True Crime with Kendall Rae - Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

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You will fail. So what? Everybody does. But your gym, your watch, your yoga pants, they pretend you won't. So when you miss a day, eat the pancakes. Give up on a workout. You failed? Seriously, what the hell?

We're body. We've been a part of that too, but not anymore. A body where rejecting, an embracing reality. Not in a pizza Monday kind of way, in a loving your whole life kind of way. In a, this workout is fun, and it's okay if I take a week off kind of way. And then, I'm eating healthy, and it's okay if I indulge kind of way. In a, I like myself no matter what kind of way. Yeah, you will fail. We all

will. But we're not going to let that be the end. You see that? We're already making progress. So let's keep going. We are Body. Start your free trial at Body.com. That's B-O-D-I-D-C-O-D-I-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C-O-D-C- Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. Oh my gosh, I am so excited to tell you guys about today's topic because this is one of my favorite topics ever. I haven't talked about it on my channel yet but it is one of the things that I am most interested in learning about. I've been interested in for so long and I'm not really sure why I waited so long to do a video on it, because it's definitely one of my most requested,

but I am finally getting around to doing it now, and today we are talking about Jones Town. Now, if you don't know what Jones Town is, get ready, because seriously, this story is shocking if you've never heard about it, and a lot of younger people don't know about this. So this is James Warren Jones, and he was born on May 13th of 1931

in a rural area of Creight, Indiana. His parents were James Thurman Jones and Lyneta Putnam. Now, economic difficulties during the Great Depression actually forced his family to move to Lynn, which is a very small town, and a gym ended up growing up in a shack without plumbing. Now people who knew him when he was growing up described him as someone who was just not quite right. People around him just said he was odd.

Like his reaction to people was odd. He was very like scared almost. Like people if you approached him too quickly, he'd kind of like freak out and he was like thought people were mad at him all the time. He seemed kind of paranoid for a kid. He was just a little off and one thing that was very weird about him, he was obsessed with death and killing things and he really liked two very things, give them proper burials. It was really hard for Jim growing up. His father was an alcoholic. He didn't have a job when Jim was growing up so his mother

really had to support the family which is a lot of stress on her. He also claimed that at one point his father was a member of the KKK. And because his mom was working all of the time trying to make money for their family and his dad was just off drinking, Jim was pretty much on his own a lot of the time wandering around and he was kind of free to do whatever he wanted to. He could kind of just get away with wandering the streets and that's why a lot of people knew of him. He was just kind of this like strange wandering boy. Now one thing that Jim became very passionate about in his life from an early age was racial equality. He wanted to be an advocate for them. He was very concerned about the discrimination that the black community faced. Lin was a very small town

in Jim claim that it had a major lack of sense of community. So one of the things he ended up doing in the town was joining a Pentecostal church and basically a person in the town invited him to go like kind of a neighbor type friend that, you know, felt bad for the kid wandering around. So he wanted him to, you know, have a sense of community and brought him to church.

And he loved church. It was the first place that he felt like he was home. He felt like people cared about him. And that's what a church is. It's a community. It's a great sense of community. So after Jim's first time of going to the Pentecostal church, he felt like he was home

for one of the first times in his life. I mean, church is a huge sense of community. People are welcoming. People wanted him to feel part of it so that he would, you know, be part of the church and he loved it. Jim was very fascinated in the idea of preachers. He often looked up to preachers as like a fatherly figure, like a godly figure. He really, really looked up to them like they had all the answers. So eventually Jim's family got a divorce and Jim ended up moving with his mother

to Richmond, Indiana. In December of 1948 he graduated from Richmond High School with honors, so he was a very good student. In the following year in 1949 Jim married a woman named Marcelin Baldwin. She was a nurse and the two of them ended up moving to Bloomington, Indiana. And he briefly attended the University of Bloomington, and in 1951, he moved to Indianapolis where he attended night school at Butler University. And he eventually earned a degree in secondary education in 1961, 10 years after enrolling. So he had a degree in education.

Now, Jim and his wife ended up having a lot of kids, and they had some of their own and then some were adopted. They adopted an African-American son and they named him Jim Junior and they also had two Asian-American children, one daughter and one son and then one of their own biological children. So the two of them, I mean you list to say, were really known for breaking stereotypes. I mean this was not normal back then. Eventually, this would be called a rainbow family. And they were one of the first rainbow families,

which is a very disrespectful thing to say. And obviously nowadays, it's way more common. But back then, it was just so out of the norm that people were, I mean, a lot of people were inspired by it, but some people did not like it. In 1951, after graduating college, Jim decided he actually wanted to get more involved in possibly becoming a pastor. So a Methodist district superintendent ended up helping him get started in the Methodist Church.

In 1952, he became a student pastor at the Somerset Southside Methodist Church. But he later claimed that he left the church because the leaders were not allowing him to invite people of color into the church. He wanted to integrate blacks and whites into the same church, and this was a deal breaker for them, deal breaker for him so he moved on. So in 1956, Jim organized a religious convention. This was going to take place June 11th to June 15th, and to draw in crowds, Jim felt like he really needed a good religious headliner. So he arranged to have Reverend William Brahm attend and he was actually a healing evangelicalist and religious author and Jim really really looked up to this guy like a lot. He

would base a lot of what he would do in his life off of him. This guy was seen as like magical, a healer like and Jim really liked the way that other people were looking up to this guy and praising him and, you know, worshipping him most. And Jim liked that. Jim had kind of a god complex, if you can't tell or a hero complex, so whatever you want to call it. So following this convention, Jim decided he wanted to launch his own church. The church changed names quite a few times, but they finally settled on the people's temple, Christian church full gospel. Now, what's interesting is Jim was way less

about the religious side of things. In fact, a lot of people think he was an atheist, his wife has even been quoted saying that he was. So maybe he just used religion as a tool, but he was very, maybe he just used, you know, religion as a tool, but he was very, very interested in mainly bringing people together and desegregating the races, which is a good thing. He was launching like an interracial mission and a lot of people were inspired by him, so it didn't take long for him to kind of start

racking up the following. People loved that it was encouraging people of all races to come together. There was a lot of people that were really into that movement and wanted to see the world change. He made it well known that hatred would not be tolerated at the church and anyone is welcome. And that was just very, very appealing to people. In 1960, Indianapolis Mayor Charles Boswell appointed Jim as the director of Human Rights Commission.

Except for he told him that, with a position like this, you should probably keep a low profile. But Jim ignored this. He continued to find new outlets to grow his following, including TV and radio. He basically did anything he could to grow his following as big as possible. Now, Jim did do a lot of great work.

He helped racially integrate a lot of churches and restaurants and he even would set up sting operations to catch restaurants in the act of refusing service to black people. In 1961, Jim even collapsed and when he was taken to the hospital, he was accidentally placed in the black ward. However, when they tried to move him to the white ward, I guess. He refused to go and instead he stayed there and even helped empty out some of the bed trays like bed pans for the people there that weren't getting proper service. He would communicate with American Nazis

and then try to get the media to display the letters that they would send him back and return to get people to know how horrible they were. So I mean, Jim's intentions were good. Things started getting a little crazy after time went on though. So Jim really hated Indiana. It really didn't align with his progressive values. So he ended up moving to California. He ended up choosing a city called Yucaya and him and his family moved there and when he first got there his family seemed to really like it. But around the 1970s, Jim started to really get into preaching against

Christianity. He preached that traditional Christianity was a flyaway religion. He basically said that the Bible was a tool to oppress people and to racially discriminate against people. And within five years of moving to California, the People's Temple Church ended up getting a huge boom of people joining, and they opened up three different locations. Spring of 1966, they only had 81 members, but five years later, there were thousands of members. So Jim really wanted to continue to grow this falling as big as he could.

His falling grew stronger and stronger, and eventually he started doing these cross-city bus tours to visit all of these people and speak to them. He would get old vans, repair them, and as many of his followers that could join him would go with him on these trips around the country. Now one thing that's super interesting to note about the followers of the church is most of them were black actually, and that's pretty unique considering the, you know, leader of it is a white guy from like the country. But this is when he started to act a little sketchy. A lot of older

people were joining the church and Jim started convincing them to sell their homes and donate all the money from their house to the church. And people actually did it. In return, Jim ended up making several houses that the older people could all live in together and be well taken care of. So as you can imagine, when now people are relying on you for everything in their life, this takes a lot of people being involved in all of this stuff. So he had a ton of volunteers.

And most people that were volunteering ended up quitting their jobs to dedicate as much as 20 hours a day to the church. Now at this point, it wasn't technically like volunteer work because they were getting paid. However, the deal was that they would have to give back their paychecks to the church to make it better. And they were given a weekly allowance of five bucks. Now I bet you're thinking like why were people even staying with this guy? Where are people getting

fed up with him like taking all this stuff from them? No, this actually made people even more loyal to him because they started seeing him as some type of like, God, like something above them. He had something about him that was charming and convincing and people were just hooked on him. Well, some people even thought he was as powerful as like Jesus and that he had healing powers and was basically magical. Now one really weird thing that Jim ended up telling his followers is that everyone but him is homosexual. Yeah, that's right. Every guy is gay and every girl is lesbian,

except for him. He basically told them that sex was selfish and that none of them should have sex at all because that time and energy should be going back into the church. And then one day at church, Jim decided he wanted to test the loyalty of his following. So he ended up passing out a bunch of punch and he told people that after they

started drinking some of it, that he was poisoned. So people started freaking out, but he was said he was testing their loyalty because this was a drill. This was a drill for if the CIA were to attack them. He would rather them all die than be captured by the CIA and his mind captured. So, you know, people were freaking out, some people were like taking it because they were loyal and trusted him. But after a little while, he told them that there was no poison in it, he was just testing their loyalty. So Jim had been living in Ucaya for a while, but eventually he decided he wanted to move to San Francisco because it was much bigger, had more people and a bigger falling, you know, it's just better for someone who's trying to build up a business or a church, whatever you want to call it.

Now he moved there in 1974 and by this time, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and JFK had already happened, so the country was very fragile and very, feeling very hopeless and dark. The people's temple and Jim's followers were convinced that they were going to be restarting the planet basically, building a way better world. So they weren't worried at all. They were thinking this is all, you know,

the storm before the calm, I guess. And after seeing Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy get assassinated, I mean, there's a good chance Jim believed in the conspiracy theories, which I mean, I do believe in both of those theories. I do think they were both assassinated in conspiracy I have videos on it and I definitely backed that up with a lot of proof for why I think that but he also probably Thought that and he started to get paranoid that since they were trying to create social change and trying to bring Races together and stuff like that that the government would come after him and he wasn't nearly as powerful as them

But he still was pretty paranoid about it. As time went on, he started to get more involved in politics. He was really influencing elections, and eventually he started getting threats. He was getting threats from, you know, just people, and then he was also paranoid about the government coming for him. And at this point, Jim was also really paranoid and started taking drugs. He claimed he was having issues with his kidneys, and that's why he was self-medicating. So eventually one of the people that was in the people's temple decided that the church was going in a wrong direction

and a lot of people are starting to feel this way because Jim was kind of losing his shit a little bit. So she ended up working to get an article published where she kind of, you know, ditched on what was really going on at the church and how Jim was and how she wanted there to be an investigation. Now, once they got wind that this article was going to publish, he randomly got the idea to move everyone and the whole people's temple church to its own community in

Guyana. So in December of 1975, Jim and 90 other members hopped on a plane and landed near Guyana and this is where they were going to build their new Community now this was like in the straight jungle people it was like fucking lot of trees a lot of green and they were out in the middle of nowhere and they were gonna Start this like utopian society that was the idea behind it like everyone's happy kind of hippie village Communist everyone takes care of each other everyone's taken care of type of situation they were fed up with the regulations in the United States and they just wanted to be free from the government they felt like the government was really corrupt so that's basically what he wanted to was just kind of start his own new world for people now Jim

had actually bought this land a little while earlier he started looking at it quite a while back this was kind of always part of his plan but the investigation kind of moved everything along and actually bought this land a little while earlier. He started looking at it quite a while back. This was kind of always part of his plan, but the investigation kind of moved everything along and he jumped ahead and did it. But it was acres and acres of land. So now you can kind of see where the money is coming from. After the first people went down there,

they sent back videos to the other people's temple members, showing them how great it was and how they had everything set up and everyone should come join them. They showed how everyone had freedom and there was total acceptance and nothing to be worried about there. So as many as 500 people ended up going over there in the beginning to start building it and setting it all up. Joanville was kind of known as a socialist paradise and people who knew of people that were going there and moving to Guyana to live there kind of just thought they were brainwashed by him, which you know a lot of them were,

but a lot of them really did have good intentions. They wanted a better world, they just weren't following the right person. I'll tell you why. Eventually, those rumors were getting out that Jim was brainwashing members into thinking they had to stay by basically blackmailing them by saying that they did illegal things and he knew about it and he would tell police if they ever tried to leave. So eventually the population of Jonestown grew to slightly under 900 people. And that was kind of at its peak around 1978. And after a ton of people came over there, it ended up getting overcrowded. But Jonestown had everything that you could possibly need.

They had a medical clinic, daycare stores, and restaurants. Jim was basically able to provide people with food, shelter, clothing, and anything else they needed. But anyone that was a member of Jones Town and lived there permanently was a full-time employee of Jim, and he basically owned them. And people were working crazy hours for Jim. He basically convinced people that the more they worked, the better their life was going to be, and the better the church would be for future generations, and for the world, that they were saving the world. They thought they

were part of something bigger than themselves. People would start to feel guilty if they took too many breaks or slept too long because they were afraid they were gonna disappoint Jim. As time went on, the whole mood around Jonestown started to go downhill. A lot of people were wanting to leave, but were afraid to leave. Jim was angry and seemed hostile at them sometimes. When he wasn't there, the mood would be a lot lighter. People would be dancing, having fun, playing games, but when he was around, it was, you know, all work. Jim would also give them these big punishments if things didn't go his way or if people broke his rules. Some of the rules were having sexual interaction with each other or leaving the group and going off and doing your own thing

So like ridiculous controlling rules and sometimes you would even punish people for doing things in front of everyone else Like a public, you know, shaming ceremony and sometimes he would even spank people hit them beat them However most of the people in the church were brainwashed into thinking that this was normal and just part of bettering the church. Now there's probably a lot more cases of this happening but eventually Jim was caught raping a woman on a bus. But he claimed he was doing it for her. It was all for her. In fall of 1977, an ex-temple member named Tim Stowen actually created a group called Concerned Relatives Group. And it was basically a group effort to try to help people whose family were still over their brainwashed and to bring the truth to Congress and government officials about what was really going on in church and in people's temple. They asked for

an investigation and Tim ended up going all the way to Washington DC to ask for one himself. While he was trying to get an investigation into it and get some help, Jim started becoming even more paranoid at this time. Jim was likely using drugs and he became very frantic all the time. He became very worried about everything. Members said that he was very uptight. It even got to the point where his speech was starting to slur, and he couldn't talk very well. So everyone there was really concerned about him.

If anyone ever tried to leave Jonestown, it would send him into a full depression. He had all this issues with separation and thought that everyone that was leaving was a traitor and trying to abandon him. But after that paper that I mentioned was finally published after, you know, he was already set up in Guyana, California Congressman Leo Ryan decided that he wanted to go ahead and see for himself what was really going on, so in November of 1978 he flew down to visit Jonestown. Now once word got to Jonestown that he was coming to visit, guess who was freaking out? Jim. Jim started to go through all these different scenarios of what could happen and deciding whether he was going to let the Congressman in or not. At one point he even talked about killing the congressman and everyone else that came.

But congressman Ryan, relatives of the temple members and NBC camera crew and reporters for various newspapers all flew to Georgetown on November 15th and two days later they traveled by another airplane and were transported to Jones Town. The night that he arrived, Jim actually planned like a ceremony to welcome him. And it was pretty lit. They had dancers and everyone was in a great mood and he convinced everyone to act really, really happy so that the congressmen would not, you know, get a hint that anyone was upset there. about questions that have been raised about your operation. I continue right now to put a few conversations on hand with some of the folks here already

in the evening that whatever the comments are, there are some people here who believe that this is the best thing you've ever had on their whole life. However, while the party was going on, a lot of the members that were very desperate to get out of there were slipping notes to the camera crew and to the congressman about how unhappy they were and how they needed help getting out of Jonestown. So that's when congressman Ryan realized that this was a real problem. That's something bad was going on here and it was not all fun and games like they were acting like it was. They confront Jones. Last night, someone came and passed me the snow. Well, I see what everybody wants to see the sun here.

If Jones sounds so sure about it, that's why he wants to see the sun here. Doesn't it concern you, though, that this man for whatever reason? What do you people in your group? People play games, friends. They lie. What can I do about Liarshan? You people are going, leave us. I just beg you, please leave us. Bill, we will bother nobody.

Anybody wants to get out of here? Can get out of here? Then the following day, people continued to tell reporters about how they were desperate to get out of there. Listen to your wish today. It's a good fact. Go back home.

And let us home. U.S. We need to take care of you. You'll pay those cash back here. He insisted that Jonestown wasn't holding anyone captive and anyone could leave and whoever was saying that was just trying to get attention. But during that afternoon, a member of the People's Temple actually came up to Congressman Ryan with a knife and tried to get attention. But during that afternoon, a member of the people's temple actually came up to Congressman Ryan with a knife and tried to attack him. Now at this point, his security was like,

uh, uh, we're out of here. He needs to go so he left. But as he was leaving, he was seen with blood stains on his shirt from the attack. Everything was being broadcasted, so when people saw him with blood on his shirt back at home, people freaked out. He was supposed to go down there and check and make sure everything was safe. But when they're seeing him with blood on his shirt back at home. People freaked out. He was supposed to go down there and check and make sure everything was safe.

But when they're seeing him with blood on him, they're like, okay, it clearly something bad is going on there. When it was time for Ryan and his crew to leave, he was escorted by some of the church members back to his plane. However, once they got to the landing strip, some of the members of the church started shooting them. Open fire right at them. Congressman Leo Ryan, along with NBC reporter Don Harris,

NBC cameraman Bob Brown, San Francisco Examiner, photographer Greg Robinson, and a temple member all ended up dying from their gunshot wounds. I hit the deck, I lie face down. I have my arm hold my head basically. I told you go to sleep with baby, you know. When my right arm was on my head like this, my left hand was this, and my face is push against kissing the floor

as close as possible. I don't want to move because I know they keep shooting. And next thing I heard, they walking towards us, one of the men. And somehow, one shot hit by a brown in the leg, I believe. I don't know what part of the body. He screamed and out. And of course, shit I believe. I don't know what part of the body. He screamed and out. And of course, shit or something. I don't know what he did.

And next thing I know, the guy came close and blow his brain off. And next thing I know, I say, oh, next one will be me, who get killed, right? So I just didn't think about it. I just think about my little daughter. The next thing I know, I have tremendously pressure, explosion right next to my head, and my arms just feel like falling apart.

But I won't dare to move in one single muscle. That's probably not save my life. I guess the reason I save my life is because my arms is ahead of my head. So the bullet missed the brain when I hit my arm is just dead. And I didn't move, and the press is all over the place. So they thought I probably dead. my arm is a step and I'd be moved and the brothers all over the place so they thought I probably did.

The bodies were flown back to the United States. I met rumours that Jones was organizing a mass suicide ritual at his farming commune. Now once the word got back to Jim about what was going on, he realized he was going to get in trouble for everything and you know especially once people back at home figured out they were gonna come for him. People were starting to rebel and trying to leave Jonestown, so in the last ditch effort to keep everyone there, he made a huge speech saying that the congressman had been shot. He then started scaring them.

He started saying that the government was coming after them and they would kill them all, torture their kids. People were freaked out. And so Jim told them that the only way to save themselves was by revolutionary suicide. So he ended up making cyanide-laced grape coolade and serving it to everyone there. He said, if we can't live in peace,

then we must die in peace. He said this was the only way and there was nothing else they could do, but one of the people's church members stood up and tried to convince him that dying wasn't the only way and there was nothing else they could do, but one of the people's church members stood up and tried to convince him that dying wasn't the only way. She started begging, saying that she wanted her children to live and that she couldn't stand seeing them go through this and she needed to get out of Jones Town.

She just wanted to leave and at this point, she was shot by guards. So this is when other people realized that there was no choice and started drinking the Kool-Aid. Now that is actually a phrase you've probably heard drinking the Kool-Aid when someone's like believing BS, people be like, oh, it sounds like you're drinking the Kool-Aid. And this is what that quote is from.

So many of the people drank it, some of them were forcibly injected with it or forced to drink it or beaten or killed other ways. So people who drank the Kool- coolates started dropping left and right. They were convincing people to give this to their children that it was the best way, so mothers started giving it to their babies to their children. They all started dying. So many people died.

And at the end of all of this, Jim shot himself. A total of 909 people's temple members died that day in the Jonestown. There was only five people who escaped into the jungle. It was very rare but some people did escape. But one thing that was found in Jonestown was a note that read, to whoever finds this note, collect all the tapes, all the writing, all the history, the story of this movement of the action. Must be examined over and over.

We did not want this kind of ending. We wanted to live to shine, to bring light to a world that was dying for a little bit of love. There's quiet as we leave this world. The sky is gray, people filed by a slowly and take the somewhat bitter drink. Many more must drink. A teeny kitten sits next to us watching a dog barks, a bird gathers on the telephone wires. Let all the stories of the people's temple be told. If nobody understands, it matters not. I'm ready to die now. Darkness settles over Jon's town on its last Dan Earth. So very, very freaky story. Obviously, when people in America were finding out about this, the coverage of it was brutal. People could not believe that

this happened and that many people died. I mean, a lot of people don't even know about this. So it is one of the craziest stories out there, man. And it definitely shows us the danger of people creating their own religions and cults and what can happen. I mean, look at Scientology. It's pretty crazy stuff going on in that. Like, Imagine if Jonestown got to that level one day. Jim's son, Jim Jr. had a very, you know,

tumultuous time after this trying to deal with, you know, what happened with his dad and why he did all this. So it was very hard on him. And overall this just shocked people. But I really want to know what you guys think of this story. What do you think of Jim? What do you think of his intentions? Like how much were his attentions about controlling people

and how much was it about actually helping the world? It's kind of like one of those things where I think maybe in the beginning he was more focused on helping the world and then over time the power just got to him and he became totally into himself and power hungry. I can't imagine telling not many people to kill themselves. These selfishness, the arrogance, and the truly incredible story.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode. And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there.