The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Jones made the formal announcement: “It’s all over. The congressman has been murdered.” Schacht and the Jonestown nurses appeared at the side of the stage. They brought with them bundles of filled syringes. It was time. Jones wanted the infants, toddlers, and older children to be first. “It’s simple, it’s simple,” he promised their parents. “Just, please get it, before it’s too late. The GDF [Guyana Defence Force] will be here, I tell you. Get movin’.” Some parents didn’t move fast enough to suit Jones. He warned them, “They’ll torture some of our children here.” Some of the guards stepped up. No one was given the choice of whether to participate. Jones told the armed men to allow parents who wanted to die with their children to join them in the line: “Who wants to go with their child has a right. . . . I think it’s humane.”