1978
- December 4, 1978 TIME Magazine Cover: Jonestown Deaths
- December 4, 1978 Newsweek Magazine Cover: The Cult Of Death: Jonestown
- November 23, 1978 U.S. Asks Help of Jonestown Kin, Washington Post (Frustrated in its efforts to locate the next-of-kin of deceased members of the Jonestown colony in Guyana, the State Department yesterday appealed to persons who are related to Jonestown residents to contact its special operations center...)
- November 21, 1978 'The Primary Emotions Were Exhaustion and Fear' - Washington Post (Deborah Layton Blakey, 25, was a top side of the Rev. Jim Jones until May, when she asked American consul officials to safeguard her departure from the Peoples Temple jungle outpost in Guyana. In the following June 15, 1978, affidavit given to her lawyer for potential action, she detailed conditions at the agricultural mission, saying Jones had become a "paranoid" obsessed with "traitors." Spokesmen for the temple categorically denied her charges at the time...)
- November 21, 1978 Jones Rehearsed Cultists in Mass Suicide, Ex Members Say - by Larry Kramer, Washington Post Staff Writer; Washington Post special correspondent Marshall Kilduff contributed to this article. (Ultimately, when they could do no more for their leader, the followers of the Rev. Jim Jones did just what he had programmed them to do - they died for his brand of socialism.
Throughout the 15-year-history of the Peoples Temple, Jones constantly used fear of violent death or persecution as a tool to mold his brand of ex-convicts, drug addicts, misfits and lost souls into a cohesive, military, congregation.
Suicide was ingrained in his philosophy, one former cult member said...)
- Video - November 20, 1978 Remembering the Jonestown massacre, NBC Nightly News covers the Nov. 18, 1978 mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. (12 min 16 secs)
- November 20, 1978 Cultists Commit Mass Suicide in Guyana, Associated Press via ePALS Classroom Exchange (Photos included.)
- November 20, 1978 Cultists Commit Mass Suicide in Guyana, by Martin Merzer, Associated Press (GEORGETOWN, Guyana - Guyanese soldiers searched through a steaming jungle Monday for hundreds of American religious zealots who fled their remote compound after the suicide-murder deaths of at least 409 fellow cultists...
...Among the dead were the Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the People's Temple settlement called Jonestown, his wife and one of their sons...
...The survivors, many of whom escaped by running into the nearby bush, spent a fearful night at the town of Port Kaituma before being evacuated by Guyanese authorities...
...Jones became a political figure, crusading for liberal causes, and eventually was appointed chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority. But reports of his unorthodox, authoritarian control over the sect - with allegations of brutal treatment of wayward members - led to his resignation from that post.
He called the charges "outrageous liss," and in August 1977 came with some 1,200 followers to Guyana. The goal of their farming commune was to become self-sufficient.)
- November 20, 1978 Survivors of Guyana Ambush Are Rescued, Larry Kramer, Washington Post Staff Writer, Washington Post staff writer Karlyn Barker contributed to this article. (The saga of the Rev. Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple is a mysterious tale of power and influence - both political and personal.
It involves the meteoric rise of an Indiana farmboy to a position of influence matched by few other citizens in the history of San Francisco.
Jones and the congregation of his self-styled cultlike church first opened doors as the Christian Assembly of God Church in the 1950s in Indianapolis, but moved to the Northern California community of Ukiah about 15 years years ago...)
- November 20, 1978 Survivor of Guyana Ambush Are Rescued, Charles A. Krause, Washington Post Foreign Service (The bullet-riddled bodies of Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.) and four other Americans were recovered from the Guyana jungle yesterday after the congressman's bid to help unwilling members flee a controversial religious sect ended in an ambush by fanatic followers of the cult.
As the surviving members of Ryan's party - at least 10 to them seriously wounded - were evacuated to Georgetown. Guyana's capital...)
- November 20, 1978 'I Lay There . . . Hoping They'd Think I Was Dead', Charles A. Krause, Washington Post Foreign Service (I remember thinking, this is crazy. It couldn't be. I was going to die in the middle of the jungle of Guyana, so far away from my family and friends.
We were in the process of boarding the two small planes at Port Kaituma's jungle landing strip near the end of a curious story about a congressman wanting to investigate a freaky religious commune in Guyana. Suddenly the story was no longer zany. Three men on a dump truck and tractor approaching our aircraft began shooting at us...)
- On this day - November 18, 1978 Mass suicide leaves 900 dead, BBC News (Video included.)
Footage of the moments leading up to the air-strip shootings
...People who had left the organisation told the authorities of brutal beatings, murders and a mass suicide plan...
- June 15, 1978 Affidavit of Deborah Layton Blakely - Source: http://www.deborahlayton.com/affidavit.html (RE THE THREAT AND POSSIBILITY OF MASS SUICIDE BY MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S TEMPLE
I, DEBORAH LAYTON BLAKEY, declare the following under penalty of perjury:
1. The purpose of this affidavit is to call to the attention of the United States government the existence of a situation which threatens the lives of United States citizens living in Jonestown, Guyana.
2. From August, 1971 until May 13, 1978, I was a member of the People's Temple. For a substantial period of time prior to my departure for Guyana in December, 1977, I held the position of Financial Secretary of the People's Temple.
3. I was 18 years old when I joined the People's Temple...)
- June 15, 1978 Grim Report From Jungle, by Marshall Kilduff, San Francisco Chronicle (The Peoples Temples jungle outpost in South America was portrayed yesterday as a remote realm where the church leader, the Rev. Jim Jones, orders public beatings, maintains a squad of 50 armed guards and has involved his 1100 followers in a threat of mass suicide.
This description was provided by Deborah Layton, 25, who was a top aide Jones until she asked American consular officials to safeguard her departure from Guyana...)
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- Video - November 20, 1978 Remembering the Jonestown massacre, NBC Nightly News covers the Nov. 18, 1978 mass murder-suicide in Jonestown, Guyana. (12 min 16 secs)
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