CLAYTON: I was, like, the first
to rise up the following morning.
It was a bright, sunny day,
but it was a dark day.
It just didn't feel right.
We were there, supposed to interview
some of the family members
to ask them why they cannot leave.
Are you happy here?
Oh, I should say I am.
I've never been any happier in my life.
Do you want to stay?
Definitely.
I certainly do.
Some people have said
they couldn't leave if they wanted to.
Do you think you could?
Yeah. If I really wanted to.
I'm free to go if I was really...
really wanted to, I would be free to go.
Well, I believe it. I've been here a few days and...
I have... I have absolutely no complaints at all.
It is really nice here. It is really nice.
And I'll be leaving in a couple of weeks
and they could come with me,
but they said they didn't want to come.
(thunder rumbling)
CARTER: Literally out of nowhere,
this storm came blowing in.
The sky turned black.
The wind came up, and it just... torrential rain.
But what I personally felt
was that evil itself blew into Jonestown.
It was about 11:30 in the morning.
Edith Parks walked up to Jackie Speier and said,
"I am being held prisoner here. I want to go home."
Yeah.
Immediately, the whole... vibe changed.
I mean, this reporter said, "We got our story."
You know, "The story here, it's happening right now."
Jim Jones came to talk to me.
And the first thing he said was,
"Don't say anything to the reporters.
They're all liars."
The last words I heard from Jim Jones was,
"I just want you to know that you can
come back to Jonestown and visit your son any time you want."
HARRIS: Last night, someone came
and passed me this note.
He's the one that I'm just talking about.
He, uh-- this is what he's talking about.
This is the man that wants to leave his son here.
Doesn't it concern you, though,
that this man, for whatever reason,
one of the people in your group...
People play games, friend.
They lie. They lie.
What can I do about liars?
Are you people going to...
Leave us, I just beg you.
Please leave us.
Bill, we will bother nobody.
Anybody wants to get out of here can get out of here.
They have no problem about getting out of here.
They come and go all the time.
I don't know what kind of game-- people like...
who-- people like publicity.
Some people do. I don't.
But some people like publicity.
But if it's so damned bad,
why is he leaving his son here?
Can you give me a good reason for that?
When word got out
that people were leaving...
all hell broke out.
You bring those kids back here!
You bring 'em back! - One second. One second.
Don't you touch my kids!
SPEIER: More people wanted to leave.
And then Jim Jones started
to make pleas to people saying,
"You can't leave. You're my people.
Why do you want to leave?"
It was an emotional roller coaster
for everyone there.
Don't you touch my kids!
Mother! You're not taking my kids!
No!
SPEIER: Jones was in the pavilion.
At one point he said,
"Well, of course, you can go if you want,"
but clearly that was not the message.
The message was, "You are betraying me."
GOSNEY: I went and I spoke to the congressman
in the pavilion.
I told him,
"You are in extreme danger.
You need to leave."
And he said, "You don't have anything to worry about."
He says, "You have the congressional
shield of protection around you."
And I just looked at him like he was
totally insane.
CARTER: Congressman Ryan is directly across from me.
And I saw this Temple member
walk up behind him and he was actually crying
and shaking, and all of a sudden
he pulled out this knife and said,
"All right, motherfucker, you're going to die."
We all jumped on him
and there were just screams of horror everywhere.
SPEIER: We heard this great uproar in the pavilion
and the truck stopped.
Shortly thereafter Congressman Ryan
starts walking out in this bloodstained shirt.
REITERMAN: Those of us
in the news media viewed Congressman Ryan
as a form of protection,
a shield of the United States.
What happened there,
in those few moments,
made it clear that nobody was safe.
CARTER: I went back to my cottage.
All I wanted to do is see my wife and my son.
Gloria and I were laid down on the cot
and we just held each other, and I said, "You know,
I think we may all die." And she said...
she kind of looked at me and then she looked down
at our son, who was playing on the floor
with a toy and she said, "You're scaring him."
I had literally opened my mouth to say,
"We need to leave,"
when there was an announcement on the loudspeaker:
"Will everybody report to the pavilion for a meeting."
(church bell ringing)
SUNG: We drove back to the airstrip, Port Kaituma.
All of a sudden we saw a dump truck
from far away arriving to this airstrip.
We realized these people catch up from--
the people from Jim Jones,
they're very close lieutenant to Jim Jones.
These three guys-- they get off the truck,
walk around this area,
as though they were looking for somebody.
They looked in people's faces.
They stared at us for a little bit,
but they didn't say one word.
They didn't ask anything.
Right away they walked back to their truck.
They drove this truck all the way across the run...
the airstrip and stop on this side of the plane.
So literally, they cut us off from the jungle.
We never know there's people hidden inside the dump truck.
The moment it stopped, they start shooting right away.
(gunfire)
Everybody ran
towards the plane, on this side of the plane.
They tried to hide underneath the wheels.
Then the Congressman ran under the plane,
and I sort of followed suit
and got behind one of the tires.
(gunfire)
SUNG: All you can hear is the gun--
"pop-pop-pop"-- goes off constantly.
We lie flat
on the tarmac at that moment.
But shortly afterwards, I heard my partner, the cameraman,
he yelled, "Oh, shit!"
He said he got... he got shot.
He was sitting up.
There were people tumbling and yelling
and letting out cries as they were hit.
I was hit in my arm and wrist.
I felt a tremendous explosion right next to my head.
I got a tremendous pain
ran through my arm and on my shoulder.
I was really shaking, but I didn't move.
I took the pain and hold still.
I was lying on my side,
pretending that I was dead
with my head down.
And, um...
they came and shot me
at point-blank, point-blank range.
I remember someone coming to me
and telling me that Congressman Ryan was dead.
But I was at a point where
I didn't know how much more time
I was going to be alive.
SUNG: The gun's dead and all we can hear,
this one engine was still running.
So all you could hear, the engine noise.
And that's it.
(church bell ringing)
CARTER: We walked up
to the pavilion together with everybody else.
It was very quiet. It was very somber.
It was very sad, but it wasn't a death march.
CLAYTON: He said,
"Well, we got to go.
"We got to get out of here.
"We got to... we got to go to sleep.
Get the solution together."
CARTER: Maria Katsaris walked up to him
and whispered in his ear, and he looked at her, he said,
"Is there any way to make it taste less bitter?"
And she said, "No, no, apparently not."
And he said, "Is it quick?"
And she said, "Yeah, it's supposed to be quick."
CARTER: On the last day of Jonestown, Christine Miller stood up
and said, "I don't want to die here.
"Why are we going to throw all this away?
We've worked too hard."
She's calling Jim Jones on some of the things
that he has promised them that they were going to do.
Jim had promised that as an alternative to them
dying in Jonestown, that they could go to the Soviet Union.
Eventually, the rhetoric ratchets up enough
that she is shouted down.
CARTER: That's when I noticed that there were
armed guards that had kind of taken positions
up around the pavilion.
I'm thinking, where did all these fucking guns come from?
CLAYTON: Jones came down off the podium
and he said, "Hey, we got to do this.
"We got to... we got to go.
That if we don't go this way, we going to go like this."
They were coming, taking, like, newborn babies
out of their mothers' arms.
There was a young kid; his name was Thurman.
When he came inside,
he bumped into me.
At that same time,
he's falling to the ground, and he's going into convulsion.
CLAYTON: I grabbed the kid from the shoulders up.
In that process of taking him out of the pavilion,
this kid died in my arms.
I mean, I just, I just felt the life go out of him.
To me, at that point,
I knew that this shit was real.
I ain't never used the term "suicide,"
and I'm not going to never use the term "suicide."
That man was killing us.
CARTER: As I walked up to the back of the pavilion,
I saw a woman named Rosie on the ground,
crying, holding her dead baby.
There were maybe eight or nine other people
who were dying or in the process of dying.
Inside, I just wanted things to stop.
Please, just let me catch my breath.
Let me figure out what's happening here.
I looked to my right, and I saw my wife
with our son in her arms
and poison being injected into his mouth.
My son was dead,
and he was frothing at the mouth.
You know, cyanide makes people froth at the mouth.
My wife died in my arms,
and my dead baby son was in her arms.
And I held her and said, "I love you. I love you,"
'cause that's all I could say.
It was like...
She died in my arms, man.
CLAYTON: My wife came up to me.
She didn't have no tears in her eyes.
She just was, was just in a daze.
"My mother, my grandmother, my sister, my brother--
they gone."
You know, she said, "Just take me.
"Just take me and just lay me down
next to my grandmama."
And she went up to that Kool-Aid,
to that death barrel, and she just...
didn't hesitate, just took it and drunk it,
and then told me to hold her, to take her, and I did.
And she died in my arms.
And, um...
once I laid her down and she told me how she wanted to lay
with her grandmother, I, um...
at that point, knew that I didn't have
no reason to be here no more.
CARTER: They were just fucking slaughtered.
They were fucking slaughtered.
There was nothing dignified about it.
Had nothing to do with revolutionary suicide,
had nothing to do about making a fucking statement.
It was just senseless waste,
senseless waste and death.
WOMAN: "To whomever finds this note.
"Collect all the tapes, all the writing,
"all the history.
"The story of this movement, this action,
"must be examined over and over.
"We did not want this kind of ending.
"We wanted to live,
"to shine, to bring light to a world
that is dying for a little bit of love."
KOHL: I never believed in heaven in my whole life.
You know, that's not the way I operated.
But when I was in Guyana, when I'd watch the sunrise,
I actually thought there was a heaven on Earth.
And now I can't believe in heaven anymore.
WOMAN: "There's quiet as we leave this world.
"The sky is gray.
"People file by us slowly
"and take the somewhat bitter drink.
Many more must drink."
I'm saddened because it didn't work out.
Because it just seemed so beautiful.
And I'll say this about November 18th:
I felt I'd lost a family.
And I knew I'd lost my children.
WOMAN: "A teeny kitten sits next to me watching.
"A dog barks.
"The birds gather on the telephone wires.
"Let all the story of this Peoples Temple be told."
SMITH: We were people that... we wanted to make a change.
It's a shame it didn't happen.
It might not never happen.
But one thing I can say, at least we tried,
and we didn't sit back and wait on the laurels
of somebody else to try it.
Yes, we tried it.
Yes, it was a failure.
Yes, it was very tragic.
But at least we tried.
WOMAN: "If nobody understands,
"it matters not.
"I'm ready to die now.
"Darkness settles over Jonestown
on its last day on Earth."
FORTSON: I'd never had any dreams
of Jonestown until this one dream came.
I could see myself in Jonestown walking,
and when I looked to my left, there was my son.
He was standing in the middle of a duffel bag.
And just right
when I got ready to reach to touch his head,
he pulled the bag up like this, and the bag fell,
and he was gone.
♪ ♪