Jim Jones, the son of a Klansman, considered himself the reincarnation of both Jesus and Lenin.  Jim had visions of an impending nuclear holocaust in which only the towns of Ukiah, California and Belo Horizonte, Brazil would survive. With that in mind, he relocated his first People's Temple to Ukiah to await the Armageddon.

Tired of waiting for the third world war, he moved his church to San Francisco where he received numerous humanitarian awards and became the Chairman of the city's Housing Authority. It was there that he first practiced a ritual called "White Nights" in which he prepared his followers for an act of revolutionary suicide to protest racism and fascism.

By 1977, as things started getting weirder, he was forced to move his church to Guyana, South America. There, in the isolation of the jungle, Jimmy created his dream community, Jonestown, and lost his mind. Jim's nirvana rapidly deteriorated into a nightmare which he knew of only one way to end.

On November 18, 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan from San Francisco went on a fact-finding mission investigating alleged human rights abuses at Jonestown. After only a day at the jungle compound, a member tried to stab Ryan. The injury was minor, but Ryan decided to leave with his party and 18 temple members who wanted to to return to the United States. Other members of the cult followed the group to the airstrip and opened fire, killing Ryan, three journalists, and one of the departing members. Eleven others were injured.

Hours later, the good reverend ordered his followers to drink from a tub of grape-flavored Fla-Vor-Aid laced with potassium cyanide and tranquilizers. All 900+ did. Children died first; babies were killed by poison squirted into their mouths with a syringe. Then the adults. Most were poisoned, some forcibly. Some were shot by security guards. As the ritual suicide progressed, it is unclear whether Jim put a bullet through his brain, or someone did it for him.

Within a few months of the mass deaths, other People's Temple members who had survived also committed suicide, with one mother slitting the throats of her three children. A year later, ex-People's Temple members Jeanne and Al Mills and their daughter Linda, who had been speaking out about their cult experience, were shot to death in their Berkeley, CA home. They had become among the most vocal People's Temple critics and feared for their safety.

When the bodies came back home, many could not be identified. Several cemeteries refused to take them until the Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland stepped forward in 1979 and accepted 409 bodies. The remaining victims had been cremated or buried in family cemeteries.

Jonestown itself has all but vanished, stripped by villagers and consumed by a fire in the early 1980s. Some believe that Jimmy was linked to the CIA and that the Jonestown massacre was in fact a mind control experiment. If it was, it was a total success. Years later, serial killer Henry Lee Lucas confessed that he did indeed personally delivered the cyanide to his "good friend, Jim Jones."

Every year, on November 18, a memorial is held at Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California, where 260 People's Temple children are buried. Due to the lack of dental records, the children were never able to be identified and thus were buried together there. On the 20th anniversary of the mass suicide, Liz Aguirre, president of Ultraseal International, hand-delivered a $5,000 check to finance a Vietnam memorial-type 20-foot wall to be erected in the cemetary. The black, granite panels of the memorial will have the names and ages of the victims inscribed as well as a dedication written by poet Maya Angelou.

Good call, Luffy! I'm working on an article on Jones for the "Human Monsters" section of Monstropedia. Trouble I'm having is, he was so thoroughly bad its difficult to create a medium-sized article! 

He was openly bi-sexual, and outlawed sex within his congregation - even for married couples - except with him. As with most of these fake messiah cult-leaders, sex and sexual domination lay at the root. Once, in the middle of a sermon, he asked that everyone who had had sex with him raise their hand. When one man didn't, he shouted out: "You weren't ashamed when you were squealing with delight as we were f****** the other night, were you, Harry?"
Some "reverend"!

Members were publicly flogged. He often poisoned "uppity" members to make it seem as if they were suffering divine punishment.

The ex-members who were assassinated afterwards, btw, were Jeannie and Al "MERTLE". She wrote a book all about Jones and his evil ways, mockingly titled "Six Years With God". It was written and published under her maiden name, Mills, hence the confusion.

Isn,t this the biggest cult killing of all time?

edited to add: I might add something of Henry Lee Lucas to the serial killer topic because he is mentioned in this article.

In modern times, certainly. The biggest mass-suicide would probably be the Jewish defenders at Masada (at least 1000). The biggest killing carried out against a cult would be the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. Although it lasted 40 years, one incident alone stands out in the annals of infamy: the slughter in the town of Beziers. When asked by one of his men how they would be able to determine which were Christians and which were Cathars, the commander famously replied -"Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eis" ("Kill them all – the Lord will recognise His own", now paraphrased as kill em all - let god sort em out.)  Around 20, 000 people died there including women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice. The town was razed to the ground.

Humankind is pretty much strange.........

It was horrible - I'll never forget the photographs of the dead people....

~Morticia

[prezhorusin04]

Remembering the Jonestown Massacre:
http://nwowatcher.com/smf/index.php?topic=2776.0

[prezhorusin04]

It's interesting that Jones was a member of the "Disciples of Christ", and friends with top leaders of the John Birch Society. Edgar Cayce was also a member of the Disciples of Christ.

http://www.disciples.org/

[Delamorte]

I remember, as a kid, watching it on the news and never could understand how such brainwashing can happen on such a large scale. Now I sit back and watch the Iraq War and see that it can be done on an even larger scale. World Wide even. (well almost)
What about the Holocoust ? I think that would constitute as the Largest Mass Murder Ever!

I generally refer to the Nazis as a killing cult, oddly enough i have ancestors who were nazis.

I generally refer to the Nazis as a killing cult, oddly enough i have ancestors who were nazis.

You may well have neighbours who are, too...

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y30/storm_dancer/bushnazi.jpg

What about the Holocoust ? I think that would constitute as the Largest Mass Murder Ever!

The Soviet Union under Stalin murdered at least 43,000,000 of its own citizens...

Has anyone here heard the audio recording of the mass suicide that happened at Jonestown? It's actually rather disturbing, and that means a lot coming from me.

[Regina Terra]

It wasn't a mass suicide though, the gunmen and a few others forced all the children, women, and husbands to drink the poison in that order, then arranged them to look like they all died peacefully before knocking back the stuff themselves.

Actually, most of them were religious whackos that did it of their own free will. The gunmen only went after the minority who weren't overjoyed to join their idiot messiah in death.

[Moloch]

Kreepy, can you upload a link to that audio?