Jonestown reflections: 36 years later
[NOTE: Yesterday a comment that referenced Jonestown caused me to revisit this post from six years ago. It was written on the 30th anniversary of the suicide/massacre; just a few days ago was the 36th anniversary. I think it holds some lessons for today, perhaps even more than when I first wrote it: about mind control, charisma, susceptibility to propaganda, idealism, the left, totalitarian systems, and press ignorance. You may think you remember, and yet the details could surprise you. So here it is again, slightly edited.]
The other evening I turned on the TV and came across this CNN documentary entitled “Escape from Jonestown.” I watched for the next two hours, because to my surprise it turned out to be riveting.
Even though I recall Jonestown well, and thought I had remembered most of the salient facts about it, there was still much more to learn. The story contains facts of tragic relevance even today, November 18, 2008, which is the thirtieth anniversary of that terrible mass suicide.
We call it a mass suicide because the evidence (and there is plenty of it, including an audiotape of the horrendous proceedings) indicates that many of Jones’ followers cooperated in their own deaths. In fact, the term “drink the Kool Aid” derives from that fact.
But what most people don’t know is the extent of the psychological and physical pressure that was placed on these people from the moment they entered the cult, as well as the fact that fully one-third of the nearly one thousand who died there were children who could hardly be said to have freely cooperated. There is also forensic evidence that those adults who did protest or try to escape were forcibly injected with cyanide as they attempted to flee.
So I prefer to call it a suicide/massacre. That places most of the blame where it belongs, on Jim Jones himself.
The first relevant lesson to be learned is the danger of blindly following a charismatic leader. Jones became more deranged later on, but as his congregation grew in the 60s and 70s, he was a respected member of the San Francisco community, with connections to Democratic politicians (I’m not sure there’s any other kind in San Francisco) and a strong reputation for racial equality.
The second lesson is to beware of the trust that gullible and trusting human beings can place in that charismatic leader. Jones required that people give over their lives and their assets when they became followers—a danger sign. Members had varied reasons for joining, but it can probably be safely said that most of them were exceedingly idealistic. According to the testimony of many of the survivors (a small group, but an articulate one), once they realized the true character of the man in whom they’d placed such hope and faith, it was too late. They were in a prison, subject to various forms of physical and psychological torture in Jones’ attempt to control the inmates. And in the final year before the terrible end, the prison we know as Jonestown was at least as isolated as Alcatraz, because it was located in the heart of the Guyanese jungle.
Two forms the psychological torture/indoctrination took are especially instructive. The first is that as Jones became increasingly paranoid, he regularly harangued his followers that they would be under attack soon, either from the CIA or the Guyanese authorities, and that mass suicide would be the only way out. In fact, he had many rehearsals for the killings, which had the effect of getting people used to what would be happening and more ready to accept it, as well as more doubtful when the real thing began to happen that it actually was the real thing; maybe it was another rehearsal?
The second was a particular type of psychological coercion described in Deborah Layton’s very fine and highly recommended book Seductive Poison. I am describing this from memory (I read the book many years ago), but my recollection is that they were encouraged to inform on each other if they heard anyone complain about or criticize Jones or Jonestown. The tattler was then publicly praised, while the complainer was subject to public harangues, physical punishment, withdrawal of privileges, and ostracism. In a totally controlled environment, this was especially difficult to take, even for those with strong personalities.
What was even more terrible—and diabolical—was the fact that Jones made some of his close confederates pretend to be be discontented, confiding their criticism of Jones and Jonestown to others. The listeners had no idea that these were false “confessions.” If they listened sympathetically and perhaps shared their own discontent, they were reported and punished. But worse, if they failed to report the confidences of their “friends”—who were actually, unbeknownst to them, Jim Jones plants—then they were punished as well.
The entire system encouraged extreme distrust of sharing any complaints with or confiding in anyone. Therefore no mass rebellion or escape plans could be hatched. A resident never knew who was telling the truth, or who would go straight to Jones with the news. Even those who hated Jones and Jonestown had to wrestle with their consciences about whether to report on a friend; the consequences for failure to do so could be dire.
I doubt that even the KGB or the Stasi were quite as able to control all aspects of their subjects’ personal lives as Jones was. I mention the latter two organizations because it is not insignificant that Jim Jones was a Socialist/Communist, who greatly admired Cuba and the USSR. This little fact had escaped my memory as well, but it takes on a greater significance in retrospect. It is, quite simply, no accident.
One of the things Jones had been planning and contemplating in his last year was a possible mass exodus to the Soviet Union. He also instructed the Temple’s money to be left to the Soviet Union. Some of the dead left handwritten notes to that effect as well.
Watching the CNN documentary and hearing the survivors’ tell their fascinating stories, it became clear that they (like Deborah Layton) are hardly lacking in brainpower. This is the next lesson: intelligence has nothing to do with it. If these people were susceptible (and they were), it was not because they were not smart. It was because they were insufficiently skeptical of a charismatic demagogue, and of the limits of idealism.
Another lesson is how connected many on the Left were to Jones’ movement. Angela Davis and Huey Newton were involved, for example, in the rehearsals for suicide:
[Jones] set up a false sniper attack upon himself and begin his first series of White Nights, called the “Six Day Siege”, where Jones spoke to Temple members about attacks from outsiders and had them surround Jonestown with guns and machetes. The fiery rallies took an almost surreal tone as Angela Davis and Huey Newton communicated via radio-telephone to the Jonestown crowd, urging them to hold strong against the “conspiracy.”
Mark Lane, the Kennedy assassination conspiricist, was also quite influential as Jones’ lawyer, which I also hadn’t before realized. He helped fan the flames of paranoia:
In 1978, Lane began to represent the Peoples Temple. Temple leader Jim Jones hired Lane and Donald Freed to help make the case of what it alleged to be a “grand conspiracy” by intelligence agencies against the Peoples Temple…
In September of 1978, Lane visited Jonestown, spoke to Jonestown residents, provided support for the theory that intelligence agencies conspired against Jonestown and drew parallels between Martin Luther King and Jim Jones. Lane then held press conferences stating that “none of the charges” against the Temple “are accurate or true” and that there was a “massive conspiracy” against the Temple by “intelligence organizations,” naming the CIA, FBI, FCC and the U.S. Post Office. Though Lane represented himself as disinterested, the Temple paid Lane $6,000 per month to help generate such theories….Lane later wrote a book about Jonestown that repeated his paranoia about CIA involvement, parroting the Jones party line.
Another important lesson that’s also forgotten is that Ryan and his entourage, including the reporters, seem to have been fooled by Jones and Jonestown. This has happened time and again in history, when people go to investigate a controlled environment. Although Ryan, his aides, and the reporters who went with them (almost all of whom were killed by Jones) are to be commended for their heroism and are deeply mourned, they also showed naivete in failing to understand the total control Jones had over his flock, and the depths of his evil. The extent of true evil, and the techniques it can use to coerce and silence, can be difficult for the good to understand:
Before leaving Jonestown for the airstrip, Congressman Ryan had told Temple attorney Charles Garry that he would issue a report that would describe Jonestown “in basically good terms.” Ryan stated that none of the sixty relatives Ryan had targeted for interviews wanted to leave, the 14 defectors constituted a very small portion of Jonestown’s residents, that any sense of imprisonment the defectors had was likely because of peer pressure and a lack of physical transportation, and even if 200 of the 900+ wanted to leave “I’d still say you have a beautiful place here.” Similarly, Washington Post reporter Charles Krause stated that, on the way back to the airstrip, he was unconvinced that Jonestown was as bad as defectors had claimed because there were no signs of malnutrition or physical abuse, while many members appeared to enjoy Jonestown and only a small number of the over 900 residents elected to leave.
It is tempting to think “it couldn’t happen to me.” We all like to think of ourselves as strong, both psychologically and physically. I have very little doubt, for example, that I would never join such a group in the first place. But I can see how anyone would be vulnerable once placed in that environment, with no way out.
I hope and trust I could resist, even then. But extreme isolation, brainwashing to stir up paranoia, constant rehearsal for death, and the sort of coercion and control Layton describes to isolate each person and make him/her think there is no escape, could take an enormous toll. In the case of the Jonestown inhabitants, they were extreme idealists who had ceded a great deal of autonomy to a leader and a group at the outset. Very few of them had a chance.
The survivors are suffused with guilt, and continue to mourn every day of their lives. Time has not healed these wounds. Some of them still live in the San Francisco area, and those who do sometimes visit the site of the mass grave in Oakland, the final resting place of those who died at Jonestown whose bodies were never identified. Many of these were children.
This is a moment to remember them and all who died there, as well as the suffering survivors. We can honor them by attempting to learn the lessons of their lives and deaths:
No surprise that Angela Davis and Huey Newton were involved or that Jim Jones was a Communist. The left are literally the party of death.
I was raised to be anti-Catholic but I’ve had to reevaluate my position. Ever since the French Enlightenment anti-Catholic thinkers like to call themselves the enlightened ones in contrast to the church which is supposedly the home of superstition and darkness. Now that they have had their chance to demonstrate their enlightenment, the darkness of the church looks like a blazing sun compared to the enlightenment of the skeptics.
One of the unique contributions the Western branch of Christianity, the Roman Catholic church, made to mankind was the concept of bipolar power shared between the political class and the clergy – separation of church and state. The secular rulers and clergy frequently collaborated in repression but more often than not they competed. This competition helped prevent the group think seen in pagan and Communist circles in which the ideology and the power are merged into one small click led by a charismatic individual who takes on the roll of a human god.
This happy competition never developed in the Eastern branch of the Roman Empire in which the church became subservient to the now Christian Emperor. Although the Roman Empire survived in the East until 29 May, 1453 with full access to the Greek classics and native Greek speakers, they lacked the creative spark which developed in the Roman Catholic Universities and which eventually let to the modern world and to the scientific revolution.
I cannot share your sympathy, save for the children. Though, how damaged they were by even that time makes the value of their survival questionable.
I can no more give credence to their innocence than I can allow that Germans under Hitler, or the other people under other dictators, were innocent. I do not even grant that North Koreans are innocent. Choices not only were made, but are made daily. If doing your job involves murdering people innocent of any true crime, then you are the crime. The only ones I give some license for are those who, when they realized what was happening, at least tried to escape.
As for Ryan? He was blind because he chose to be blind. He went there to prove Jones was good, and pretty much left with that as his mantra. Another Walter Duranty, only this time he got what he deserved, not awards. Ryan was a supporter. An enabler. May he enjoy the burn right along with Jones.
Doom:
You should read her book. Many people disagreed but they were prisoners there. Most came into the cult when it (and Jones) seemed very different, and then were subjected to totalitarian brainwashing of a very advanced type, in a closed system (somewhat like North Korea). Some, however, were part and parcel of the enforcement of that system, and they are the ones I believe bear the most guilt. Jones bears by far the most guilt.
Her book is one of the most chilling things I have ever read.
Illuminati,
Regarding your comment that, “This happy competition never developed in the Eastern branch of the Roman Empire in which the church became subservient to the now Christian Emperor.”
The eastern church never gained that independence precisely because the Emperor remained. In the west, the Roman empire collapsed and the western church filled the vacuum. The western church remained largely unchallenged in their primacy until the 14th century.
Had the empire survived in the west, I suspect the western church would have developed a similar relationship.
“Exceedingly idealistic”. Isn’t it just another name for stupidity? It certainly sounds so for me. Lack of skepticism is the most common sign of a fool.
On this sad memory of Jonetown and its even sadder fate, a short passage from Joan Didion, regarding the present day Jim Jones wannbe in the White house.
Early in the primary season a certain number of Americans began to feel an almost inexpressible uneasiness about the direction events were taking. What made this uneasiness so hard to express was that it seemed to belie everything we officially claim–through election cycle after election cycle–that we want.
We were getting what we said we wanted.
For the first time in the memory of most of us a major political party was moving in the direction of nominating a demonstrably superior candidate–a genuinely literate man in a culture that does not prize literacy, an actually cosmopolitan man in an arena that deems tolerance of the world suspect by definition. A civil man. A politically adroit man. Enthusiasm was high. Participation was up.
Yet something troubled.
What troubled had nothing to do with the candidate himself.
It had to do instead with the reaction he evoked.
Close to the heart of the problem was the way in which only the very young were decreed capable of truly appreciating the candidate. Again and again, perfectly sentient adults cited the clinching arguments made on the candidate’s behalf by their children. Again and again we were told that this was a generational thing, we couldn’t understand. In a flash, we were back in high school, and we couldn’t sit with the popular kids, we didn’t get it. The Style section of The New York Times, on the Sunday after the election, mentioned the Obama T-shirt that “makes irony look old.”
Irony was now out.
Naiveté, translated into “hope,” was now in.
Innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.
Partisanship could now be appropriately expressed by consumerism.
I couldn’t count the number of snapshots I got e-mailed showing people’s babies dressed in Obama gear.
I couldn’t count the number of times I heard the words “transformational” or “inspirational,” or heard the 1960s evoked by people with no apparent memory that what drove the social revolution of the 1960s was not babies in cute T-shirts but the kind of resistance to that decade’s war that in the case of our current wars, unmotivated by a draft, we have yet to see. It became increasingly clear that we were gearing up for another close encounter with militant idealism–by which I mean the convenient but dangerous redefinition of political or pragmatic questions as moral questions–“convenient” because such redefinition makes those questions seem easier to answer, “dangerous” because this was a time when the nation was least prepared to afford easy answers.
Some who were troubled by this redefinition referred to those who remained untroubled by a code phrase. This phrase, which referred back to a previous encounter with militant idealism, the one that ended at the Jonestown encampment in Guyana in 1978, was “drinking the Kool-Aid.”
Though a supporter of Obama then, she clearly was uneasy with the cult like aspects which the democrats cultivated. And cultivated deliberately and most cynically.
2008 was the year of the soft coup. The democrats rode in on a wave of dissatisfaction directed at Bush and the republican administration. Much of it deserved, much of it a lie promulgated by the MSM to aid the democrats who sensed their moment. In Alaska, laughable trumped up charges were brought against the aging senior senator to weaken his electoral position. Charges which were, after the election, thrown out and the prosecutors charged with misconduct. Though we heard of no further action against those prosecutors. The charges against Ted Stevens worked as expected, he lost the election to a democrat challenger.
Unfortunately, the cult is alive and well and flourishing. It controls the mainstream media, academia, and has a stranglehold on the agencies of the federal government. Nobody in power is going to willingly give up that power.
Our little empty suit in the White House is a true ideologue and feels (rightly so) that he has the MSM to provide air cover and the cult to watch his back. If he can’t transform America as he promised to do, I’m sure he’s comfortable with ‘Jonestowning’ us because we are unworthy of him.
Jim Jones was a well spoken, fairly smart pastor of a church in San Francisco that was reaching out to damaged, some disadvantaged, most all troubled people and their children offering a better way to live, then he moved them across the ocean to form a nutty experiment of communal living.
It is my impression that a whole lot of people will abdicate their freedom and common sense for be part of a group with wonderful goals of equality and caring even when the actual conditions are anything but that. I think perhaps it is a tribal instinct that is built into most of us that can be turned and used for evil in some of us when we are vulnerable.
My heart goes out to most all of those poor people who became the bloated bodies shown on the pages of Time magazine. There were arguments and discussion about how much US money should be used to clean up the dead and bring them home and there was a brief shortage of cheap caskets in the US to take care of them.
As for other countries and their atrocities, I would not like to envision what kind of solution some in this country might try to develop if we were to ever go through a large disruption of our ability to get food and services for several years.
I would think readers of this column would not be looking to charismatic leaders for a solution but there are plenty of others who would and I don’t doubt that they might be as cruel and despicable as others in the past working together to achieve the greater good for mankind.
A more recent example of mind control leading to mass suicides.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven's_Gate_(religious_group)
Perhaps even more effective than Jonestown as these victims were in San Diego and could have walked away.
Here’s an article on the demographics of Jonestown, which looks at the place within the “context of black experience and black religion in America”. Some of its findings:
And the conclusion of the article:
All very, very sad.
Tim P said:
“Had the empire survived in the west, I suspect the western church would have developed a similar relationship.”
Good point.
The reason the left keeps falling into tyranny is because they have eliminated the church entirely and have concentrated all civil and moral authority in the political class led by their “dear leader” who serves as a human god. The left follow their dear leader blindly like a group of lemmings marching to their deaths.
Part of what makes Jonestown so chilling to think about is the idea that, once people were mentally and emotionally pulled into the group, they were then physically stopped from leaving. I think that’s one of the things about cults that people tell themselves they would never be fooled by — if being in a group or being allied with a trusted person means going to some isolated or protected place with no means of escape, that’s a giant red flag. People think that, okay, it’s conceivable that they might be taken in by some charismatic leader-of-men at some point, but if physical isolation ever came into the picture they would know to back away.
But then, like George said with the link to the Heaven’s Gate info, there are cults that keep their members emotionally and mentally spellbound while never restraining them physically. Tiny cults, too, consisting of just a few members, that don’t ring the mental warning bell of “large group following charismatic leader into strange beliefs and circumstances!” (Try looking up Amy Player, aka “thanfiction,” for a tale both fascinating and horrifying, the bulk of which involves just 3-5 cult victims. It can be a lot of work to follow links and tease the whole story from the bowels of the internet, but it makes for gripping reading.)
The point is that I don’t think people can rely on the “obvious” warning signs of cults to keep themselves safe. Cults aren’t always flashy, don’t always look crazy; the people who create them are often master manipulators, sociopaths who take the measure of their mark’s mind and tailor their approach to appeal to that person in particular. That’s why it’s so dangerous to think “it could never happen to me” — it’s more accurate, when reading about something like Jamestown, to think “that approach would never work on me.” And then ask yourself what approach would work on you.
I’ve done a lot of thinking while reading about different cults, examining my thought processes, biases, and the things I like to see in fellow human beings, trying to figure out how somebody like a cult leader would target me. I’ll probably never be in that situation, but I think I’m better off for the introspection.
You might find the Eric Hoffer book on mass movements enlightening.
http://www.amazon.com/The-True-Believer-Movements-Perennial/dp/0060505915
Jerry Brown — the sitting Governor of California — was a MAJOR booster of Jim Jones… and vice versa.
There are no end of photo ops featuring them both from that era.
Jones had financial supporters from Leftist circles all around the Bay Area.
And we’d better not forget the financial games Jones played on his flock. He was forcing most to divert their stipends through his hands. (!)
No small amount of his flock were drawing welfare benefits — annuities — and such — which Jones was ‘helping them’ redistribute to the needy. (His crew.)
They’d become financially trapped inside his psychic prison.
Illuminati,
I have to agree with you that “…their “dear leader” who serves as a human god. The left follow their dear leader blindly like a group of lemmings marching to their deaths.”
However, I think tyranny can exist within a religious framework also, but only when those in charge have lost sight of God and their main mission. I speak within the Judeo-Christian frame of reference. Islam is, by it’s very nature totalitarian.
Though saddened I am not surprised that otherwise intelligent people fell for the Jim Jones snake oil. Neither am I surprised they killed their children, each other, and themselves in the situation they were in. When you consider the results of the famous Milgram experiment, or the equally infamous Stanford Prison Experiment. You begin to see that not just evil men can perform such acts, but good men in evil situations.
Jones in his heart of Hearts looked upon his followers as rubes. Much as did Hitler and Stalin. Much as does Obama and today’s left. The revelations of Grubergate should not surprise anyone. The governing class, both democrat and republican view the electorate this way. They have since the late 19th century.
Look at Woodrow Wilson who 100 years ago almost, felt he needed to form the Committee of Public Information, also known as the Creel Committee, to help steer public opinion towards entering the war, on the side of the allies. Walter Lippmann was a member of that committee. He later went on to write Public Opinion, in which he argued that … mass man functioned as a “bewildered herd” who must be governed by “a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality.” The elite class of intellectuals and experts were to be a machinery of knowledge to circumvent the primary defect of democracy, the impossible ideal of the “omnicompetent citizen”. This attitude, while it could be considered elitist today, was held as liberal by the standards of the 1920s, endorsing the continuation of civil society rather than populist fascism.”
Sound familiar?
When it comes to the political class, they’re all Jim Jonses to a greater or lesser extent.
In a writing workshop I attended this year, a young women told us about the book she is writing about her recent experience in a cult. What was most striking was how long it took her to figure out that it WAS a cult.
She was kicked out of the group for disobedience. The woman running the cult had put herself in charge of who had sex with whom, and had determined that this gal should have babies with a certain guy. The gal was quite young and not interested and when she balked she was rejected from the group, driven to the nearest highway and left with a few dollars and a sleeping bag.
And her primary reaction at that time was to be upset about having been kicked out. It took her a long time to understand what had happened to her.
Patty Hearst’s book is also instructive on this topic. It took her a long time to understand that she had been brainwashed, and to get over the guilt she felt for having cooperated with her captors once they had broken her will. (By locking her in a closet for about three months, then being selectively nice to her.)
It really makes one wonder just how much of our own thinking is conditioned by circumstance…
Where does one draw the line between cults like Jonestown and all the “causes” that seem to become quasi religions? like Veganism, PETA, Tree Hugging, anti-technology, anti-vaccine…………. Is it when they ask you to sign over your house?
Seriously, I suppose it is when you can’t leave of your own accord.
I think this was different from a Patty Hearst type of scenario. The controlling tactics were the same, but the appeal was mostly to poor African Americans who wanted a better life not middle class types with a “cause.” Here’s one survivor, Hyacinth Thrash: “One thing you can say for Jim – he didn’t deny medical care when they needed it…. We all had our blood pressure checked regular, Indians too…. Jim had real fine caring nurses too, both black and white.”
Ann:
On Patty Hearst: part I, part II.
While not denigrating the skills of the indoctrinators, I feel that a large component here is the self-selected nature of the group. I don’t think it’s apt to compare the Jonestown inhabitants to the average man off the street.
On a related note, I think that’s why the first real resistance to the SJWs came from gamers (i.e. GamerGate). The gamers are already socially ostracized, and much less susceptible to group think.
Matt,
I think it’s also because gamers are, by nature, contrarian and competitive. We argue. We argue over the dumbest things. And massive blowback on the part of fans is part and parcel of the group. Look up an article on the reaction to the ending of Mass Effect 3 (a game that was released a couple of years ago) for an example. Call a gamer names and the response is likely to be a flame war. Call *all* gamers names, and, well…
Additionally, there’s been mounting cynicism on the part of gamers about the corruption in the video game review industry. Gamergate essentially started because there were some pretty strong hints that a “sex for positive reviews” thing had been going on (though as it turns out, apparently the dates don’t match up).
Former FBI profiler John Douglas, in the book Mind Hunter, tells the story about the time he called one of his subordinates into his office. He told him that while he understood how it happened, he had to keep his affair with his officemate more covert. The subordinate, who was married and not having an affair, flipped out at the accusation. Then Douglas told him it was a lesson: even trained FBI profilers can be KO’d by the right head game. The truth is, there isn’t one of us who wouldn’t end up joining the right cult.
I thought of Patty Hearst too. People believed what they wanted to believe. Radicals thought the revolution was so groovy that Patty had seen the light and joined of her own free will. And that generated hatred from the folks that hated the radicals. I did read a few books on Jonestown and it is chilling. I think that Ryan wanted to believe that things were fine. He deluded himself into thinking it was all overblown.
If I can find the title, there is an excellent book on the torture of American POWs during the Vietnam war. It’s a large book and very thorough. I really had no idea what they were going through and than the Cubans were involved in the torture as well.
Here you go:
Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973 by
Stuart I. Rochester, Frederick Kiley
Stockdale is an amazing man.
Reminds me of the Waco Massacre….
Bill and Hillary Clinton should be in prison for crimes against humanity for what they did to their fellow citizens at Waco, TX, on April 19, 1993. The Waco Massacre and church burning (it was not a “compound,” it was their church),was the most brutal, heinous violation of civil, human and Constitutional rights in this nation’s history. Innocent men, women and children were attacked with tanks, poison gas (CS gas turns to cyanide when heated) and burned alive. Those who ran from the church were machine-gunned as documented in the movie “Waco, The Rules of Engagement.” If you doubt how bad this was consider that you never hear the left stream media talk about it. They want it erased from history but this memorial site will remain forever:
www . wizardsofaz . com/waco/waco2 . html*
And if that weren’t bad enough, Clinton’s thugs then stuck a machine gun in the face of a 5 year old boy and sent him to the communist gulag known as Cuba: www . therealcuba . com/elian_gonzalez . htm
Let’s hope Clinton isn’t teaching President Prompter too many of his old tricks!
Here is a list of the children murdered at Waco:
Lisa Martin 13, Sheila Martin, Jr. 15, Rachel Sylvia 12, Hollywood Sylvia 1,
Joseph Martinez 8, Abigail Martinez 11, Crystal Martinez 3 Isaiah Martinez 4
Audrey Martinez 13, Melissa Morrison 6, Chanel Andrade 1, Cyrus Koresh 8
Star Koresh 6, Bobbie Lane Koresh 2, Dayland Gent 3, Page Gent 1,
Mayanah Schneider 2, Startle Summers 1, Serenity Jones 4, Chica Jones 2,
Little One Jones 2.
*Note: regarding links: Much of the Waco information once available on the web has “disappeared” and quite a few of the links on this page have expired (a few are marked as such) or no longer lead to the original page. An expired link at least shows that the page once existed. Some pages which no longer exist on the web can still be recovered by entering the URL (right mouse click on the link to get the URL) into the Wayback Machine.
And as an amusing exercise in provoking censorship try adding a link to this page from Wikipedia’s Waco Siege page and see how long it takes to be deleted.
I listened to the audio of the Jonestown massacre and it is chilling to say the least. The screams and the death rattles of the children made it nearly unbearable to listen to till the end. What makes it even more creepy is that the recording was dubbed over a previous recording of some choir music. So at the end when everything goes silent there nothing but this warbly, morbid, out of tune music faintly playing in the background.
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