The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple

by Jeff Guinn

Although Peoples Temple struggled financially in its early days, by 1975 the church had some significant money. Much of it, though not all, was dutifully recorded in Temple ledgers. The church had been granted tax-exempt status, but Jones always wanted financial records ready for audits by state or federal authorities. Jones also had a few private accounts. Though he proudly proclaimed that he never took a salary as Temple pastor, with his family living on Marceline’s state pay, Jones needed additional funds available for personal expenses, like the Jones family vacations that most Temple members knew nothing about. Jones also hid money in savings accounts under the names of various family members. Marceline had personal accounts of as much as $200,000 (almost $800,000 in today’s dollars). At one point, his mother, Lynetta, had accounts totaling $89,584 ($380,000 in current value) in eight different California banks. Whether in terms of its public records or Jones’s private accounts, the Temple was flush. Yet this brought Jones no comfort—if anything, the Temple’s wealth added to his ever-burgeoning sense of paranoia. His schemes to ensure that no one other than he knew how much money there was, and where, owed as much to uncontrollable compulsion as to deliberate design.