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Forty-five years later, what happened in Guyana, South America, is still shocking. More than 900 members of the Peoples Temple organization, a former San Francisco-based Disciples of Christ congregation that in exile turned into a militant New Left group, died from ingesting or being injected with potassium cyanide-laced poison. Many corpses were found face down and holding hands in and around the pavilion in the farm commune known as Jonestown, an indication they died willingly.
Ryan recognized that investigating Jones could be dangerous; he considered taking a gun to protect himself from robbers. Yet neither he nor anyone else expected Jones to unleash the violence he did. In the end, Ryan, too, was a victim. At a remote dirt airstrip in Port Kaituma, Guyana, he and four others were assassinated by Jones’ hit squad while escorting 14 Americans to safety.
jones is sitting on the bench. and he is just sitting there, a dejected, beaten man. >> yet, another confrontation awaited jim jones when he sat down with nbc reporter don harris for an interview. >> last night, someone came and passed me this note. >> harris gave him vern gosney's note asking for help to go home. >> that's who we're talking about. he wants to leave his son here. if jonestown is such a bad place, why does he want to leave his son here? >> in fact, vern gosney had to agree to leave his young son mark behind before jones would let him go. >> all decisions around my son i -- well, you know, will haunt me for the rest of my life. >> jones raged at harris. >> people play games, friend. they lie. they lie. what can i do about liars? are you going to leave us? i just beg you. please leave us. we will bother nobody.
that's vern walking toward us. >> when i got there, we unloaded and i had a feeling of foreboding. >> this man, larry layton, was a faithful follower of jones. he worried congressional aide jackie speier. >> the only thing that was really bothering me was that all of a sudden larry layton had decided he was a defector. i just had a gut instinct. you just have intuition. >> jackie speier seen here, got people moving toward this plane, a 19-seat otter. that's jerry parks walking with his wife. tracy parks and her brother dale got on the smaller plane, so did larry layton and vern gosney. >> the pilots started the plane and we were taxiing, and we were coming down the runway to take off and then the tractor trailer
don't even see how i walked around much less worked a full-time job. it was so painful for me to be conscious i just really -- i drank myself to unconsciousness every day. >> in 1982, gosney moved to the island of maui in hawaii with another commune that collapsed. when he lost one job, he applied for another with the maui police department. >> i didn't tell them that i was a chronic alcoholic. i didn't tell them that i was a jonestown survivor. i didn't tell them that i was hiv positive. i didn't tell them that i had a drug history. >> after a couple of years as a cop, he hit rock bottom. finally, he stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and kept his job. >> i've been clean and sober for 19 years now, over 19 years. >> life has not been easy.
a powder keg. >> this is vern gosney dragging his belongings toward the departing truck. he tried to warn the congressman they were all in danger. >> he told me i had the congressional shield of protection over me and that i had nothing to worry about. i thought he was totally out of his mind. >> congressman leo ryan carrying the briefcase had planned to stay the night to help get more families out. then a church member came up behind him. >> and all of a sudden he puts a knife up to his throat and he says, all right, mf, you're going to die. we all jumped on him anyway. we all got the knife away. >> you can see blood spatters on his shirt from the attacker, not ryan. the ride to the small airport at port kaituma was slow, bumpy and tense. >> and you could just sense the fear in everyone. you could just feel it like it
>> 303 children would die in jonestown that day from toddlers to teens. >> leslie wilson's nephew and her niece. vern gosney's son mark. a third of all the dead were children murdered at jim jones' command wracked with convulsions, a painful death. >> i tell you, i don't care how many screams you hear, i don't care how many cries. death is a million times preferable to continue more days of this life. >> what i experienced and saw was absolute chaos and insanity. >> die with a degree of dignity. lay down your life with dignity. don't lay down with tears and agony. >> tim carter walked back to the pavilion and saw his 1-year-old son malcolm in the arms of his wife gloria.
i always feel like someone is going to shoot me. yeah, it scars you. >> for vern gosney, it could be walking down the street. >> i could see a man with light skin and black hair from behind and in my mind i thought jim jones was alive. >> the airport shooting left gosney in a hospital for months. >> i was shot through the stomach. i was shot through the liver. my diaphragm was torn. my stomach had a -- was torn. had a collapsed lung. my spleen ended up -- having to remove my spleen. >> at first he turned to painkillers. >> i was on anti-depressants. i was on tranquilizers. i was on sedatives. >> then worst. >> and i started drinking and i started using elicit drugs, as well. >> he had gone back to work in a san francisco law office. >> when i look back on it now i
i believe in christ. but i don't believe you have to attend a church to make it into the next world. >> vern gosney stands apart, literally. his body from neck to feet is tattooed with eastern religious symbols. >> the gods and goddesses, mostly hindu. i would say i'm a pagan. a wiccan. buddhist. >> rather than renounce religion, he has opened himself to much of everything. >> it's a very important part of my life. meditation, prayer, to whatever spark animates life. and i don't know what that is. >> tracy parks' prayer was to