Original subtitles

[helicopter blades whirring]

[♪ ominous music playing]

[pilot] [on radio] There's been some kind of a shooting.

[woman] [on radio] It's some kind of a shooting?

[pilot] Yes.

Can't confirm that being true or not.

[Charles Krause] I really did think I was gonna die.

And it was frightening. I mean, it was.

But I escaped death.

[newscaster] This story just into our newsroom,

California Congressman Leo Ryan has been shot.

Congressman Leo Ryan of California is dead,

shot along with four other Americans.

Right now we go to Floyd Kalber for the latest details

on that continuing and bizarre story in Guyana.

All of a sudden, it was the biggest story in the world.

You know, boom.

We now have pictures that were just flown out,

fed to us by satellite.

The shooting started right there.

The shooting, see the gunmen right there?

Unbelievable.

The wounded are being flown to Washington tonight

aboard an Air Force medical evacuation plane.

♪♪

Among the several people wounded in the shootings

were Jacqueline Speier, the legislative aide

to Congressman Ryan and Steven...

[Jackie Speier] My first image was the words

"The United States of America" on it.

I felt like I was wrapped with the American flag.

There's no reason why I didn't die

except it wasn't in the plan.

I should have died on that airstrip.

[newscaster] The Government of Guyana reports this morning

that mass suicides have swept through that jungle camp

of a California religious sect, the Peoples Temple.

There's no question that Jim Jones

was a maniacal, evil human being.

How was it people had been,

uh, so... ensnared in Jim Jones' world?

[♪ symphonic theme music playing]

[inaudible dialogue]

[♪ music continues]

[inaudible dialogue]

[inaudible dialogue]

[♪ music continues]

[inaudible dialogue]

[inaudible dialogue]

[inaudible dialogue]

[♪ music continues]

[inaudible dialogue]

[inaudible dialogue]

[♪ music continues]

[Tom Reston] Alright, ladies and gentlemen,

first of all, let me apologize for being late.

I have a statement to read here,

part of which has been handed out to you but part of which has not.

The Department of State is shocked

and deeply sorrowed

by yesterday's tragic events

at Port Kaituma, Guyana,

which resulted in the deaths of Congressman Leo Ryan

of the State of California and several others in his party.

[overlapping chatter]

Uh, now, just a minute, please.

In addition, there are reports, as yet unconfirmed that members

of the Peoples Temple community in Guyana

are perhaps engaging in mass suicides.

The full investigation is going to have to be

carried out by the Security Forces,

which are on their way to Jonestown.

[David Netterville] I was 27 years old at the time,

an Air Force Special Operations sergeant.

We were going into Jonestown, Guyana.

The only thing we knew, uh,

estimated 900 to 1,000 people there in this commune.

And the people there are armed and dangerous.

We were told, your main job is to go in and recon and find Jim Jones.

Uh, we got the standard photo of Jim Jones,

so we'd recognize who he was when we saw him.

Well, he looked like a very charismatic type person.

I was very apprehensive.

We didn't know what was to be expected.

♪♪

[Krause] They said they were gonna allow one journalist

and one photographer to go in

and represent the world's press.

And I was the first journalist to be able to actually go back

and see what had happened.

The story wasn't over.

We didn't know how many people in Jonestown were still alive.

[Netterville] As we're flying in from a distance,

about three, four miles out,

it looked like clothes laying on the ground.

See all those multicolors?

Got to sink down a little lower.

[Krause] There was the pavilion and there was all these bright colors

you know, around it.

To me, it looked like confetti.

[♪ ominous music playing]

But each one of those pieces of confetti

was the shirt or, or dress

of a, of a dead person.

You know, it was just...

well...

senseless in a way.

[Netterville] Terrible, just terrible.

I was just totally shocked

at the number of bodies that were laying on the ground.

I will never forget.

♪♪

We were directed to count casualties,

see if there were any people

that were still left alive and find Jim Jones.

I, I'll be honest with ya, I was, um,

I was actually, I was pretty scared.

Uh, I did keep my weapon right next to me all the time.

I was prepared to defend myself if I had to.

It was frightening. I mean it, it was.

I don't think anyone could have really imagined it.

[♪ soft eerie music playing]

The damnedest thing I've ever seen.

[Netterville] Oh, as I walked through,

one of the first things that I saw was a table.

And it was covered with syringes and bottles,

cyanide poison.

Right off to the side was a 55-gallon drum that had been cut in half.

They'd mixed up cyanide along with

what they call Kool-Aid to poison the people.

-Right here. -Right here.

[Netterville] And as I looked around,

this is maybe five yards away...

I found him.

I saw Jim Jones.

Jim Jones was laying on the ground

just outside the pavilion, on the ground.

Right behind his quote, "throne."

He was wearing khaki pants and a bright red shirt.

Uh, he had been shot in the head.

I got the initial count and we called back on HF radio.

We told them, uh, casualty count's 450.

"Say again?" "Roger. 450."

"Are you saying 450? Four-five-zero?"

"That's affirmative."

He goes, "Roger.

We'll get back to you. Out."

[Krause] The army count, that still didn't account for

half the people who were there.

That meant there were nearly 500 people missing.

Where were they?

The army believed that a lot of these people

had fled into the jungle.

♪♪

[newscaster] ...for survivors of the Jonestown

suicide-murders goes on.

Nobody really knows how many people are out there in the Guyana jungle

but they do know that it is deadly difficult

to survive out there for more than a day or two.

♪♪

♪♪

[reporter] Here at police headquarters and elsewhere,

it's become virtually impossible to find out more about possible survivors

of the Jonestown tragedy.

♪♪

[Stephan Jones] The night of November 18th,

I was in Georgetown.

Understandably people had an eye on me.

Jim Jones was my dad.

At that time, I was so afraid

and, you know, just nervous about

what was going to happen.

[indistinct chatter]

Steve, how many of your members are being detained?

I think all of us that are here are being detained.

We're in Georgetown

when this happened, and it's about 46, I guess.

[Krause] How many, 46 people in the Georgetown house?

There I was, face-to-face with Stephan Jones, right?

The world wanted answers.

People wanted to know who was there, who were these people.

Was there a tendency to violence among any of the members?

[Krause] Stephan Jones was the heir apparent

and did do this press conference.

[indistinct chatter]

And I asked a lot of questions.

Steve, isn't it true that anyone who tried to leave

was caught and brought back and put on drugs?

I can't say.

But, Steve, wasn't it true

that people were forced to sit up half the night

and if they fell asleep

the security guards would come over and poke them with a gun?

No.

Isn't it true that

some people from Jonestown

would kill the certain people who were on a list of enemies of the church?

No. I mean... No.

You never heard that?

That... that's not true.

How many guns were there altogether?

Were you familiar with the term White Night?

[Stephan Jones] It felt to me like the entire outside world

was against me.

Could you explain why your father was so upset

with the possibility of members leaving?

No.

People thought there was an underlying mission

to do harm to others,

and that's just not the case.

But I can assure you, sir, I do not... I was not in on what happened here.

I'm doing the best I can.

And I understand your... I understand your problem.

[Krause] Look, he might have thought I was confronting him,

but, really, I just wanted some answers.

I had the distinct feeling that he knew much more

than he was willing to say.

[Stephan Jones] You know, I don't want...

I, I don't wanna be associated with what's happened.

You know, I've never dreamed of, uh, committing murder

or, you know, hurting anyone.

I'm amazed that I could even talk to anybody at that time.

I was very ashamed.

[exhales deeply]

And terrified.

You know, I, I can almost say that I, I hate this man

for doing what he's done

because he has destroyed everything I've lived for.

[present day] What the outside world didn't know

was that I hated my father.

[♪ slow dramatic music playing]

Looking back...

my mother was very nurturing and loving.

I didn't get a lot of attention from my dad

but definitely had dad moments,

you know, playful moments with him.

My family, the immediate family, all of whom are adopted but me,

I felt loved, I felt like a little bit of a trophy.

It wasn't long before I realized

it was all about my father.

[inaudible dialogue]

What he had done to my mother was what really broke it for me.

I remember when he introduced me to his mistress.

He had taken me and basically tried to

force a relationship between me and his mistress.

And I was going to lie to my mother about that.

Only to find out that he had told her everything about it in great detail.

And that's when it really... something ruptured in me.

And I was angry.

It was harming my mother who was a wonderful person.

A lovely partner to him.

I had become openly resistant to him.

Really quite rebellious.

And we had rageful exchanges

in front of a lot of people on multiple occasions.

I was whipped publicly.

I thought he was drugging me at one point.

The Temple was my entire life

but I did everything I could to try and get away from him.

And he needed to manage my rebellion.

He was concerned about how that looked.

My rebellion, it was threatening to him.

He's thinking, if people see that my own son is against me,

that may feed something in them,

um, in their own rebellion.

So all of those things that had gone on

for as long as I could remember

and now were all reasons for me to...

[exhales deeply] ...despise my father.

It was completely unheard of for US government

and the press to come into Jonestown.

Everyone knew that could not end up well

for Jonestown, for my father.

You'd have to understand, I didn't know

he might completely lose his mind.

It was terrible to not be there.

To stop what happened.

So, of course, you hold out onto hope

that the people dearest to you had survived somehow.

Not everyone could be dead.

♪♪

[♪ ominous music playing]

The bodies were deteriorating terribly.

Just terrible sights.

I mean, to tell you, it was just awful.

You know, we were trained for military operations...

which this became a rescue and recovery operation.

Found bodies, uh, in some of the houses.

There were people that had, uh,

syringes stuck in the back of their neck.

Right in the center of their neck, along the spinal cord.

And they just let 'em drop right there and die.

Ptew, dead body.

And they, they moved onto the next person.

I found a lot of people that you could tell

they had been held down

and had been forced to either drink it

or had been hit with a syringe in the back of the neck.

♪♪

They killed a lot of these people.

They didn't commit suicide.

And I look out over the horizon, there comes two helicopters.

[inaudible dialogue]

A few correspondents each aircraft.

They were from NBC, ABC, CBS, all the major networks.

Just going crazy.

First words out of everyone's mouth,

"I wanna see the Kool-Aid.

I wanna see where Jim Jones was."

[Fred Francis] When the poison was being passed out,

men were around this auditorium area here with crossbows.

They were acting as guards.

[Netterville] They're snapping, uh, pictures.

And they were asking 500 million questions.

Were you here when all this occurred?

No, no.

[newscaster] No one knows how many people escaped

into the jungle, escaped the mass suicide.

One witness said about a dozen,

others believe there are hundreds out there.

[Tim Carter] I'd been in the jungle for a long time.

When we finally arrived at Port Kaituma,

as soon as we walked down the clearing, it was "Halt."

You know, "Put your hands up."

♪♪

What's your name?

My name's Tim Carter, but I don't really wanna talk right now.

[reporter] Tim, please, this is very important.

I lost two friends here too.

I lost my wife and my son.

I don't wanna talk right now.

[present day] I was beside myself.

I was just blubbering.

"They murdered my son they murdered my son,

they murdered my son."

The pain was just too much.

It was just darkness.

I really didn't give a... about anybody or anything.

You know, I was broken.

I was completely broken.

[newscaster 1] About 30 including six children

came out of the jungle,

but nobody knows how many more

are lost in this treacherous and very dangerous part of South America.

[helicopter blades whirring]

[newscaster 2] Survivors of the mass suicide

remain in Guyana.

Those survivors are in a hotel in Georgetown.

[Carter] When we got back to Georgetown,

the onslaught started.

[reporter 1] Can you tell us what you saw?

I don't feel like talking.

[reporter 2] Knowing you were armed

and other people were dying back there,

did it ever occur to you to go back?

You could have saved people.

I know there's a lot of very rational questions that arise,

but you have to remember, they're very irrational circumstances.

It was a feeding frenzy.

And when we said, "We don't want to talk,"

they wouldn't leave us alone.

This is all private.

Stay back.

Stay back.

[reporter] This interview is with Leslie, L-E-S-L-I-E

Wilson, W-I-L-S-O-N

of San Francisco

and her three-year-old son Jakari.

Oh, I put my shell in there.

[reporter] Why did you leave that day?

I'd been planning on trying to get out for a long time.

For a while.

[Leslie Wagner-Wilson] I was 21.

I was in the Peoples Temple since I was 13.

[reporter] Leslie, tell me what the distinction

is that Jakari enjoys?

Uh, he's, he's free.

[babbles]

[present day] We had escaped.

I had decided that I wanted to leave Jonestown months before.

I didn't see a future for myself or my son.

Back in Jonestown,

there was always a sense of fear in the camp.

Jim Jones demanded loyalty.

He controlled everything.

He had us trapped.

We had no way out of Jonestown.

He would say, "You'll die before you leave here."

There were 11 of us that wanted to escape.

The congressman being there was actually a distraction

on the morning of the 18th.

Our escape route was walking over 30 miles in the jungle to another town.

I had Jakari tied to a sheet on my back.

As we trekked up this hill, I was waiting for this bullet.

Because I thought we have to be seen.

How could they not, how could they not see us?

We were totally exposed.

And I didn't look back. I was scared to look back.

I thought I was gonna feel the heat of a bullet.

All I could think about was saving my son.

I was prepared to die and told my group,

"If you see me shot dead, to take my son and run."

While we were walking to freedom,

we had no idea what was happening in Jonestown.

I had no idea that I've gotten away at the right time.

[reporter] If you had not left that morning

you would have been in Jonestown

at the time that Reverend Jones

told everybody to commit suicide.

Right.

[reporter] Had you been there,

would you have given poison to the child?

Definitely not.

[reporter] Why not?

If you would have been out there that day, really,

surrounded by all your friends holding your child,

Jim Jones brewing the poison, really,

you would have probably taken it too.

I don't think so.

And you would have probably given it to Jakari.

Just like the other mothers did.

I wouldn't.

[present day] The reporter was very unsympathetic.

All I could think about was

my mom and my family.

I was praying that my family,

someone from my family had escaped.

♪♪

[♪ ominous music playing]

[Bernard Shaw] Here at the American Embassy,

the flag at half-mast best symbolizes

how most people are reacting to this

still unexplained act of horror.

Bernard Shaw, ABC News, Georgetown, Guyana.

[Douglas Ellice] Everyone was in crisis mode,

trying to figure out what was happening.

We were trying to figure out who was doing what to whom.

It wasn't clear if there were good guys and bad guys.

There was murder in the air.

We were very nervous.

A team came back from Jonestown and had a reel-to-reel tape

that had been on the tape recorder next to Jim Jones' body.

[Jim Jones speaking]

[Ellice] We listened to the last hour of the Peoples Temple.

And it was the spookiest moment of my life.

Uh... [stammers]

Everyone in, in the room was just shattered

by what they heard Jones saying.

[Jim Jones speaking]

Jones, he was encouraging people

who might be hesitating to commit murder,

to calm down, be quiet, stop crying

and poison themselves and their children.

[Jim Jones playing]

[Temple members clamor]

These people never had a chance.

And they've been victims of racism,

they're victims of poverty.

[inaudible singing]

Jim Jones came along and offered them something.

They trusted him and they believed him.

They thought they were changing the world,

or at least they thought they were changing their lives.

But he was a crazy son of a bitch.

And he was willing to see them all die.

I don't know why he needed to destroy these people

but he... he, he did.

[Jim Jones speaking]

[baby crying]

[newscaster] Hundreds of Americans

who escaped last Saturday's orgy of suicide and murder

are still missing after more than 72 hours.

♪♪

[John Cobb] I am 18 years old at that time.

I was born into the Peoples Temple,

so it's all I knew.

The government, they asked us

if anyone would be willing to go back and identify bodies.

That was not so much of a mission of identifying bodies

as it was more a mission of hope.

That if people weren't there, they were missing,

that we would know where to go and look for 'em in the bush.

Um...

It was just really, uh...

I don't know, it was just a feeling of...

I don't know how to really describe it.

It was just a hard scene to look at.

I will never forget it.

We started seeing our relatives...

all my family.

All my family.

Some of my younger brother and sisters.

They were together. So I put a sheet over them.

I lost 11 altogether, between in-laws

and adopted nieces.

Eleven people.

Being a part of Peoples Temple, you did everything together.

You went to school together,

on vacations together.

We did everything together.

We had hopes and dreams.

Yeah.

[Netterville] Being in Jonestown was pretty tough.

[inaudible dialogue]

And the hot sun,

well, the smell was overwhelming.

The US Army started moving bodies.

We found bodies in some of the houses

and they, they died in their bed.

So that was probably 35, 40 people

that were in there.

We, we didn't even know about.

And we would count 'em and take 'em to the helicopters.

It hit my heart hard

to see young children that had died there.

Some of the people that died were actually holding onto their children

and they were tucked underneath 'em.

That was just...

I, I couldn't fathom that.

That-that just tore me up.

♪♪

♪♪

[indistinct chatter]

[Captain John Moscatelli] Okay, this announcement

has been released by the American Embassy.

The original count of persons found dead at the Jonestown site

has been found to be seriously in error.

It now appears there may be as many as 780 bodies, total,

[exhales] found at the site.

And more may be expected.

There were larger adults, they were grouped together

and under their bodies were found the bodies

of smaller, uh, adults and children.

[newscaster] The Jonestown story took another quantum leap in horror today.

The known death toll almost doubled

as American troops found hundreds more decomposing bodies.

The numbers just kept growing.

They just kept growing. It was unreal.

There was 35, 40 bodies that were put on a trailer

and you look back out there over the horizon

and there's that many more bodies still stacked up.

After a while I, I just quit counting.

I, I, I couldn't do it anymore.

Deep down in my heart, I really felt hate for Jim Jones.

[newscaster] Right now, let's go to Floyd Kalber

who has details

on that continuing grim story out of Guyana.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

American soldiers are flying out of Guyana this morning.

They're en route home.

Their gruesome job

at the Jonestown suicide camp ended.

[♪ eerie music playing]

[newscaster 1] Today, the recovery teams

admitted they had made a big mistake.

[Stephan Jones] We were listening to the radio.

[newscaster 2] Good evening.

The news from Guyana is even worse than we thought yesterday.

Another 135 bodies were found today

and authorities now believe the final death count

will be about 910 people.

Devastated by that, oh, my God, how, how, how,

how could that have happened?

I just fell over backward crying and sobbing.

The grief was absolutely devastating.

♪♪

[♪ vocalizing]

[Speier] We failed those people.

That was a very painful feeling

because we went there to help them and to save them

and we didn't succeed.

They lost their lives.

[♪ fast-paced dramatic music playing]

[newscaster] Jonestown survivors returning

to the United States today from Guyana, South America.

The seven among the 80 cult members

who escaped or somehow missed

that mass poisoning in their jungle commune.

[♪ music continues]

You're gonna have to move, you're blocking our door.

It was just devastatingly traumatic for the survivors.

I saw the survivors as victims

of Jones'... imaginings.

Because of the mysterious aura of death and homicide

around the group,

no airline wanted to board any of these people.

Pan Am said, "We're not gonna fly

"any of these potentially homicidal maniacs

uh, without sky marshals on the plane."

♪♪

[Wagner-Wilson] I remember flying over New York

and seeing these lights...

and I'm just petrified.

This fear engulfed me and the sadness,

I thought "What am I going to do?'"

How do I come back to a society I was taught to hate?

How, how do we do this?

Because everything that I loved was gone.

And so, it was frightening.

[newscaster] More American survivors

of the mass murder-suicide ritual in Jonestown

returned to the United States tonight.

Among them, a few men who were members

of the cult's security force.

[camera shutters clicking]

I lost my brother, 21,

I lost another brother, 24, I lost my wife.

Our whole foundation was tore off from underneath us.

Our parents and our families are all gone.

We just felt lost.

[Wagner-Wilson] The way we were portrayed in the media

caused a lot of people not to have compassion for us.

Because they thought we deserved it.

We were stigmatized.

Went on for years.

Losing your family. How?

[indistinct chatter]

[Wagner-Wilson] Because it was so difficult,

I changed my name

and I created this entire person

that didn't exist.

Lived this life of not talking about it.

And that was the dangerous part.

Not talking about it.

For almost 15 years, I did that.

[military spokesman] The State Department has asked us

to put the word out to any relatives,

if they have any medical records or dental records

or photographs of the individuals,

we encourage them to send them to our mortuary officer here

at Dover Air Force Base.

Uh, and we will use them in the identification process.

[telephone ringing]

Get the phone out of the background, please.

Take it out of its misery.

Stick the receiver in a glass of Kool-Aid.

[faint laughter]

[Stephan Jones] I hope folks stop saying...

[scoffs]

"Drinking the Kool-Aid"

or "You just drunk the Kool-Aid."

It so dehumanizes the people that died there

and it's so off the mark.

That night... was murder.

My father created fear.

He got lost in power and drugs.

[inaudible dialogue]

For Dad, you lose that power,

he'd lose everything.

The temple didn't exist beyond him.

The world didn't exist beyond him

and that played out on that final night.

♪♪

[newscaster] First of dozens of caskets were put beneath the surface of the earth.

It's part of the tragic story that even till now is not over.

[priest] Spirit of the departed has returned to God.

[Cobb] Everyone I knew at Peoples Temple

are some of the absolute best people I've ever met in my life.

[priest] Earth to earth,

ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

[Cobb] We never had time to just mourn.

You know, you live with this every day. Every single day.

There's not a day that goes by that you don't think of some parts of it.

[Stephan Jones] The guilt I carried, I buried for years.

I just tried my best to live while...

and put up a good front, um, all the while tortured.

Um, and, and that, that still rears its head and I,

and it still torments me.

Work in progress.

[Wagner-Wilson] It was a dark secret. For years.

What I realize is that in order to move on,

I had to forgive Jim Jones.

Once I forgave Jim Jones, I started healing.

And I've had a good life.

Of course, I've had ups and downs like all of us do

but when I stand here today,

when I didn't think I was gonna live to be 22,

I'm grateful. I'm grateful for it all.

[Carter] For a long time, I mean,

I literally had people say take it one day at a time.

I was taking it one hour at a time.

The only person I saw being poisoned

in Jonestown was Malcolm, was my son.

The only one.

And for a long time, I thought

that was my punishment for living.

You know, Malcolm died,

but the universe returned three beautiful children to me.

And now a grandson whose name is Malcolm.

[voice breaking] And...

it was a full-circle moment.

Sorry.

It was just really beautiful and it was like, uh,

you know, when Malcolm got taken from me

and another Malcolm got returned to me.

Let's deal with this, uh, so we don't forget.

[Speier] I like to think my life is a story about resilience.

That you can overcome almost anything that happens to you.

[archival] I can't bring those 900 people back to life.

I just wanna see the government work

and create an environment

in Congress and in our government,

so that that kinda thing won't ever happen again.

[present day] I was hospitalized for over two months.

But I was alive. I was alive.

I was really given a second chance at life.

What a gift.

[gavel pounding]

[Nancy Pelosi] Representative elect will raise her right hand.

Do you solemnly swear or affirm

that you will support and defend the constitution of the United States

against all enemies, foreign and domestic...

[Speier] It was thrilling to be able to walk onto that House floor

as a newly elected member of Congress.

-I do. -Congratulations.

You are now a member of the...

[Speier] Knowing it was the same seat

that Congressman Ryan had held decades before.

If you can look death in the eye and survive,

it gives you the sense that you can do...

you can do anything.

And that's what I've tried to do.

♪♪

[♪ somber music playing]

[♪ music continues]

[music fades]