Original subtitles

[narrator] Thanks to the playbook,

your cult-building project is well underway.

You've even gained a small but loyal group of followers.

But to reach the next level, you have to up your game.

To be a successful long-term cult leader,

you have to grow your audience.

[Julia] The number of followers is like money in the bank.

The more you have, the more power you have.

[narrator] Not to mention other benefits.

Incredible loyalty.

Dollars out of every orifice.

[narrator] And let's not forget...

Pretty indiscriminate sex within the congregation.

[exclaims]

[narrator] It starts by giving people something to believe in.

You need people to think you mean well. You can't have them feel manipulated.

[woman] The moment someone feels manipulated, you're done.

[narrator] Take a lesson from the Reverend Jim Jones,

who mixed shrewd recruitment with a communal vision

to grow his Peoples Temple from 50 lost souls in Indiana

to an estimated 20,000 devotees across two continents.

I shall do all the miracles you said your God would do and never did.

Yeah!

[narrator] He didn't stick the landing.

But give him this,

Jones knew how to draw and hold a crowd.

[tense music accelerates]

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[narrator] Jim Jones went from a storefront preacher

to a larger-than-life messiah with government leaders on speed dial.

Not bad for a guy who used to sell monkeys for cash.

[gecker sound]

He was a very charismatic person who was extremely intelligent.

[Yulanda] He just knew how to touch your heart.

Thank you for inviting me in.

[narrator] But long before

he became the paranoid ruler of a doomed jungle community,

Jim was just a young man trying to find his place.

Wanna see what Jim Jones' story

can teach you on your own path to cult leader success?

Let's start at the beginning.

[Jeff] Jim Jones grew up in rural Indiana.

There's five churches in town.

He joined all of them,

and would run from parts of one service every Sunday to another.

[Julia] While other kids were playing games like doctor and patients,

he liked to play preacher and congregants.

He would dress up and put a white sheet around his shoulders,

and then pretend to do faith healing, say, with chickens.

Jones was fascinated by Hitler.

[speaks German]

[speaks German] Sieg Heil!

The glories of Hitler's control over his followers,

and that when he was surrounded by enemies,

and when there was no escape, he killed himself rather than surrender.

He was a civil rights leader, believe it or not, in the '50s.

[Julia] He was always about this notion of equality and social justice.

This is why you join Peoples Temple,

was because you believed his message and his mission.

[Amanda] He had his own rainbow family of children, of multiple races.

He seemed to be the real deal.

Slowly it evolved into a high control group

where the leader had total dominion and domination over his followers.

[narrator] From Hitler-admiring churchgoer to tyrannical cult leader,

you could say Jim's story came full circle.

But matching his success won't be easy.

In fact, it's going to take a miracle.

[bleating]

[narrator] Lost souls can choose to follow any number of charming leaders.

If you want them on your team,

you need to establish a higher authority.

You need to make people think that you are in some way special,

better, magical even.

[narrator] It's a tried and true formula.

[chill out music slowly playing]

[narrator] Shoko Asahara, leader of Aum Shinrikyo,

bolstered the ranks of his Japanese doomsday cult

by publishing photos of himself levitating.

Polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs

claimed he inherited the superpower of talking to God,

which gave him the authority to assign male followers

multiple wives for all eternity.

While Brazilian cult leader João de Deus drew thousands of followers

who believed God had blessed him with the power to heal AIDS and cancer.

He was later endowed with 600 charges of sexual abuse.

[speaks Portuguese]

[narrator] I'm sure people will appreciate your miracle work much more.

When Jim Jones set out to grow his flock,

he already knew a trusty method to lure people in.

In rural Indiana,

there would be revival meetings,

and by God, they'd put on a show.

[Jeff] The shows would involve healings.

Pride refuses to heal, but Jesus can make it heal. Everyone.

[narrator] Faith healings have been part of Christian tradition for centuries.

There's no science involved in faith healing.

Skeptics believe that this is the power of positive thinking,

but if you believe that your pastor is a divine messenger from God,

you wanna believe in miracles.

[narrator] After Jones opened his first church,

he started by claiming he could sense people's pain.

But it wasn't too long

before he expanded his repertoire into full-blown healings.

And the crazy part?

Some of them actually worked.

[exclaiming and clapping]

My dad was a Baptist minister.

[Yulanda] He had sustained a heart attack.

He said, "Your doctor, he said that you'll never be able to work again."

He said, "Do you believe in God?"

And my dad said, "Yes."

And he said, "Do you believe God sends prophets?"

My dad said, "Yes."

He says, "Do you believe prophets can heal?"

And my Dad said, "Absolutely."

And next thing we knew, Jim Jones did something with his hands,

and he said, "Reverend, I want you to run around this whole church."

He says, "I know you can do it."

[cheering]

And I said at that point,

"God, thank you so much for Jim Jones."

[narrator] Was his power real?

Jones claimed he didn't know.

Sometimes it'd work, sometimes it wouldn't,

so as his congregation grew,

what he then resorted to was to fake these faith healings.

[narrator] Before long, Jones started diagnosing followers with cancers

no one knew they had

and showing he could cure their afflictions.

They would cough up a growth from their lungs.

They would show that all around very ceremoniously.

[narrator] Another Jim Jones miracle?

Not quite.

That cancer victim was really one of Jones' most loyal followers.

And the so-called tumor?

It was usually chicken parts,

some gizzard or lung or heart

or something that they would supposedly cough up into a hanky.

[Jeff] Assistants were told, "Don't let anybody get close."

And if somebody tried to grab it away from them,

the assistants were instructed to put it in their mouths and swallow.

[narrator] Legit or not, the healings become Jones' biggest calling card,

with even the skeptics going along for the ride.

You might have been thinking in your mind that this is just a lot of BS,

but you're saying this to yourself.

[Herbert] You're not gonna say to the person next to you.

You might not know what the next person is thinking.

[narrator] Thanks to the power of a good show,

the crowds continued to build.

You mix in this artistry with the deception,

but when you add God into the mix,

then you have something that makes people think,

"I will follow this man anywhere."

[narrator] Your miracles are a hit with the tent revival crowd. Bravo.

But not everyone goes for that particular kind of show,

and you need to expand your audience,

so follow the playbook and spread your wings.

[slow tempo music playing]

[narrator] As a cult leader on the rise,

you need to find a way to reach people from all walks of life.

And on this front, Jim Jones was a legend.

[Yulanda] Jim Jones was a master manipulator.

You felt like you were important

and that he was speaking specifically to you.

[Jeff] He's so charismatic.

He could connect with three, four, five different types of audience

at the same time.

[narrator] Jones' secret,

a time-honored technique called "code switching."

Code switching might involve

alternating between different dialects or different languages

within the space of one conversation or even the space of one sentence.

[narrator] We all do a bit of code switching sometimes.

The stakes of code switching can be as low as using "pop" instead of "soda"

if you're a Midwesterner to show you're from where you're from.

[narrator] But Jim Jones raised the bar.

[slightly upbeat music playing]

[narrator] Jim Jones' rise takes him across America,

and wherever he goes,

Jones shifts his delivery to connect with his local audience.

[Jeff] Jones started in Indianapolis,

and the first people who come to see him are mostly elderly Black women.

[narrator] Here, he uses the spirit-filled speech

of a Pentecostal preacher.

When he moves the church to conservative, mostly white Redwood Valley, California,

he's all about wholesome family values.

And when students from a local college turn up...

He would quote Nietzsche and Mao.

He would talk of Karma

and more Eastern philosophy that was trendy at the time.

[narrator] Finally, when Jones moves the temple's headquarters

to its permanent home in downtown San Francisco,

he reads his audience and talks about radical social revolution.

[Jones] But we shall have our freedom here and now!

[cheering] Yeah!

[narrator] And if attention ever waned,

Jones could always deploy the message he knew everyone would respond to,

telling them they're all going to die.

We don't need more concerns about the tomorrows

because every day will be heaven.

The content, the ethics didn't matter,

but his ability to speak to the masses and cultivate power did.

We started with about 141 people,

and from that we've grown to a thriving congregation

of a few thousand.

[narrator] Of course, it's one thing to get people to join your cult,

you have to make sure they stick around.

The playbook's next lesson

shows how to keep your growing flock committed

by embracing the power of sharing.

Say what you will about cults,

they bring people together.

It feels good to connect with other human beings.

It feels good to chant and to dance

and to do things that might be considered "cultish."

[narrator] Nothing says connection like forcing adult strangers to live together.

All good cult leaders know this.

Shoko Asahara bonded his acolytes

by forcing them to shack up in communal living quarters,

which were riddled with pests

because his teachings forbade killing any living creature.

Followers of Indian guru Bhagwan Rajneesh

pitched in to build a self-contained city, Rajneeshpuram,

where they could securely practice their faith,

including free love and nude therapy sessions.

Members of the Buddhafield cult pooled their free time and money

to serve their guru, Jaime Gomez.

They even built him his own ballet theater.

Jim Jones had his own

clever and profitable way of uniting his followers

around a common purpose.

He called it "apostolic socialism."

The apostles all lived together,

Jesus' 12 apostles, and they lived communally,

so he thought his members should also live in communes,

and then, to fund this communal living,

to sign over all of their worldly wealth to the church, to Jim Jones.

Aren't you retired?

Not around you I'm not.

[laughing]

He would easily convince people to sell off any real estate they had,

cars, and turn it over to the church.

[narrator] And if anyone needed a little extra convincing...

He always made us feel guilty.

He told us he'd made

all of these sacrifices in his life to help us.

He told us he could have been a rich man.

So when he asks us to do something, we shouldn't give it a second thought.

[narrator] Jones used his followers' cash and unpaid labor

to expand the temple's outreach.

You could serve meals in the temple's soup kitchen,

distribute food to the needy,

or read to the elderly in a temple nursing home.

You could fix cars in the temple garage,

spend all week writing letters to government officials praising Jones,

write or edit the temple newspaper,

or work delivering the finished product around town.

The opportunities were endless,

and so were the hours.

It's just not a Sunday type of thing.

This is your whole life, so you are all in at this point.

It was a way of making people feel they were contributing,

and it was a way of gaining total control over their lives.

[narrator] Even with communal success at home,

there's still a whole world of potential followers

who have no idea what you can do for them.

Time to tackle that challenge head on.

[melancholic music playing]

[narrator] If you want to be the one true Messiah,

you'll need to be more than the big fish in a small pond.

If I'm setting myself up as the be-all, end-all prophet,

I don't want somebody else in the next town over

having three times as many followers as I do.

How's that look?

[narrator] Not good.

And one of Jim Jones' greatest qualities

as a cult leader was that he was never satisfied.

He knew exactly what to do to get what he ultimately wanted,

which was money, power, and people.

Jim Jones bought a fleet of buses and he would take his show on the road,

and at the end of the service, he would tell people,

"Come back to California with us."

[narrator] The Jim Jones experience was a sight to behold.

On a typical tour,

the temple caravan rolled into town,

unleashing the reverend, a band,

and hundreds of loyal worshippers to liven up Jones' service.

Of course, no traveling festival would be complete without a merch table,

fully stocked with portraits of Jones

that were said to cure a wide array of ailments.

Sales, healings, and other donations raked in ten grand at a single service,

while audience members were encouraged

to pack up their lives and come to San Francisco.

Many did.

But not every stop was a success.

In 1971, Jones brings 200 temple members

to a dinner at the estate of his lifelong hero,

the late pastor and faith healer, Father Divine.

Jones' goal?

Take over Divine's flock.

At dinner with Father Divine's widow,

Jones makes a surprising claim

that he is, in fact, Father Divine reincarnated.

[gasp]

[narrator] Mother Divine is not impressed.

She calls him the devil.

Mother Divine and her followers chase out Jones and his group

under threat of violence.

You could see Jones' gambit as bold or even crazy,

but he didn't leave town empty-handed.

He was able to steal some of Father Divine's sheep

that then went on the buses and came back to California with him.

[narrator] Jones' outreach efforts paid off.

By the end of 1971,

the temple mailing list had more than quadrupled.

Yes, Jones was hitting the big time.

But you know the saying, the bigger they are, the harder they fall.

One of the things that is most disastrous about cults,

at some point, it's going off the rails.

With Jim Jones, this happens once he got into drugs.

[slightly upbeat music playing]

[narrator] When these problems do arise,

if you want to stay in charge and out of trouble,

you're going to need to enlist some steady hands.

It's good at the top.

The view,

the amenities,

the walk-in closet

full of skeletons.

[screams]

[narrator] That's why you need the right sort of allies

to keep your nose clean.

Cult leaders are very good at having a group of people around them

who are part of the machine.

They keep their secrets,

and they know not to talk about what happens from behind the scenes.

[narrator] Take it from these guys.

Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh relied on his spokeswoman,

Ma Anand Sheela, to protect his reputation.

And when an unfriendly prosecutor started poking around,

she tried to have him killed.

NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere had high-ranking member Lauren Salzman

force female recruits to provide compromising photographs

to make sure they remain faithful to him and the group.

While members of Shoko Asahara's inner circle

killed a lapsed disciple who threatened to spill the cult's secrets,

then incinerated his body in a giant microwave.

But few cult leaders had an inner circle as loyal or organized as Jim Jones.

Jim Jones' inner circle was called The Planning Commission.

[Julia] This was about 30 of his closest followers.

These were people Jim Jones knew would go to bat for him.

[narrator] And despite the temple's diverse population,

these insiders had one thing in common.

The inner circle was all white.

It was basically a hierarchy, and the white folks were in charge.

They knew about his lies and the fake healings,

but they believed that the means justified the ends.

[narrator] As Jones' increasing power starts to go to his head,

maintaining his divine reputation takes a village,

especially now.

To keep up with his demanding schedule,

Jones begins popping an impressive amount of pills.

Amphetamines for energy and Quaaludes to come down.

Despite his commitments,

Jones still finds time to have affairs with several of his parishioners,

which naturally need to be kept quiet.

Then in 1973,

Jones is busted at a local movie theater

for revealing his "staff" to an undercover cop.

Not the best look for a messenger of God.

It was something that, if it had become public,

could have ruined him.

[narrator] But when it comes to indecent exposure,

you can only cover up so much.

[Jeff] They had to keep it quiet,

so he cut a deal.

[narrator] Jones pleads guilty, but his lawyer,

also a loyal temple member,

makes sure the record's kept sealed from the public and his followers,

which was actually a mixed blessing.

Once he got away with something like that,

why not do something else?

What happened with Jim Jones is he started getting sloppy.

There were disenchanted people who left and who knew about the drug use,

about some of the money-making operations that are going on behind the scenes.

[narrator] Even you do everything right, some people just won't get off your back.

The playbook's advice?

Turn this speed bump into a pathway to paradise.

[man singing]

[narrator] Like dancing, leading a cult often works best when no one's watching.

So if outsiders begin prying into your affairs,

it may be time to find a less judgemental refuge.

You've gotta get the hell away to some place

where you're not gonna be getting outside criticism.

This is typical of so many cult leaders.

[narrator] Jones had a good reason for wanting to get away.

Jim Jones hears that there is this reporter

that's sniffing around, trying to talk to former temple members,

sniffing around the finances, trying to dig up dirt.

[narrator] And by the spring of 1977,

the reporter begins preparing a bombshell exposé.

It is damning.

It blows the lid off of the temple.

It talks about his affairs,

it talks about him coercing money from members.

[Julia] It talks about beating children.

[narrator] Jones' connections in the media tip him off about what's coming.

[Jeff] They didn't use anonymous sources.

They had the names of the people, they had their photographs.

It was the crack

that was going to widen into a fissure, and Jones knew it.

[narrator] Luckily, he already had an escape plan in mind.

[reporter] But this fascinating country

on the northeastern coast of South America, Guyana,

vividly contrasts the old and the new.

[narrator] Guyana checked all of Jones' boxes.

It was English-speaking,

it was socialist,

and far beyond the reach of pesky investigative reporters,

as well as another of Jones' mounting concerns,

Cold War nuclear crossfire.

An added bonus,

Guyana was in dire financial straits,

so the government wasn't in a position

to turn down an infusion of sweet cold cash.

Jones has Peoples Temple

lease 3,800 acres of jungle in Guyana to build his Eden.

By this time, this article in the San Francisco magazine comes out.

[Jeff] There are about 75 people clearing land,

building cabins, and so forth.

[narrator] Feeling the heat,

Jones immediately runs off to Guyana with his family,

and wastes no time trying to get more followers to join him.

He told us we needed to have a place where we could have our own utopia.

[narrator] Jones sends back home movies to the temple,

which paint the settlement as paradise.

We saw big oranges and bananas,

and everything supposedly growing on these trees.

Mm, mm, mm!

You don't know what you're missing here.

They make their own buns and hamburgers and green vegetables.

[Yulanda] He said we wouldn't need police officers.

There would be food aplenty for everyone.

You didn't have to go to work, you could just relax and just enjoy life.

We have so many lovely insects and animals who don't harm at all.

They've never been harmed by anything down here.

[narrator] In all, Jones convinces over 1,000 temple members

to relocate to the settlement in Guyana,

or as Jones christens it,

"Jonestown."

But upon arrival,

the reality is not exactly as advertised.

The fruit that they claimed was growing on the tree,

there was no fruit.

[Yulanda] They couldn't grow anything.

They said there were gonna be individual houses for families.

That was not true.

There were no real beds.

[narrator] Oh, and one more thing.

It becomes abundantly clear

once they arrive in Jonestown that they cannot leave.

[Yulanda] There were armed guards around the complex 24/7.

It was like a concentration camp.

I mean, I've never been on a plantation,

but, my God, it was a plantation,

and he was the master!

[narrator] Jones forces temple members to work 12 to 14 hours a day, hard labor.

And anybody who tried to push back or argue with him,

those people would end up in the "Special Care Unit"

drugged up with Thorazine.

[narrator] Some tried to escape,

but were brought back by Jones' security team and punished.

Fear begins to permeate Jonestown,

but Jones,

high on increasing amounts of drugs,

doesn't seem to mind.

[ominous music playing]

Their only means of survival is listening to Jim Jones

and doing what he says.

They have Jim Jones and that's it,

and in some ways, that's a cult leader's dream.

[narrator] But the tricky thing about Eden is,

you have to keep out the snakes.

Relatives of people in Jonestown who are worried,

they appealed to Congressman Leo Ryan from San Mateo,

"Will you please go to Jonestown and check in with our relatives?"

"We wanna make sure they aren't held against their will."

[reporter] Tuesday, November 14th.

Congressman Leo Ryan had left the United States for Georgetown, Guyana.

[narrator] Company's coming.

Better make sure your paradise is presentable.

When the congressman finally arrived,

everything was carefully orchestrated.

- [man] You're happy here? - Very happy.

Best place I've ever been.

[Julia] There is song and dance. They play music.

It appears that Jim Jones has pulled the visit off.

It's a pleasure to be here.

I appreciate the hospitality you've shown me.

[cheers]

[narrator] But all it takes to sabotage your work is one weak link.

Unbeknownst to Jim Jones,

one resident has slipped

the NBC reporter a note that says,

"Help us get out of Jonestown."

[reporter] Doesn't it concern you though...

What can I do about liars? Are you people gonna...

Leave us. I just beg you. Please leave us.

[narrator] Jones allows the disgruntled members

to leave with the congressman,

but then he has a change of heart.

Jones sends people with guns after them.

[gunshots]

[reporter] Five people died in the gunfire

that came from men on a flatbed truck pulled by a tractor trailer.

[narrator] Congressman Ryan himself

is killed at the airstrip before his plane can take off.

Within hours, Jones and more than 900 of his followers are dead as well.

He told them that they were all going to commit revolutionary suicide.

There was no alternative.

[narrator] But the evidence tells a different story.

On so many bodies,

they found injection mark bruises in the neck or behind the knee.

This wasn't mass suicide, it was mass murder.

I think about all of those 900 people

that just made a mistake of following

this evil man to the point of no return.

[narrator] Jim Jones' jungle utopia ended in tragedy,

giving cult leaders everywhere a bad name.

But don't despair.

The playbook offers another path

to creating your own heaven on Earth without going half a world away.

You just have to hack into your followers' minds

and never let them go.

Stick around for a lesson in persuasion from the man who used a failed porn career

as a springboard to discovering his true calling.

The Be-Speedo'd Master of the Buddhafield,

Jaime Gomez.

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