RedHanded - Episode 380 - Jim Jones Part 2: The Jonestown Massacre

Episode Date: December 19, 2024

Last week we told you how over 1,000 people ended up in the Guyanese jungle following the orders of a meth-head with a god complex. Short answer: Nobody knowingly joins a cult.This week we’re here to tell you how the arrival of US Congressman Leo Ryan inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to the chaotic end of Jonestown and the tragic loss of nearly 1,000 lives.This is part two of their storyExclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramXVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome back to part two of our Jonestown series. And I can't say welcome to the jungle because I said that in part one. Enter the dragon? Enter the dragon, yeah. This last week we gave you, well I should say, if you want to read more about Jonestown, if you want to know about Jim Jones, the best book is The Road to Jonestown. If you want to know about the people, the best book is The Road to Jonestown. If you

want to know about the people, it's called A Thousand Lives. Those are your two options. Last week, we gave you The Road to Jonestown. And this week, we're going to lay out how it all went so horribly wrong. Last week, we left you on the precipice of disaster, the likes of which the world hadn't seen since the human sacrifices of the ancients. Californian Congressman Leo Ryan had been tasked with finding out what the bollocks was going on in the Guyanese jungle.

The alarm had been raised by those that the People's Temple left behind. Any communication that loved ones had received from those who had left for the wilderness seemed redacted and strange. Some families never received any word at all from those who had followed the Reverend Jim Jones to build the socialist utopia that no one would escape. On top of that, allegations of human rights abuses by Jones upon his flock had been brought to the press by former members of the People's Temple who had got out before it was too late.

And it was Leo Ryan's job to find out if any of that was true. He was used to conducting investigations. In 1965, he had headed the inquiry after the Watts Rebellion in Los Angeles. Ryan took this job so seriously that he went undercover and got himself arrested. Imagine a congressman doing that now. Can't.

No. But unfortunately for Leo Ryan and his family and anyone who knew him, his incognito courage would not be the legacy he left behind. The congressman was actually a lot closer to the People's Temple than you may think. He had been close with a temple member called Bob Houston, whose mutilated remains were found by a railway line in 1976, three days after he and his ex-wife had a conversation about leaving Jim Jones's congregation. That escape exchange, like all of the other evidence that we have, was recorded on cassette.

No one knows exactly what happened to Bob, but the People's Temple connection is hard to ignore. And when Leo Ryan read an article in the San Francisco Examiner, examining the suspicions held about the goings-on in Guyana, he announced that he was going to get down there and see for himself. And so, on the 17th of November 1978, Leo Ryan did just that. We told you about the joyous reception that Ryan and his team received when they landed in Jonestown. After they stopped rapturously clapping, the residents of the jungle immediately took the congressman on a tour of their open-air penitentiary.

Leo Ryan was impressed by what had been created. It was quite spartan, but surely under the tropical circumstances, that was to be expected. The people's temple all lined up to tell the congressman and the journalists that he brought along how ecstatically happy they were with the life afforded to them in Jonestown by their dear leader, Jim Jones. That evening, everyone gathered in the pavilion where the People's Forum was now happening three times a week, and they ate, drank and made merry.

But the mask was starting to slip. Tension hung in the air. Faces were tight and laughter was forced. Then Leo Ryan cut through the tension, not with a knife, but with an endorsement. To all there gathered, Congressman Leo Ryan said, whatever the comments back home are, there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing to have ever happened in their whole lives. That statement was met with thunderous applause. Jonestown had pulled it off. They had convinced a delegation sent by Congress that absolutely nothing was wrong.

And maybe, perhaps, kind of, Leo Ryan was convinced that everything was fine, or maybe this compliment was a tactic. I really don't know. I've really thought about it. But I can't escape that, like, he's an intelligent man, he's an experienced politician. I just find it really hard to believe that he spent a day in Jonestown and didn't feel like something was very, very wrong.

I mean, the people have been hungry there for a long time before he arrives. Are you not seeing the fact that they're all fucking looking a bit on the skinny side? And a bit on the dirty side? And a bit on the brainwashed, starey-eyed PTSD side? I don't know. Maybe it just makes for a better story

about what we're about to tell you. Because despite all the whooping, there were some Jonestown residents that saw the Congressional delegation for what it was, their chance to get out. One of those people was Vern Gosney. He knew that this was his only shot at freedom,

and he was not willing to let it slip through his fingers. So Vern Gosney wrote a note, and it read, Dear Congressman, Vern Gosney and Monica Bagby, please help us get out of Jonestown. Vern and Monica had both arrived in Guyana earlier that year and managed to subvert the infrastructure designed to turn them against each other and instead became fast friends. Verne passed this desperate plea for help to Don Harris, an NBC reporter.

Not as Verne had thought, a part of the Congressional staff. This exchange was witnessed by one of the many children living in Jonestown, who immediately alerted the Red Brigade and the dad loyalist hackles were well and truly raised. Later on, after an assembly had concluded in the pavilion, Don Harris, the reporter, told Verne and Monica that they would have the first seats on the plane.

And I can't imagine the relief that Vern must have felt it was happening. He and Monica were actually going to get out after months of ego-shattering torture. That fucking kid. I know. Their road to Jonestown had ended. The next day, Vern and Monica were interviewed by Congressman Leo Ryan. And after that happened, Jim Jones approached the pair of them and asked them, Are you lovers?

They absolutely were not lovers. In fact, the foundation of their relationship was that they were both gay. And Monica told Jim Jones that they weren't together and then started to express some of her concerns about Jonestown to Jones himself. Danger. Vern knew that this was extraordinarily bad news, Bears, and he stomped on Monica's foot to get her to shut up.

He'd been in Jonestown longer than she had and he knew that she was making a grave mistake. Jim Jones told Monica and Vern that they shouldn't speak to reporters because they were all liars, and for just one moment, Vern thought that Jim Jones might be right. But then he changed his tack. Jim Jones told the two would-be defectors,

you can come back and visit your son any time you want. So Verne Gosney has a son who is in the jungle, and he leaves him behind. So that's what that's about. But in just a few hours, there would be absolutely nothing to come back to. But for reasons we have pondered for years now, Congressman Ryan's team still did not understand

the severity of the situation that they were in. So much so that Don Harris, 1978's nominee for the worst decision award, handed the note that Vern had written the day before to Jim fucking Jones. On camera. It's excruciating. And NBC journalist Don Harris would pay the ultimate price for this mistake.

Harris flat out asked Jim Jones why people were being held in Jonestown against their will. In the footage, Jones is visibly taken aback. He told Harris and the camera crew that Monica's worries were all total nonsense and that anyone who wanted to leave was free to do so. And they always had been. The news that Verne and Monica were getting out sped across the commune at the speed of light. And it wasn't long before the number of Jones devotees that wanted to leave the jungle on a tiny plane with Leo Ryan grew to more than 20. Jim Jones was incandescent, but even his drug-decimated brain knew that flying into a rage was not going to work in his favour. So he begged them to stay instead, like a dejected child. He says, like, you can't leave me, you're my people.

And it was during this imploring pandering that things started to go wrong. As Congressman Ryan watched this bizarre display, one of Jim Jones's most zealous henchmen pulled a knife and stabbed him, screaming, all right, motherfucker, you are going to die. Any misunderstanding about how much danger the delegation were in vanished. It was now undeniably clear that they needed to get the fuck out faster than the words had crossed the camp that people were leaving. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal.

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or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Who is now or never, Ryan's group and all those who had decided to leave made a break for it. An extra plane had been ordered for the additional escapees too. But neither the congressional team nor the journalists had arranged their own transfer to the airstrip. Which meant that they were entirely reliant on Jim Jones's followers to get them there. Which obviously did not go so well. Those brave enough to seize their chance clambered into the truck and the driver reluctantly headed towards the airstrip. That truck, which kept stalling every two minutes, was followed by a tractor pulling a trailer carrying eight of the most hard-line members of the Red Brigade.

The Supernark squad were not going to let the delegation leave without a showdown. Even from a distance, it was clear that the cultists in the wagon were armed to the teeth. As soon as the Red Brigade were in range of the defectors, they opened fire on the truck headed to the airstrip. The two charter planes and the escapees only hope. Under a flurry of gunfire, the runaways leapt out of the truck and ran for the planes on the tarmac.

The truck driver slung a Yui and headed back to the compound. Leo Ryan, his team, the news crew and the Jonestown deserters against all the odds made it onto those planes alive. The first plane wobbled down the tiny runway and then the tractor caught up with it. It's like it's not real. I know. And the tractor blocked the flight path.

So the pilot had no option. He had to stop, or the crash would kill them all. I spent the weekend at home watching a lot of films because I couldn't go anywhere. Sick dog. No going outside. And I watched Escape Plan.

Have you seen it? No, I've never heard of it. I really enjoy like an old 90s era action movie. I think it was the golden age of the action movie. And it's got Sylvester Stallone in it. It's got 50 Cent in it. And it's great. It's basically about this guy, Ray Breslin,

played by Sylvester Stallone, who gets put in prisons, like high maximum security prisons, and he has to try and escape to basically say whether that prison is safe, inescapable, whether it's, you know, protecting the public by keeping the people in there actually on lockdown, or is there a way out? So that's his entire job.

And it's obviously, as all 90s action films are, very over the top. There's lots of explosions. There's lots of like, ah! That's what this feels like. I tried to watch Escape Plan 2. It was terrible. But this feels very much like escape plan 4 because there is an escape plan 3 which i don't plan on watching enter the dragon in the jungle it's bonkers this just feels so hollywood it really really does and i think because it is so unbelievable it's really hard to tell the story, quite honestly, because the words don't exist.

If there was any sense of relief inside those two little planes, it was short-lived. Because, in another twist, the escapees had a traitor in their ranks, determined to punish them for daring to leave Jonestown. I was thinking about this this morning whilst I was cycling in. Verne Gosney and Monica, right, they know what's up. And this man who they know is a hard line is sat in the trailer with them. So there must have been this feeling of like, I don't know, man. I don't like this.

And again, it's so movie-esque. Like this idea that, oh, you think you've got to wait. Wait a minute. There's someone in here who's sabotaging everything. Yeah. So this guy's name was Larry Layton and he occupied the seat next to Vern Gosney and behind

Monica. As the plane's engine stuttered to a halt, Layton pulled out the gun that he had been concealing and shot Monica Bagby twice in the back. Then it was Vern's turn.

Leighton shot him three times. Now Verne managed to fight off the crazed gunman and he and Monica and the pilot of the rickety plane made a break for it. The NBC crew, who were bound for the second plane, managed to capture the first few seconds of the chaos on camera. But for reasons that will become clear in a second. That was it. In the paranoid terror gunfight from Doom, the cameraman Bob Brown, photographer Greg Robinson,

reporter Don Harris and temple defector Patricia all died on the airstrip. And so did Congressman Leo Ryan after he was shot 20 times. The smaller plane did manage to take off, and arrived in Guyana's capital Georgetown shortly afterwards, with Monica aboard, who later died of her injuries. Vern Gosney, the man who started the whole escape attempt, survived. And later he worked with San Diego State University to document what life and death in Jonestown was really like from someone who was there. He has a really lovely article called Remembering Monica, so I would recommend.

It'll be in the show notes actually, but it's a good read. Six miles back into the jungle, blind and total panic gripped Jonestown. Jim Jones knew that his reign of terror was well and truly up. It's so interesting, the thought process here. And look, Jim Jones has created this situation in which it was inevitably going to boil over. But like if they had let Leo Ryan, the congressional delegation, go back to the US, the wheels of progress are slow. The wheels of justice are slow. Like the chances that anything would have even happened in another big group from the US would have come back

to investigate what was going on in Jonestown because of a note from one person who was there, two people who were there. I mean, it's not a guarantee that anything even would have happened. But when you shoot and kill Leo Ryan congressman, they're coming for you. Oh, yeah. It's a very big miscalculation if we believe that Jim Jones had it within his control to stop this. The thing is, he's created these people who are zealous, who are not thinking clearly because that's exactly what he's done to them, and who react in a way that is going to ultimately lead to his downfall, which is murdering a congressional delegation. Jones's top legal advisor, who's a guy called Charles Gary,

tried to reassure his leader. But Jones wasn't having any of it. Jim Jones turned to Charles Gary and said, I have failed. All is lost. An announcement rang out across the camp that told the People's Temple that everything was fine and absolutely nobody should panic. Congressman Ryan's betrayal was proof that the US government would never let them be happy and only wanted to drag them all back to the States and grind them down as cogs in the evil capitalist machine. So they should all just go back to their huts and await instruction. Meanwhile, Jones's closest companions filled a big metal tub with a chemical cocktail of all sorts, but

most importantly, cyanide. And then they mixed it up with grape flavour eight. The time had come. The people's temple all gathered in the pavilion, and the Reverend Jim Jones told them that there was only one way out. As with everything else in the Jonosphere, we know exactly what happened next. Because it was all recorded. The death tape is still available for your listening pleasure today. But really consider whether that is something you really want living in your brain.

You can't unhear it. I've never listened to it. I have, and I wish I hadn't. Now, although this final solution was a reaction to the catastrophic murder of a US congressman, nothing was left to chance. The People's Temple had been rehearsing their revolutionary suicide for months during the white nights that we told you about last week. There was enough cyanide on site to kill every single one of them. That had been Jim Jones's exit strategy for quite some time.

He always knew how. He just didn't know when. Given all we know about Jim Jones and how tangential his relationship with reality had become, it's pretty likely that he never had any intention of going on the run after the revolutionary suicide. He wouldn't have been able to bear people knowing what a failure he was. And like a family annihilator, as Saru said, he probably would have rationalized that it was kinder for him to die so his family wouldn't have to go on without him. As they gathered in the jungle like they had done so many times before, Jones told his apostles that their revolutionary suicide had finally arrived and their deaths would be quick, painless and serve the socialist cause. They had no reason to be afraid. and their deaths would be quick, painless and serve the socialist cause.

They had no reason to be afraid. And in the tapes, I think her name's Michelle. This woman says, is it too late for Russia? Oh, Michelle. Yeah. Oh, my God. And what Jim Jones says in the death tape, the way he talks about death, is very Christian.

Like, we've all seen that bit in Titanic where there's the priest and he's clinging to the propeller, and he says, and this is from Revelation 21.4, and God shall wipe away all the tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death. Neither shall there be sorrow or crying, neither shall there be any more pain the former world has passed away

like it's all there you know and actually i've looked into it because you know obviously recovering catholic i that particular bit of titanic has always had quite a big effect on me he's real it's a real priest and he gave up his spot on a lifeboat because he was like, I'm going to shepherd these people into the next life. Wow. I know, amazing. Back in Jonestown, the greatest intentional loss of American lives in history began. The children were killed first, partly because they needed to be fed the poison,

and partly because once they were dead, their parents were less likely to feel the need to live. Hundreds of tumblers of flavour aid laced with cyanide and valium were handed out to the children. The babies, who couldn't quite hold a cup yet, had it injected into their mouths. Now, cyanide has a bit of a reputation for being a quick and painless way to go because of its rise to fame as like the suicide pill of choice in World War II but we now know

that it is certainly neither of those things. Cyanide will take between two to five minutes to kill you and during that time you are fully conscious and unable to breathe until you enter cardiac arrest. So that meant that hundreds of parents had to watch their children's mouths fill with blood and vomit as Jones's voice poured over the PA system, telling them that they needed to die with respect. After the last of the children were gone, the adults were next. Some of them were all too eager to end things. But we also know for a fact that not all of the adults in Jonestown willingly drank from the quite literally poisoned chalice. And we know that because some bodies of adults were found with abscesses

where the concoction had been forcibly injected into them. And as his followers collapsed to the ground convulsing in pain, Jones rambled over the jungle sound system, how very much I've tried to give you a good life, but in spite of all I've tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our lives impossible. No man takes my life from me. I lay down my life. And then most famously, he said, if we can't live in peace, let us die in peace.

909 men, women and children who had wanted to change the world collapsed in unimaginable pain and died in the Guyanese jungle that day. Their final screams of agony are immortalised on cassette. Don't listen to it. I have no interest in listening to that and I'm just like again if this was in a film you'd be like how ridiculous how fucking unbelievable

oh my god all I can think is I've got shivers thinking about that patch of jungle mhm just imagine being in that jungle at dark knowing that a thousand people died there. Oh my God. Yeah, it's...

I'm upset. The death tape stops after most of the children are dead. And I can't unhear those children's screams. Has that bit of jungle become some sort of perverse, like... You know it has. ...true crime tourist pilgrim spot? Yes, but it's only for the extraordinarily hardcore because they're just so difficult to get to.

Sure, sure. Eventually, the Guyanese army realised that something was very wrong and sent a group of helicopters to Jonestown. The smell of decomposing bodies on the floor of the jungle made it all the way up to the helicopters hovering hundreds of feet above. On the ground, the army discovered the 909 bodies scattered around the compound. Chillingly, some of the corpses had been lined up in rows, like someone had been tidying up in the middle of the massacre. Of the almost 1,000 bodies they found, 300 were never identified. Most of the unknown

were children. The temple's illustrious leader was discovered with a gunshot wound to the head. He had not flavorated himself to death. Perhaps watching how quick and painless it was not 909 times, he couldn't bring himself to die that way. But he knew he couldn't leave the jungle alive. Like he had said to his followers so many times, the only way out of Jonestown was in a box. The last thing he said to the people he had broken so totally they willingly murdered their own children were, we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the considerations

of an inhumane world. And their sacrifice would echo through history forever. Temple member Eugene Smith left behind a note that read this is not what we wanted. At least we tried. Now people rarely talk about the singular chimp fatality at Jonestown. I told you the monkeys would be back. Because remember Jones' previous life as a door-to-door chimpanzee salesman?

Well, a fully grown adult chimp called Mr Muggs lived with Jim Jones in Jonestown. Jones told everybody that he had single-handedly rescued Mr Muggs from scientific experimentation, but it's much more likely that he had just bought him from a pet shop.

Mr Muggs' body was found in the jungle commune too. He hadn't been forced to take cyanide either. He, like Jim Jones, had been shot in the head. And we don't know whether Jones shot himself or whether someone shot him. We just will never know that. But amidst all the death and destruction, we're happy to say that there were survivors too. Some had run off into the jungle and some had managed to slip away

when Jones had instructed them to take suitcases containing $7.3 million to the nearest Soviet embassy. And that's just proof that he knew what he was doing to these people. He absolutely could have fed them. Yeah. He could have made their lives a lot more comfortable and he actively did not. And as we've been talking about, the Jonestown Massacre is so shocking in scale that it does feel undescribable and I just how can you see that much death and believe it it's because it's unquantifiable it's unfathomable like I said in

episode one to kill one person is an unthinkable act it's a thousand. It's like the line out of Harry Potter. You're a wizard, Harry? Yeah, the other one. About when Harry asked Dumbledore how many Horcruxes could there be out there? Could he have made more? I don't remember it word for word. I haven't read this book in a long time. But Dumbledore is like

how many more do there need to be to kill one person splits your soul? How many more? But obviously Tom Riddle had created lots more. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing. And of course, there is an unavoidable question. Why on earth did those people, with their children, stay in Jonestown to the bitter revolutionary end?

Lots of reasons. First off, they were in the middle of the jungle, no phones or money or passports, so there are physical barriers that play a role, but there were invisible ones too. The people in Jonestown were severely malnourished and they barely slept, which made decision-making and critical thinking

difficult, if not impossible. By isolating his followers both geographically and ideologically, Jones was able to totally control the communication within his cult, not just between followers, but inside his dedicants' own heads. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom, but I made no excuses. I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime, this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest

to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery Plus. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly

moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Through the use of the Red Brigade, his people's forums and the public beatings, Jones also managed to sow a culture of extreme fear. The members of the cult were terrified of being reported for dissent, so no one spoke to anyone about anything of substance.

Being trapped, scared and unable to communicate is of course a recipe for major anxiety and depression. Anxious depressed people who are scared out of their minds are less likely to make elaborate escape plans and they're also much more likely to exhibit drastically changed behaviours and even to kill themselves, whether it's disguised as a revolutionary act or not. Humans are emotional and often behave irrationally.

Hope is key to survival. Without it, we'd all cease to exist. And Jonestown was loaded with hope. The people there truly believed that they were building a better world. And if you didn't really believe with your being, that a socialist utopia was possible, you probably wouldn't move to the jungle to build one. And that brings us back to why cults go after intelligent, socially conscious, hard-working people. Because they're full of hopes and dreams.

The followers of the People's Temple had attached such hope and emotion to Jonestown and the racial integration and the equality it represented, and they clung to it. They clung to that whisper of hope so hard that they poisoned their peers and their families because a drug addict in dark glasses told them to. They were broken people, shattered. And Jim Jones had done that to them. And we can explain how that mental pivot works on a deeper psychological level in theory. There's a paper called

An Object Relations Approach to Cult Membership. And in that joseph d salande i want to say and david r perkins argue that being in a cult puts a human brain under so much pressure that people can exhibit borderline personality organization which is one of the symptoms of bpd and we have come across BPD before, borderline personality disorder, but let's give a quick shakedown just in case. BPD can happen for a bunch of different reasons, some genetic and some environmental. Often people with BPD have experienced traumatic childhoods. And according to the National Health Service and the charity MIND, those living with BPD feel emotions more strongly and uncontrollably

sometimes than other people. And they exhibit disturbed patterns of thinking. Stuff like an intense fear of abandonment, extremely intense emotions that can change rapidly, no strong sense of identity, meaning that you become very different around different groups and can be easily influenced, feeling of emptiness, impulsive behavior that puts you and those around you in danger, self-harm, suicidal ideation, uncontrollable anger, extreme difficulty maintaining balanced relationships and paranoia and disassociation. And, you know, not everybody who's diagnosed with BPD will have all of those symptoms, but generally more than seven of what I just said is enough for a diagnosis and I cannot imagine living under those conditions.

Life with BPD is a life of extremes and suicidal ideation is absolutely disturbed thinking. Evolutionarily speaking we are hardwired to want to survive and so to end our lives is not rational behavior. The point is the repetitive activity, lack of sleep and constant pressure to conform that cult members are often exposed to can actually cause their personality organization to break down to the point that their thinking resembles someone with borderline personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or antisocial personality disorder. Which makes perfect sense. Being indoctrinated into a cult is a traumatic experience and everything about the cult is built to weaken our normal functioning egos, induce disassociation and compromise critical thinking. Now we're not saying that the people who lived and died in Jonestown that day

spontaneously sprouted personality disorders. We're saying that the cult experience can weaken a healthy person with a well-regulated ego so much that it causes the self-destructive behavior that you may observe in someone who lives with a serious personality disorder. So as unbelievable as what the followers of Jim Jones did may seem, biologically and psychologically, it would appear that a lot of people would act in the same way had they been put through what happened in Jonestown. And I can only speak for myself here, but I'm one of them. My ego ain't that strong anyway. I absolutely would have succumbed to the pressure. So think about that next time you're looking at cult members and being

like how could they have been so stupid going through something like that is impossible for it not to change who you are yeah i mean again we've made several comparisons throughout this two-parter of jim jones and cult leaders in general to other types of offenders. So domestic abusers, for one, that whole cutting you off from anybody else, isolating you from other family, from friends, from anybody else that would give you a way to change your frame of reference as to this relationship that you're in with this incredibly dangerous, toxic person. To think you could never join a cult is akin to thinking you could never be in an abusive relationship. I completely agree.

It happens every day. It happens to intelligent people. It happens to people who are successful. It happens to people who have everything to live for. So I think it's just one of those things to be aware of, right? We're not saying go around, be paranoid of everybody you encounter. You might be joining a cult, but it's don't fall into that complacent way of thinking that this could never happen to you or to somebody you love. Because there really is nothing that's going to safeguard you from this other than critical thinking. And they genuinely thought they were going to change the Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah. Tough, tough, tough old ride. Jonestown survivor, Leslie Wagner-Wilson, who has a book, slipped away the morning of the massacre with her three-year-old son.

And she walked 30 kilometres to the nearest town. And she backs us up on that as well, on our thoughts, feelings, concerns. Even though Leslie was there through the White Knights and the Six Day Siege, she stayed almost until it was too late. She once wrote to Jim Jones saying that she was glad to have a dad and a father like you. So she was in, and she did believe in Jim Jones at some point. But she knew in her heart that she was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing with the wrong people. But she explains that when you're in a group setting, it's so hard to break away. And this is a quote. Because everyone else is embracing and clapping and being joyous,

you look at yourself and say, it must be me. Nearly 1,000 people were feeling exactly the same way and they didn't try and run. And over 40 years after that day in the jungle, we're all still obsessed with Jonestown. And there's going to be a film, and Leonardo DiCaprio is going to be Jim Jones. And we have feelings.

But it's not going to happen for a couple of years, so we're going to have to sit on those. Yeah, it's... I know I keep using this word, but it's so unfathomable truly truly truly truly so yeah that's it guys that is our two parter

on Jim Jones and also the end of season the year of 2024 here at Red Handed we don't do seasons we're not allowed the year of 2024 here at Red Handed we don't do seasons we're not allowed no we're not allowed

the year is the season and this is the reason for the season we now get a few weeks off which will be lovely to give us a little break, recoup some energy and we will be back in 2025 to kick true crimes butt

and we'll be starting off with a two-parter on Ellen Greenberg. We certainly will. Yeah. I'm quite happy to have put Jonestown to bed because we've been dealing with it for a long time. And I'm free. Free from the jungle. Yes. She's made it out, guys.

So that's it. Have a beautiful Christmas, whatever you do. Have a wonderful new year. You know, just enjoy the people around you. Do all of those things. Give your dogs extra hugs. And your cats, if that's what you got. And yeah, just, you know, enjoy.

And we'll see you all in January. And don't you dare let the bastards what you got. And yeah, just, you know, enjoy. And we'll see you all in January. And don't you dare let the bastards grab you down. We will see you on the other side. Or else. Happy Christmas. Goodbye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come.

This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood

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