All language subtitles for Jonestown.Terror.In.The.Jungle.S01E04.WEB.x264-TORRENTGALAXY-eng

We thought we were going to paradise,
but the drama just escalated.

Put him in the [bleep] box tonight.

The people inside this Ukiah home

fear for the lives of their family
in Guyana.

Concerned relatives started
writing Congressman Ryan,

so he went to Guyana.

I'm here to find out more
about your operation here.

I thought, this is my chance
to get out of here.

And all of a sudden, other people
said, we want to go,

and you could
see the anger on Jones' face.

We've got these defectors,
so we take off to the airstrip.

Then a tractor pulls out
of Jonestown after them.

There's a number of men on it.
All armed.

Get on the plane, get on the plane!

All of a sudden, there's this noise.

WELCOME TO JONESTOWN

It does not even register to me
that it's guns going off.

I see Ryan running.
All of a sudden, I'm hit.

I looked out the window.

I said they're killing everyone,
they're killing everyone.

And I turned to Larry
and he shot me twice...

...point blank, one in each
side, once in the leg.

And then Larry shot Monica twice
in the back.

I think he had one bullet left,

and he took and pointed it right
into Dale Park's face...

...and pulled the trigger
and the gun misfired.

And so, we had the fight for the gun.

I'm lying under the plane,
pretending I'm dead.

And I look down at the right side
of my body

and my whole right leg
is just blown up.

And I realize that I'm dying.

The adrenaline was running.
I felt no pain.

I was in survival mode
and I overpowered Larry Layton.

I went out through the pilot's door.

I could still hear the gunshots,

and I ran to the side of the runway
until I collapsed.

And I just started calling for help.

There are other people
grievously wounded.

Some younger people who were part
of the group run into the jungle.

Other people are slightly wounded,
trying to hide in the grass.

The gunmen make certain
that Leo Ryan is dead.

They could have continued hunting
for the wounded, finished them off,

but instead they get on the tractor
and return to Jonestown.

Eventually, Guyanese locals
get to the airstrip

and place me
on the side of the airstrip.

Unfortunately, I am placed
on top of an ant hill.

So all of a sudden, I have these ants
crawling over my body,

and I oftentimes say,

you don't sweat the small
stuff when you're dying.

I don't recall
how big the group of assassins were.

I don't know, four, five, six.

They were all people
I knew for many years.

All the assassins...

including Larry as well.

I knew everyone.

GUYANA AIRWAYS

There are five dead on the tarmac.

The five dead include Ryan,
members of the media,

and one woman

who had been at Jonestown
and was trying to escape.

Meanwhile, back at Jonestown,

a voice comes on the speaker

saying everyone needs to come
to the pavilion.

Jim Jones realizes it's no longer
a matter of if, but when.

He's not gonna be able
to go back to the States.

What was going to be left to him
was to tell his followers that

now is the time.
We're committing a revolutionary act.

The congressman's dead.
They've killed people.

So, my dad at this point,
he knows he's gone.

So he knows he's going out and now
he doesn't want to go alone.

As people were walking up
from the cottages,

it was very quiet,
it was very somber.

I see Jones in this conversation,
and it's very animated,

and it's obvious
that something is going on.

He's saying that there are people
coming right now to attack us.

They're going to take us out.
This is our final stand.

Maria Katsaris comes up,
whispers something in Jones' ear.

Maria Katsaris was one of Jones' true
quote unquote lieutenants...

one of the people
that was closest to Jim Jones.

Jim looks at her and he goes,
"Is it supposed to be quick?"

And she goes, "Yes, it's supposed
to be quick."

And he said, "Does it taste okay?"

She goes, "Yes,
it's supposed to taste good."

FL-VOR-AID
INSTANT DRINK MIX

Somewhere in Jonestown,

human guinea pigs
were testing cyanide

that was mixed in a vat
of Flavor Aid.

Flavor Aid was a cheap
Kool-Aid knockoff.

And I'm thinking, my God,
how do I get out of here?

How do I get Gloria and Malcolm
out of here with me?

As people are gathering in
the pavilion, Jones took the stage,

and we don't have to wonder
what was said that day.

There was a tape running.
It's known now as the death tape.

How very much I've loved you.

How very much I've tried my best
to give you the good life.

But in spite of all I've tried,

a handful of our people with their
lies have made our lives impossible.

There's no way to detach ourselves
from what's happened today.

And we are sitting here
waiting on a powder keg.

It was said by the greatest of
prophets, from time immemorial...

"No man takes my life from me,
I lay my life down."

If we can't live in peace,
then let's die in peace.

ON NOVEMBER 18TH, JIM JONES JR.
AND HIS BROTHER STEPHAN

ARE IN GEORGETOWN FOR A BASKETBALL
TOURNAMENT.

On November 18th, my brothers
went to go see a movie.

I stayed at the compound.

Early evening, I was called to
the radio room by Sharon Amos.

I never liked Sharon.
She was a fanatic.

My father was on the radio,

and he said, "Jimmy, we're visiting
Mr. Frazier," which was a code.

Then he said, the avenging angels
have visited Leo Ryan

and we need you
to avenge our actions.

In code, to break that up, was we're
gonna commit revolutionary suicide.

The congressman has been killed.

We need you to avenge our deaths,

so kill anybody in town
and kill yourself.

I know when I was in Jonestown

and they were having these
white night drills

and long meetings
about dying for the cause,

I never took it serious.

I never thought we were
gonna die for the cause.

I broke out of code.

"Dad, we're not going
to kill ourselves.

The people in Jonestown can't die."

But, "No, no, no, Jim." Meanwhile,
I'm like, "Go get my brothers."

So, they went and got them and Sharon
Amos is like,

"We gotta figure out
how to kill ourselves.

Do we have piano wire?

Do we have, you know, thin wire?"
She's kinda tweaking out.

We quickly made our way back
the headquarters in Georgetown.

I knew that things were far worse
than they had ever been before

and I'm trying
to manage the situation.

I told someone, do not let Sharon
Amos out of your sight.

I knew she had to be watched

and that she was volatile
and capable of terrible things.

We ran over to the U.S. Embassy

and we're talking to a little
squawk box, and they won't let us in.

We're saying,
"Send us into Jonestown.

We can stop it.
We don't know what's going on,

but you need to send us out there
right now."

And they're saying,
surely the embassy,

if nothing else,
we can get a helicopter.

If we can get back
to Jonestown before anything happens,

we can stop it.

And they're trying to call in, you
know, "This is an emergency, it's..."

"No, we're closed."
You know, "It's Saturday."

So, we go back to the house.

Everyone's screaming and yelling.

Sharon Amos had tooken her kids...

...into the bathroom with a guy
named Chuck Brightman

and he took our niece inside,
Stephanie,

and cut the children's throats.

What I came upon is not something
that I want to describe,

but it was horrible.

You could still hear people gurgling.

Our friend Calvin Douglas busted
into the bathroom

and pulled Stephanie out.

She still has the scar.

We called the police.

And the police came.

By then, the gurgling had stopped.

Back in Jonestown,
Jim Jones is on the stage.

I don't know who fired the shot.

I don't know
who killed the congressman.

But as far as I'm concerned,
I killed him.

You understand what I'm saying?
I killed him.

He had no business coming.
I told him not to come.

And as soon as the word gets out,
the army's gonna be parachuting in,

they're gonna come for us,
they're gonna kill us all,

they're gonna get our kids.
We can't let that happen.

We need to commit
revolutionary suicide.

We can't go back.
They won't leave us alone.

They're now going back to tell more
lies, which means more congressmen.

And there's no way,
no way we can survive.

As they are in the pavilion
getting ready to commit suicide,

a woman by the name of Christine
Miller begins to question

what the logic
is behind letting 14 people

who defect cause the deaths
of over 1,000 people.

Yes, Christine?

Not that I'm afraid to die...

I don't think you are,
I don't think you are.

But, I look at our babies
and I think they deserve to live.

-I agree.
-But also, they deserve peace.

I'm completely schizophrenic
at this time,

because one part of me is
saying, everybody's gonna die,

you're going to die.

And another part of me is saying,
this doesn't make any sense.

You don't kill everybody.

Everybody dies.

I haven't seen anybody yet
that didn't die.

And I'd like to choose my own
kind of death for a change.

I'm tired of being tormented
to hell, that's what I'm tired of.

Tired of it.

By this time, the pavilion
is filled up with people.

There's armed guards
around the pavilion.

But the energy there was just...

TIM CARTER
JONESTOWN SURVIVOR

I don't even know how to describe it.
Defeated?

I'm ready.

It was kind of like people
had been crushed.

At this point,
I'm kind of intellectual.

It's like, well, how is
this gonna come down?

How am I gonna die?
What's gonna happen?

Because I'm not gonna go
down without a fight...

when there's a tap on my shoulder.

He's been tapped on the shoulder
by Maria Katsaris.

So is his brother, Mike.

"Jim has a job for you.
Come with us."

And they're taken to a back cabin
and there are three suitcases.

She goes, "We have suitcases of money
"that need to be delivered"

to the Russian Embassy
in Georgetown.

Will you take them?"
She gave us each a gun.

She said, "If you're successful,

take what you need to live on
and have a good life...

but under no circumstances
are you to be taken alive.

You're to kill yourselves
if you're caught."

As to why he wanted it
to go to the Russians,

I don't know if it was Jim Jones'
final "eff you"

to the United States government.
I don't know.

But I said yes.

And in my mind, I was buying time,
'cause I couldn't catch up.

I could not catch up
with what was going on.

Who wants to go with their child
has a right to go with their child.

I think it's humane.
I want to see you go, though.

I don't want to see you go
through this hell no more.

No more, no more, no more.

As the vats of cyanide-laced
Flavor Aid are brought out,

they are instructed to give the drink
to the children first,

because, of course, once the children
have been poisoned,

how can any adult live after having
watched their own children die?

Hurry, my children. Hurry.

All I think... Let's not fall
into the hands of the enemy.

Hurry, my children.

They have syringes,

and they're gonna squirt this stuff
in the babies' mouths.

No more pain now.

No more pain.

No more pain.

MORE THAN 300 CHILDREN ARE GIVEN
FATAL DOSES OF CYANIDE.

If you adults will stop
some of this nonsense.

Adults... Adults...

Adults, I call on you
to stop this nonsense.

I call on you to quit exciting
your children,

when all they're doing
is going to quiet rest.

I call on you to stop this now
if you have any respect at all.

Meanwhile, the adults
are about to have their turn.

Where's the vat, the vat, the vat?
Where's the vat with the green C's?

Bring it here
so the adults can begin.

People are lining up and some of them
refused to do it,

and they're held down
and forcibly injected.

And we know this
because later with the bodies,

some of them had abscesses on their
neck, on their arms, on their skull,

anywhere a needle could get jammed.
That's where the needles went in.

And everybody else
is lined up to die.

So while Maria's getting the gold,
I went to get water.

You don't go into the jungle
without water.

As I'm approaching the back
of the pavilion,

it's when people started dying,

and I cannot go through
the rest of it today, I just can't,

but needless to say,
my wife and son were dying.

It was just darkness.

There was no light anywhere
in my life.

As I'm walking back
to Jones' cottage,

Carolyn Layton was coming up
and she said, "What's wrong, Tim?

Why are you crying?"

All I could say is,

"They've murdered my son,
they've murdered my son,

they've murdered my son."

FL-VOR-AID
INSTANT DRINK MIX

Jones says it's going to be easy.

But death by cyanide is one
of the worst ways to go possible.

It keeps your body
from absorbing oxygen.

You suffocate slowly.

I tell you, I don't care
how many screams you hear,

I don't care
how many anguished cries.

Death is a million times preferable
to ten more days of this life.

The sounds I was hearing
were screaming.

People were screaming
in fear, in pain, in death.

There was nothing joyous going on.

There was no grand hallelujah
for Jim Jones.

Marceline Jones was screaming,
"Stop this! Stop this! Stop this!"

People were being massacred.

Mother, please, please, please.

Don't do this. Don't do this.

People have painted this picture

that my mother was up there doling
out the poison,

but that runs contrary
to what I know about my mother.

She came from a stand by
and slightly behind your man era,

but she was also very strong-willed,
and my father ordered her restrained

and she struggled
until the last child died.

At that point in time,
I just wanted the nightmare to stop.

I wanted to die.

And there was a voice in my head that
said, you cannot die, you cannot die,

you must go on, you cannot die.

We went back to the cottages, got
the suitcases, and left Jonestown.

At this point in time, I didn't even
know if I wanted to live.

But I knew I wanted nothing
to do with Jim Jones,

I wanted nothing to do with Russians,
I wanted nothing to do with money.

So I said, we can't do this.
We need to dump the suitcases.

And there's a part of me
that doesn't even believe

that I just saw what I saw.

One thousand people say
we don't like the way the world is.

Take our life from us.
We laid it down, we got tired.

We didn't commit suicide,

we committed an act of revolutionary
suicide

protesting the conditions
of an inhumane world.

BY THE EVENING OF NOVEMBER 18TH,

WORD OF THE SHOOTING
AT THE AIRSTRIP

HAS REACHED OFFICIALS
IN GEORGETOWN.

THE GUYANESE ARMY IS SENT
TO JONESTOWN TO INVESTIGATE.

There's been a monsoon
the day before.

Steam is rising up off the ground.
It's like fog.

And finally...

the fog,
the mist is clearing a little bit.

And what they see,

they find almost impossible
to describe over the radio

to the superiors waiting back
in Georgetown.

They start describing,
there's just heaps of them.

And, of course, in Georgetown,
"Heaps of what?"

"Dead people."

As soon as these pictures from
Jonestown cleared our newsroom,

everybody, even a lot
of hardened news people,

reacted in horror and disbelief.

The word on everybody's lips
was "shades of Auschwitz."

As you can see, bodies are strewn
all over the place.

The bodies seemed awful and orderly,

not flung about like corpses
after a battle but neat,

hand-in-hand sometimes,
arms about each other's shoulders.

The death ritual was methodical.

Some of the syringes contained
poison, the rest had tranquilizers.

Marcia, you have more.

Yeah, of course,
there's a lot we don't know,

but this we do know,
the Reverend Jim Jones,

the founder of Peoples Temple,
is dead,

and he died as a result of a gunshot
wound to the head, not of poisoning.

Jim Jones they find on the pavilion,

bloated, dead, a gunshot wound
to the head.

You can suspect that Jim Jones,

having seen the terrible deaths
his followers were suffering,

at the last minute didn't want it
for himself.

Police believe that most
of the people went willingly,

but others were forced
by armed guards.

When the poison was being passed out,

men were around this auditorium area
here with crossbows.

They were acting as guards.

Clayton, 28, of Oakland, is one
of four known eyewitnesses

to the suicide-murders.

He got away after more than 700
had died by slipping past a guard.

A lot of people didn't want to die.
They was just sitting there.

Frightened. Afraid.

In one case, she struggled pretty
hard, 'cause she didn't want to die.

And how did they kill her?

They injected her in the arm.

The soldiers, they're asked,
can you count 'em?

And they try.

Four hundred suicides and killings,

one of the most astonishing stories
of our time, perhaps of any time.

Well, there's at least 900-something
people in Jonestown.

That must mean that there's 500
people who are still alive.

Maybe they've run into the jungle.

LESLIE WAGNER-WILSON
AND HER SON TRAVELED 30 MILES

THROUGH THE JUNGLE BEFORE THEY
WERE PICKED UP BY LOCAL AUTHORITIES.

The morning that we left, my plan
was to escape,

come back and get my sister and
brother and my niece and nephew.

So, once we realized
that the tragedy happened,

I'm just praying that one of my
family members ran into the jungle,

if not all of them.

But the body count was wrong
from the beginning.

Good evening.

The searching American soldiers

have finished counting the bodies
in Jonestown, Guyana.

Nine-hundred-ten died

in the poison ritual
of the Peoples Temple last week.

Why in the world would so many
people agree to kill themselves?

What kind of a leader could order
mass suicide and be obeyed?

The mass suicides happened
in this heavily forested area,

down there, in the compound.

The narrative is mass suicide.

Sheep. Drinking the Kool-Aid.
Voluntarily drinking the Kool-Aid.

And yet, a lot of people
were murdered.

And if you've just seen
your child murdered,

besides wanting to kill
the [bleep] that did it,

would you want to live?

The answer is probably no.

If you believe that the only choice
you have

is dying by drinking a poison
or getting shot...

are you committing suicide,
or are you taking the easiest way out

'cause you know
that you're gonna die anyway?

The bottom line is, what happened
in Jonestown, Guyana, was murder.

I lost my entire immediate family
in Jonestown.

I lost my mother, Inez, who was 50.

I lost my brother, Mark, who was 16.

I lost my sister, Michelle,
who was 24.

I lost Joe, who was 24.

Yeah, I lost them all in one moment.

MORE THAN 300 BODIES
WERE NEVER IDENTIFIED.

ALMOST ALL OF THEM WERE CHILDREN.

They didn't want me to keep my hopes
up for John Victor,

but finally one of the survivors said
that they had personally seen John

and that he had evidently been taken
to... he was in Jim's cabin...

and he had been injected
and they actually saw.

So I knew, for sure...

...that he was deceased, so...

AFTER SURVIVING THE ATTACK
ON THE PORT KAITUMA AIRSTRIP,

VERNON GOSNEY WAS AIRLIFTED TO
A MILITARY HOSPITAL IN PUERTO RICO.

I was shot once in each side,
my diaphragm, my stomach.

My liver.
My pancreas was removed.

When I came out of ICU,

I found out what had happened
in Jonestown, 'cause I did not know.

The psychiatrist just came into my
room and opened the paper like this,

to show me the pictures
of the dead bodies.

I think at the moment
when I knew that my son was dead

and being asked
to describe his clothing,

I think my mind just snapped.

I just think
I just had a mental breakdown.

I didn't function really
well for a very long time.

DAD

CHLORAL HYDROGEN USP

How are you gonna handle
this nightmare?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It's a nightmare.

For the survivors,
things were only gonna get worse.

The cultists try to forget, but

all know they can never escape the
stigma of what happened at Jonestown.

My name is Tim Carter, but I
really don't want to talk right now.

Tim, please, this is very important.
I lost two friends here, too.

I lost my wife and my son.
I don't want to talk right now.

We get to the airport,

and all of a sudden,
there's just reporters everywhere.

So that was the beginning of 36 hours
straight of media interviews.

You claim you had no role in
the actual deaths of other people?

-Absolutely, not at all.
-No, 'cause we didn't see it.

We gotta go.

Stay back.

But the very first reporter said,

this is going on the evening national
news saying that you guys are hitmen.

You can respond if you want or not.

WHO PLACED KIDS WITH CULTISTS?

APPEARS JONES' GUARDS
TERRIFIES GUYANA SURVIVORS

You were an elite.

You had a better life inside
Jonestown,

so that you could have saved people.

Wait a second. Wait a second.

There was no place
for us to go or hide.

Stay with them.

-Hey, hey, this is all private, okay?
-This is private.

Okay, stay back.

After everyone died,
the media was everywhere.

It wasn't mass suicide, you know?
It was mass murder.

I wanted to stop it.
All of those people are my life.

All my 19 years, I've known
no one else, right?

What am I gonna do?

You see what's happened
when a few people tried to leave.

I didn't know what could happen.
I'm doing the best I can.

There were many people
within the community that I loved.

We had just lost everything.
We were devastated.

I know I felt complicit.

I felt terrified, horrified, grief
stricken, hopeless, and ashamed.

I can almost say that I hate this man
for doing what he's done,

because he has destroyed everything
I've lived for.

Moments
after the latest 17 survivors arrived

at Kennedy Airport last night,

FBI agents escorted them onto buses

for the most intense questioning yet
of returning survivors.

Included in the group, the Reverend
Jim Jones' adopted son, Jim.

To me, he was sick.

I'm not no medical person,
but if I was to look at him,

I would look at him
and say, that's a sick man.

We arrived penniless and hungry

and, you know, traumatized
by our whole experience,

and then they kept up
the questioning.

They were suspected
of being part of the plot.

People all think they're nuts,
they might be murderers.

They're all scarred in that way.

We were followed.

I would go to work, I'd have
a plainclothes car following me.

I think some of that was like, what
the hell's going on with him?

What is he gonna do?

After I escaped Jonestown,
I was still in Jonestown in my mind.

There was a lot of paranoia.

I saw a man from the back
with black hair,

I thought it was Jim Jones
and I would start running.

One of the hardest things
to deal with,

among many, were Kool-Aid jokes,
Jonestown jokes.

I was treated by people
that thought I was very stupid.

We all felt like we had been
made fools of, in a way,

because we had believed so totally
in what Jim Jones was saying.

Jim Jones was a cult leader
who was maniacal

and who was allowed
to pursue this horrific cause

for his personal aggrandizement.

He had used the word "church"

in sanitizing his grotesque behavior.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Jim went into the deep,
dark recesses of his mind

and what came back out was scary.

It was terrible.

Jones put himself in the position
where no one could tell him no.

He was enabled.
This is what demagogues do.

And so, gradually, the worst part
of his nature took over

until finally it consumed him

and, sadly, it consumed all the
people who had believed in him.

I felt it was my responsibility

to attend as many funerals
as possible.

Especially for my friends,
friends of mine.

One of my friends,
I went to her funeral,

and I remember the mother
coming out of the hallway

with a .38 caliber pistol
and pointing it at me

and saying why are you
alive when my daughter's not?

And then everyone grabbing her,

and me kind of sitting there going,
pull the trigger.

You know? It was...

At that point,

I didn't want to live.

ONE YEAR AFTER THE MASSACRE

Little has changed
in the settlement itself.

There are police guards patrolling
to keep visitors away.

The chair in which Jim Jones sat

when he called on his people to die
is still there,

along with the benches where they sat
and listened and obeyed.

AFTER YEARS OF MAINTAINING
THE COMPLEX,

THE GUYANESE GOVERNMENT
ABANDONED JONESTOWN.

IN JUST A FEW YEARS, THE SETTLEMENT
WAS COMPLETELY LOST TO THE JUNGLE.

My name is Larry Layton.

LARRY LAYTON, WHO TOOK PART IN THE
PORT KAITUMA AIRSTRIP SHOOTINGS,

SERVED 18 YEARS IN PRISON.

NO ONE WAS EVER CHARGED
WITH THE DEATHS IN JONESTOWN.

Most of the Temple survivors
and defectors

who returned from Guyana
have settled in San Francisco.

The Peoples Temple building was sold.

It is now a Korean Presbyterian
Church.

Doctors say that almost
all the former Temple members

live with anxiety, fear, and guilt.

I think that they will be able
to build a life for themselves.

The fears, the memories, and some
of the scars, for many of them,

it'll be a lifelong process trying
to deal with that.

For many years, I wasn't healing.

I was battling demons
on a daily basis,

using everything I could
to quiet the noise inside me.

And around that time,
my daughter was born.

That little baby cracked my
heart open in a way

that pushed me toward life instead
of choosing the easy way out.

STEPHAN JONES LIVES IN NORTHERN
CALIFORNIA

AND WRITES ABOUT HIS
EXPERIENCES IN PEOPLES TEMPLE.

HIS ESSAYS CAN BE FOUND ONLINE.

I went by James for a long time...

and it wasn't until many years after
that I even went by Jim Jones again.

After 40 years, I've lived two
lifetimes outside Peoples Temple.

I'm grateful that, I survived.

JIM JONES JR. IS MARRIED AND HAS
THREE SONS AND A GRANDDAUGHTER.

I was hospitalized for two months.
I had a lot of time to think.

I was so badly wounded
that they thought

they were gonna have to amputate my
arm and/or my leg.

I had gas gangrene through my body.

I just made a commitment to myself

that I did not want
to spend the rest of my life

as a victim or survivor of Guyana,
and I made a commitment

then to spend the rest of my life
in public service,

to continue Congressman
Ryan's legacy.

JACKIE SPEIER WAS ELECTED TO U.S.
CONGRESS IN 2008.

SHE REPRESENTS LEO RYAN'S DISTRICT.

When I came back to
the United States, I was shattered.

Came back with survivor's guilt
and I wasn't diagnosed.

Every day I was like,
why did I survive?

Why was I allowed to survive?
Inside, I was so broken.

I didn't start healing
until 20 years later.

My son, Jakari, calls me his,
you know, warrior queen.

He understands the sacrifice
that I made.

He knows every step
of the way, I'm there.

I'm just not going anywhere.

And I know a lot of it
is because of Jonestown.

LESLIE WAGNER-WILSON
LIVES IN ARIZONA.

IN 2009, SHE PUBLISHED A BOOK
ABOUT HER EXPERIENCE.

I call Leslie Wagner my hero

because she left with her son.

I see her as a person
of great courage,

that she was able to do that,
she was able to get her son out,

and she was able to risk death.

I've come to peace with my journey,
except around my son.

That will be something
that's always with me.

I still struggle to forgive myself.

VERNON GOSNEY SERVED
AS A POLICE OFFICER FOR 30 YEARS.

HE IS RETIRED AND LIVES
PEACEFULLY IN HAWAII.

The former Temple members try
to comfort each other

and their Temple past is their bond.

Whatever their thoughts
about Jim Jones,

they are all trying to rebuild
shattered lives.

All of us, if we allow ourselves
to step into that story,

there's something there
we can use.

And I pray that anyone
watching this...

can take away from it
whatever is valuable to them

as a way of honoring those we lost.

There are many lessons to be
learned from Jonestown.

I look at the world today, I look
at the environment that we're in,

and I see this parallel.

And I look at how Peoples
Temple began.

It began in a time when
there was a socio-political change,

but it was also based on fear.

We are in the same type
of environment, if not worse,

that could generate something much,
much more dangerous than Jonestown.

It could happen again.

I put the blame for what happened
in Jonestown on my father.

But I don't think the story
is Jim Jones.

I think the story is the people
who followed Jim Jones to Jonestown.

PEOPLES TEMPLE

You know, I always said, I go,

how appropriately named
was Peoples Temple?

Because it was really the people
that made that church.

Some of the best years of my life
were in Peoples Temple.

It wasn't Peoples Temple,
it was a sense of community.

A sense of belonging.

A sense of doing the right thing
when no one was looking.

It's just really too bad that
we couldn't have gone down in history

as this great, wonderful humanitarian
group that we were.

We could've been a force
to be reckoned with.

JONESTOWN

THE BIG QUESTION:

I wish that there was an easy answer
around Peoples Temple and Jonestown.

But there are no easy answers.

Anybody that has taken the time
to get to know the story

has discovered that, my gosh, these
were, like, real folks, you know?

Nothing special about us, nothing
unspecial about us.

Maybe even like me.

And I might have actually joined
something like that.

DEDICATED TO THE 918 MEN,
WOMEN AND CHILDREN

WHO DIED IN THE TRAGEDY IN GUYANA
ON NOVEMBER 18TH, 1978.

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