The Peoples Temple is one of the most infamous cults in history, and its leader, Jim Jones, is just as infamous. His cult and their beliefs led to them moving to South America to live in the jungle. Eventually, some members of the cult shot members of the U.S. government. After this, all members of the cult committed mass suicide on the orders of their leader. This event is known as the Jonestown Massacre.

James Warren Jones was born in Crete, Indiana, on May 13, 1931. His father was a disabled WWI veteran, and his mother was constantly working, so he didn’t receive much love or attention from his parents as a child. As a child, Jim was very interested in religion, and his interest only grew as he got older. Jim went to many different denominations of Christian churches as he was growing up, in an effort to find one that he most agreed with. He explored Quaker, Nazarene, Methodist, Apostolic, and Penecostal churches, bouncing from one to the next after becoming disinterested in their beliefs and practices. Jones was always able to command the attention of people, and many people thought of him as an incredible preacher. Jones moved to Indianapolis, and in 1955, after marrying his wife Marceline, he founded the Peoples Temple.

Much of Jones’ annoyance with mainstream churches was segregation. Jones grew up as an outsider, and he empathized with other outsiders, bringing racial equity to his family and the Peoples Temple. 

While the Peoples Temple was active in humanitarian causes in its communities, Jones’s treatment of his followers was often less than humane. Temple members were regularly humiliated, beaten, and blackmailed, and many were coerced or brainwashed into signing over their possessions—including their homes—to the church. Black members and members of other minority groups were convinced that if they left the Peoples Temple they would be rounded up into government-run concentration camps. Family members were kept apart and encouraged to inform on one another. In 1977, after members of the press began to ask questions about Jones’s operation, he moved with several hundred of his followers to Jonestown, a compund that he had been building in Guyana for some three to four years.

In November 1978, U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan traveled to Guyana to inspect the Peoples Temple’s activities and the Jonestown compound. He was investigating rumours that some members of the cult were being held against their will and that some were being subjected to physical and psychological abuse. After traveling to Guyana’s capital, Georgetown, on November 14, he arrived at Jonestown on November 17. The following day, when Ryan was set to return home, several Temple members who wanted to leave the compound boarded his delegation’s truck in order to accompany him back to the United States. Other members attacked Ryan shortly before the vehicle left the compound, but he escaped unhurt, and the truck continued on with Ryan aboard. Temple members then launched an attack at the airstrip from which Ryan and his company were to depart. Five people, including Ryan and three members of the press, were shot and killed, and 11 others were wounded.

In the wake of the shooting, Jones released radio orders for Temple members outside the compound to commit suicide. Shortly thereafter Jones enacted his “revolutionary suicide” plan at the compound, which members had “practiced” in the past, in which a fruit drink was laced with cyanide, tranquilizers, and sedatives. It was first squirted into the mouths of babies and children via syringe and then imbibed by adult members. Jones himself died of a gunshot wound. Fewer than 100 of the Temple members in Guyana survived the massacre; the majority of survivors either had defected that day or were in Georgetown. Officials later discovered a cache of firearms, hundreds of passports stacked together, and $500,000 in U.S. currency. Millions more had reportedly been deposited in bank accounts overseas.The Peoples Temple effectively disbanded after the incident and declared bankruptcy at the end of 1978.

Only one man, Temple member Larry Layton, was tried in the United States for his involvement in the November 18 events. He was found guilty of conspiracy and aiding and abetting in the murder of Ryan and the attempted murder of U.S. embassy official Richard Dwyer and was sentenced to life in prison, though he was released in 2002. Another man, Charles Beikman, pleaded guilty to the attempted murder of a young girl and served a five-year prison term in Guyana.