The Tapes

I will never forget that first box of tapes. The rows of musty rectangles varying in age but uniformly catalogued Q154-Q637. At the time, the Jonestown tapes had recently been recovered through a FOIA request with the FBI. For decades, the tapes collected dust in an FBI vault and their contents, at the time I received my first box, were still a mystery. My cautious expectations of what I might find on the tapes had been set by the infamous death tape, a recording of the last moments in Jonestown that include the cyanide poisoning of over 300 of the community’s children. My interest in the Peoples Temple and the audio archive began with the death tape. The historical importance of such an event, captured in such a raw format, drew my curiosity. As I analyzed the recording there were so many puzzling elements. I reached out to Fielding McGehee, editor and research director of the Jonestown Institute, with questions and theories I had about the recording.

 The Jonestown Institute was founded by Mac McGehee and Rebecca Moore to examine and archive the history of Peoples Temple. Rebecca lost her two sisters and a nephew in the Jonestown tragedy. Mac and Rebecca have spent decades recovering the Peoples Temple’s tapes, documents and lost footage, sometimes fighting long battles with the FBI and other government agencies. Their focus has been to archive everything in an effort to preserve the temple’s history, to humanize those who died in Jonestown, and to understand the mysteries and conspiracies that taint the temple’s legacy. When Mac told me of the recently obtained audio tapes, all 977 of them, I offered to help digitize them.

I loaded the first tape into my cassette deck and it hummed with age. It was Jim Jones reading the news over the loudspeaker in Jonestown, slurring his words and sounding agitated. The next, a cryptic recording of radio transmissions from San Francisco, distorted and in code. Followed by a young Jim Jones preaching from the bible in Redwood Valley, his voice clear and his message completely different from his militant ravings over the loudspeaker in Jonestown. As I worked my way through the first box, then the next, the voices on the tape became oddly familiar and a clear timeline emerged. For hours I listened, learning something new from each recording. From the earliest recording until the last, one thing became abundantly clear, there was a conspiracy against Jim Jones and the temple. Annie Moore and her sister Carolyn Layton had written letters from Jonestown spelling out a conspiracy that was later supported by Mark Lane (PT lawyer) and others. My decent down the rabbit hole began.

The Vortex

After years of research and with most of the Peoples Temple audio archive digitized thanks to the efforts of countless volunteers working with the Jonestown institute, I felt it was time to share what I had learned with the public. Always an audiophile, I decided the story would need to be told using the original temple recordings. As I got to work on the timeline and wove a giant web of mystery I myself felt entangled in, Episodes 1-9 were born. The duality and motivations of Jim Jones, the FBI’s war on counterculture, institutional racism, and the suspicious behavior of the Guyanese government, are just a few examples of the topics explored. Like Dr. Jolyon West, his arms elbow deep in the carcass of an elephant who recently overdosed on LSD, I methodically autopsied the mysteries as I found them. The synchronicities, often violent, caused by man’s psychedelic experimental nature and determination to break and reprogram the human brain, drew my focus. My forensic approach, accompanied by the colorful participation of anonymous contributors, may, and I say that theoretically, have solved a mystery or two. Compared to the sheer enormity of strange facts and connections, it was a drop in the swamp. Truth will out with time they say, but I began to realize that the further I stepped away from 1978 and the temple itself, the less I understood how and why Jonestown happened. My perspective surveyed the vast reaches of possibilities, connections to the SLA, the HIV crisis, reduction of violence studies, MK Ultra, just to name a few. The mythology of Jonestown, sometimes indistinguishable from the facts, make it difficult to discern the motivation of temple members and the humanity of those who died. If I was to truly understand what happened in Jonestown and why, I could no longer look to the outer rings of the ripples of causality, coincidence and history. I would have to go deeper and focus on the temples structure and the source of its power.

The source of all Jim’s power was his people.

The Paradox

I was talking to Vern Gosney, a former member of the temple and survivor of Jonestown. He asked me about mercenaries that hid outside of Jonestown and terrified the settlement at night. He wanted to know who they were and what it was all about. I explained all I knew about Joe Mazor, the shady private detective hired to investigate Jonestown and facilitate concerned relatives in their attempts to free their children. Mazor double crossed the concerned relatives and encouraged Jim Jones to arm the settlement and amp up security, adding to Jones paranoia those last few months. Stories about armed mercenaries poised to kidnap children by force in the night caused a memorable white night or two for Vern, and after all these years he wanted some answers. As I told him the story, Vern was enraged by Jones control over the situation and his use of fear to manipulate his people. He wasn’t surprised. Jones was a liar, but Vern was deeply disturbed by the trauma and fear caused by those lies even decades later. Vern was still trying to put the pieces together and understand why this happened, even though he had been there. Vern mourned the death of his beautiful four year old son Mark who tragically died in Jonestown and up until his own death just this past year, questioned if anything could have been done to prevent it.

I realized that even people who were there on November 18 and involved in what led up to the tragedy often only knew part of the story. Every temple member’s perspective and experiences were so unique, and restricted to what they were allowed to know. Decades later we have the privilege of viewing all of the evidence at once, comparing stories, connecting dots, decoding the truths and lies and sifting out red herrings. I knew it was time to focus on the experiences and insights of the people who knew Jim Jones, dedicated their lives to the temple, and survived Jonestown. The trail of breadcrumbs that had led me to this moment, mesmerizing as they may have been, were mere fragments of the bigger picture. My questions have changed with my perspective, as new details emerge, the depths of this story and the motivations of temple members, though complex, solve many of Jonestown’s greatest mysteries. One cannot understand why Jonestown happened if we don’t examine the humanity of former members and attempt to understand their motivations. Through the stories told by those who were there, the once murky abyss becomes as clear as crystal.

So, my quest renewed, with the determination to view the stories from as many angles as possible, I have reached out to former members of the temple, researchers, investigators and eye witnesses. With an open mind and compassionate ear I have observed, recording the insights and memories from so many wonderful people who took the time to share a piece of their story with me. Their participation in this project, inspired by their own pursuit of truth and knowledge, shines light into the shadowy crevices of Peoples Temple’s history. With enough light and knowledge combined, we might just banish some of the shadows haunting temple lore forever and finally confront what society does to itself in pursuit of utopia.

Technically, you’re caught up on the story thus far as episodes are still in production even as I write this. I invite you to forget everything you think you know about Peoples Temple and Jonestown and let go of your outsider’s perspective. Join us as we stop snooping around the temple’s foggy windows and going through their trash, as we cross the threshold to go inside. Stay tuned for more episodes.