Last Update on the Left - Episode 17 - The Road to Jonestown: An Interview with Jeff Guinn

[MUSIC]

“Hello everyone and welcome to last update on the left.”

My name's Marcus Parks, I'm here with Henry Zebrauski. And Ed Larson. And today-- It's a joint. [LAUGH]

Hey, not automatically hear it out first.

[LAUGH] Yeah, here the pitch. And our guest today is a returning guest so far. The biggest response we've got from a guest on last update on the left. Welcome back, Jeff Gwyn.

Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, it's good to be back on the show. So last time we talked to you about Waco and your new book about Waco, but many years ago, over almost 300 episodes ago, we did a five-part series on Jones Town.

And your book, Road to Jones Town, I think it had been released a year before, was an invaluable resource to us. And it's still honestly one of my favorite non-fiction books. It's one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. So thank you very much for that book, that's incredible.

You talking about, I'll always remember you describing the idea of

him believing that laser beams would like come out of his eyes. Like Jesus energy was coming out of his face. And it was like, he does have a lot of face.

“Yeah, that's why I had to wear sunglasses.”

Yeah. Well, that was the excuse anyway. [LAUGH] But of course it was to hide the red eyes from the upper's downers. He was constantly taking.

But let's start with the macro. Big question. And looking at mass suicides, it seems like there are kind of like three different reasons why mass suicides happen. And I know that Jones Town was much more of a mass murder than a mass suicide.

But it seems to be some of them are to avoid wrath. It's to avoid approaching armies, to avoid a fate worse than death. Some of them are suicides of despair, like how many people and Nazi Germany committed suicide after the Nazis lost. And then of course, there's religiously motivated suicide when it comes to

like, say, like, heaven's gate, like, which of these three do you think loomed largest over Jones Town in the eventual end? We have a lot of trouble trying to figure that out. And I finally decided, it took months, really, that to try to say there was one overriding reason just didn't work in this case.

“And that's what makes this whole thing so unique.”

There really hasn't been anything like it that we can say what happened in Jones Town is especially like what happened at such in such a place. The reason that isn't the case is that by the time over 900 people are in Jones Town in November, 1978, they're no longer there for any one specific reason they don't all have one reason in common.

Jim Jones, a lot through basic instinct, more than anything else, understood that

if he was going to have a big following, he was never going to sell everybody on

anyone aspect of what he was trying to do. So you've got people in Jones Town, a number of them who are there because they believe Jim Jones is more than human, that there's some godlike aspect to him and that they are joining him in some great sort of moment, that there will be a wonderful life beyond. And in this case they're doing exactly what a greater than human leader wants them to do.

So there's some people like that. There are people who have been convinced by Jim Jones as they're out here in the jungle for a long time, no other communication, that the American government is coming to kill them all. We're dangerous to the government, they're coming to get us.

If we let them come and we fight them and they're going to kill us and they'll take our children off and they'll do terrible things to the children. So we're avoiding that. And then you had at least a couple hundred people who had been living out in the damn jungle for so long and I have been there guys, I used a machete and I cut my way into the place

this was. And it was in the mind, soon-season, triple-decker canopy so the sun hardly gets through

and they work it like slaves every day and the hours are six a.m. to six p.m. and they're physically

exhausted and there's not enough food and they're half-starred and they just decide screw it. He says we've all got to die, let's just get this crap over with. So you're right, there are three different reasons for this kind of mass death. But to say only one was predominant, misses the whole point, Jones was selling all kinds of things to different people and that was part of his allure.

He could convince anybody, let's say you three, each one of you, Jones might have convinced

“you need to be part of people's temple for an entirely different reason, you had something”

to ask, I'm sorry, that was actually a big question in my mind, what was the ex-factor? Is it just because he gave a good enough answer to each unique person's like predicament and he was like multifaceted like he was a mirror, I know the Charles Manson said that, right famously that you know, you looked out on me, I'm the devil, you're like, I mean, I'm got Charlie Manson at his best. It only convinced a couple dozen drug-addled kids.

Yeah. They needed to do what he said. Jim Jones created people's temple out of a whole conglomerate of humanity from elderly get black ghetto dwellers to white Indiana farmers to great intellectuals out in California who are lawyers who are accountants who are really

“brilliant people who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And there are probably”

right now, if you guys are feeling brave, three or 400 hours of Jim Jones' recorded sermons at people's temple. I've listened to many of them. Yeah, they're happening. You know, and I have listened as part of my book, I felt obligate. I listened to everyone that's out there. Thousands of hours have sitting up here in the same room I'm talking from now, listening to Jim Jones. And at first, you just think, my God, it's a mess.

It's rambling. It makes no sense, but then you start to pick some things out. And this man had an inherent or rhetorical brilliance. And what he would do in the course of these five hour marathons is he would touch on all different kinds of approaches. He'd spend 20 minutes talking to the true Bible believers quoting scripture being dramatic as hell. Then he'd talk to the atheist. The one who didn't believe in God at all. Then he'd make fun of a sky God who says he's going to

do all these wonderful things and never does and he'd throw the Bible on the floor and stamp on it.

And then he'd talk for 20 minutes about all the social injustice in America. And you guys are much younger than me. But I promise you, in the 1960s to mid 70s, when all the racial discrimination, the hatred, the holding down of women's rights, the whole economic disparity, it's coming up. It's being discussed in public for the first times. And Jim Jones touches on that. Then he has people following him who don't care about religion at all. They're interested in socialism.

“Everybody getting a fair chance. So that's why everybody who followed Jim Jones,”

every sermon he preached, they would hear something that seemed to speak directly to them. And it worked. I mean, you say you've heard a lot of these takes, right? Yeah. Didn't you after a while start picking up that way to minute, we're getting something for everybody? Well, I mean, I think he himself even said, I can be all things to all people. I can be whoever you want me to be. He came out and said it.

He said the quiet part out loud to people. There wasn't no quiet, Mark. Yeah. He was never quiet.

So in eliciting to this for all those hours, like, what did he say that? You were like, "Oh, that makes sense. I'm with that." Like, what do you get, what do you get you on? Okay, here's a scary thing. I have written about a lot of controversial subjects. My books usually look at iconic events where things happen that have affected us ever since, right? And I never,

Spon Ranch. I never, in three years of studying, wake, go in the branch of idioms.

Thought for a moment, there was anything to David Kresh that would interest me that would make me willing to do anything. But Jim Jones was out in Greyhound buses travel around the country with his followers, going to different college towns, talking to different college audiences and challenging the college kids. What, how many of you think racial discrimination is

“drawn? How much have you think misogyny is wrong that women are treated fairly in America?”

How many of you think there's too many poor people in America within one half to be? Well, why do you think you're going to change it sitting around on a college campus, listening to professors give you lectures? You come with us right now and tomorrow we will have you out in that part of America where help is so desperately needed and you can actually do something. And I'm in college University of Texas in Austin. These years he's going out there.

And he gets into Texas. He gets to use it a few times. Never seems to get to Austin.

And I'm glad he didn't. Because I was very socially conscious and college. I wanted to do something. I wanted to help make a difference. And I can just see myself one a years old hearing about this Jones guy going to see him, hearing him say that, and jumping on the gray-hawn bus. I wouldn't do it now. I wouldn't do it when I was old enough. Maybe to have a better sense of balance. But I could see myself at that point in my life going,

"Yeah, I want to do this. I'll give up everything and I'll follow you." Well, that was one of our biggest questions when we were doing the Jones Town series, is that Jim Jones accomplished some pretty impressive things. He desegregated Indianapolis. And that was one of our biggest questions. Like, "Did Jim Jones believe?" And these things, or did he just see this as a path? Did he just see it as these people?

No one has paid attention to these people here. And I can manipulate these people in the whole power over them. Again, the things you're saying are the things I thought I was probably going to find when I started looking. And when I say I spent three years, I really did. I went everywhere Jim Jones had been where he grew up,

where he had his first church, sore front church, and Indianapolis. Follow him all over the

damn world, right? Right to Guyana. And I heard something when I was in Indiana that just shocked me. I mean, Lynn, the little farm town where he grows up, right? He's a weird kid. I've been there. Yep, let's see. He had funerals for animals. He was the weird guy in a community where everybody else wants to conform. And he was like a preacher fanboy, right? Like he would go and kind of wash, yeah, church. I church is in this little town. Jim, when he's a kid, goes to all five

“because he's picking up on what the different preachers you're doing. But here's the thing.”

Every Saturday, Lynn, Indiana. He's a poor kid, right? And he's got maybe one nice shirt and pair of pants. Every Saturday, he gets on the bus. And he goes about 30 miles to the town of Richmond, which is the big town in the area. And Richmond is so socially and racially segregated. There's just no believing it almost. I mean, the white people tolerate black people in town because you need gargers. You need maids. You know, they know we're not equals. And a lot of black

hobos would be in Richmond in every any given time because they're coming in on the train. They're right in the rails. And they hop off in Richmond because the big towns of where you might be able to beg a few, a few coins and get something to eat. Jim Jones 15, 16, 17, every Saturday takes that bus into Richmond. And he goes to this place by the tracks where white people do not go. And he preaches. He stands up and he talks about we are all equal. Your life isn't fair. But we're going to change

“that. And the only thing he ever got from that was beaten up a few times. What would could he possibly”

be getting out of that when he's in Indianapolis or a single handed? He desegregates a major city.

Trump administration. Somebody from a magazine, I believe it was rolling stone called me when the book came out and said, hey, it sounds to us like you're saying Donald Trump is a lot like Jim Jones. And I said that absolutely is not true because a few times in his life, Jim Jones things that were good for people. Maybe this is not about just helping me. The idea of where does the line you think? Obviously, we're all armchair psychiatrists of the line at the top. Yes, of pathological

confidence into like some form of like I would call what he has like some form of souped up anti-social personality disorder, but he it's like the opposite of it. Like he has like he's like an ultimate people reader that had bad intentions. So like where does that cut? Did you think that it's like a

“mental disorder? Like something like that? I think there are always going to be people who have”

tendency towards Megalomania. I am great. I am special. I am going to do amazing things. I'm of all met people like that and most of them don't do jack. But then you get someone like him.

He's got all these crazy dreams that a poor farm kid in rural Indiana. I mean, it's never going to

happen. And then in this first ministry of his in Indianapolis, he actually makes some things happen. And he gets followers. People who've seen him do this who absolutely believe everything he does is perfect. Oh, tell us more. You can do nothing wrong. And you get isolated from the kinds of things the rest of us have to deal with every day that reminds us we may think we're great. The threats to the world is not agreeing with that. So that starts to build. He goes out to California because he wants

“to be even more important and damned if he doesn't pull it off again, but now he's using drugs.”

And he's using drugs all the time. And again, as a child of the 60s and early 70s, I saw people who were, you know, 24/7. He usually take an upper so they get all worked up. And then if they want to go to sleep, they got to take a handful of downers to do that. And you start losing more contact with the real world, with real balance. And by the time he's in Guyana, he's got 900 people in this remote jungle outpost. They have nowhere to go. If they want

to believe, you've got to get through the jungle. And folks, there are big cats in that jungle that will eat you. There are poison to snakes that will kill you with one strike. So they're stuck, they're with him. And they have, they're doing whatever he says. And he goes completely out of it.

So yes, he always had tendencies, like hopefully very few people,

but completely succumb to, then I am better. There is something about me that is better. Well, we didn't know anything about that. We just live in Los Angeles. I never met any of these, anybody that you described. The rest of us just hope, when I was eight, I knew I was going to play for the San Francisco Giants with my hero William A's. And then somebody threw me a curveball. And I realized, it ain't happening. I better learn

that or I'd books because I can't hit decent pitching. But Jim Jones never has that.

It's always, wait a minute, they said, this couldn't be done. And I did it. They said it Indianapolis. They said it in California. And he did it. You mix that with drugs. And with literally thousands of followers, including the tract of women, who are going to do whatever you ask and think it's an honor. And like every other demigod, with any sort of even religious following it, yes, Jim Jones had sex with his followers.

“That's almost inevitably part of it. But was he crazy from the get go?”

Well, I don't know, but if he was, then at least for a while, that craziness resulted in some

a few that followed him from Indianapolis. And we're there on that last day in Guyana. Like,

“do you think that some of those people were still on that last day waiting for the good man”

who de-segregated Indianapolis to come back? When I say what, when I answer that question,

please understand. I'm not answering it through second or third-hand information.

There are a few people who survived that day. Yeah. And one of them in particular, Tim Carter. Shared everything with me. And in all the years, since that book of known Tim and some of these other folks survivors, and I have come to truly respect them. So I can tell it when I tell you that on this last day, there actually were people who thought that great young pioneer still stood before them. Maybe father had a little problem with too many drugs.

“Maybe father was screwing a few women besides his wife. And maybe father sometimes said some”

pretty stupid things when he's up there. But he is also the man who said 30 years ago

helped me and we will change Indianapolis. And he did it. Come with me to California and in some of the great cities in that state, San Francisco particularly, we are going to bring social justice to the downtrodden. He not only did that, these people who'd come from Indiana saw some of the most famous California show business folks and the top politicians coming to people's temple to testify how wonderful Jim Jones is. So you damn straight, there were some people

who still believed, okay, maybe he's gotten a little weird as a years of gone by. But still when

“he says we're going to do some great thing, we do it. I find it so interesting that Colt leaders”

all accidentally, they follow like very similar road maps. Like now we're seeing the ironic Colt leader like Keith Reniri who is up, he seems his Colt, like next to him was an entire sort of amalgamation of, he stole from LRA, he stole from this, he stole from various things. LRA is by the way, he's he is Lron Hubbard, he likes to call Lron Hubbard LRA. He wouldn't be as he would approve of. You know, it's interesting, I did get some some messages from some of your fans and

audience members after I was on the show and they each seems to have each of you guys for different reasons. Yes, very much so. What you in particular, I'm not going to say who they were going that's the guy you better watch out for. I'm not doing anything bad. I've been nothing but good. But see, here I agree with you completely that almost all these demagogues are going to find so many things in common, including Jones who stole liberally from from other people, particularly

father divide. But here is the one difference, the one damn difference that I cannot get past. I counted up and so far I've spent 14 years of my adult life researching and writing about faults. Yeah, okay. Now, every other example I've seen, people end up following a demagogue, a false leader because they believe they're getting something great for it. Manson said we're going to have helped your skeleton, you're going to help me rule the world.

David Koresh promised we're going to lead the fight at the end of the world against Babelon and we are going to be in the foremost of God's army and then we're going to help rule this thousand kingdom of God. Only people's temple, nobody ever joined people's temple because they were promised you're going to get rich. God's going to love you, you're all going, you've got a ticket to heaven. If you follow me, anyone who joined people's temple gave rather than God,

all their possessions. But they didn't see their possessions turned into the leader having

a mansion in fancy cars and $10,000 suits. They saw their possessions go to second hand stores

pre-clothing outlets come in pick what you need, no questions asked. And to me the most amazing

thing, people's temple took teenagers in the ghetto. Kids whose only future was crime in the streets and they sent them to college, they paid everything. Not just tuition and books, they bought houses they turned into dormitories. I met people, I'm writing this book who said, if it weren't for Jim Jones and people's temple, I'd have been dead long ago and instead I've got this and they mean it. That doesn't mean they forgive the horrible things that end up happening. That's

inexcusable and I'm not trying to say Jim Jones is a misunderstood saint. No. No. But to understand

“him, to understand people's temple, the crucial thing to get is that the people who are joining”

this and it's unique, pretty much, are doing it because they want to help other people.

It's incredible. He's using their best quality against them.

So that's the thing. Jim Jones is attracting people because of good qualities. We can all think not just of religious demagogues but political leaders who get following because they appeal to people's bad side. Be your worst. It's good. And here you've got somebody who's going to do these awful things that culminate in one of the greatest mass murders in history and yet the Corvette, the beginning of it, were things that in retrospect seem impossible that they could have been achieved

“in that time in place and yet people benefit it. That's why it's so troubling. That's why there's”

it's so multi-dimensional. Yeah. It's the question of, you know, was this a man who always had

good intentions and he'd just fell to his, his worst side or if this is all just opportunism from the start? I mean, that's an impossible question to answer. I know, but it's the one that always comes up in my mind when I think about Jim Jones. Well, of course it does. And that's another reason why all these years later we're still talking about it. We have. Yeah. I mean, I think they had the capacity to be a great man.

Well, in some ways, he was a great man for a while. I mean, we have to accept that I wrote in the book

“that if on those gray-hound buses they were taken from Indiana to California, Jim Jones had”

died in a highway wreck. He would be remembered today is one of the first early pioneers of the civil right movement. Yeah. He'd have there be like a statue of him in Indianapolis. Deservedly. I thought I've talked to the black people in Indianapolis who first joined his church to community unity in a little storefront. And he started this church, Jim and his wife Marcellan, in the worst of the get-os. And there were lots of people trying storefront churches. He'd

run a store. He'd put up some folding chairs. He'd hand out leaflets. You'd see if some of these black folks would come in and maybe some of them would for a couple weeks because it was different. But then they'd wander off. Jim Jones did it differently. He gets a storefront church. He goes to a Quaker missionary in town named Ron Haldeman. And I met Ron and talked with him for a long time. And told Haldeman, I want to do something for black people.

I'm going to go right into the heart of the ghetto. And I'm not only going to tell those folks, there's hope. I'm going to do something for them. He promised. And these are his exact words. I am going to give those poor black people a church that gives them something now. Not promises will your suffering and nobody's fair, but someday you'll go to heaven and live and paradise. Haldeman described what would happen at one of these storefront gatherings. He goes there

maybe a month after Jones has started the thing. And Jones said, "Well, you know, we've got a couple dozen people are coming back. Haldeman wanted to see for himself." And so instead of a church service, Jones comes walking up to the front and said,

Then Haldeman said this little elderly black lady, very frail, kind of waves her hand.

And she says, "The electric company is hurting me. I pay all my bills, but they say they didn't get my payment last time. And I got a family. I got baby grandchildren living with me and my little apartment, and they've turned off my power. And the little ones are cold because we got no heating. I can't cook a mini food. I don't know what to do." And Jones says, "We're going to fix that."

“Let's write a letter right now. What should we put in the letter? What are the ideas?”

And he asks everybody to suggest some things. And they write the letter. Jones said,

"Today's Sunday tomorrow I'm taking this letter to the power company. We're going to fix this."

I'm back next Sunday, and everybody comes back, you know, to see how we'd screwed up. And he asked the little lady, tell them, and she said, "The power company people came out. They said they made a mistake. The power's back on." And she then starts crying and praising everybody there, saying, "All of you did this, you know, God led me here to all of you. And you fixed it and passed your Jones most of all." And Jones said, "See this crew something.

We're a family. We're in it together. And not only are we in it together. We change things. See, keep coming. You'll get things that you deserve." And he did. And he built on that.

Now tell me guys, anyone of you three, you're used to studying demagogues who are defrauding

people, faking them out and everything. Yeah. If you'd been in that storefront church and seem like Ron Holden and saw, would you start thinking that maybe this Jim Jones guy has some kind of special ability? Of course. Of course, that's the idea that you're looking for, especially if you're already in the spot. Right, you're there. You're looking for an answer. You are here to, you are obviously in trouble. We're now at this spot where you're,

you've already heard that other people went to this place and they got helped. And then you go when you see that he does this and whatever it was that he did, because he probably just got the gift to gab like nobody's business. And he probably went in and bitched to supervisor until just

“to get rid of them. Super. That's what my mom taught me. Well, not the other thing is when you're”

poor and you get so desperate, you feel so powerless. You know, you think that a hundred dollars is $20,000. You know, and it's just like you get so beat down and destitute. You see this dude come in and get results. Of course you're going to follow. Look at Mr. Beast. And also, remember, they've been going to other churches in Indianapolis, usually with black ministers, who are saying to them, this is God testing us, but someday you're going to be in paradise.

Well, if you're a little old lady who's got hungry grandchildren who are shivering, and here's this white guy. And so what the black people I talked to, the old timers in Indian apolis would tell me, is he preached like a black man and he got stuff done like a white one. That was a combination. I mean, these are, I mean, we're talking a lot about like Jim Jones is like big qualities that the things that that they that his followers saw, but what one of the things that I

loved about your book is that you really painted a picture of just how incredibly weird Jim Jones was. Like personally, a very, very strange person. You mentioned the animal funerals earlier from when he was a child, just these strange things that he did. Like did his followers see those, it's just like mere eccentricities because at the same time that he's, you know, getting people's lights turn back on, he's selling spider monkeys door to door. More than that, he's fake and all kinds of miracles

of revival meetings to get donations to keep the straight church going. What he was able to sell to his followers was not spider monkeys, but what he could sell was this philosophy. Sometimes we have to do things that will keep the church financially viable that will make people

“curious enough to come in. That's why I have to do certain things. I have to act a certain way,”

but it's to recruit people in just to get them interested and once they hear our real messages, they're going to want to be with us and they're going to do the right things. So say people who've

accepting the idea. Yeah, Jim's weird and he does some weird things, but a lot of it is just an act

he's putting on to make people pay attention. When he was, by that point, I guess like I remember from the book, when they were looking at him, like Jim Jones, at that style because I know like he got more and more separated from kind of the main body of the people, but there were the old people. Were there people there? There were kind of there from the beginning that knew him as like not father, but like you knew him as Jim more so like what a bunch of like, those like those

people in the end, like to the very, very end from the survivor's perspective, like do they know what was coming was real bad or they knew that like you know like how do you get locked in that

“hard? I guess that's what I'm trying to say. Where it's like you don't look at him like he's a god.”

You know him as Jim and you're like how the fuck am I? Wow, the fuck are they still there?

Here's, here's the best answer to that. And I got this Tim Carter first said it to me.

But I, I talk since to Jones is surviving sons. I talked to a guy who's my age now 70s, who was part of Jones's Indiana honorage when he was just 15, 16 years old. And I would ask the question, I can see where would you first start with them and you see some of these great things happen and you think it's wonderful. But then come on, some of this is just too bizarre. And Tim Carter told me this first, but I tested it on the others and they also,

again, that's exactly it. And Tim said, it's the analogy of the frog in a pot of water. If you put the frog in a pot of lukewarm water with the flame a little low and he'll just sit there and you turn up the flame gradually and he'll sit there till he's getting boiled alive and didn't realize it and then he can't get out. He said, that's the way Jim Jones worked. A little weird. Okay, we accept that. Look at this great thing. Weirder. Okay, here's a great thing.

Weirder. And it built up until finally what you've done.

You're sitting in the goddamn jungle and guys, please understand this ain't like those Tarzan movies where the trees are real separated and there's nice little monkeys and beautiful birds. They are in this jungle. They can't get away. They've given away all their possessions. They've told their family and friends, I don't want anything to do with you ever again because you don't

“understand Jim and pride is involved. There's no place left to go. What are you going to do?”

Are you going to stand there at Jones town and admit to yourself, I was wrong the whole time and look where got me? That's not human nature. You just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Jim Jones Jr., a wonderful, wonderful guy. I mean, I can't think of too many people. I like more than Jimmy. He's a wonderful guy. And I asked him, you know, all these years later, were just sitting at his house in California. On the day that Jones said, we're all going to do this together.

They didn't drink Kool-Aid. Of course, it was flavorate or cyanide. But tell them they're going to do that. Jimmy and some of the others are across the jungle in Georgetown the capital of Guyanna. And of course, terrible things happen to them there. But they're not dying right then. I said, Jimmy, if you had been there in Jones town with your young wife, you're just married with your mom and siblings and nieces and nephews and your dad and people you love, and you'd be in tall

blind-up drink this stuff die. Would you have done it? And he thought about it. Well, I said, you know, I can't definitely say that I would have, but I can't say I wouldn't. I was feeling so worn out

“by there. I'd seen all the good stuff, but boy, I'd seen the crazy stuff. And I think it might have been”

that I just would have looked at him and said, I'm tired of this shit. Give me your damn poison. Yeah. I mean, at the end of it, you know, when, as we all know, you know, the catalysts for the massacre came when Congressman Leo Ryan came to you. And I don't know if you'd know this,

that was trying to get you knew about this that he wrote the note, "Hang in there."

“Oh, Leo Ryan got into a lot of things. Yeah. He, of course, I couldn't interview him,”

but I interviewed Jim Wright who was Speaker of the House at the time. And he said, "Well, you know, Leo originally promised that he was going to go over there with a number of other members of Congress to show that the problem with people's temple was more than just his California district, but nobody would go with him." And I said, "Why?" They said, "Well, Leo was a master of getting the media to talk to him. Any other kind of member of Congress who went,

would have been his supporting cast. And there he goes. We're going to accept that." Well, I, well, speaking of, like, now that we're kind of on the subject a little bit of a Patty Hearst, like we just did, we really got into the Symbianese liberation army.

“And the thing that, the thing that both the SLA and the People's Temple share is that they would use”

one word to get people to do shit that they didn't want to do, bourgeois. What do you think, and that if people didn't want to ship with the door closed and SLA, bourgeois, you know, if you didn't want to eat mung beans every day, bourgeois. And I know in Jones to, or at least, I mean, go and even back to UK, they would use that excuse. Like, what did you think the power of that word was with people's temple? We tend to look at past events from the perspective

of the moment we're living in now. It helped when I wrote this book that I was young and impressionable and hopeful about the time Jim Jones was doing this stuff. I wouldn't have joined the Symbianese liberation army because those guys were to scare the shit out of me. So that wasn't going to happen. But there were so many of us from all different kinds of backgrounds. I've been a poor kid myself, so that made a difference. But I knew a lot of rich kids who felt guilty.

And that was it. That was toy that could always work. You just don't want to give up all these

things that you've got, all these comforts when there are people who are suffering so greatly. If you close that door when you're on the toilet, if you won't give one of your fellow SLA members a blow job, that means that you think you're too good to do this. Fine, get the hell out of here. We need real people who care. And as you can see, I mean, with the SLA it worked. Some, you know, some people pretty well off people who became famous sports agents and other

things later, you know, in their lives, got swept up in it. Again, patty hurts the poor little rich girl. And of course, you know, people's temple was involved in all that too. You may, you may

“remember. Oh, yeah, yeah, with the people who don't want to play it both ways. He told his”

members, well, we really sympathize with SLA. But if we offer Mr. Hersh some money, just say, we're with you. We're going to try to help. Then that would make us look good to the newspapers. He runs. So again, there's Jones saying, we're doing one thing to further the cause in another way. And getting people to buy into that. Yeah, you'll suck up to Hurst and the Hurst family. But that's because that'll make the newspapers treat us more favorably. And we can help

meet people even more. Sure. I, so during that time in San Francisco, like I know that Jim Jones, he ran the flavorate test twice, right? Like where he told everyone once in San Francisco. Yeah. So he had a committee of church leaders and locked him away with him and had them all drink something and said, a poison to you're going to die in 45 minutes. And he had a couple players there too. One of them pretended to try to run out of the room and was shot by a gun with

blanks. Another, well, I can feel, I can feel my limbs are starting to go numb, which made a lot of the other ones go, oh my God, I feel it too. Then he told them, well, this was just a test in you past it. Then in Guyana, he has what they call white nights. Yeah. And what he's called at

white night is it's a night of tragedy, but people always say black is bad and white is good.

And he encounters everybody and said, you know, you need to drink this stuff and then he tells

“and they've been poisoned. And he's testing. What this shows him is that for whatever reason,”

most not all, but most of the people there would do this. And he thinks about it. And after that, he tells the doctor, the jewelry shop who himself is a great interesting guy. And shot sends out for one pound of cyanide, powdered cyanide, enough for 1,800 lethal doses. It costs $8.85 Jesus Christ. And after that, Jim Jones, with him, it's not a matter of will he at some point, really do it? It was a matter of wind. Yeah. And Leo Ryan gave him that moment, but if it hadn't been

Leo Ryan, it would have been something. Jones was sort of at the end there in Guyana. He thought maybe they could move to Russia. The Russians weren't going to take them. The guy in these were getting kind of antsy about the whole thing. It was possible that U.S. legalities for some of the children that were in Jones town were going to get those kids out of there. And that was Jones's big hole on so many of his followers. He just fought at the time to make this one big final dramatic

statement. And he does. Yeah. It definitely feels like sometimes with one of these organizations, the group is in the head of the leader, like they're all like in his head. And then when he

“decides to die by suicide, it's almost like he that's what the action is. I can see what”

you say about Jimmy Jones, Jr. saying, I was just so tired. Like when you hear his final speeches, and he's been like, and he's even saying it in time. He's I'm tired. He's tired. He's doing that thing and you're like, he was looking for a reason. Well, any demigod sooner or later is going to lead his followers to disaster. It is inevitable. Whether it's religious, whether it's political, push, push, push, and then you're going to hit that point. And it's going to turn to hell.

That's what's happened with all of them. That's what happened to Jim Jones. But the horror of that day

when we hear it, first hand from the couple people who survived it. Jones announces,

“the time has come. The congressman's dead. Any minute now, the United States army,”

along with the Gyanese army and mercenaries are going to be parachuting in here. They're going to slaughter us. They're going to take our children off. We can't have that. We're going to do what they did at Masada. We're not in any way committing suicide. What we're doing is we're giving a dramatic statement. We're showing our defiance and he has him bring out the barrels, the buckets, the trash cans,

of flavor aid with the cyanide mixed in. And first they're going to take the little babies.

And some of the mothers line up with their children, others are hanging back. And surrounding this group of people, our Jones' bodyguard that day and they've got guns. His real bodyguard, most of the basketball team with his sons that are in Georgetown and they might have said no. But now the ones that are there with the guns are the true believers. And so the nurses there get syringes and they suck up this poison and they squirted into the

baby's mouths. And as they do, Jim Jones is telling his followers, it's very peaceful. It's just like going to sleep. But you guys know what cyanide poisoning does. And these children start to suffocate horribly these little babies. They're writhing and they want to scream, but they're gurgling. And it's horrible. And their eyes are bulging and people are seeing how horrible it is. And Jones is saying the whole time, oh no, no, it's just because it tastes, it tastes bitter.

Don't worry about it. And they're lining people up now and he's saying it's only fair that we let the parents die with their babies. So now you get the grownups. And now some of the people are

and it was interesting, but I was allowed to get copies of the coroner's reports.

“And the coroner's reports said that of these 900 who died may be 650 of the murder adults.”

At least a third and maybe as many as half of the adults did not die by drinking the poison.

They were held down and forcibly injected. And they had the bruise marks on their next or their legs or their backs where the needles had gone in. Marcil and Jones, Jim Jones is wife. And again, this isn't second hand. We know this happened. She's standing away from the stage. She's on. She's screaming. You can't do this. You can't do this. And he's saying it's on tape. Anybody here listen to that final tape. Mother or mother or mother. Don't say this. You know,

be with your children. Mother, mother, mother, he's talking to Marcilen. And the people who believe in him are going up there and they're almost in a religious fervor. This is it. This is the big thing. What an honor. And you're getting people who are dragged there, kicking and screaming and they're being murdered. It is murder. And you're getting others who are just so fed up. God damn it. It's come to this. Screw you. Screw everything.

Let's get it over with. Now the next day and I met with the leader of the Gyanese army that went in the next day. And he talked about what they discovered. And they go in the next morning and it's monsoon season. It's very humid. And they're approaching Jones town. These soldiers with their guns. Carefully because ground fog is coming up and they can't really see where they're going. But they're getting into Jones town. They don't hear anything. But then they start stumbling

and they think maybe they've put logs down for us to trip over. And then the soldiers start screaming because they're tripping over bodies. Jesus Christ. And as the sun comes up and the fog burns off, they think they're probably 250 people laying in just this huge sheep. And they bring in different crews in the next day or two. They're starting to try to pull everybody out. And they

realize there's a second layer underneath the first one. All adults, where are the children?

And under that layer there's a third layer and that's the babies and the children who died first.

“Think of it a three layer mountain of decaying bodies. That's what there was.”

And that's what demagogues can do. And that even those demagogues who do accomplish some good things in the beginning and along the way. Because any demagogue ultimately is looking for power, is looking for self glorification. Maybe not at first but it grows and it grows till it takes hold. And finally, there's disaster. Only two, two bodies out of all of them did not die by poison. One was any more Jim Jones's personal nurse who died by self-inflicted gunshot wound and Jim Jones

who died of a gunshot wound. And this is the thing I hate about that son of a bitch. He put all his followers through unimaginable agony. And then at the last minute the asshole couldn't even go ahead and drink the damn poison himself. He took the chicken shit way out and had his nurse shoot him. And then so she could have the honor of shooting herself and dying

what he did. That was to me the ultimate betrayal. And every time I start thinking, well Jim Jones never

“gets a fair shake because of the good things he did, which is true. Then I think about that moment”

when he was willing to let everybody else have the horrible death, but oh no, not for him. I mean, I was going to ask about Mr. Mugs, but that sounds like a pretty good way to end. Yeah, I feel like we're going to get back to Mr. Mugs eventually.

get these contacts from it. This is something that endlessly, obviously Marcus is very devoted to

“the subject, but this is something I find endlessly interesting and illuminating.”

Marcus, there is so much. Don't ever think that anyone but mine included is the definitive

BL endo book. Of course. There's always so much more every time. And one of the things I

always do with with all my books when I finish up, I've got boxes and boxes of documents and copies of interviews. I've done everything else. But I always try to give them to some museum or some public group or the next person who wants to write on that subject and have complete access to everything I had. And then hopefully we'll think of things I didn't think of and find people I didn't think of. Why don't you write the next book? You

could do it. You could do it better than I did it. Oh, thank you. That's nice. No, I mean, you know, I read Raven and you know, I was able to speak with Fielding McGee here. Yeah, Fielding McGee.

“Yeah, I spoke with him quite a few. He was another person, just an incredible resource.”

He's become a close friend of mine. I mean, there are good people who are associated with

all this. But really, never ever think one person's written the perfect book because there

isn't one. Yeah. We all think we're doing it when we do it. But then we look at the book afterwards and think maybe I should have done more here. I should have looked more there. So maybe you'll be the one who takes it the next step. I hope you are. I mean, it helped me and my wife actually went on we went on a Jones Tom vacation for their anniversary. They went to go look at all the highlights we went to. We went to your wife stayed with you. It was my wife's idea.

Oh, you married a special woman. I have a lot of fun as a girl. Yeah, we went to Lynn. We visited his that we found the tiny cemetery where his father is buried. Yeah. Which yeah, it's a, I mean, it isn't endlessly for me and endlessly fascinating subject. But thank you so much for coming in. We can't wait for, I mean, we hope to have a trifecta with you and bring you back to talk about

Charles Manson. Yes, please. Well, you know, I'll be always glad to talk to you guys right now.

I'm just starting a new three year. Who work on a new project and I'll be in and out a lot. But I'll always be glad to hear from you. Is it something light or are you going to be? Is it about like Tostinos like the source of pizza rolls? Well, as much as I enjoy writing books that don't involve tragedy and I've written some of those. I think of them as my vacations. You know, I'm 73. I don't know how many books I've got left considering the time it takes me in the footwork

I put into these things. And so I've decided that for whatever time I've got left, I'm going to try to look at current America. And I'm going to look at issues that I think are critical and maybe haven't been addressed the way they should. And I'm going to try to focus on those. So I decided this time, I'm going to pick something right now that really bothers me. In issue, I think continues that shouldn't that it's horrific. We're letting it happen and try to write a book about some incident

“related that maybe we'll get people looking at it in a different way. So that's what I'm doing this time.”

That's really mean. Yeah, we're all sad that Rhett Lopser is going. Well, what I'm working on now is I've decided school shootings. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. It's the most horrible afflictions and nobody's doing jack. Nothing. What do you do? They kids get to wear body armor and they get to have like they get to learn how to make the big body shields with their deaths and stuff. Isn't that fun for them?

My body's a teacher that gave me hammer in case there's an attack. So that's good. Like, I mean, the three of us, we're part of the Columbine generation. You know, we were all in high school when Columbine happened. So we were there to see that that was the beginning of it. Could you have imagined, and I'm going to use a figure that's going to stun you? Could you imagine that since Columbine, there have been in the United States of America over 1100

shooting incidents and deaths in schools in this country? Jesus Christ, my God. We hear about the occasional monster one. We don't hear about the one in a parking lot between two students who got into fight or something like that. We talk about how horrible Columbine was. But that was a fairly comfortable suburb, you know, teenage white boys who were kind of

You get Sandy Hook. We talk about that one, maybe. Yeah. But I decided to pick one that

“would involve little poor kids and a community that was certain it had done everything it had”

to do to protect its children. Jesus. And so I'm spending a lot of time right now in you, Valdi. Well, we would, oh, wow, yeah. We would love to know. Whenever you were ready to present anything like that, we would love to talk about it on the show. Well, tell you, why don't, if you guys really want to, why don't you meet me in your Valdi for a couple days on one of my research trips? Join me. Talk to some of these people. See for yourselves

the real tragedy. How did arms length, but right there? I would love to. I would absolutely, I would

absolutely love to do that. Yeah. Think about it carefully. It's one thing to go on a Jones town

trip where it happened all those years ago. Yeah. It's another to look in the eyes of a mother who's child was slaughtered. Oh, yeah. And wonders why nobody's done anything to stop it happening to other kids. So that's when we're right about particularly why, why in this country, it's so easy to get guns when guns are used for such awful reasons. Yeah. And they're really easy to use the affair. No, no. That's the next project. You're going to be cheerful. No, well, hey, that sounds like

you could add a really good insight out of something. How close for you to the shooting at University of Texas? Because you said you weren't there in the-- It was the year before I got there. Yeah. You know, I got there thinking about, wow, the tower except it locked it off so you couldn't get up in there again. I have friend, I went to college with his name was Kinky Friedman. Yeah. And all right, Kinky Friedman. All right, Kinky Friedman. Who we called Richie Friedman.

Yeah. A long time friend of mine, he wrote the Ballet of Charles Whitman. Yeah. And later when my son went to University of Texas, he stayed at the same apartment complex that Charlie Whitman lived in. Oh, Kinky told me your boys the next one. Oh, hell yeah, boat, boat, Kinky. Thank you so. Thank you guys every decide you want to actually get your feet wet and see some of this. That's very-- I love to. I'm definitely in for this. Yeah. I have to be respectful to people though.

Of course. He's kind of things before. I've been down to the border and I've seen I've been into different deplabbed and done shows and jails and stuff like that. I've-- Okay. It's very intense. I think about it. Yeah. But think about it carefully because once you get there, it's it emotionally grabbed you by the throat. Oh, I know. It's insane. Yeah. I want to imagine so. Well, I know. Thank you very much for being on your show. Hey, thank you so much. Thank you so much,

Mr. Gwen. We'll talk to you very soon. Take care guys. One more question for you. Way for-- I'm also from Texas. Texas Tech. Oh, six. Love it. Yeah. Well, that's where I went to college. I grew up north of Avaline. Really? Where? Called Rochester? Okay. Yeah. I'm in Fort Worth. Yeah. But I've spent a lot of time in West Texas. So, um, okay. We'll go eat some great Mexican food guys. That's fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, man. All right. We'll talk to you soon. We'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Bye. Bye. Bye from Northland. Oh, wow. He seems, he's a very wise man. He's an extraordinary wise man.

“We learn things from wise men. Well, you got to get dirty. You know, that's what we do. You do.”

If you really want to learn, I mean, you know, people love listening to us, but we just, you know, we have researchers. Oh, yeah. But we read the books. And it's really, it really is people like Jeff Quinn, they're like, do the real, they do the real work out there. They do the real stuff. They really get in there and, and do what is necessary to bring these stories, um, to light, which is just, I mean, you've all the, my God. I, and I would, I'd love to do that.

Absolutely. Let me do that. I'm more than, and, you know, that's, that's what got me an staying in the comedy to be honest with you. It was work like that. I wouldn't mind doing some more with you fellas. That would be very, very interesting. Well, thank you guys for listening. We're updated. Aren't we? Yeah. And now it's time for you go to patreon.com. You could give us money last bait your own.com slash slash podcast on the left.

TikTok Instagram. We're on that at LPO the left. Social media.

“Are you trouble breathing or are you coming up first?”

Yeah. Last podcast on the left.com. Do you want to come out at CS Live? We're about to be in Australia? It's gonna be amazing. Check it all out. Yeah. And that was a, those were good.

Yeah. That was very good. That was very intense. As it always is, Mr. Goin.

My God, what a storyteller. Can you imagine just being a little silly while he's

We talked about it last time. How hard it was for him to work with all the sex?

How many people lived in Jungstown?

“It was nine hundred and thirty. Some odd, you know, because there were, because the”

basketball team survived because they were, they were out of an away game.

Yeah. And they were in the town and, and his, uh, Steven a son was involved.

“It was on the basketball team and that's why he survived. And there was,”

Hey, guys, we could do, we could do this. You're on fire. Tell us where the rest of our lives are going to be going to ask him.

“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. I think there was, I mean, everyone who was there,”

the only people who survived that I really wish I were to ask them about was Mark Lane. There's plenty of time we can do this again.

I know, I know. I like the dude who, like, wrote the fucking, the first half.

Okay. That's a bunch of books there. Much as the next person does. No, no, no. Well, I'm going to get some cool. Okay. That's Frank, because I don't have a case of flavorate.