The article "The Sixth Sense" was previously published. In it we mentioned the "People's Temple" sect, whose 911 members committed suicide on the night of November 18-19, 1978. After the publication, the editorial office received letters from readers who asked to consider this topic in more detail. Many believe that the people of the People's Temple were the victims of a conspiracy.
Bright personality
At the center of the action is the enigmatic figure of James Warren, known as Jim Jones. Born in Indiana in 1931, he became a member of the local Pentecostal church as a boy. Then he is a preacher of the Methodist church in the predominantly white population, carrying out his mission on the streets of Indianapolis. At the very beginning of his career, he wanted to help the disadvantaged, regardless of skin color.
In the 1950s, Jones established his own church, which he called the People's Temple. The task of the church was to care for the poor, to distribute free meals. One of the main features of the "People's Temple" was its mixed ethnicity - both whites and blacks were gladly accepted into the organization. The Church called for racial tolerance while supporting the civil rights movement. Whites and blacks belonged to different parishes at the time, and Jim Jones's practice caused public discontent.
By the mid-1970s, Temple had nine nursing homes and six free schools. In addition, he published a monthly magazine with a circulation of 30 thousand copies. Members of the organization worked at the Santa Rosa Youth College.
Nuclear war, paranoia and zombies
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At the same time, Jones begins to worry about the prospect of a nuclear war, and he is thinking about moving his parishioners abroad, where, in his opinion, it is possible to escape from a nuclear explosion. However, this was not the only reason to leave the States. Lawsuits were filed against the "People's Temple", accusing Jones of zombifying people. Publications appear in the press that call the organization a destructive cult, it is argued that people are forcibly held in its ranks, that their will is suppressed, money is extorted, and the guilty are severely punished.
Jim Jones traveled extensively looking for a suitable location for the community. He traveled to Hawaii, Brazil, visited the newly minted South American country of Guyana. Jones decided that this was a wonderful place for his community. But long distance travel required a lot of money, which Jones did not yet have at the time. I had to forget about my dream and move the church to Ukiah, California.
Great difficulties fell on the lot of the parishioners in the new place. It turned out that Jones suffers from paranoia and is completely dependent on drugs. Nevertheless, fortune smiled at him. As a result of his collaboration with the more influential religious organization, Disciples of Christ, he opens new churches in San Francisco and Los Angeles and becomes an influential political figure.
Congressman visit
In 1973, Jones began working on his dream of moving the community to Guyana. In 1974, in the Guyanese jungle, on an area of 16 square kilometers, several members of the People's Temple founded a village named after Jim Jones Johnstown. At first, only 50 members of the sect moved there. But by the end of 1978, the population of the village was over a thousand people. It was an interracial community. The parishioners worked hard to provide themselves with everything they needed, and held meetings in the evenings.
However, information soon leaked to the media that not everything in Johnstown is so wonderful. On November 13, 1977, an article appeared in the San Francisco Examiner, telling the story of Bob Houston. His father was sure that his son was killed when he tried to leave the "People's Temple".
Local Congressman Leo Ryan was interested in this story. In June 1978, Ryan heard testimony from Debi Blakey, a fugitive from Johnstown. According to Debi, Jim Jones conducted mass suicide rehearsals with the population of the village. The congressman decided to figure out what is really happening in Johnstown. On November 14, 1978, he flew to Guyana with his staff, journalists and some of the parishioners' relatives.
Jones was confident that visitors would have an excellent opinion of community unity, but during the visit, the senator was secretly informed that some members of the community wanted to leave the village. Ryan went to help them. The news that someone was about to leave the settlement angered Jones, but he did not show it.
Armed attack
The next day, Saturday, Ryan gathered about 20 refugees on an airstrip near Port Kaitum. Two planes were to pick them up and take them to Georgetown, the capital of Guyana.
One of the escapees was named Larry Layton, and it was Jones's man. While boarding the plane, Larry took out a pistol from under his clothes and started shooting at his "brothers". They managed to disarm him, but he wounded three passengers. At the same time, a truck and a tractor belonging to the People's Temple unexpectedly appeared on the runway. Several armed men got out of the truck and opened fire on people. Five minutes later the tractor and truck disappeared. Leo Ryan. three journalists and one former commune member were killed. Bob Brown, an NBC cameraman, filmed the attack on camera until he was shot in the head. Video footage of the attack has been preserved. Journalist Tim Reiterman, who was on the runway, took a series of photographs of the aftermath of the attack. One of the aircraft received significant damage and could not fly. The second flew to the capital.the pilot informed the dispatcher by radio about the incident. The rest of the group made it to Port Kaitum.
Potassium cyanide juice
On the same day, Jones held a meeting, announcing that the congressman had been killed and after the incident, the life of the community would not be the same. The only way out of the situation, according to Jones, could only be suicide. He was supported by many members of the community - the preserved audio recording of the meeting confirms this. Jones convinced people that death is just a step into the next life. Some objected that children should not die, but no one listened to them.
Then a tank was prepared filled with a grape drink to which potassium cyanide was added. The children were poisoned first. Watching their babies die, the adults did not hesitate and took the poison themselves. Some tried to escape, but ran into armed guards who shot the fugitives. But more than a hundred people still managed to escape into the jungle. As a result of an act of collective suicide, more than 911 people died, including 270 children. Jim Jones was found with a bullet in his head. It is believed that this was suicide.
Mind control
So what happened in Johnstown? An epidemic of insanity, the death of a totalitarian sect according to the classical scenario, or the mass destruction of people resulting from a sinister conspiracy?
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, there were indications in the press that Congressman Leo Ryan, during his visit to Johnstown, had found compelling evidence that Jim Jones was a CIA staff agent involved in a lengthy mind control experiment. And to hide the real facts (the dead are silent), a mass suicide was organized. The true purpose of what happened in Guyana was the assassination of Leo Ryan, and the mass suicide is just a clever distraction. Killing 911 people to cover up the murder of one - why not, if the threat of declassification of an inhuman experiment conducted by the American government is imminent?
Nobody believes in collective suicide
In 1980, the Senate Standing Committee on Intelligence investigated the Johnstown mass suicide and announced that no evidence had been found to support the CIA's involvement in the event. Then why was most of the documents relating to the investigation of this tragedy classified by the US government? Why, out of more than 900 bodies, were only six autopsied? This fact aroused a lot of suspicion, because the US government, according to the law, were obliged to conduct an autopsy on every body! According to Dr. Mutu, who examined the bodies of the victims in Johnstown, some adults had injection marks on their backs, indicating that they were injected with cyanide against their will …
The public is trying to convince that what happened was a collective madness. But who will seriously believe that such a huge number of people could commit collective suicide ?! That is why the Johnstown tragedy still ranks high on the list of worldwide conspiracies.
Max Galitsky. Secrets of the XX century magazine