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Not 100% what I am. My mother was about sick, angry, hungry, and very sad woman. I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother. This is Cereal Killing, a podcast.
Hello, and welcome to Cereal Killing, a podcast where we also veer off the Cereal Killer Path to delve into other topics within our beloved true crime community. This is part two of the Jim Jones and the Jones Town Massacre. Without further ado, let's just dive right in. Jim's Church, called the People's Temple, was officially named that in 1956 when Jim was 25 years old.
Two years prior, he and his wife, Marceline, had adopted a little Native American girl named Agnes. Then after, they adopted three more Korean American children named Lou, Stephanie, and Suzanne by 1969. Jim stated that his family was a, quote, rainbow family and said, quote, integration is a more personal thing with me now. It's a question of my son's future, unquote.
Now, this was a smart maneuver on Jim's part, and it was just that. Don't mistake it. Because it portrayed him as ever more the Savior-type pastor. He began saying that his congregation, you know, the temple was a large rainbow family as well.
So, what were some of the things that Jim was actually teaching his congregation? Jim preached endlessly about how there should be no poor people, no private property. He pushed his socialist beliefs on his congregation. According to the site, Jonestown.sdsu.edu, quote, Jones saw socialism as a dual concept of doubt, belief.
According to which, the seeker overcomes all inequalities and injustices through the power of thought. Specifically, the consent of the power-granting thought is that God is a force within the human mind that, as it becomes progressively recognized and unfolded by the knower, erases all limitations and deficiencies in the world. If only it were that easy. Jim began to state that he was God, the reincarnation of Buddha, Jesus, Lenin, and Gandhi, and that he was clairvoyant, meaning that he could see into the future.
The others in the congregation could if they wanted to follow his deifying path. He stated that it was not divine in any traditional Christian or religious sense. Rather, he was simply more psychologically evolved and thus had access to higher paranormal dimensions. He told his people that he was, quote, a unique embodiment of an impersonal, defined force that could equalize all imbalances in the cosmos, unquote.
He called himself God ideal and promised his people that they could become God too. He also thought if society would conform itself perfectly to his will, then a society of absolute happiness and fulfillment would be the end result. Because of this idea, he would verbally and often physically punish his people. Some he would force to stand for hours at a time or make them strain themselves nearly to the point of breaking and then would tell them that it was for their own good.
He called them dummies and stupid, but then he'd turn around and tell them to call him Dad or Father. Because it's really important to remember the people's temples inception. It very much seemed like Jim's heart was in the right place. Outsiders that could come in would see that he wanted to end poverty and race inequality and who doesn't?
Who doesn't? People began coming to his church in droves. Most were religious people from the more poor areas, but some were there also because they agreed with Jim's political views. Now, Marceline and Jim had tried for years to have a biological child of their own, and after a while, they finally adopted the other children, and then she became pregnant.
During Marceline's pregnancy, a car that little Stephanie, one of their adopted children, had been riding in, was hit, and Stephanie, unfortunately, lost her life. Three weeks later, she gave birth to their only biological child, a son they named Stephen, in 1959. They adopted an African-American boy as well that he renamed Jim Jones Jr. rather than his own biological son, which is customary because of the points he thought he would win with his followers.
So in 1960, the people's temple gained a membership in the Christian church by being recognized by the disciples of Christ. They ordained a gem, noting that his ministry was a new kind of mix of faith healing and socialist politics that quote, Shawn to white Christianity and the Bible, unquote. Now, his faith healing was, of course, the laying of hands and stating a person was now healed, or he would supposedly expel these, quote, bloody growths from the bodies of the ailing, unquote. Though it was later learned that he used kind of a slight of hand and parts of raw chicken to make it look like he had taken bits and pieces of cancer and whatever out.
He would even have some people dress up as, let's say, an elderly woman pretending to not be able to walk. He would then put his healing hands on them, telling her that she could now walk, and of course she would stand up and walk, it was a whole thing. But he was charitable. One story goes, and YouTuber Stephanie Harlow touched on this as well in her Jim Jones video series, that one of his parishioners had their electricity shut off because she could not afford to pay the bill.
Jim called the electric company, spoke with them, and her electricity was turned right back on. And that is, of course, a wonderful thing to do as a person of authority over a number of people. Only, there was always a price to pay, which was, at the time and rather innocently, the person's undying and unwavering loyalty. Now remember, Jim's wife, Marceline, was a nurse and a considerable amount of the church's population was elderly people.
So, Jim and Marceline would visit the nursing homes, and some say they were appalled at the conditions the elderly patients were in. Still, others say that Jim saw an opportunity to have more money coming into the church by opening a senior care facility in his own home. Once he did that, Marceline was in her element. She absolutely loved caring for these people, and they were indeed very well taken care of.
Jim would come in and speak to the people and comfort them. So, again, we have an instance where Jim was actually doing something truly great, but the underlying motivation was their money. And, you know, he would hire people from the congregation that had no job, and in return these people were also very grateful to him. By all outward appearances, he was a very great man.
And then he decided he wanted to go into politics, right? So, he started sending Marceline to political gatherings to take notes about what the speaker said, how they said it, and how the crowd reacted to it, and so on. He would then experiment these techniques on his congregation and watch them react to him enjoy full glee. Jim's followers believed in him and his agendas so completely, so blindly, that he was able to talk a great many of them into signing over their money, possessions, and what not directly to him.
And at first he fumbled most of it back into his socialist movement, but slowly he started dressing in the nice black suit that most of us are pretty familiar with. And, of course, he was considered a handsome man, at least in his younger years, and the women flocked to him, and he began having many affairs with these women. He would tell stories of women propositioning him, and he would tell them that, you know, they faithfully married men, and that if they would donate a larger amount of money to whatever charity he suggested, then it would be like he was sacrificing himself into sinning for the betterment of the community. And he didn't just sleep with women.
He was fairly openly bisexual, and he would preach to his people about how he had to, quote, lay with men for his cause. In 1962, Jim took his family and traveled to the southeast area of Brazil because he wanted to set up a satellite temple. He had worked his congregation up with bold talk about there would be a nuclear holocaust. One of the stops on his way down was in Guyana, interestingly enough.
Jim rented himself and his family a modest home as he set out to learn about the area, you know, how the economy was, how they might receive his very racially diverse group and so on. And again, he was careful to not outright say he thought of himself as a communist, so he advertised his ideas as more of a, quote, communal lifestyle instead. Jim wasn't completely satisfied with this area and moved his family again, and this time it was to Rio de Janeiro, working in the more poorer areas. But he didn't want to completely abandon the church that he'd worked so hard to establish back in Indiana, and he had received word that the people were not as tight-knit as they had been, so he gathered up his family and they moved back.
Once he returned, he told his people that the end of the world, brought on by nuclear war, was going to happen in July of 1967. He told them that it would end in a, quote, socialist Eden on Earth, unquote, and that for their safety, everyone should follow him and move to the Northern California Redwood Valley area, where they would be safe. So in 1966, he piled himself, his family, and around 100 of his closest followers, and they drove from Indianapolis, Indiana, to Ukaya, California. At first, the locals were not too terribly thrilled about this large group of people, but Jim Jones turned on his infamous charm, and it wasn't long before some of the more wealthy people became some of his most devoted followers.
And then life settled in and went on. Then in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, and Jim decided to use this horrific act to his advantage. He said specifically appointed members of his church to Martin Luther King Jr.'s gathering in remembrance and had them recruit for him.
After this, it would seem that his followers went from just over 100 to nearly 500, like almost overnight. And then his behavior became ever-increasingly bizarre. It was as if he were losing touch with reality. He would preach over his people for hours upon hours, and they were not allowed to leave.
Sometimes the doors would be locked. Sometimes he wouldn't even allow them to sit down. He preached, quote, If you're born in capitalist America, racist America, fascist America, then you're born in sin. But if you're born in socialism, you're not born in sin, unquote.
He started saying Christianity in and of itself was a religion in decline, and he publicly denounced the Christian Bible irrelevant due to its oppression of women and non-white people, which, I mean, kind of. He even wrote a short book called, quote, The Letter Killeth, where he criticized the King James Bible. He would call on some of his people to go and listen in on others' conversations or get them to open up about personal matters, and then they were to immediately go back to Jim and report their findings. This is, of course, his deep paranoia beginning to rear its ugly head.
To test his inner circle and their devotion to him, there were mock poisonings, where he would tell them, after they drank juice or wine, that he had poisoned them. And it was a good thing that he moved his church out to California, because in 1971, the Indianapolis Star published its very first article of Jim Jones and his deceptive miracle healing services. The article, in turn, got the attention of other media outlets, and Jim was beginning to feel the pressure. It was around this time that he met a woman named Carolyn Layton.
Now, Carolyn was raised by Methodist minister and a conscientious objector to World War II. Her family moved from Ohio to California when she was still very young, and by all appearances, she was a happy and normal child. But because of how her parents raised her, she was very much a part of the social justice movement and openly identified as a communist. She went to college, lived in France for a while, came back, worked as a student teacher at Vacaville High School in California.
She married a quiet and passive man, and they landed in a town not too far from Ukiah, where Jim Jones and the people's temple were. And then Carolyn and her husband began going to Jim's church. And it didn't take long for Carolyn to fall head over heels in love with Jim Jones, and they began to sleep together. Her husband left for Reno to get a quickie divorce.
Jim had told Carolyn that Marceline was, quote, unable to respond to him sexually, unquote, and that he could not divorce her because she was supposedly mentally ill. So Carolyn wrote to her parents stating that Jim was the reincarnation of Vladimir Lenin, and she had been reincarnated as Lenin's mistress, Enessa Armand. Carolyn's personality went from a free spirit, open-minded, happy little woman to a ruthless authoritarian. Jim even told his children to think of her as their stepmother.
So by 1973, Jim had now 3,000 followers. He had expanded his church into San Francisco, San Fernando, and Los Angeles. He talked Marceline into signing an affidavit stating that, in the event of her death, she gave Carolyn permission to have all of the maternal duties, if you will. The next year, Carolyn was pregnant with Jim's child.
She named their son Jim-John Prokes, but they called him chemo. Jim then explained to the congregation that he had, now get this, accidentally got in Carolyn pregnant while he was training her to use her body for the cause. I'm not even joking. Carolyn very quickly became Jim's sort of right-hand man, if you will.
And then Jim would go on to have another biological child with another man's wife, but he got several women pregnant, and he would make most of them get abortions. And as Jim's responsibilities to his people became really intense, he started taking amphetamines to be able to stay awake and alert enough to keep up with everything that he had to. And then, of course, as so many people do, they become addicted, and then the amphetamines make it to where they can't sleep, so then they have to take some sort of intense sleeping pills or downers so that they can even get any sleep at all. And because of this new, drug-doubt lifestyle he was living, it started becoming rather obvious visually.
So this is when he started wearing his signature sunglasses. This way, he could hide how terrible his eyes looked. Of course, he told the people that it was because the power of God Almighty was so strong within him, that looking into his eyes would mean certain death. And so, as it goes, with the drugs came the paranoia, came the anxiety.
He began refusing to go anywhere without taking all of his people with him. So if he decided to travel and partake in some revivals, he would put everyone in several buses and make them go with him. He even had an armed militia around him nearly at all times. If anyone questioned his facts with regards to history or just false information, he would call them out and then later tell them that he needed them to be in his inner circle.
You know, keep your enemies closer and all of that. Marceline had finally had enough, and she told him that she wanted a divorce and that she would be taking the children. He threatened to have her killed, effectively sealing her later, fate. He started preaching that there was no heaven above and that they would make a heaven on Earth.
He then moved the temple's headquarters to San Francisco and he became quite influential in the local politics. Jim eventually became the chairman of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission. He even met with the vice presidential candidate just before the 1976 election. First lady, Rosalyn Carter, met with Jim on a few occasions, spoke with him about stresses regarding Cuba and so on, so he was rubbing elbows with important people.
And now that he was able to impress many political figures, but you know, he was facing ever-increasing media scrutiny. This in turn made him even more paranoid and he started trying and successfully taking his people into separating them away from their own families. This is the hallmark of a cult. He wanted his members to be completely and wholly devoted to him and him alone.
And then he would begin to verbally abuse his followers in front of all of the others and once he broke them down, he would console them and tell them that it was for their own spiritual growth. This quickly turned into members gathering to beat up the member that Jim would single out. So while this was all going on, Jim had begun planning to take his followers and move the people's temple to Guyana. At first he called it People's Temple Agricultural Project before eventually renaming it, Jonestown.
He promoted it as a quote, socialist paradise and sanctuary from the prying eyes of the outside world, meaning the media, who seemed to continually write bad articles about him claiming that he was stealing from his members that he was a false prophet. Abusing his power over his people and so on. But there were a few followers that began to see the light as they say and they left the group and Jim was livid. He ordered phones to be bugged and he began listening to other members whispers about leaving the people's temple out of fear for their lives.
Now Jonestown itself was projected to take at minimum 10 years to finish and it would be able to keep around 600 people going. He had sent a team of people down there to begin building the living quarters and just you know everything that they would need to live there 100% completely socialistic existence. Before they had even had more than two houses built. In 1977, Jim decided to take around 1,000 of his followers including his children and his lady love Carolyn and immediately moved to Guyana.
Of course, Marceline was ordered at least at first to stay back and keep an eye on things in San Francisco. So you can imagine that it was a mad dash to try to build housing structures to hold over 400 more people than what the property was really able to accommodate. But you know really most of the people were happy in their circumstance and at first really enjoyed the manual labor that it was taking to try to get the jungle tamed buildings built and making a home for themselves. Others were less than thrilled with having to work from sun up to sundown in the oppressive heat with unbearable mosquito bites and snakes and you guys can imagine.
It wasn't exactly what Jim had promised them but for the most part they did their best to make do. Any correspondence coming in or out of Jonestown was opened and read to get intel on what was being said both from the people in Jonestown as well as others still in the United States. And even with the push to get the buildings completed, people were so incredibly cramped and sleeping close to 20 people per cabin and were forced to use outhouses that always had long lines. Available food was also a very, very serious problem.
So you're probably thinking that Jim was also having to live like this, right? But no. He had a nice cabin with electricity in his own bathroom and this was not the socialist paradise that he had promised because absolute power corrupts absolutely. And also because he was with these people all of the time.
He couldn't really hide his drug addiction. And then once the US government discovered that the elderly people or foster kids that they sent checks for were no longer residing on US soil, that money stopped as well. So Jim began to sprinkle in ideas such as quote, translation, meaning that the citizens of Jonestown would eventually all die together, move to another planet and live in peace and harmony. Now some defectors of the group formed another group that they called quote, concerned relatives along with family members who were very concerned for their loved ones in Jonestown.
In 1978 an ex-member went to Washington DC to speak on the abuses and concerning behaviors of Jim. This got the attention of a California congressman who then wrote to the Guyanese Prime Minister. The politicians that had once stood behind Jim were now breaking ties with him. Flyers and documents were being created by the concerned relatives group and given to the media as well as government officials.
A few very lucky people who were somehow able to escape Jonestown came back with reports of the horrific conditions that the members of the cult were actually living in. In turn, Jim hired two conspiracy theorists to help him show how the US intelligence agencies were conspiring against him. He had loudspeakers installed throughout Jonestown so that he could blast whatever music he wanted to the people or just to non-stop preach and kind of just bitch at them. And most of the time they were not allowed to even speak to each other.
And all of this, this soup of controversy, physical and mental exhaustion, lack of food and everything else was taking its toll on Jim Jones. The kindly godlike father figure character he had carefully orchestrated was crumbling into a very serious and ever increasing drug addicted person that the people started to be a little bit scared of. He completely humiliated these people but you know what could they do? He had their passports, he had their money and the jungle was a very serious and very real danger.
In November of 1978, California Congressman Leo Ryan decided enough was enough. He was going to put together a team and travel to Jonestown to see for himself what was going on. He took with him a small group of family members of some of the people living in Jonestown as well as an NBC camera crew and a few reporters from various newspapers. They arrived in Guyana on November 15th, 1978.
Two days later they were driven into Jonestown. Now Jim had carefully prepared for their arrival and made sure everyone knew to talk Jonestown up, right? Seeing its praises and talk about how sublimely happy that they all were to be there and that life was just great. Leo was actually super impressed at first after seeing all of the smiling faces and meeting Jim and felt that perhaps some of the accusations about Jim and his group were false.
And then one of the temple members slipped a note to someone in Leo's group saying they'd like to be taken with them back to the US. Later another temple member attempted to attack Leo with a knife but was unsuccessful. So he and his group were asked to leave by Jim. Leo, the group of people he had brought with him and a further 14 temple members who wanted to go home left and went to the airstrip to catch a plane only.
The plane wasn't sitting there waiting for them. And when the planes finally arrived they saw a vehicle pulling a trailer full of armed people who jumped out and began shooting at them. One temple, Skaby, three media people and Leo Ryan were all killed. When the shooters got back to Jonestown and they told Jim what had happened, he announced that it's over and that they, the proverbial though, the proverbial those who are they, are coming for them.
Jim stated that the group should commit, quote, revolutionary suicide by drinking a type of grape flavored kule that had been laced with cyanide. Some of the people agreed with this decision but a considerable number absolutely did not want to do that. This was not a quick decision on Jim's part which is usually how this massacre is advertised. He had actually been planning an act such as this for a couple of months before this because he already knew that his heaven on earth was failing.
You can hear the audio of this very moment as Jim recorded nearly everything. You can hear people crying and begging for their lives so people either drank the poisoned kuleed willingly or with a gun poking in their side and some people were just injected. He told them to not be afraid to die and that death was just stepping over into another plane and that death was their friend. Marceline had been living in Jonestown for some time at this point and had to be physically restrained while the children were poisoned.
She died with them as did Carolyn and over 900 other temple members. Parents fed their children the poison first. There were some that escaped out into the jungle and survived the mass suicide murder and had lived on to tell their stories. Jim Jones supposedly killed himself with a gunshot to the head but there are a lot of alternate theories as to how he died.
But nonetheless he was found dead. He also had lethal levels of barbiturates in his system that was later discovered. Jim's mother was among the dead as well as all of his children saved three. His first biological son Stephen and Tim Jones and another son who just happened to be off playing in a basketball tournament in Georgetown.
Jim Jr. and his two brothers drove to the US embassy in Georgetown to get help only. They were imprisoned but they were quickly released. By the time that word got back that everyone in Jonestown was dead helicopters were dispatched and that becomes the footage that we have all seen and are familiar with.
The sea of people that Jim had either talked into killing themselves or they had been murdered all laying on the ground dead. It is horrific. And that's the full story of Jim Jones and the Jonestown massacre. This story, as I stated in part one, has been told time and time again.
And as I had said, most of us know this story but there are people behind us that are just learning. So I believe that it's really important to remember this story and what happened so that history does not repeat itself. And it shows respect to the victims as we remember them. So it is believed that Jim Jones had narcissistic personality disorder.
The Mayo Clinic describes this personality disorder as quote, a mental condition in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance, a deep need for excessive attention and admiration, troubled relationships, and a lack of empathy for others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence lies a fragile self-esteem that's vulnerable to the slightest criticism. So we know that his mother spoke of him often about how he was a godlike man, a very important and admirable man, and yet she could barely be bothered with his upbringing or spending good quality time with him. She covered up his childhood indiscretions and then went behind them and paid for them.
She was very good at stroking his ego but not giving him any life guidance. So guys, what do you think? Do you think Jim Jones was born this way? Way or condition to be?
Let me know, guys. What do you think? Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate every single one of you because I know you could be listening to anyone else, but you chose me.
Have you guys. Thank you so much and have a great day.