Random Facts About What Happened At Jonestown (10 items)

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  (#5) Armed Men Surrounded The Compound And Were Required To Stop Anyone Who Tried To Leave 

  Teri Buford O'Shea told The Atlantic about her experience at the Jonestown compound, providing insight into what members of the Jonestown community experienced. She said there was little opportunity to escape: 

  Unless you were one of the lucky ones who happened to sneak off into the jungle, you were dead. They went around with stethoscopes, and if you still had a heartbeat, you'd be shot... 
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  (#6) Jim Jones Didn't Drink The Punch

  Neither Jones himself, nor his nurse, Annie Moore, died as a result of poisoning. According to Jones's toxicology report, found Pentobarbital in his system, but no cyanide, so he never actually consumed the punch that doomed his followers. 

  Jones and Moore were both shot, though it is unclear if Jones is responsible for taking his own life. While his autopsy asserts that his wound could indicate he pulled the trigger, “the possibility of homicide cannot be entirely ruled out because of the lack of specific and reliable information.”
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  (#8) Jim Jones Was Said To Be Heavily Influenced By History's Most Notorious Dictators 

  Jim Jones was the founder of The Peoples Temple at Jonestown, where he used both his charm and his position as a pastor to attract followers. 

  Jones spent a lot of time studying the works of Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler while growing up. According to some childhood friends inverviewd for a PBS special, he was "obsessed with religion... obsessed with death."

  It wasn't until 1955 that a 25-year-old Jones founded his first church in Indianapolis. This church would change names several times until landing on its final moniker: Peoples Temple Christian Church Full Gospel.
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  (#1) The Peoples Temple Grew To 900 Members After Jones Moved To The Compound Promising A 'Tropical Paradise'

  After moving to California in 1963, Jones's followers only continued to grow and he began to think of himself as more a dictator than a pastor. Hue Forston Jr., a former Temple member, remembers Jones saying: 

  What you need to believe in is what you can see... If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. If you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father... If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God.

  In 1974, The Peoples Temple signed a lease for a plot of land in Guyana that would become the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project - or Jonestown - where his followers could escape from what he believed were the engrained evils of American society.

  In 1977, Jonestown had 50 residents, and in 1978, Jones decided to move to the compound himself following a harsh critique of his congregation in the New West. He encouraged many of his followers to come with him, promising a "tropical paradise." The population ballooned to over 900. 
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  (#2) Jones Loyalists Took Out A Congressman And Several Former Members Attempting To Escape On November 18, 1978 

  On November 17, 1978, California Congressman Leo Ryan made a trip out to Jonestown to follow up on rumors that residents were being mistreated. During his visit, many of the residents wanted to leave with Ryan, and the next day, several of them joined him on the local airstrip hoping to return to the United States. As they prepared to leave, Temple security guards opened fire on the group.

  Ryan's staffer, Jackie Speier, described how, "Within seconds, gunmen leaped from a nearby tractor and leveled their weapons at us... I dived to the ground behind an airplane wheel and pretended to be dead."

  While Speier made it out alive, Ryan, several former Jonestown members, and three journalists all perished. 
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  (#9) Jonestown Members Were Mostly Motivated To Help Others, Not Worship Jones 

  Journalist Tim Reiterman explained to Time that Jones's congregation was full of “hard-working people, [who] were drawn initially to a rare thing in the Midwest, an integrated Christian congregation.”

  He added that Jones had, from a young age, been able to engage people with his charisma and the power of his voice, and attracted "young, idealistic, many of them college-educated people, who wanted to belong to an organization that practiced what it preached and had a social and political component."

  He also emphasized that they were motivated to help others, not to worship Jim Jones as a “self-proclaimed deity.”

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