Jim Jones Case Study

On November 18, 1978, in “Jones town” more than 900 members of an American cult Peoples Temple died in a mass suicide-murder under the direction of their leader Jim Jones. The megalomaniac leader, Jim Jones, was born on May 31, 1931, in rural Indiana. Everything started at the 1950’s, when he began working as a self-ordained Christian minister in small churches around Indianapolis. He wanted to do a church of his own, and to collect money for it he tried various ways, including selling live monkeys door-to-door. That seems like he had a lot of desires for having his own church, what a crazy guy. But with his perseverance he reached to open his first Peoples Temple church in Indianapolis in the mid-1950s. In the mid-1960s Jones moved his small

Leo Ryan, the Congressman representing a Northern California district, announced on November 1, 1978 that he would visit Jonestown to investigate complaints from “concerned relatives and allegations following the defection of Deborah Layton”. On November 15, Ryan traveled to Georgetown, Guyana, about 250 miles from Jonestown, with a team of eighteen people “consisting of government officials, media representatives, and members of the group Concerned Relatives of Peoples Temple Members. On November 17, upon arrival in Jonestown, Congressman Ryan and his party were warmly welcomed, but this was short lived. Throughout Ryan’s visit he received quiet requests from various Jonestown residents asking for assistance in leaving Jonestown. Ryan and his party left Jonestown for the Port Kaituma airstrip with sixteen defecting members on November 18. Jones allowed them to leave with little protest, but after Ryan boarded one of the aircrafts destined for Georgetown, a group of Jones bodyguards pulled up in a tractor next to the plane and opened fire. Five people, including Ryan, were killed and eleven people were

He went said, “if we can’t live in peace, then we must die in peace…die with respect, die with a degree of dignity”. Jones then distributed grape flavored Flavor Aid laced with cyanide to the residents of Jonestown so they could “die in peace”. Many people drank this cyanide-laced Flavor Aid without questioning Jones’ judgment. Others were forcefully injected with cyanide or shot with guns. The total death count at Jonestown was over nine hundred, including Jim Jones. That misteriously was found with a shot wound in the head.

The masacre at Jonestown on November 18, 1978 was 909 people. A few people managed to escape into the jungle that day, while at least several dozen more Peoples Temple members, including several of Jones sons, were in another part of Guyana at the