The Jonestown Massacre

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 people, under the instruction of religious leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by ingesting poison-laden punch. Until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the event, known as the Jonestown Massacre, marked the largest loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster.

Jim Jones began his quest in the 1950s when he established the conspicuously apostrophe-absent Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana. His mission seemed virtuous in the beginning, as Jones preached integration and tolerance.

As his congregation grew, however, Jones's focus leaned more toward what was referred to as "apostolic socialism." He encouraged people to give up their belongings, to sell their homes and to give everything they had to the church, which would provide all their needs.

Jones worked his gift of intense charisma to hold his followers spellbound. He faked healings, leading others to believe he had incredible power. He convinced members of the Peoples Temple that he himself was their redeemer.

As a surviving member quoted him, Jones once preached, "If you want me to be your friend, I'll be your friend. If you want me to be your father, I'll be your father. If you want me to be your savior, I'll be your savior. If you want me to be your god, I'll be your god." When he decided to move the Peoples Temple to California, he convinced many members to leave their spouses and their families to follow him.

Then Jones started going really nuts. He was insistent that everyone was gay, that only he was heterosexual, and anyone who engaged in sex was just compensating. He encouraged everyone to be celibate, though he of course was not, as he had sex with women in the congregation.

Additionally, Jones had members of his commune working 20-23 hours a day, sometimes staying awake for as many as 6 days in a row. Jones kept everyone so tired that they couldn't think for themselves. He also began pulling members of the congregation up during sermons and calling them out on their sins, inviting other members to beat them as punishment. He even had one woman stand before the church and strip naked so everyone could openly criticize her body.

As for Jones himself, he had reportedly started taking drugs and became convinced someone was trying to assassinate him and that the government was trying to infiltrate his movement.

In 1977, Temple members migrated to a new facility being built in the jungles of Guyana. There, Jones was free from the scrutiny that had been growing in the United States. It also made it easier for him to control the congregation, which was dissuaded from engaging in interpersonal communication, while being encouraged to snitch on one another for infractions, especially for talking about leaving.

Jones went so far as to play his own voice over a loudspeaker day and night, providing the only source of information from the outside. He convinced the people of Jonestown that things were falling apart in the United States and that they couldn't go back there, even if they wanted to.

Soon, in 1978, Leo Ryan, a congressman from California, paid a visit to Jonestown along with several associates and reporters to see what exactly was going on there. During their visit, a few members let it be known that they wished to leave, and subsequently all hell broke loose. Even though Ryan reiterated that his report on Jonestown would be positive, Jones began quietly panicking, convinced that everything was coming to an end.

When Ryan's party began to board their plane home, armed members of Jones's "Red Brigade" surrounded them and fired their weapons, killing the congressman and four others.

Meanwhile, Jones called an emergency meeting of his congregation and told them Congressman Ryan was dead. He insisted there was no way the government was going to let them get away with what they had done and that the best thing for everyone was to participate in an act of mass "revolutionary suicide."

With almost no opposition, members quickly gulped from a vat filled with a Kool-Aid-like drink tainted with potassium cyanide, potassium chloride and tranquilizers. Parents fed the concoction to their children, then drank it themselves. Within minutes, all but a handful were dead.

Jones was later discovered with a gunshot wound to the head, likely self-inflicted.