Jones, a man who called himself god. How very much ive loved you. How very much ive tried my best to give you the good life. Who convinced his followers to kill their children and then kill themselves. Let us be done with it. Lets be done with the agony of it. Drinking a koolaid type fruit punch laced with deadly cyanide. Something to put you to rest. Oh, god. 30 years later in a place where words could kill and did, there is silence. An empty field, the people gone. Almost no trace of their lives or dreams. This is the site of jonestowns openair meeting hall where im standing right now, where the reverend jim jones led his followers into the worst mass murder and suicide pact in americas history. Only small golden flowers grow where bodies once lay. On that fateful morning, there are more than 940 People Living in jonestown. By nightfall, only 33 would still be alive. For most of the few who did survive, it took incredible courage to defy jim jones and step away. This is their story, one of desperation and daring and, in the end, a story of human triumph amid horrible tragedy. It was a slave camp ran by a mad man with a huge ego. As a young mother, Leslie Wilson went to guyana because her husband had taken their son there. In jonestown, she found not enough food, not enough sleep, too much fear. For me to think i was going to see the age of 21 was a miracle. I didnt think i was going to see 21. She recoiled the first time jim jones called together peoples temple members for a suicide drill. And i remember him looking at me and me looking like, please dont ask me to do this. Because we really didnt know if it was real or not. On the last morning, she said she wanted to take her child on a picnic and started on a daylong trek to a town 30 miles away. Everyone can look up and see us walking, and i was just shaking. I was so, so frightened. For years, Leslie Wilson would not let anyone know she was a jonestown survivor. Because i would sit at the table sometimes at work, whatever, and they would talk about jonestown. I didnt say a word. I mean, i lived under a veil of secrecy for 20something years. Vernon gosney, now a policeman in hawaii, remembers jonestown as an armed camp supposedly to guard against outsiders. But many of the times the guns were pointed towards us. Gosney wanted to leave as soon as he arrived but couldnt until a california congressman, leo ryan, came to guyana in the fall of 78 on a oneman investigative mission. I had decided i was going to pass a note asking for help to escape. By that next afternoon, as gosney dragged his trunk toward a departing truck, more than a dozen others had decided to go. I thought i was going to die at any moment. I never thought that i would ever be permitted to leave. When the group reached the small airport nearby, gunmen opened fire. There was blood everywhere, and i thought im dying, and then i blacked out. That same day, gerald parks, seen here in the blue and white shirt talking with jim jones, sensed it was his last chance to get his family out. You can feel death in the air. You can actually feel it. The parks family asked to fly back with congressman ryans group. And i told him who i was and i said, weve been held prisoner here. At the airport, a tractor pulled a farm wagon up alongside their plane. About five or six guys stood up and pulled their guns up and started firing at us. I heard my mom holler, my god, look at patty. Gerry parks wife was killed. So was congressman ryan and three newsmen. Parks ordered his daughter tracy, her older sister, and three other youth to run for safety into the jungle. We ran too far, and, of course, its so thick that, like, once you get so far you cant you get lost in your direction. Before night came, we went back to the jungle and started hollering for the kids. And no response. And i thought, oh, my god, dont tell me theyre lost. I was the organizer, and anything that needed organizing they gave to carter. Tim carter, seen here in 78, was a trusted aide to jim jones. He saw jonestown through different eyes. It was beautiful. I mean, something about nature, being in the jungle, it was beautiful. Carter stayed almost to the end. He saw the gunmen come back from the airport. The tractor trailer that had come from the airstrip came up behind and stopped at the kitchen, and these guys jumped out. Bob kai said, we got the congressman. Thats when the reverend jim jones told his people this would be the day theyd have to die. The congressman is dead. Please get us some medication. Its simple. Its simple. Theres no convulsions with it. Its simple. Just please get it. The children were killed first. Tim carter saw his 1yearold son poisoned. Malcolm was dead, his little lips covered with foam, which is what happens with arsenic and cyanide as it foams at the mouth. He held his wife as she died. I put my arms around gloria as she was holding malcolm and just kept on sobbing, i love you so much, i love you so much. Carter lived only because he was sent away on a final errand. He came close to shooting himself that night. And i knew that i would never get the sounds and the smells and the sights of jonestown out of my mind ever again. So few survived jonestown. For most, only by determination born of desperation. For others, by a twist of circumstance. Over the next two hours, we will follow the lives of these survivors, then and now. Escape from jonestown continues. Hey terry stop they have a special so, what did you guys think of the test drive . I love the jetta. But what about a deal . Terry, stop its quite alright. You know what . We want to make a deal with you. Were twins, so could you give us two for the price of one . Come on, give us a deal. Look at how old i am. Do you come here often . He works here, terry you work here, right . Yes. Ok lets get to the point. 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A knack for predicting the future. Reflexes faster than the speed of thought. Can a business have a spirit . Can a business have a soul . Can a business be. Alive . When heartburn comes creeping up on you. Fight back with relief so smooth and fast. Tums smoothies starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. And neutralizes stomach acid at the source. Tumtumtumtumtums smoothies, only from tums. The reverend jim jones left no doubt as to who he thought he was. When i say im god, then i feel it well up in my soul and i see the sick healed and the blind see and the dead raised. In truth, he was a liar, a charlatan, a phony faith healer. This from that same sermon in 1972 talking about a 90yearold with a bad leg. His leg was healed instantaneously because he saw me as god, god, god, god, god, god, god, god watch this woman who jones said had a broken leg. A helper cuts through the cast. Now the leg was broken yesterday . Now run jones asks if she feels any pain. Jump up and down real quick. No pain whatsoever. Thats it. They traveled around the country and held these meetings, pulled these fake healings and fake miracles, and people, man, would shell out money like you wouldnt believe. This is gerry parks as he looked back then. He was fooled for years. But it was all through lies, fake healings and all that stuff. The man was fake. I know now that he was fake from the beginning. By his own account, jim jones was born on the wrong side of the tracks in a small indiana town in the depression years. At 21, jones became a student pastor by taking a correspondence course. Within a few years, he had started his own church in indianapolis, named it peoples temple, and opened its doors to africanamericans. He and his wife marceline became an interracial family through adoption and embraced racial harmony in an era that resisted it. But even then jones preached of catastrophe. At that time, the cold war was going on, and he was saying a bomb was going to fall and there would be a nuclear war. In the mid60s, jones moved his church outside the town of ukiah in northern california. So he got this revelation somehow to come to ukiah, california. And there was a cave out here. A cave in the hills around Redwood Valley that would shield everyone from nuclear fallout. I know now as sure as im sitting here and i knew and have for a long time there was no such place. It was all one of his lies. Jones built this church and offered sanctuary there, a safety net to the elderly and poor, usually blacks from the inner city. They signed over their Social Security checks, and the peoples temple cared for them for the rest of their lives. He built this whole thing on the premise of brotherhood, economic equality, and a world where no babies go to bed hungry. Gerry parks and his family followed jones from the midwest out to ukiah in 1966. Gerry got a job in a supermarket. He started talking about everybody giving 25 of their income. I sat down one time and figured after i got back how much money i gave that man, and it was around 76,000 bucks. His youngest daughter, tracy, learned to fear jones when she started school and was told to stay away from other children. If you got caught talking to people that were not affiliated with the church, then you would be in trouble for that. Trouble at jim jones wednesday night meetings. He called them catharsis, the purging of evil. So i was scared to do anything wrong because i was scared i was going to be called up and be beaten. Leslie wilson was 13 when she first encountered the peoples temple and the hold it had on members. What happened in catharsis . If you were doing something incorrectly, which nine times out of ten someone would find something you did incorrectly, you would be called to the floor and disciplined. How . Either by a paddle or being spanked. You were hit . Uhhuh. In front of the whole church . Oh, yes. Grown people . Oh, yes. Spanked . Yes. Who did the spanking . Whoever he deemed to do it. Her mother joined the peoples temple as a haven where leslies sister michelle, on the right, could get help for her drug problem. As a minister, leslie said, jim jones could be spellbinding. He could quote scripture and turn around and preach socialism. He appealed to anyone on any level at any time. Even so, racial equality came with exceptions. The majority of the congregation was africanamerican. The people who ran the church, the leadership, were they majority africanamerican . No. They were majority caucasian. The dark side of jim jones was always there. What did you have to call him . Father. Like he was god. Correct. Jones would boast openly in church about his sexual couplings with both women and men. For me sitting there listening to it, i thought it was insane. And i dont understand, soledad, why my mother didnt grab our hands and run like crazy when he spoke about having sex with men and women on the pulpit. I dont know what drove her to stay. Ill never have that question answered. Just ahead, rehearsing suicide. Five minutes later, jones says, youve all just been poisoned. You have an hour to live. This is the peoples temple membership, now numbering in the hundreds, in Redwood Valley, california, in the 70s. By then, tim carter was already getting an early taste of how it would all end. We had a very small vineyard on the ranch in Redwood Valley. And they said, hey, grapes would come in from the ranch and wed have wine, does anybody want some wine . And so each of us got this styrofoam cup threequarters filled with wine, drank the wine. And like five minutes later, jones says, youve all been poisoned. You have an hour to live. It was a test for jim jones trusted inner circle. They did not panic or resist. Now when i look back on that whole thing now, you know, you think that might have been the wakeup call that it was time to get out of dodge . Yeah, absolutely. That should have been i should have been gone the next day. Carter stayed on. He was a marine vet whod survived some of the worst fighting in vietnam. He came home bitter, a cynic, a hippie, and joined the peoples temple in 1973. That same year, jim jones reached a deal in guyana to begin clearing land in the jungle for a future settlement he would call jonestown. Jones chose guyana because its government was socialist, its people black and english speaking. It is a small country, not even a million people, on the north coast of south america. Beautiful Promised Land. Beautiful Promised Land. Those were jones words for his creation, a place where he and his people could practice socialism, live in harmony, and answer only to themselves. We wanted to have a better world, you know, a better society, one without racism, sexism, ageism, economic equality for people. Verne gosney joined the church in california about that same time. He and his wife, an interracial couple, were welcome. The peoples temple was a rich tapestry of people. They were people who had survived adverse situations, racism, discrimination, just very difficult lives, and they had triumphed to that point. In 1975, jones moved his Church Headquarters from Redwood Valley down to San Francisco to a larger stage where he became a Political Force and a face in photoops. Roslyn carter was campaigning for jimmy carter. I believe that was 1976. And there was going to be a rally downtown. Literally, we stuffed the building. We were the rally. This photo of tim carter with the woman he loved, gloria, was taken at the Golden Gate Bridge during another public appearance. When jim jones was asked to give the benediction for the new Suicide Prevention barrier that had been erected. Thats right. Only a year before jonestown took its own life, jim jones was praying over a Suicide Prevention barrier. In that summer of 1977, jones was facing increasing criticism from some members who fled the church because they no longer believed in jones. When new west magazine published an expose article about church beatings, jim jones suddenly decided to leave the country. He began putting his flock on planes to south america by the dozens day after day. Teenagers and Young Children were among the first to go. Parents followed. I got this phone call that says, its time for you to go, and this voice entered my head that said, if you dont go now, you will never see your child again. Leslie wilson had become pregnant at 18. This is her son, jakari. His father took the boy to guyana first so leslie followed. What was it like in guyana . Beautiful . Paradise . Not paradise by any means. Did it feel like you were in captivity . Oh, right away, right away. Your passports were taken right away, seized. And this did not raise red flags, or it did . It did. In your heart of hearts, you had to know that there was no way out. There was no way out. Tim carter praised jonestown in this testimonial. Its beautiful. I cant ive never been so totally happy or fulfilled in my life. As long as he was not being eaten up by bugs. You could see him scratching the bites. These are home movies made by jim jones to attract Church Members to his namesake. American bananas are nothing like these. He showed off the supplies. Flour, flour, rice, blackeyed peas. And then this. Koolaid. Koolaid. The reality of jonestown . Hard work, long hours, too much heat, too little sleep, and, as Leslie Wilson remembers, meager food. Dinner was rice and gravy and sometimes a soup with chicken feet sticking out. She wrote this letter to a friend there in jonestown. I now feel as if my whole being is being worthless here. Im now 21 years old, and my life will surely consist of nothing more than it does now. At the bottom she wrote destroy this now. But at a wednesday catharsis meeting my letter was being read by jim in front of the whole congregation. And if i could have crawled in that guyanese soil and dug a hole so deep, i would have done that. I was just in fear. Your best friend turned you in. My best friend turned me in. As punishment, leslie was placed on a hard work detail. For her, the Promised Land was a failure. Were not going to make a difference in the world because no one knew about us. No one cared. We were just this bunch of folks living in the jungle, surviving. The utopia was a hoax. It was a hoax. And that realization itself was overwhelming. When we return, a secret plan to kill. Cyanide is one of the most rapidly acting poisons. Id like to give about two grams to a large pig to see how effective our batch is. 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