LPOTL (intro theme) There's no place to escape to. This is the Last Podcast on the Left. Rise from your
graves! That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Oh shit!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Does anybody else feel like they could draw Jonestown from memory in their head now? Like I
could do a Google Street 3D map of Jonestown.
BEN KISSEL Like a really sad Noah's Ark pamphlet.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL That's a water park in Wisconsin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I feel like I'm shuffling around Jonestown right now.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Is that bad? Is that depression?
BEN KISSEL It would be a horrible place to be a Google Mapper, whoever the hell would have that gig.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's just the dude with the Google segway just waving.
BEN KISSEL Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left everyone. I am Ben Kissel, as always staring at the
face of Marcus Parks.
MARCUS PARKS Hey, Ben.
BEN KISSEL And Henry Zebrowski.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I have been sick for 15 days.
BEN KISSEL I got re-sick. I was sick and I still hadn't finished being sick and now I'm re-sick.
MARCUS PARKS I pinched a nerve in my shoulder drying my hair.
BEN KISSEL (singing) It's a middle-aged podcast!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (elderly voice) Sometimes my ankles swell and I can't get my special doctor socks above my
ankles.
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Honestly, we're getting there guys. We're getting to special socks.
BEN KISSEL Oh, I already have a couple, yeah. All right, we gotta continue on here with the Jonestown
series, we're onto part 5. Warning! Some of the audio we're gonna play later on in the
episode, it's disturbing as you can imagine so just be forewarned and of course we'll treat it
with a lot of respect and things like that.
MARCUS PARKS And not just continuing, this is the end of Jonestown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's not like a fun dance number end.
BEN KISSEL No!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is not like, what was it, 9 weddings and a funeral?
MARCUS PARKS Four Weddings and a Funeral.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Four Weddings and a Funeral! It's not one of those. Hugh Grant is not gonna come out and be
like (garbled sounds), and everyone's gonna be like, 'He's charming.' It's very rough.
MARCUS PARKS So, Peoples Temple grew for 27 years before Jim Jones arrived in Jonestown in August of 1977.
In one year and three months, Jim Jones would tear down everything he'd worked for. This last
chapter of our series is about that time in the end of it all.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Honestly, it's an incredible trip. Cause Marcus and I were talking about the breadth of
Jonestown over the phone, and part of it's like, really, you start thinking about it, it's like...
Wow, he spent such a long time, we said, sowing the seeds, being super cult leader patient
which is what he shoulda been and he did great, he was doing great for a long time, and then
it took a year for the mass suicide to happen. And this year, what we're gonna cover here, is
very brutal and it got dark very, very fast.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely. It is the opposite of 'the future's so bright I gotta wear shades'. Because in reality
the future's very dark for the people at Jonestown and for Jim Jones, himself. And Mr. Muggs!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But he still wore shades!
BEN KISSEL But he still wore shades.
MARCUS PARKS Now, an important thing to know about Jonestown is the people there have become quite
used to Jim Jones as a constant presence. Jonestown was rigged with a sound system
complete with loudspeakers that were connected directly to a microphone in Jim Jones'
private cabin.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is a podcaster's dream. Who wouldn't love that constant time to be able to tell everybody,
be like, 'I thought the last Thor movie was fine, but also, I thought The Last Jedi was pretty
good. Also, Phantom Thread was pretty good. Also, Get Out was good but it shouldn't have
been nominated as a comedy for the Golden Globes.' Just for hours and hours and hours.
BEN KISSEL Was Get Out nominated as a comedy?
MARCUS PARKS Was it?
BEN KISSEL Was it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Mm-hmm.
BEN KISSEL It was?!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL That is news to me!
MARCUS PARKS Lil Rel was very funny but that was...
BEN KISSEL Welcome to the newest segment called News To Me! By Ben Kissel. It's a horror movie!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes, of course, it's a drama. They didn't know how to categorize it because they're stupid.
BEN KISSEL I have to go on a little side rant here. Every time there's a good horror movie, they're like, 'No.
It wasn't. It couldn't be, because it couldn't be good if it was a horror film.' That's why
everyone's like, 'There's no good horror films.' Evidently Get Out's a frickin comedy!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes. Or it's drama. That's what people don't understand, horror's just drama, it's just got
monsters in it.
So, remember though, the 5 months leading up... So they send a bunch of people there to
clear out the jungle. And they said during that time period in Jonestown, they were very
peaceful. They were connected to the lord. They felt very with it, they were in commune with
nature, they were out there. They said that, all the people there, it was really hard work but
they were feeling the rhythm of the jungle. Which I think is kinda fun, they were all like (steel
drum sounds). They were loving their life, just playing with lemurs and shit, they're taking
macadamia nuts out of their hands. And then Jim Jones shows up and it immediately becomes
the Jim Jones show. And he is such an exacting micromanager, to use a pedantic term for him,
he just crawled up their asses, and then it's 24 hours of his face and his voice from then on.
BEN KISSEL It's like every single person who works in an office, his manager is gone on vacation for a week
trying to quit smoking in the Bahamas, everything works totally smooth in the office,
everything is finished on time. And then as soon as he gets back it's just more difficult when
he's there.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. That's exactly how people described Jonestown. Now, sometimes on these loudspeakers
they'd play music, they'd play like Earth, Wind & Fire, which was super fun or they'd play Perry
Como, which isn't as fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's relaxing.
MARCUS PARKS It's relaxing, I guess. But mostly these people would have to put up with long diatribes from
Jones himself. And this was throughout an 11 hour workday. And when Jones didn't feel like
talking or he was too busy or he was too fucked up on drugs, which he was a lot, he'd pull one
of his old tapes out and play that, just to keep the constant blather going.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Good lord, it's gotta be like living with Sinbad.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL The only people I'll ever allow to complain about millennials' work ethic are the people of
Jonestown. Because that's crazy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It was a lot of work and it was backbreaking work. And then you have to listen to him all day
long. Which is the cult thing, right, the idea that he becomes your whole consciousness.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Well, the weird thing was though, when they were starting to get towards the end, every
once in a while they'd turn off the speakers and just let him talk.
BEN KISSEL And he didn't notice?
MARCUS PARKS And he didn't notice.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (laughs)
BEN KISSEL Like the fat kid from the movie Heavyweights? Was it Heavyweights where he was never
connected, he was just talking into the microphone the whole time?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No, I think you're, uh, Wet Hot American Summer.
BEN KISSEL Oh, Wet Hot American Summer! Yes, oh that movie's great.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, yeah, yeah. If he was too fucked up, they'd just turn it off and just be like, (whispers)
'Silence. Thank Christ.'
So at the end of the workday, the people, after listening to Jones speak for hours, they'd all go
to the pavilion to hear Jones speak some more.
BEN KISSEL Oh my gosh.
MARCUS PARKS And these meetings were where Jones truly sowed the seeds of paranoia in his people. We
listened on the last episode to a couple of these meetings, to some of the punishment
meetings, but that wasn't all it was, it wasn't all punishment. This is an example of Jones telling
his people what direction America was heading. Because he had to keep them on their toes.
He's like, 'You think shit's bad here, you oughta know what's going on back in America.'
BEN KISSEL All right.
MARCUS PARKS Now, these tapes, they're not always the best quality. And there is an echo on this one but I
still think this is important to hear.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: If you have any mistaken feelings to look back to America... If you have any idea
that America has anything to offer, you need to... Perhaps you need to hear the housing
director, that I promised I'd told them the end would come for minorities. I'm just thinking of it
spontaneously, so I don't know it all. Find it, offhand. I'd quote it just word for word, he sent
me a letter. And saying, he said, 'I hate to say, Reverend Jones, that all you said about what
was going to happen to minorities in America is taking place before our eyes.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It does sound like an audio sample from a Butthole Surfers song.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL Yeah, a little bit. It also sounds like if Lou Gehrig really went a different direction within his
final speech there at Yankee Stadium.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He would sit onstage... So, have you seen the movie The Sacrament? They do a really good job
of setting up what the actual space looked like. It was like an elevated platform that sat a
bunch of loose chairs and tables and people would stand and stare at him. And behind him,
he'd have this big sign that says 'Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it', it's
something like that line-
MARCUS PARKS Those who don't remember the past are doomed to repeat it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Or condemned to repeat it. Which is interesting-
MARCUS PARKS It was a misquote in the first place, even if we are misquoting it, he misquoted it as well.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We're doing a double misquote.
BEN KISSEL You can't misquote on a misquote, I'm pretty sure you cannot misquote a misquote.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You can't, you can't. But he would go up there and he'd just pick up the newspaper and he'd
start doing bits like he's Dave Chappelle, like he's just doing his extra hours where he is
interpreting the news for everyone, every single day at the end of the day. And it sounds trippy
as fuck.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it sorta sounds like if Lenny Bruce met Marlon Brando from, what was that horrible
movie that he was in where he was covered in all white... The Island of Dr. Moreau!
MARCUS PARKS Ah!
BEN KISSEL Marlon Brando form The Island of Dr. Moreau meets Lenny Bruce and the entire time Wayne
from The Flaming Lips is playing bass.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Also it marks the slow descent of when Jim Jones begins to sound like Droopy Dog. And you
will see later when we play some of the more horrible tapes, maybe it'll bring a smile to your
face to imagine it's Droopy Dog.
BEN KISSEL We gotta get through it somehow.
MARCUS PARKS You might think that people would try to verify these claims with their friends and relatives
back home. After all, since black people were the majority in Jonestown, their friends and
family would probably have heard something about shit like this going on, because Jim Jones is
telling 'em they're getting rounded up and put into concentration camps and the KKK is taking
over towns in America. But all mail going out was censored and all mail coming in was opened
up and read. Anything that went against Jones' narrative, either coming in or going out, wasn't
allowed. And that's if people even had the nerve to ask. In fact, most letters were filled with
outright lies meant to soothe worries in the United States. When family members whose loved
ones had gone to Jonestown got together and compared notes, they found that many of their
daughters had all claimed to be engaged to Dr. Larry Schacht, fulfilling the age old 'my
daughter is marrying a doctor' dream.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Ugh. Meanwhile it's Dr. Larry Schacht who looks like Riff Raff from Rocky Horror Picture Show.
He's got those long, blonde hairs at either side of his head and he's fucking bald up top and
he's walking around being like, (creepy voice) 'So you guys are dating old Dr. Schacht, right?
(laughs) Right? I know it's fake, but on paper, it's as good as if you're dating me, so... You're my
girlfriend, you're my girlfriend, you're my girlfriend, you're my boyfriend. (laughs) I will not
physically touch you, I am not allowed by dad, but on paper, rock and roll!'
BEN KISSEL Kinda sounds like Donald Trump's doctor.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL Remember that lunatic?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. People in the U.S., they weren't buying that line of horseshit or any other, so they
formed a coalition called 'Concerned Relatives'.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh my god that sounds like a basketball team from Southern Florida. The Boca Raton
Concerned Relatives. But they did a very good job, these are the ones that essentially brought
down Jonestown.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Their express purposes were to rescue their family members and hopefully take down
Jim Jones in the process. These people were joined by Grace Stoen, who'd begun to turn up
the heat in the custody battle over her son, John Victor, aka John-John, who by this time was
being referred to as 'the child god' in Jonestown, which gave the fight for his custody even
more gravitas.
BEN KISSEL All right.
MARCUS PARKS Then Jones was faced with his highest-profile defection yet. Longtime lawyer Tim Stoen, who
had finally gotten tired of Jim Jones' shit after Jim accused him of being a CIA double agent.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's what got him mad. After all of this bullshit, after all of this bullshit, he got mad because
Jim Jones decided to paint him as a fake villain with Tim Stoen's knowledge within the cult. But
what we're finding out here is that, number one, Tim Stoen was never really happy with the
fact that Jim Jones fucked his wife and they had a kid. He was never, he signed that affidavit-
BEN KISSEL He didn't quite get over that one, huh?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No!
BEN KISSEL That little hurdle there?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It seemed to always come up, especially when you watch your fat, weird little boy being called
the child god and you're just standing there being like, 'You know, I made him. I wish I coulda
made him, I wish I coulda had a shot to make him.' But he got so mad that he went back to
Grace Stoen. So he would go on these trips for Jim Jones doing various coordinating things,
and he started taking more and more time to do his own bullshit. And so he went to Grace and
said, 'Listen, I know this is a problem, we gotta go get John-John out.' And they joined forces.
And Tim Stoen being the super fucking aggressive lawyer that he was, which made him such a
useful tool for the Peoples Temple, has now made him the only real, true enemy that Jim
Jones can't handle.
MARCUS PARKS Mm-hmm.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, okay.
MARCUS PARKS So in response to Tim's defection, Jim Jones, I mean he's going against this high-powered,
extremely aggressive lawyer, this guy was an assistant D.A. in San Francisco, he's not fucking
around. But the best Jim Jones could do was he subscribed to gay porn magazines in Stoen's
name and had 'em sent to his address.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (evil laughter)
BEN KISSEL Is he Bart Simpson? What is going on?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, he released an affidavit saying that Stoen had made fun of the Guyanese Prime
Minister...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I mean, he does have big feet! So he wrote a long thing being like, (Droopy Dog voice) 'Okay
guys, how do we roast him? How do we roast the Guyanese Prime Minister?'
He's got big feet!
(Droopy Dog voice) 'Yeah okay, he's got clown feet, ya asshole. Write it down, write that
down! That's a good roast, that's a good rib.'
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) He's joking but he did that in kind of a roundabout sorta way. Jim Jones got them all
together, all the people, and had then write essays about how they would kill Tim Stoen. And
then he had them read it aloud during meetings.
BEN KISSEL Well that's kinda fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It is. It's nice to get everybody together with an activity.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, not the worst of all the activities they had to do, there, I suppose.
MARCUS PARKS But when King God Jones talked to his people about Tim Stoen, he's never say that Stoen, and
by extension anyone else, could ever hurt Jim Jones. It was all about what Stoen was doing to
them, to Peoples Temple. Here is an example.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: I could kill him, I could really kill him. Literally kill him. He's a son of a bitch to do
what he did to me, to this people. To do what he did. And I don't give a goddamn to me
because it's you that he hurt, he can't hurt me, I wish it was just me and him, goddamn his ass,
I'd drive him crazy. But I've got to watch every move I take because it could hurt the Eugene
Brown or Leona back there or Guy Young or a whole host of other people, lots of people back
there, Alice, that need the chance, Dennis, that need the chance on down the line, Louis Davis,
on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on (fading)... I'd get him tonight! Oh, I've got the man that'll
get him! All I gotta do is say the word go! I love those people too much, it's not worth it. His
white ass isn't worth it, let him live. Yeah, but only one little catch to that. If he ever gets into a
court of law, he can hurt you more. So dad's always moving back and forth like the pendulum,
wondering about it. It's not an easy decision.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I am saying 'pen-dyu-lum' from now on instead of pendulum. It is interesting, you can see him
make shit up as he goes.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You can see him do that thing where he'd go, (Droopy Dog voice) 'Let's go get him right now, if
I can go get him if I want to! He's right over there, you can't see him? He's dressed like Spider-
Man. That's why I wear these sunglasses cause I can see this invisible Spider-Man. And you
better watch cause I've got nine more invisible Spider-Men all over this compound.'
BEN KISSEL Yeah he sounds like Harry Caray fucked Charles Manson or something. It's very weird.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Well, you hear it a lot, that was a minute-long clip and you hear a lot of Jim Jones'
tactics in that minute-long clip. He's calling out people personally, he's doing that politician
thing, he's frightening them with one hand and he's bringing them closer with other. And he's
also keeping them off balance, he's not quite making a decision, he's saying like, 'Well I could
get him if I wanted to.' And he's saying like, 'I could kill him,' but he's also saying, 'There's only
one problem with that. What if he gets into a court of law?' But that's the thing, you just said
you'd kill him. If you kill him, he can't get into a court of law.
BEN KISSEL Right. Well, Marcus, you mentioned how he couldn't take him to court if he was dead but now
I'm thinking about a great new movie, Ghost Court, which we could have Dan Aykroyd-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's a really good idea! Litigation for ghosts. That's kinda fun. It's like Night Court but with
ghosts.
BEN KISSEL With ghosts, yeah!
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) It was not all bad days in Jonestown. Fielding McGehee, this guy, hoo, Fielding
McGehee-
BEN KISSEL (chuckles)
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You had a two hour conversation with him, which was great. What is the institute that he's the
head of?
MARCUS PARKS The Jonestown Institute. This is the guy, he is the principal researcher for the Jonestown
Institute, which is an achievement of research. This guy, he has been transcribing these tapes,
these Jonestown tapes for decades now, he's been going through 'em and transcribing them-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And he sounds like it. I listened to the interview that you guys did and I could not have heard
more nerd kissing in my life. The two of them just so interested, they're so excited to talk to
each other. And Fielding could just name off tapes. And he was like, 'Oh yeah, that's the tape
from May 15th, 1974,' and it's crazy, his knowledge. And he shed a lot of light on the story for
us.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. It's like when Tori Spelling's character from Saved by the Bell dated Screech. Isn't that
nice, remember that?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) I do remember.
BEN KISSEL Screech did find a little love there after all.
MARCUS PARKS I do remember that. But yeah, he shed a lot of light, especially on the last days, and he pointed
me towards a lot of really great resources to really try to piece together the timeline of what
really happened here. And he actually gave me a little tip on a story when I asked him what
about the good times? Were there good times in Jonestown? And this is something that
especially Henry was interested in. What were the good times in Jonestown? And Fielding
McGehee-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What was game night like?
BEN KISSEL Yeah, exactly (chuckles).
MARCUS PARKS And Fielding, he told me there were good times. There were babies being born, kids were
playing all the time, the kids were happy, there was genuine love there. And there was positive
laughter too, it's not just the cruel shit that we heard on the snake tape, that was not a regular
thing. There were people here who very much loved each other and, as an example, Fielding
pointed me towards this story called 'Ruth's Teeth' that was recounted by Stephan Jones, Jim
Jones' son. And in this story, Stephan wrote about the time he helped a girl named Ruth fish
her fake teeth out of a latrine after they'd been popped out by a violent spray of vomit,
frequent vomiting being a fact of life in Jonestown.
BEN KISSEL This was the good times?
MARCUS PARKS These were the good times.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI This is a funny story?
MARCUS PARKS A guy named Ronny rigged a harness and was lowered down into a 15 foot deep waste pit full
of socialist scat.
BEN KISSEL Oh my goodness. Why does that sound more disgusting than capitalist doom?
MARCUS PARKS The Republican runs?
BEN KISSEL The Republican runs!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I will say that the Republican runs are thicker, a socialist scat is a little bit more watery.
BEN KISSEL All right.
MARCUS PARKS This guy Ronny working with Stephan, he managed to swing down and he plucked the teeth
that rested on a pile of goo, all for this girl. And they said they were laughing the whole time.
'Look at the ridiculous shit that we're doing. This is what we're doing down here.'
BEN KISSEL It's like a deleted scene from the animated movie The Rescuers.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Aw, but with more piles of fetid jungle shit.
BEN KISSEL (laughs)
MARCUS PARKS The point of this story is that these people would do anything for each other, and they would.
And it's sweet in that way, that these people would do absolutely anything for each other. But
these were the good times. It was a hard, hard life.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS And some didn't mind it, and some people loved it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Some people took to it. They were saying it's weird how these people from Indiana, that was a
part of the 5 months before, there were people who were like, 'I'm a jungle person! I thought I
was a Gary, Indiana person. But in fact, I love palm fronds, I love bugs. I love sweat all over
every single crease of my body.' And they love it. But many people did now.
BEN KISSEL I watched Planet Earth II last night-
MARCUS PARKS It's great, right?
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it's great! It's a little Jonestowny there when they get to the forest.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Well, the people who didn't love it, Jones made it very difficult for them to leave. First
of all, he had all their passports, all their money, and all their valuables. Some even tried
leaving regardless, just going out into the jungle and seeing what the fuck would happen,
because they knew there was a railroad not too far away, a few miles out. If they got to the
railroad, then maybe someone would pick them up, maybe they could hitch on a train. But a
lot of times these people were brought back, quote unquote, "for their own good". In fact, two
teens who tried to escape through the jungle, they were caught, they were brought back, and
they had to wear leg irons for weeks!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I don't really understand how they don't have things like... There's certain foods that they
don't have, there's stuff that they can't get, like they can't get toilet lids but they can get leg
irons.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. That's interesting, huh.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's very difficult to find leg irons if you don't have access to eBay.
BEN KISSEL I don't even think, can you even get them on eBay? I don't even know.
MARCUS PARKS Oh yeah, you can get 'em on eBay, yeah.
And Jones was also just casually mentioning in meetings, like for example when he was talking
about Tim Stoen, that people who betrayed him should be killed.
BEN KISSEL What was that last part, Jim?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (Droopy Dog voice) 'They should be killed. It's simple as that, my dear, they should be killed as
soon as possible.'
And he's waving a fucking gun around. He's just throwing this shit out there like it's casual.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Honestly he sounds like a dude running for the Alabama Senate. Waving a gun, being like,
'They should be killed!'
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Yeah, and that's not something that we've really mentioned, is that Jones had a gun
on him a lot. Big, big .357 magnum, and he'd sometimes just twirl it around during meetings.
And one night he was speaking at a meeting, it was like 1am, these people had worked 11
hours, he'd been speaking for hours upon hours, and so people were falling asleep so he just
fired the fucking gun into the air and said, 'Y'all... You awake now? You ready to listen to me
now?'
BEN KISSEL That'll work.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I had a history teacher that had a big stick, he had this big bamboo stick that he used to keep
next to his desk and if somebody fell asleep in class he'd smash the stick down on the desk and
wake 'em up.
BEN KISSEL Was your history teacher Sabu from ECW?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What?! Yes he was, Mr. Sabu! Dr. Sabu. He got his doctorate.
MARCUS PARKS Well, Jones was casually mentioning that he would kill anyone that betrayed him and of
course, leaving was a betrayal. And a lot of the rank and file, they didn't give a shit who left.
They were saying like, 'You know what, if they wanna leave, let 'em leave.'
BEN KISSEL Yeah, more food for them, right?
MARCUS PARKS More food for us, we love it here. These people who don't wanna stay here, they're nothing
but trouble, we're spending so much time punishing them and trying to get them to love it
here, let 'em go!
BEN KISSEL By the way, update on Nothing But Trouble, it's at 5% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's actually gone
down and I think it's because-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI How has it gone down?!
BEN KISSEL I don't know, think it's because we are driving people to watch it and they are accurately giving
it the score of tomato at rotten, at 5%.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No, it's gotta go back up!
MARCUS PARKS I think we are actively making the Rotten Tomatoes score even worse, yes.
BEN KISSEL Although Jackie Zebrowski from Page 7, I don't believe she'll need to get that tattoo which she
has been entertaining for along time, so very good.
MARCUS PARKS For most of these people, they coulda lost 200, 300 people and they wouldn't have cared.
Whittle it down to the true believers. But for Jones, even one was too many, as we'll see. So
when the legal pressure from the custody battle finally made its way down to Guyana, Jones
stepped things up, taking his old assassination trick to the next level with a full-fledged fake
invasion.
BEN KISSEL And if it wasn't so fucking horrible, it woulda been kind of fun.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Because think about this, again, you've got a couple of assault rifles, you got a bunch of people
out in the jungle compound anyway, they are kind of itching for some action. I maybe would,
it'd be kinda fun to walk around with the little black marks or the camouflage on my face,
jumping out of things, being like, 'Gotcha, jungle cat! Gotcha, jungle monkey!' Just like
attacking things, that would be fun, but it wasn't like that.
BEN KISSEL They were just kinda war gaming.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, they're kinda war gaming but they think it's real. And I think for a lot of these people,
Henry hits on a good point there, I think for a lot of these people, half of this is the sense of
adventure. It's adventure that they're in the jungle and they're-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They're from Indiana! This is exciting shit. You're down in the jungle, you don't know what's
going on, you hear these kind of half-convoluted stories from your pastor, your father now
who you now believed to maybe be touched by god, he is there telling you all of these truths
about how America's turning into a concentration camp fucking warehouse, that is just what's
happening. And so in Guyana, Jim Jones, on the inside, they don't really know about the
custody battle. They have been asking, there's some kind of leaks of information here and
there but they don't really know how serious this is getting because Tim and Grace Stoen,
they're constantly filing these court hearings for Jim Jones to have to show up at in the States,
and then he's not. So the legal pressure is mounting and mounting. So one day he calls one of
his normal meetings and then shit just go apeshit.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Cause Jones had been ordered to appear in a Guyanese court, cause up until this point it
had all just been American courts, but now it had gotten all the way down to Guyana. So,
Jones called up the Deputy Prime Minister, Ptolemy Reid, to see if he could straighten it out
because Jim Jones and Guyana, Jones had become quite a pain in the ass to Guyana.
BEN KISSEL He still had political clout though, huh?
MARCUS PARKS Because he had political clout in America, so it translated down to Guyana. But Reid was
unavailable, he was in the United States on business.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And that's the part of it that made him kinda crazy. Cause first of all it's like, why is he in the
United States? Is he researching on me? Because it all has to be about Jim Jones. Also, he used
to have access to the Prime Minister himself but now he's been kind of downgraded to just
talking to the Deputy Prime Minister which is who he shoulda been talking to anyway. And so
Jim Jones also believes that there is now an inner conspiracy in the Guyanese court system
coming to get him. And also 'Guyanese Court' would be a great sister show to 'Ghost Court'.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I honestly think that would also be really fun. Night Court, Ghost Court, Guyanese Court would
be a lot of fun.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS I mean, Jim Jones... A rational person would've thought okay, this guy is a high-ranking
government official, he's probably in the United States on business that has nothing to do with
me. But Jones could not imagine these people to be going to America for any reason other
than Jonestown. He figured in his mind, in his paranoid mind, that either Reid had gone to the
U.S. to collude with the United States government, or he'd been taken prisoner in a United
States-backed coup.
BEN KISSEL Oh, yeah! We always want the Deputy Prime Minister of Guyana. That's a big get.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes, yes. We gotta get him.
MARCUS PARKS But it didn't matter which one because the reason behind either was singular, Jonestown. And
so Jones called out the troops. To make things real for his settlers, Jones brought out the false
flag and had his son shoot in his direction from the tree line.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI God, that's gotta be so fun as the son, you get to go shoot the guns. It's like, finally. They have
all these guns that they're not supposed to use because technically they're codename for them
is bibles, that's what they call them on the ham radio, and so they've got these crates full of
quote unquote (swishing sounds) "bibles" that you finally get to go play with. And so he's like,
(Droopy Dog voice) 'Son, go out there and start the revolution.' And so he runs out into the
jungle and starts shooting at the compound and he's like, fuck it, we're mobilizing.
BEN KISSEL So either his son is a horrible shot or a great one.
MARCUS PARKS He's a great one. And furthermore, Jones didn't tell his private guard that his son was taking
the shot at him, so when his son took the shot, the guards started firing in Jim Jones Jr's
direction. So he could've very easily been killed here.
BEN KISSEL Well, if they were the animated bullets from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, that's kind of fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's the third time you've ever brought that up on this show. That is a reference that I don't
understand why that is logged in your brain.
BEN KISSEL I love that movie!
MARCUS PARKS So do I.
BEN KISSEL Jessica Rabbit.
MARCUS PARKS So for the next six days, Jonestown was under siege, as far as they knew. Jones said that the
Guyanese troops, working with a team of mercenaries were on their way at that moment to
take away John Victor.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Now remember this, so this is what's happened here. The Red Guard, which is their group,
right, the guys that are the security team just grabbed all the AK-47s that they have hidden,
most of the people in the group didn't even know that they had. All of a sudden guns are
everywhere, they are being marched in military formations in front of and around the pavilion
and on the grounds of the entire Jonestown compound. No one is allowed to sleep.
BEN KISSEL How many guns did they have?
MARCUS PARKS Not as many as you'd think.
BEN KISSEL Okay, cause I'm picturing everyone is loaded, armed to the teeth-
MARCUS PARKS No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's 25 guns.
BEN KISSEL Oh, okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI 25-30 guns.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, it's not Branch Davidian...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's just, I'd say, six short of a stockpile. To me a stockpile, honestly a stockpile officially is 100,
right, would you call that, legally, maybe?
BEN KISSEL Yeah, this is a Texas baker's dozen of guns.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, yes. A smattering is six, that's what I would call a smattering of guns. They had like a
standard pile of guns.
BEN KISSEL Okay, a pile of guns.
MARCUS PARKS A large collection, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And so you have to remember, everybody's running in military formation and they are being
kept up. No one is allowed to go to sleep, everyone's on full alert.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And then nothing happened for two days. After nothing happened, Jones told his people
that they were all gonna go to Cuba.
BEN KISSEL (chuckles)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Cause he just made shit up. Everybody's staring at him, everyone's been up for two full days.
He finally says like, (Droopy Dog voice) 'Okay, remember y'all, there's a boat that will take us
all to Cuba.' And he just made this shit up, saying we have to go to Port Kaituma, and there'll
be a boat waiting for us that's gonna take this to our communist homeland. So he mobilizes all
these old people in the middle of the night to march through the jungle to Port Kaituma, which
is like a 2-3 mile hike through solid jungle.
MARCUS PARKS I think it was longer than that. I think it was more like 5-10. But yeah, he's improvising, cause
he has to say something.
BEN KISSEL How reasonable is the idea that they could go to Cuba?
MARCUS PARKS I mean, somewhat reasonable in that he's telling people that Cuba is a reasonable idea, they
think-
BEN KISSEL But it's not.
MARCUS PARKS It's not. No, no, no.
BEN KISSEL Cause Guy Fieri was just there, I watched Triple D and Guy Fieri was there, it looked nice.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, so he's improvising, he's like, we're going to Cuba, everyone get there. And he takes 'em
to Port Kaituma and he actually starts loading them up onto the boat. But then an old lady fell
and broke her hip and the whole thing was called off. They're like, 'All right, everybody back,
everyone back to Jonestown.' Sometimes Jones, you know, he was a master improviser, but
just sometimes it just didn't work.
BEN KISSEL No kidding.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I wish we could get across... Cause when I first read it in Road to Jonestown, again, if you are
really interested in this subject, there's stuff that we're even kind of glossing over that's in The
Road to Jonestown. Also, Raven's a fun read and if you go to the Jonestown Institute you're
gonna see even more what Road to Jonestown, what that even glossed over. But a part of this
night was the true panic of it. These people were whipped up into a frenzy. This trek across the
jungle was a panicked half-run. People were running and really, really frightened, thinking that
people were gonna shoot at them from the jungle, they had people with guns right next to
them. So a part of this was he just started this chain reaction, where he was like, 'Okay
everybody we're going to the port!' And everyone just ran out into the jungle and it became a
very scary chaos.
BEN KISSEL Is it fair to say the average age of the people running would be the same people, the average
age of people running after Neil Diamond now?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL They saw him performing in Dollywood, or something?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes. If I went to a soup plantation with a gun and tried to get all those guys going, that's like
the same equivalent. It's like a 55-75.
MARCUS PARKS Well Jonestown was in thirds. It was a third elderly, a third adults, and then a third children. So
it was all kinds of people. And Jones had been telling 'em for days, like, 'They're right out
there, they're at the treeline, they're waiting for you out there.' And all of a sudden he's
saying, 'Go out there. And you could be killed at any minute.' But they got back to Jonestown,
nothing happened and Jones, he gets on the ham radio with Marceline, and by the way it is
Marcel-lyn, not Marcel-een, I learned that from Fielding, that it's Marcel-lyn.
But he's on the ham radio with Marceline back in the U.S. cause she's still over there trying to
take care of Peoples Temple business, and he told her what he thought was going on and he
also told her, "We're all prepared to die. It's time. Revolutionary suicide is gonna happen." And
Marceline knew that this was a threat to take seriously, so she, along with a few other Peoples
Temple members, hustled their asses off and managed to locate the Deputy Prime Minister of
Guyana in the whole of America and found him, coincidentally, in Indiana.
BEN KISSEL In Indiana!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Why? Why is he there?
BEN KISSEL He's the Music Man!
MARCUS PARKS Reid got on the ham with Jones and assured him that nobody was coming. After the assurance,
Jones called everyone back to the pavilion and told 'em, "We won!"
BEN KISSEL (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We won! Yay!
BEN KISSEL That's it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I didn't know there was an option to win! Oh wow, congrats, old lady! Meanwhile she's
covered in bug bites and shit.
BEN KISSEL Broken hip.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, he didn't tell 'em what they'd won, he didn't tell them how they won it, he just said "we
won". All that people knew and all they cared about was that the six day siege, as they started
calling it, was finally over.
BEN KISSEL I'm gonna do that every time the Knicks lose, I'm just gonna say we won!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We won! Cause you feel so much better that way. Here's my question. Marceline was a part of
the idea, she was party to the idea that everyone was gonna kill themselves, right, or was she
kind of like playing along a little bit? Because she seemed to always kind of fight the final
round up. Every single time there was one of these, we're now gonna find out is called the
White Nights, but every single time there's one of these, she's kind of the one that says like,
'No, no, no, no, no, no, we're not really gonna go all the way.'
MARCUS PARKS Well, the way Fielding McGehee put it to me was that this whole thing was a runaway train
and Marceline was in the engine room tinkering with the carburetor. She was trying.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI She was Scotty. So you're saying she's Scotty of Jonestown?
BEN KISSEL Is that a Star Trek reference?
MARCUS PARKS No, I'm not saying she's Scotty. Essentially what is is that Marceline was trying to do everything
that she could but it was too big, it was too much. There was way too much to do and way too
much to stop. And she just didn't have the power, the power had been taken away from her
years before and given to Carolyn Layton.
BEN KISSEL It sounds like it might be a runaway train on a one-way track.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (singing) Spinning wheels on a one-way track... Feels like we should be getting somewhere...
Find out it's neither here nor there... Runaway train! Never going back!
That's honestly a really good soundtrack for the rest of the episode.
BEN KISSEL Yeah I love that we began the episode as old men and we've middled the episode as old men.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Uh, we are just representatives of the Lithium generation. And I think that's important, we're
holding the line.
MARCUS PARKS But the beginning of all this shit, the beginning of the six night siege when Jones called his
people to the pavilion, that was the first of what came to be known as the White Nights. And
that's nights N-I-G-H-T. White Nights were emergency meetings, something Jones called when
there was a defector or there was a problem back home or whenever he felt like he just had
something important to say.
BEN KISSEL Oh, I feel like that happened a lot.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It did. Well, White Nights were like the elevated one. He always had important things to say,
Marcus. So he was always talking late at night, they always had the night sessions. White
Nights became, I mean, again, we're joking around as always, we're a big of a jokesters, but
the serious quality of the White Nights is something we have to get across, too.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Where it's like, this was scary shit. The six day siege, it became to be known, was six days of
pure panic that drove people to the edge of pure exhaustion. A part of what's happening here
is that people are so tired and so brainwashed and upset that they don't really know what
they're doing, they're kind of moving automatically, they're getting guns put in their hands,
they're getting pushed towards the jungle, they're kind of running back and forth in these
weird military scenarios. So these White Nights, every single time it happened, they say you
could feel the feeling in the whole compound kind of wash over. Where it's like where a
comedian does, being like, 'Now on a serious note.' That's like what Jim Jones was doing.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it's always my favorite part of every comedian's set.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I always love a comedian's lesson. Because comedians are philosophers and they are very
important and they're the ones, really they're role models, and I think they're too important...
We should be protected by the government.
BEN KISSEL I agree and why isn't the whole plane made out of the black box?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Eventually, these White Nights, they would take on a much darker purpose than just
scaring people. Now, White Night was not the first name. It was developed through the Jim
Jones method which was just keep saying shit until something sticks. The first name was
Omegas, but that signified an end, which went against Jones' whole reincarnation bullshit.
Then he tried Alphas, but that didn't have the same pizzazz, that same element of danger.
Cause 'Omega', that sounds tough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's kinda fun! But Alpha's very 4chan.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Next was Black Night, much scarier, but he was worried about the racial connotations in that.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS But he finally got it with White Night, which sounded mysterious, foreboding, and again, had
that little racial edge to it, subtly referencing the race of the people who were coming to get
'em.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It also kind of sounds like one of those things that that Party Monster guy would go to in the
Village in like 1994.
MARCUS PARKS Michael Alig, yes.
BEN KISSEL He's doing fine now. He's out!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He's doing great!
BEN KISSEL Yeah!
MARCUS PARKS Well, White Nights had the explicit purposes of terrifying members and keeping then
constantly off balance. The point was to mentally exhaust people to the point of ultimate
surrender. These people never knew which White Night would be their last, because Jones
always made sure they knew the end could come at any moment. In one meeting, and who
knows if this was accurate because Jones just spouted bullshit, Jones said that these people
had gone through 84 White Nights together over the course of the year.
BEN KISSEL Wow, that's a lot.
MARCUS PARKS Multiple times a week these people are doing this. Jones even made them write essays with
titles like 'What I Would Do If This Was The Last White Night.' These people obsessed over it
and they were terrified of it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd probably ask Becky to dance with me. (singing) Cause I never had a
chance to dance with Becky!
All right, that's enough. That's enough, Tom.
You asked me what I would do if this was the last White Night!
BEN KISSEL Aw, I love Singing' Tom.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Part of why they were so terrified of 'em was because the first one lasted, as we said,
six days. That's six days of constant terror all because Jones' ego could not imagine the
Guyanese government doing anything that didn't have to do with Jonestown.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Can I ask a question? How many of these things do you think came out of a genuine concern
that there was a real conspiracy going on? Or was it about Jim Jones essentially needing
activity? I think this may be a 50/50 slice here between him being truly paranoid and driving
these people, and I do think at some point he does believe the thoughts that come into his
head, like he thinks that he is channeling shit, but there's also a part of me that thinks that he
just likes the action.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI And he likes getting everybody revved up cause it basically gets him horny for how much
power he has.
BEN KISSEL Yeah how much of his own bullshit is he taking seriously?
MARCUS PARKS (sighs) It's hard to know. I mean, that's one of the things that it's impossible to know, how
much he was actually taking seriously we can guess, but...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Fielding McGehee said that he thought he was taking himself pretty seriously until Brazil.
BEN KISSEL Oh, until he failed over there, okay.
MARCUS PARKS Well taking himself seriously as in he was a Christian. McGehee believed that Jim Jones didn't
believe in everything, and we talked about that in the first or second episode as well, that
Brazil was the turning point for Jim Jones. And another thing that McGehee said is that every
time you talk about Jonestown, you're faced with ten more existential questions that will
never be answered. It's just such a gigantic mystery.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, why do you park on a driveway but you drive on a parkway?
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Now, the Guyanese, they weren't only government officials in Georgetown to have to deal
with Jim Jones.
BEN KISSEL Airpert! If nothing sticks to Teflon-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI How do they get it to stick to the Teflon?
MARCUS PARKS How do you know if yogurt's gone bad?
BEN KISSEL Ah, that's the best comedian of all time. What was his name again?
MARCUS PARKS Mike Warnke.
BEN KISSEL Mike Warnke.
MARCUS PARKS Can you hear me?
BEN KISSEL Airpert.
MARCUS PARKS Now, besides just the Guyanese, the Russian ambassador was also besieged by calls from
Peoples Temple. The Russians gave the Peoples Temple a little attention because they were
fellow communists. They sent a Russian reporter but the only question the reporter asked was,
(Russian accent) "Where are all the TVs?"
BEN KISSEL (sighs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's fucking ridiculous. Because he also assumes that because it's an American compound...
He's just like, (Russian accent) 'All your TVs and your jean jackets. Everyone has a jean jacket
and the denim Levi.' I turned Italian. But a part of what he did... Jim Jones was obviously
looking for, what we talk about with every cult leader, he needs what's the next chapter?
What's the next thing we're gonna do? So he was looking for possible socialist asylum in
whatever country that he could reach. So he started sending letters to North Korea, he sent
letters to China, to the Chinese embassy, to the North Korean embassy in Guyana. And all of
them were like, 'Uh, cool. Okay, no thank you!' Like they were all like, as soon as they got the
letter, they'd just barely respond. They sent like a form response being like, 'Thank you for
your interest in the communist party, we don't need you.'
MARCUS PARKS But the Russians were down!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But I think the Russians did it just to make fun of use! The Russians, all of this shit with Putin
too, all of this stuff with the election, I think it's just because they think it's hilarious to fuck
with us. Because he showed up and they went all the way down to Jonestown with no... This is
after the White Night had already happened, they had no intention of taking them, but the guy
went and did the full inspection.
MARCUS PARKS He did the full thing, he walked around and he looked at Jonestown but the only thing he said
was, (Russian accent) "Jonestown is more socialist than us! We should be taking lessons from
you!"
BEN KISSEL Oh my god.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (Russian accent) 'You guys crazy, huh? Check, please! Me and my compatriots are leaving now
because this place sucks balls. And I've lived in Russia! Okay, see you soon!'
BEN KISSEL I do want to update everyone on my GameCube experience regarding Freedom Fighters 2004,
I have defeated it. So I did beat the Russians in my own right.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What?
BEN KISSEL I'm playing a game, I'm a gamer now. I'm gaming.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh, good. Oh, good.
MARCUS PARKS But really Russia, it was a false hope. Jim Jones knew Russia was never gonna take 'em, he'd
just use it as something for people to cling to when things looked grim. And man, you know
shit is not going well when the Soviet Union is you happy place.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I dunno, Russia's kinda fun. They have footage of like giraffes driving taxis and shit and AK-47s
being used to cook eggs. It's like a fun place.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL If you wanna have a great YouTube hole experience, Russian uh...
MARCUS PARKS Dashcam videos.
BEN KISSEL Dashcam videos, yes. The amount of rage that they drive with. I don't even think they have gas
in those cars, it is simply hate.
MARCUS PARKS Now the State Department was also getting involved but in a very half-assed capacity. They
sent representatives to see if people were doing okay, but all they got were stock, 'We're
doing great, everyone loves it here!' type of answers. Peoples Temple, they actually had public
rehearsals for when people came investigating, whether it be the State Department or
reporters, with the questions being asked by Jones himself in what he called his "reporter
voice".
BEN KISSEL (laughs) All right.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: Now tell me, do you put people in boxes here and bury them in boxes? Have you
ever buried anybody in boxes?
Man: No. Uh...
Jim Jones: I'd look more shocked than that.
Man: No we haven't-
Jim Jones: I'd say well hell no, or shit not.
Man: Huh?
Jim Jones: I'd say, what?! Hell no. What, what, what prompted that question? Say some of
these rotten news stories? See, first I'd say, how you gonna put somebody, even though we
got ideal temperatures, 67 degrees with trade wind, how you gonna put somebody in the
ground, in the earth, in a box, and keep them alive? That's silly man, that's crazy. See what I'm
saying? It don't make no sense. You can't put nobody in a box under the ground like
[inaudible]. You couldn't do that. You couldn't put nobody underground in a coffin. Shit, I'm
surprised these fools print this shit. Anybody with a right mind oughta see through it. Okay
then, I've stamped on you long enough.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Now, first of all, blank slate, if you need to get out of anything, the standard response has got
to be, 'WHAT?!'
BEN KISSEL What now? Hell no.'
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's how you know for a fact that you don't believe in what they just said. 'WHAT? HELL NO.'
BEN KISSEL That was Stone Cold Steve Austin's catchphrase when he ran out of ideas. But that's no fault of
his own, he had a lot of good ideas.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Another thing to remember here is, think about what he just said. He is coaching them to tell
reporters and insane and horrible it is, the idea that someone would put somebody in a box
and you would torture them and yell at them outside of this box and put it in the ground. How
insane, there's no way you have that. But in reality they did do that. They did do that. So this is
the kinda control that he has. He is telling you to tell everybody how insane the idea is of the
thing that you already did. The cognitive dissonance is insane.
BEN KISSEL Right, yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You're putting them in a whole other world like that was somebody else, you're
compartmentalizing their whole reality.
MARCUS PARKS Now, the State Department said one of the reasons why they never pushed too hard was
because they didn't wanna impede on the religious freedom of the settlers.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS But I don't think there's really a lot of truth to that. Ironically, I think the reason why they
didn't push was because the government didn't wanna deal with a bunch of San Francisco
hippies living out in the jungle, and they just hoped it would all work itself out.
BEN KISSEL It coulda been, I mean that's a logistical nightmare for them also, right? What would that look
like?
MARCUS PARKS I mean, lawyers have to be brought in, there's all kinds of legal ramifications here. Like
constitutional ramifications, here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You can kinda almost see the line of thought about how maybe this is even influenced later on
why they dealt with Waco the way they did, where it's like, essentially they did a hands off
policy with this one and then 900 people died, and they just kind of assumed the jungle would
handle everything and they were afraid of the legal ramifications. But then with Waco, Waco
was a total fuck up too but it was the opposite side of the fuck up, where it's like this is just
them trying to figure out what to do and they don't know how to handle this shit.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. I think they actually got it right with that old Bundy clan. Where was it, in Oregon?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) In Oregon, yeah.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, they just kind of waited 'em out and I think most of 'em are in jail now.
MARCUS PARKS Jonestown was too soft and Waco was too hard. They went way far in the other direction. I
mean, the CIA was not after Jim Jones because the CIA usually doesn't waste time with
failures. They might have paid attention had Jones reached national status and actually started
changing shit, like what happened with Martin Luther King, but I seriously doubt the
government gave even the tiniest fuck about some raving asshole shouting in the boonies in
South America.
BEN KISSEL Okay. Do you think they would've cared if he would've stayed in America?
MARCUS PARKS Maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes. Things were mounting in America, because remember you had the big article in San
Francisco came out, and in America, that's a part of what's happening here is that the pressure
from America is really, really increasing. There's more and more people looking into the cult,
it's becoming kind of like the topic of the day in America of people obsessed with Peoples
Temple.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And Peoples Temple did have government agencies after them but they weren't
anywhere near as sexy as CIA agents hiding in the jungle. It was like-
BEN KISSEL (chuckles) That's not that sexy.
MARCUS PARKS Well you know what I mean-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Problem is that in movies, CIA agents are Gerard Butler and Gillian Anderson, but in reality CIA
agents are me. I look like a CIA agent, which is kind of fun, I'd kinda like to join them just to see
what it's like on the inside.
MARCUS PARKS They're the most boring people you could possibly imagine.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They're not allowed to talk to you.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the people that were actually after Peoples Temple was like the
social security office that were delivering the checks to all the old people and customs
checking their supplies and the FCC getting on their ass about using the ham radio for
business, cause you're only supposed to use the ham radio for fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That is it! That is the rules, Kissel! You better be having fun, if you're using a ham radio, you
better be giggling and giving nicknames to truck drivers!
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL What if I love my job? My dad was a truck driver and his nickname was B-Kraut, by the way.
MARCUS PARKS Ooh, I like that. B-Kraut!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's cute, that's really cute.
MARCUS PARKS And these were serious problems, you know, it's threatening their money and their supplies
and their communications, but the deep state it was not.
BEN KISSEL It was postal service workers.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. It was the post service and the social security office and dudes that work at the FCC.
Yeah, these are real problems, but it wasn't the CIA and the FBI.
BEN KISSEL I do love the idea of a post office worker every morning just being like, 'last line of defense,' as
he puts on his little blue shirt...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well it's like Lil Rel from Get Out, the whole TSA agent... But a part of it is, yeah, can you
imagine the guys at the FCC just being like, 'You guys know how fucked up this is?' Trying to
call the government, being like, 'There's like fucked up shit happening. They're saying bibles
but I know for a fact they're talking about guns. And ham radio is supposed to be for fun! And
there's nothing fun about lying about guns.'
BEN KISSEL It's so subjective!
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. But in the mind of Jim Jones and by extension the people who were getting the info
through his filter, it was all the same. These people were coming, they were coming soon, and
so they better prepare. That's when the White Nights took dark turn.
BEN KISSEL That's when.
MARCUS PARKS On February 18, 1978, Jones gathered everyone together and told them that the Guyanese
government had been infiltrated by the CIA, for real this time, and that soldiers had begun
gathering at Port Kaituma.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Uh, Mr. Jones, uh, I don't wanna interrupt your monologue but... Is this, this is for real for real
this time?
BEN KISSEL Uh, Singing Tom, could you just sing that back to me?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (gospel singing) Is this for real for real this time? Oh you've got to believe!
That's enough, Singing Tom!
MARCUS PARKS This time though, nothing was done. No troops were deployed, no sentries were mounted, no
exodus was spoken of, and after a few hours of making people wait, Jones left and went to the
radio room and came back to tell everyone that the troops were advancing, they were coming
and they were coming now.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI He might as well have just picked up his hand and done like the phone motion with his pinky
and thumb, being like, (Droopy Dog voice) 'I'm gonna call the Guyanese government and make
sure I know what's happening. Beep, boop, boop, debabeep, boop, boop, beep, boop. I'm
seriously dialing the phone, y'all. Yep. Yep. Hello? Yep. Yep. Yep. We gotta kill everybody know,
there's definitely a thing happening. They're all over the place, the CIA is everywhere, I saw a
CIA agent dressed as a monkey earlier trying to get up close to Mr. Muggs.'
(robot voice) I did not, this is not, I am not a part of this. I am being dragged into this scenario,
I am just trying to enjoy a banana the way that monkeys enjoy a banana from the bottom up.
BEN KISSEL I love Mr. Muggs.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Well, I mean, that's kinda what happened. Jones declared that it was finally time.
Assistants brought out vats filled with dark liquid and told everyone to scoop out a cup and
drink deep. Within 45 minutes, he said they would all be dead. Those that argues were pushed
to the front by guards armed with guns and crossbows, and those people were made to drink
first, setting a precedent. These people knew that this could very well be a test, but when it
did actually happen, they knew there was not going to be a choice. After the 45 minutes were
up, Jones told 'em that it was all just a test and that everyone had passed.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We won! We won!
MARCUS PARKS And again, nobody said shit. In fact, it seemed to strengthen their resolve, cause they didn't
blame Jim Jones, they blamed the outside world for making him do it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well think about that kind of shit too, where you're being trained to take the poison. Also I
think on a certain level you believe that it'll always be a test. I don't think that they truly let it
digest that it was really going to happen. They thought it was a thought test, I think, forever.
And it wasn't until we'll say on the final one was the tenor was so intense, mostly just because
the level of armed guards that was kind of forcing them to do it that they realized it was for
real. But I think up until then they thought it was always gonna be shit like this where he's just
teaching us a lesson.
MARCUS PARKS Now we don't have enough time to go through every stressor that led to November 18th,
1978. Jones had lawsuits, threats, and a steady drip of news stories out of San Francisco, all of
these coming one after another after another. So in an effort to relieve stress, Jones turned to
any avenue, including Jimmy Carter.
BEN KISSEL Really?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah! Jones wrote Carter a five page letter titled 'Urgent! Urgent! Urgent!' that told Jimmy
about all the problems he was having with the custody battle, making sure to let Jimmy know
how and why he had sex with Grace Stoen.
BEN KISSEL Uh, if you wanna get his attention you say, 'Peanuts! Peanuts! Peanuts!'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (old-timey accent) Now I'm just a simple peanut farmer, and I've read your co urgent letter
from the old Mr. Jones, and I have to say I am glad that Grace Stoen has been dutifully sexually
satisfied, but I am trying to put solar panels on the White House and I am getting much push
back. They don't like it, I don't understand. Can you help me, Jim Jones? This is my Jimmy
Carter impression which is getting worse and worse.
BEN KISSEL (laughs) Well Jim Jones, you can just send him those sunglasses, put those on top of the White
House, I'll tell you that.
MARCUS PARKS Jimmy did not respond.
BEN KISSEL He did not. He was busy.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh, he was the President. The President didn't respond, that's weird.
MARCUS PARKS Well the drugs were taking hold as well. Once, Larry Schacht caught Jones in his room combing
his hair, saying he had to make sure he looked good for his upcoming visit with King Hussein of
Jordan who was coming to visit Jonestown.
BEN KISSEL No kidding.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Aw.
BEN KISSEL Was he wearing pants, that's my question.
MARCUS PARKS Defectors also continued to escape, high-profilers. Debbie Layton, the sister of Jones' right
hand, escaped and told about the poison test which caught the attention of congressman Leo
Ryan. Jones' sons were already on their way out the door too. They, along with Marceline, saw
him for what he was more than anyone. But Jones didn't really need them anymore, he had
Carolyn Layton and Maria Katsaris and Annie Moore and a dozen others, the no-matter-whats,
the ones who doubled down every time Jim Jones did crazy shit. But Jones was gaining allies as
well. One of Jones' favorite movies was Executive Action.
BEN KISSEL What's that about?
MARCUS PARKS It's a conspiracy thriller, it's about the JFK assassination, it was a bomb.
BEN KISSEL Wasn't there another movie called Executive Action that had Kurt Russell in it-
MARCUS PARKS Executive Decision.
BEN KISSEL Executive Decision, that's what I'm thinking about.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Jones contacted one of the screenwriters, this guy named Donald Freed, and Freed came
down to Guyana and found he liked the cut of Jonestown's jib!
BEN KISSEL Big fan of your work, sir! Bulk of the series, he wrote the bulk of the series.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Now through Freed, Jones was put into contact with a lawyer and author named Mark
Lane. Lane was a conspiracy theorist who swallowed Jones' claims that the government was
working against Jones hook, line, and sinker. Or, more likely, Lane saw something he could
exploit, much like another more modern conspiracy theorist named Jones that saw the same
type of opening and, seeing a meal ticket, seized on it.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Okay. Being a sadly, a self-described, I would say almost former conspiracy theorist, cause now
the times have changed and it's been taken from me, is that I can't imagine anything more
exciting than a fresh, new conspiracy. You get to be dropped down into a whole thing and it's
kind of fun, where you get to show up and look and see like, 'Oh, I can manipulate this.' Kind of
like what would happen if we had really gotten into Lord RayEl back in the day when we found
him.
BEN KISSEL Oh! Anyway, we gotta take a quick break here, I need to hop in my tactical bath... Just
purchased it.
MARCUS PARKS Now, Freed and Lane listened to Jones' rantings about the intelligence community coming
after him for what Jones said was no reason whatsoever and took them public. And it didn't
matter if they believed it or not, these two guys. They created a feedback loop, making Jim
Jones' claims quote unquote "real". When reporters asked Lane for concrete evidence, Lane
said, "Where's the CIA not been?"
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, got 'em. Got 'em.
MARCUS PARKS But that's not an answer, there's no evidence... We're asking for specifics, you're giving us
conjecture, do you have any specifics? Cause this was a time when the FBI and the CIA were
villains. There was Cointelpro and all kinds of shit, and so media-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They were villains until fucking six weeks ago, Marcus. All of a sudden they're not villains
anymore, and so-
BEN KISSEL We talked about that on Abe Lincoln's Top Hat. Never forget they're still kind of villains.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah! Yes.
MARCUS PARKS Well, the media, who was looking for any dirt on the CIA and the FBI, looking for anything,
they were saying like, 'Dude, give it to us, give us something.' And Lane was just like, 'Draw
your own conclusions on this one, bud.'
BEN KISSEL All I got is this dress from J. Edgar Hoover's closet, must be his wife's or something, I don't
know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You wanna see a fun little secret? He puts a mask on that just says 'CIA' on it. I'm the CIA now.
You can just do that? WHAT? Hell no!
I also imagine Mark Lane as wearing a Hawaiian shirt, looking like Nedry from Jurassic Park.
But he had a fun opportunity here as a conspiracy theorist and I believe he milked it
sufficiently.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
MARCUS PARKS So in November of 1978, Leo Ryan finally decided it was time for him to visit Jonestown on
behalf of the United States government, supported by the Concerned Relatives group. In
addition to hearing the poison test stories from Debbie Layton, Ryan represented a district
near San Francisco so he had a vested interest. And ironically, Ryan also traveled to Jonestown
because he was known to fight against social injustice which he saw in spades from the stories
coming from Jonestown.
BEN KISSEL Okay. Now I'm only gonna do this once because I know it gets really sad, but I think about
Jonah Ryan from Veep every time you say Congressman Ryan, which makes it fun.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So many Veep references.
BEN KISSEL Veep is the best show, it's an actual comedy! But yes, I'm not gonna think about that again.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I would say this Leo Ryan move to Jonestown and what happened to him pretty much
chronicles the last time a congressman ever did anything.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Like in terms of actively leaving or doing anything for any sort of constituents whatsoever,
because it gets you killed sometimes. Because I guess they're not as popular as you'd think
they'd be.
BEN KISSEL Yeah. As they'd think they are, I guess.
MARCUS PARKS Ryan sent a letter to Jim Jones informing him of his intentions weeks in advance, so Jones
knew he was coming. Along with Leo Ryan went two staff members, nine members of the
media, and thirteen Concerned Relatives members including Tim and Grace Stoen. This is
Jones telling his people what was being said about 'em back in the United States in advance of
Ryan's visit. They endured weeks of this shit, which only served to heighten tensions.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: ...a lie, they're filled with hate. They say I initiate every member here, every male I
have to screw and every female in screw, and that we cut up people, kill them, bury them, eat
them. They tell all kinds of vicious lies, anything that fits the purpose. Babies have been burned
alive, they don't mind telling any kind of lie and they feast on lies. Each one of 'em feasting on
lies. They spend every wasted moment, every moment they're not at their job talking about
us, obsessed by us. We are their devil. They have to have something to keep them going
because their life is so empty.
BEN KISSEL I mean, people are also thinking about the Hoosiers and I know in Wisconsin they think about
the Pack Attack quite a bit. This is just unbelievable, the self-obsession here.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I mean, obviously he is a narcissist and he's making everybody obsessed with him as well
because that's, again, it's what we always talk about, when you're in a cult, you're in the cult
leader's brain, you're now an extension of him. But also, there are nuggets of truth in what
he's saying. Which is he does fuck all the women and all the men and everything else is lies but
I wonder how that is for people in Jonestown when they hear him saying, 'They're spouting all
these lies saying that I make love to every man and woman.' And they're like, 'Uh...You do,
dad. But, uh...I mean, you fucked me.'
BEN KISSEL Also I do want to point out to the audience that Henry has lost his shirt-
MARCUS PARKS He has.
BEN KISSEL At some point during this recording. Now you are, however, more clothed it looks like on
account of your hair.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I spilled some of my coffee and I didn't wanna get it on the computer so I had to use my shirt
cause we were on a roll.
BEN KISSEL (laughs) Okay, all right. Just wanted to keep everyone up to date on the shirt status of Henry
Zebrowski.
MARCUS PARKS Well, no one back in the United States is saying that they burn babies or kill babies or eat
babies or anything like that, no one's saying that. But Jim Jones is telling these people that
they're saying that, and he's saying that people like Ryan is coming and saying that. And on top
of that, Tim Stoen is coming, this villain that Jones has created for such a long time, all of the
villains are coming. And we know they're coming, they are absolutely coming this time. There's
no ifs ands or buts about it, so people endure this shit for weeks, they hear it every single
night. So by the time Ryan show sup, people are fucking terrified. They are on edge, Jones is
walking around with his armed guards at all times, shit is reaching a boiling point before Ryan
even shows up.
BEN KISSEL I mean, if you're Congressman Ryan, you gotta be like, 'Have you been saying bad shit about
me or something? Cause I just feel like they don't like me at all...'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah the vibe is off in here, it's like I had a bad opener. You know what I mean, it's just like,
what can I do? An opener can't be that good but he also can't be too good, you know what I
mean? Cause he's gotta set the stage for the headliner.
But when Leo Ryan showed up, honestly, that's what he'd been doing, right. He'd been telling
all these lies about what was gonna happen when he came. He was kinda getting normal
correspondence from them. They had a normal thing, he'd said that they were planning to
come, they didn't realize the inner debate that was happening in Jonestown if he even could
come to the compound. But a part of me wonders if Jones knew the second that Marceline
convinced him that they should let Leo Ryan in is that this was gonna be the final couple of
days. I really wonder if he knew.
MARCUS PARKS Well Ryan didn't even want to go into Jonestown. His entire plan was he was gonna go, he was
gonna have a nice little trip to South America, he was gonna go to the gates of Jonestown,
they'd say 'You're not coming in,' and he was gonna go back to America and be a politician. He
was gonna open a congressional hearing and then it wouldn't be his fucking problem anymore.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh so being a politician just means getting together in a room with a bunch of other fucking
idiots and doing nothing?
BEN KISSEL Yes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But you feel like you did something because everyone had a good, long talk about it. And then
he also got a free trip to South America, and you don't think that he would just go to Guyana
and dip his toe in at Jonestown and leave. There would be a little bit of partying, a little bit of
(singing). I'm not sure how they party but there'd be a lot of drinking Sambuca, actually I don't
know what they drink in South America, but stuff like that. Where it's like he'd have a vacation,
too. Fucking congressmen pieces of shit.
BEN KISSEL Always finding time to party!
MARCUS PARKS Well we can't malign the name of Leo Ryan, he was actually a good man.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Sure! No, I know, I know. I'm just saying, I have a disdain for congressmen in general that gets
expressed.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, Leo Ryan was a good dude. But unfortunately for him and everyone involved, Jones
decided after a lot of pressure from his lawyers and Marceline that Ryan should be let in.
Because they'd believed that Ryan was the key to their survival. Because Marceline, she was a
good woman, she didn't want anyone to die. And the lawyers, they didn't wanna lose their
meal ticket and presumably didn't want anyone to die either. This was the reasonable
Jonestown contingent, because there was still reasonable people there, that's what you hear
again and again, especially from people like Tim Carter, being like, this was not necessarily a
huge hive mind. There was some sort of hive mind going on but there were a lot of reasonable
people going like, 'Hey, wait a minute. We need to slow this shit down. We like what's going
on here with the socialist society, but all this other shit, we don't want.'
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Now, Marceline, was she not involved, she was not involved in the first White Night. She was
outta town, right? She was in the United States?
MARCUS PARKS I think that was before she came, yeah. By the time Marceline got there it was way outta hand.
BEN KISSEL Okay.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So up until then, cause Marceline was part of the original, the burgeoning, cutting the jungle,
getting Jonestown in there. A part of their big argument was like we have done this beautiful
thing, we are creating a pure socialist society where everyone takes care of each other, all of
the best qualities of everyone is being used. She doesn't really understand quite how dark it's
gotten. So a part of her big push and everyone on the inside being like, 'Let Ryan see what
we've built. We have a...' What's it, City in the Sky? What was that term? Like on the
Mountaintop? 'We made the PL, we made the promised land.' But she didn't fully understand
the extent of how bad things were really getting.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it sounds like when your college roommate is like, 'Come to the bathroom, I got
something to show you.' And it's just a turd.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (laughs)
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Well I think Marceline also somewhat willfully ignored a lot of the bad shit that was
going on. I think she thought that Leo Ryan could come in because it had happened before,
where people had traveled down to Jonestown, like family members had traveled down, and
they clean up their act when those family members are there. When the outside people are
there they clean up their act for a few days, they don't do anything awful, and then the family
members go back and say, 'Actually it looks pretty cool. Like everyone's really enjoying
themselves there.' And they could have done the exact same thing with Leo Ryan, but there
was another contingent involved in Jonestown. The ones that were preparing for Armageddon,
or at least their own personal Armageddon.
BEN KISSEL You think they get off on the lie? Like the whole community when the person comes in and
they pretend to be so nice like the movie House of Wax, and then as soon as they go... Do you
think that even they like it?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, of course. Yeah, they get away with it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I think originally when we started talking about Jim Jones, the first couple of episodes, we
kinda used the idea that he is like a serial killer that used a group of people as a weapon
against itself. This is where the serial killer compartmentalization of his personality, I think,
comes in. Cause a part of it is the joy of getting one over on somebody. There's a thing here
where we're hoodwinking people, we're living double lives, and the thrill of that is pretty
intense. He loves that we have all these inner sanctums, there are people on a need-to-know
basis about what's really happening here. But I also think they also openly expressed that a
part of having Leo Ryan come was they thought they'd get relief from some pressure, that is
he comes and takes out the people who didn't wanna be there. Marceline actually wanted
that to happen. She wanted the people who didn't wanna be there to get a chance to leave,
and that Leo Ryan would be the kind of ticket for that. It would be a good way, it would soothe
Jim Jones, it would be a thing where he comes in, hopefully gives a blessing to everything, and
takes just the small portion on people who wanna leave out, and that'll allow the rest of us to
live a peaceful life here without all these people complaining all the time.
BEN KISSEL Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. But there were a lot of people that were no into that, specifically Carolyn Layton. She
drew up a memo called 'Analysis of Future Prospects' in which she outlined all the reasons why
Jonestown had no chance of survival in any way whatsoever. In a subsection titled 'A Final
Stand if Decided On', she casually wrote about a final solution should things go south with
Congressman Ryan, outlining how the mass suicide could most efficiently be carried out,
casually. "Well, maybe we'll behead each other. Maybe we'll shoot each other. Maybe we'll
take pills. What do you think?"
BEN KISSEL Guillotine!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They always say guillotines! They act like a guillotine... First of all, it took me seven hours to
put together the clothes drawer, like the set of drawers I have from IKEA in my bedroom, right,
na dim a fucking moron and there's a set of instructions. If you order a guillotine, it is not only
gonna come disassembled, but I don't think that they're gonna give you instructions on how to
build it. I think a guillotine's like, well, if you can figure it out, good luck. Also you're gonna
need to find your own guillotine blade, which is the hardest part of a guillotine. So you act like
it's a simple solution, but that's like hundreds of man hours that you just casually wrote down,
Carolyn. Thinking that we could just build all these guillotines lickety-split. We got Leo Ryan
coming in a week!
BEN KISSEL That's a very recent, relatively recent Alex Jones conspiracy as a matter of fact, that the
government's gonna kill us with guillotines, which is not even an effective way to do it.
MARCUS PARKS Oh no, that's not recent at all.
BEN KISSEL Within five years, or so.
MARCUS PARKS I guess so-
BEN KISSEL It's so stupid!
MARCUS PARKS No dude, Bill Cooper was saying that.
BEN KISSEL Oh that was Bill Cooper!
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, it started with Bill Cooper.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI No, the whole point of guillotines is to do the mass suicide, cause what it does is it builds up
the organ energy of people lying in terror of the blade and when the blade drops, the spurting
of blood acquires a lot of magic energy and that is what they're supposed to be using to open
up the pyramids to let the reptilians in.
BEN KISSEL It all makes perfect sense.
MARCUS PARKS This memo from Carolyn Layton, it had echoes of correspondence you read between Nazis
about the concentration camps, the best way to kill everyone. It has that banality to it. They
talk about this shit like we talk about planning out a fucking episode.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI We're fairly serious.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Now, I think we got a chicken and egg situation here. Did Layton plant the seed of
inevitability in Jones' mind with the memo? Or did Jones plant the seed in Layton's mind,
which led Layton to write it, feeding back in Jones' own deadly desires.
BEN KISSEL Did they #releasethismemo or... I mean, did people know about his or-
MARCUS PARKS No. Absolutely not.
BEN KISSEL This was a top secret memo, okay.
MARCUS PARKS This was a top secret, and I don't even know who else saw it, it might've just been between
Carolyn Layton and Jim Jones, cause they found so much documentation and so many tapes
after everyone killed themselves. Either way, whether Jones planted it in Layton's mind or
whether Layton planted it in Jones, when you look at how fast and efficiently all of this
happened, it was obvious that this seed had fully bloomed before Ryan even arrived. But just
before Ryan arrived, though, Marceline insisted Jones let their sons travel to Georgetown for a
week of exhibition basketball games, cause Jonestown had a basketball team.
BEN KISSEL They did! The Jonestown Boys, what was their name?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It was called the South Guyana Thin Men. Very malnourished. And they would show up,
apparently they would go and they would lose, they were a very bad basketball team but they
loved it. But Jim Jones would always spout the scores from the games being like, 'And we
whooped 'em again. We whooped 'em, and that's all we do, we whoop 'em and we whoop 'em
and whoop across this great country.' Meanwhile it's like they are traveling with the ball
constantly because they don't have the energy to dribble. And everyone else just lets them do
it because they know they're from Jonestown.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, they were terrible, they constantly lost, and they were having to come back after Jones
told everyone that they had won. And eventually they lost so much that Jones would just lie
about how much they lost by.
BEN KISSEL Oh, but he did admit they lost.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's so sad! Can you imagine being, honestly, going through all of this shit, you love basketball,
and then you're sitting there, I mean obviously you're one of the chosen ones, you're here
hanging out in Jonestown as a child so you're actually having like an okay time. But having to
lie, like that level of lie has got to be depressing.
BEN KISSEL It's ridiculous.
MARCUS PARKS Well, this brings up another question about Marceline sending the boys out. Was this a
calculated move on Marceline's part to remove at least a couple of her children from ground
zero, the place where shit was most likely to go down?
BEN KISSEL Was it a calculated move for her to remove some of her children from ground zero?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Or was it a coincidence?
BEN KISSEL Huh. I don't know.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I actually, I wonder... The more and more we learn about Marceline, especially from McGehee,
is that it seems like it may be calculated.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, I mean, either-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It seems like she may have sent them out. Because she did this a couple of times with the
other kids, whatever opportunity she could to get the kids out, she took.
MARCUS PARKS I mean either way it's a tragedy. Stephan Jones himself said on multiple occasions that he and
his mother together were the only people who could talk Jim Jones out of his dumber ideas.
Leaving Jonestown saved the lives of Stephan and Jim Jr and a few dozen others, but the
absence of their cool heads may have doomed everyone else. And this is no fault of their own,
this is just a tragedy of history. But had they been there, it's possible they might have been
able to stop it, maybe.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I don't know. It seems like that train, once that train left the station, it seemed like by the end,
especially we're gonna find out the fates of everybody involved, what we see end up
happening is that whatever it would've been would've been delaying the inevitable until either
they really, truly did get in trouble with the U.S. or Guyanese government, or they finally just
did their version of the final solution.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, it's like when they cut the brakes of John Candy's car in Who...
MARCUS PARKS Who Killed Harry Crumb? No, Who is Harry Crumb?
BEN KISSEL Who is Harry Crumb, is that what it's called?! Who is Harry Crumb?
MARCUS PARKS Who is Harry Crumb, yeah.
BEN KISSEL Oh that movie's great. Well, once he starts going, you're not stopping.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You know what, when I sat down and re-listened to the death tape again, the only thing I could
think of was John Candy. And I'm just glad you brought him up.
BEN KISSEL No problem. R.I.P. A legend.
MARCUS PARKS So on November 17th, 1978, Congressman Ryan and 19 others charted a plane and flew to the
small potholed airstrip in Port Kaituma. After being greeted by Jonestown settlers, only
Congressman Ryan, an aid, and 8 members of the media were allowed to go. The ninth, from
the National Enquirer, was refused admission to an earlier beef with Jim Jones.
BEN KISSEL He had a feud with the National Enquirer? (chuckles) That's great.
MARCUS PARKS Now when the group arrived in Jonestown, they found a near paradise. The settlers had
worked even harder than usual in the days leading up to the visit to make it seem like
Jonestown was a well-oiled machine full of the happiest people on earth. And the rehearsals
had somewhat worked too. Here is a couple of statements from settlers on that day, as shown
in the PBS documentary which is why there's the creepy music underneath.
LPOTL (audio)
Interviewer: Are you happy here?
Woman: Oh, I should say I am. I never been any happier in my life.
Interviewer: You wanna stay?
Woman: Definitely. I certainly do.
Interviewer: Some people have said they couldn't leave if they wanted to. Do you think you
could?
Woman: Yes, if I really wanted to, I'm free to go. If I really wanted to, I'd be free to go.
BEN KISSEL So brainwashed at this point.
MARCUS PARKS Uh, brainwashed, I'm not sure, I don't know if it's brainwashed.
BEN KISSEL No?
MARCUS PARKS No, I don't know if brainwashing is the right word to use.
BEN KISSEL Do you think that they knew they were even lying?
MARCUS PARKS What's that?
BEN KISSEL Do you think they knew that they were lying that situation?
MARCUS PARKS I think so.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I think so, I think they know that they're lying, I think a part of it, in the end, is what they've
been indoctrinated... Actually Marcus, I think maybe - not that you're wrong - but I think that
this is actually the face of what brainwashing actually is. You're not actually an automaton. I
think that's kind of the thing that everybody gets confused about by cults in general is they
think that you become this kind of brainless robot. Aum Shinrikyo is probably the closest that
this came to that. This is people making a willing choice they have now been constantly
indoctrinated to believe is a means to an end, that we have to do this to keep our perfect
society alive, we're now in the growing pains of a perfect society, that's why it's not good right
now. That's actually to me brainwashing at its most insidious where they are fully convinced
that what they're doing is right and they'll do anything to protect it, including lying. So a part of
it's they're actively lying but the brainwashing's the layer deeper.
MARCUS PARKS I mean, there definitely were people in Jonestown that were definitely of that ilk-
BEN KISSEL True believers.
MARCUS PARKS True believers that were like that far in that were lying, to that thought this was a means to an
end. But I think when you start to see the defectors coming out, there were definitely some
people that saw something wrong going on here and wanted to get the fuck out. The hold that
Jim Jones had on his people, it was tenuous and strong at the same time. It was very strong on
some people and very, very loose on others.
Now, that night, Jim Jones met this whole group at the pavilion and everyone had dinner in
honor of Congressman Ryan, and even a couple of Concerned Relatives. But they didn't have
the usual rice mixed in with specks of meat that was the norm at Jonestown. Peoples Temple
dipped into the piggery, as they did only when guests came and served a nice pork dish.
BEN KISSEL Have I made the joke about how that sounds like a bank run by pigs?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Many times, many times. But what I will say is that eventually I will own a bar called The
Piggery so that we can always say that I gotta go take a dip into The Piggery and you go... Man,
that would be so much fun! Make hot girls dress up as hogs! You get a bunch of hot girls and
you make it like a bikini bar and you get hot dudes too, dressed with piggy noses and little
piggy ears. That's kinda fun, right? That's good.
BEN KISSEL It sounds like you're a Ukrainian billionaire.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah.
BEN KISSEL Very weird.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI If I ever get real money, if I get a million dollars, everybody's gonna be fucked. Everyone talks
about Elon Musk. I'm actually pro-Elon Musk-
BEN KISSEL Yeah, he sent a car to space!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Cause he can! He's a billionaire! And when I'm a billionaire, if I'm ever a billionaire, I'm wearing
an exoskeleton everywhere I go, one of those big mechwarrior things and I'm gonna terrorize
people on the street.
BEN KISSEL Elon Musk is the only reason we have a space program. You're talking about having people
wear pig costumes and serving beer. So I feel like one might be a billion dollar idea and the
other one is a pig costume and beer service.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I am a modern day Elon Musk. I'm next gen Elon Musk.
BEN KISSEL Oh, okay.
MARCUS PARKS Well, dinner was followed with testimonies and a special performance by the Jonestown
Express.
BEN KISSEL Oh, cool!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They were really good.
MARCUS PARKS They were great.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI If you listen, if you go to the beginning of this chapter in the PBS documentary and they show
some singing from it, the girl that was the lead singer of Jonestown Express was fucking
incredible.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. And in the middle of all that, Congressman Ryan got on the microphone and said a few
words.
LPOTL (audio)
Leo Ryan: I think that all of you know that I am here to find out more about [inaudible] your
operations here, and I can tell you right now from the few conversations I've had with some of
the folks here already this evening that whatever the comments are, there's some people here
who believe that this is the best thing thing they've ever had in their whole life.
(crowd screaming, applause)
BEN KISSEL Jeez. It's crazy, it's like Led Zeppelin or something.
MARCUS PARKS Dude, I cut the cheering off because it goes on longer.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI The cameraman said that I'd never seen anything like this. He sat there, and the sound that
came out of them, he was like, 'I'd never heard anything like this.' And one of the followers
turned to him and was like, 'It's just cause you've never seen anything like this.' Which is very-
MARCUS PARKS That was Tim Carter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes, that's really intense, that's very, very intense. But also I think in that noise you hear
almost... I think everybody kind of read a little bit of the writing on the wall, thinking that this
was gonna be the end times. And I think a part of what we're hearing is relief of, 'Okay, he's
cool, we don't have to all kill ourselves. We just bought time, we did it, we did the big hurdle
what we thought was gonna be the big hurdle, now we can really start living our socialist
utopia.'
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. We did it. They actually-
BEN KISSEL We won!
MARCUS PARKS (laughs) Yeah, they saw a huge victory right in front of 'em. He would leave and everything
would be great and no one was gonna die. But while all these good times were happening, a
settler named Vernon Gosney had passed a note to Don Harris of NBC, because Vernon
thought that Don Harris was Congressman Leo Ryan. And the note read, 'Vernon Gosney and
Monica Bagby. Please help us get out of Jonestown.'
BEN KISSEL Ooh, that's chilling.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
MARCUS PARKS Now, Vernon tried to be smooth with it but since he was nervous as hell, he got butterfingers
and dropped the note as he was passing it. And when he picked it back up and handed the
note to Harris, a little kid saw him and said, "He passed a note! He passed a note!"
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Which is what all of the kids were trained to do. The kids were trained to rat on everybody,
which is another strike against having a child. It's very similar to, have you ever seen the movie
White Ribbon?
BEN KISSEL No.
MARCUS PARKS No.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's about as the Nazi party is rising in Germany and it's about the kids in the school where
essentially the thought process of the Nazis had boiled down into the kids, and so the kids
became really scary. Because essentially they became informants for the state, which is
basically what they were going for with the Nazi Youth movement. And you see it here, where
in this little moment, where you could see how a child is weaponized with thought. It's very
intense.
BEN KISSEL Right. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS Jones did nothing that night, although he almost certainly knew about the note. It's almost
impossible for Jones to not have heard about one of his settlers passing a note to one of the
reporters. The media had to go back to Port Kaituma to sleep, but Ryan spent the night in
Jonestown without incident. I think if the plan all along was to just kill Ryan, he coulda done it
then. Very easily, slit his throat in his sleep, that would be it. Once again, Jones was
improvising but he was prepared. The next day on November 18, 1978, what Jones had been
preparing his people for over the course of almost a decade finally came to fruition. Ryan
awoke early and was almost immediately met with people ready to get the hell out of
Jonestown. In fact, people had already started to go. Overnight, 11 settlers had seen the
writing on the wall and had escaped through the jungle.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI But also, this show's the true congressman spirit of Leo Ryan, because when he showed up, he
didn't show up with any plan to get people out of there. He just showed up really expecting,
'I'm not even gonna be able to get in there, I get to go party in Guyana, and then leave.' I know
it's his job and it know that he was technically doing a very good job, I'm not trying to malign
him, but what I will say is that he had no backup plan. And so when he showed up, all of these
people are now coming at him saying, 'Hey, we wanna get the fuck outta here.' And he's like
uh oh, what the fuck do I do now?
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS Now, Jones himself didn't appear until noon, and as soon as Jones walked out of his hut he
was told about the overnight escapes and the defectors who'd approached Ryan. Jones and
Marceline took some of the defectors aside, the ones who were still there, and tried to
convince them to stay but none were persuaded. He especially tried to use Marceline,
Marceline was like, 'We're gonna do reforms, we're gonna change everything. I know you're
not happy here, I know you've had a hard time. But we're gonna change, believe me, we're
gonna change.'
BEN KISSEL Yeah. Maybe just change the name to Uncle Grumpy's Circus Fun.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's how you do it, you start with the name.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, change it.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, there were whole families that were leaving, like the Parks family. They'd been with
Jones since Indiana, and they told Ryan that they were prisoners in Jonestown and begged to
be taken away. And the Bogue family who counted 6 said pretty much the same thing. The
head of the Bogue household, he'd been getting ripped on by Jim Jones for weeks if not
months at that point. He was one of Jim Jones' whipping boys, so he was like, 'We can get out
of here? Let's get out of here.' Parents took children, they left their spouses behind, they cause
just complete and total chaos. Loyalists verbally attacked the defectors and they were calling
them traitors. And then the news crew cornered Jones for a torturous, desperate 45 minute
long interview. Here's an excerpt.
LPOTL (audio)
(crowd noise)
Interviewer: Last night, someone came and passed me this note.
Jim Jones: He's the one that I was just talking about. This is the man who [inaudible].
Interviewer: Does it concern you thought that this man, for whatever reason, one of the
people in your group-
Jim Jones: People [inaudible], friend. They lie, they lie. What can I do about liars? Are you
people gonna leave us, I just beg you, please leave us. We will bother nobody, anybody who
wants to get out of here can get outta here, we have no problem with them getting outta
here, they come and go all the time. I don't know what kind of game... People like publicity,
some people do, I don't. Some of you like publicity. If it's so damn bad, why is he leaving his
son here? Can you give me a good reason for that?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI When you listen to that, hear that noise in the background. At this point, it's fucking at fever
pitch. You're seeing Jim Jones, he's lost kind of a lot of his powers at his point. He's saying
weird dumb shit about playing a game and doing stuff, which is obviously he's kinda been
exposed. He's sitting there, he's talking to people while everyone around him is starting to
fucking freak out. Because they are trying to pull out, like Leo Ryan and the crew is trying to
leave and people are like take my fucking kid, and trying to jump in with them on the party.
But Leo Ryan doesn't have any fucking room on the plane, so they're all having this ongoing
negotiation at the foothills of Jonestown, trying to get out. Meanwhile, Jim Jones is doing
whatever kind of frantic shit he can trying to keep everybody in play.
MARCUS PARKS Now as the people continued to scream at each other and have these very, very public fights,
the rain came. A fall storm descended upon the settlement, torrential rains and howling wind.
Tim Carter, in an oft-quoted line, said it felt like evil blowing into Jonestown. By the time the
storm had passed, 15 people had decided to leave. Along with the 11 that had escaped
overnight, the total number of defectors stood at 26. Now, to put that into perspective, that
was less than 3% of the Jonestown population. The lawyers, they were fully prepared to lose
three times that. They were like, if we lose 10%, great. And they would've considered that a
victory. 26? That was beyond their wildest hopes.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yeah, they did good! Technically that was not bad. That was not bad loss. And honestly, it
would help some shit, cause they're all sleeping fucking on top of each other, it probably
would've been good to have lost like 30 bodies so that there's some more room out there.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, and the lawyers and Marceline also figured like, hey, this is gonna take the wind out of
Leo Ryan's sails, because he went down, he did his due diligence, only 26 people left, you
know, 3% left, and so Ryan's not really gonna have enough people to go back for a
congressional hearing, especially after Jim Jones let him in. Marceline and the lawyers plan, it
worked. It totally worked. Everything was on track. But Jones didn't see it that way. He saw it
as an ultimate betrayal. One person would've been too many, much less 26. To him, the 26
was only a beginning and he very well may have been right, course we'll never know. Either
way, he wasn't gonna give them the chance to leave. Not the 26, nor the 908 who decided to
stay. Jones decided it was time for the final White Night.
The original plan was that Jones would send Larry Layton, Carolyn's brother, along with Ryan
as a would-be defector. And Larry Layton did go along, but he brought with him his gun. And
the plan was that as soon as the plane was in the air, Layton was supposed to take out the gun
and shoot the pilot in the head, and that would crash the plane into the jungle. And this had
nothing to do with keeping Ryan from telling his story and everything to do with giving
Jonestown one last push.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What's with brothers-in-law doing fucked up shit? Honestly, why is it always like my brother-
in-law, like my sister's first husband, I had to go and help him run booze one time into this dry
county that his buddy was in in upstate Florida, I had to do that. He also had a whole pile of
Nugget and Butt magazine that was like all that stuff in a big trash bag... Why is it always
brothers-in-law?
BEN KISSEL I don't know, I think that might just be more of you sister's dating choices.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI (laughs)
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, Larry Layton was Carolyn's brother-in-law, yes. Now, this action, killing Leo Ryan, it
would make Jones' oft-repeated fantasies that the United States was coming after them a
reality. A dead congressman would ensure that. They were coming. The problem was, there
were more defectors than Jones had planned on, as we said. That meant that Jones had to call
a second plane to bring 'em all, and now that there were two planes, there was no guarantee
that Layton would be on the same plane as Ryan.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well think about this shit too. There's all of this chaos is happening at Jonestown, storm comes
in, now nobody's leaving. It's torrential downpour, people are freaking out. Jim Jones and his
contingent has gone off to the side, they are already putting the final White Night into order.
Leo Ryan has got to figure how to get a plane back to the airfield and so he has to arrange all
this shit from the offices of Jonestown. He is calling the Guyanese government and doing all
this shit, it's massive chaos.
MARCUS PARKS And then at the last minute, Ryan decided to stay behind, just in case more people decided to
defect. So once more, Jones improvised. Now, we don't know for sure which order Jim Jones
gave or if Jim Jones even gave an order. But some believe that Jones took aside a loyalist
named Don Ujara Sly and told him to cut the congressman's throat then and there.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI That's how you know you've become acclimated to the jungle is if you change your own name
to Ujara and you're from Indiana.
MARCUS PARKS Sly walked up to Ryan and held the knife to his neck but Sly hesitated, and in that moment of
hesitation, Tim Carter and [Mark] Lane, the conspiracist lawyer, wrestled him away, then when
they wrestled him away, they accidentally cut Sly's hand in the process and showered Ryan
with blood. Which is why in the pictures you see of Leo Ryan after he left, why he's covered in
blood.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI They said it was kind of haunting, that way that Ujara acted. He showed up and he was like a
Manchurian candidate, where he walked up to Leo Ryan and just said the words,
"Motherfucker it's time for you to die." And then he was crying, viciously crying, and he like
slowly put the knife up to his throat and then just froze. He wasn't prepared to kill, he couldn't
do it. And so they pulled him down and just how insane is that? Cause I don't know if you've
ever, have you been mugged? Kissel or Marcus?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah I've been mugged.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI When I got mugged, there's a part of being assaulted on the street or something like that,
which I don't know if people know, where you kind of almost feel in shock.
MARCUS PARKS Mm-hmm.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Where you're not even sure what's happening, when you're looking at them being like, 'Am I
being mugged right now?' You have to like ask the question. And you could see the look on Leo
Ryan's face where he's like, 'Oh shit. I was just almost murdered.'
BEN KISSEL That's crazy. So I mean, I was just thinking about when he was helping people out in the black
community with electricity bills and stuff like that and how it got to this point, it's just insane.
MARCUS PARKS That's the great tragedy of it.
BEN KISSEL My goodness.
MARCUS PARKS Now, after that, Ryan figured it was about time for him to get the fuck out of Dodge.
BEN KISSEL Yep! You know what, ding ding ding, that's the indicator! Time to go!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Check, please! He's the first person to actually use 'check, please' and it worked, because the
plane showed up.
MARCUS PARKS Ryan caught up with the truck that had been carrying the defectors and the media back to the
airstrip, he hopped on, and he told 'em drive as fast as you can and get us out of here. Now,
it's possible that Jones was trying to take Ryan out on the spot, but it's equally as possible that
he was just trying to scare Ryan away. But either way, Jones was not going to let Leo Ryan
leave Guyana alive. On Jones' command, a heavily-armed crew of eight, the Red Brigade,
hopped in a tractor trailer and took off after the congressman. Jones then called up the
Peoples Temple offices in Georgetown and gave the code that it was time to die.
Now remember, Stephan and Jim Jones Jr were in Georgetown for a basketball game. Stephan
was at the Georgetown headquarters at the time when they received this code: 'A lot of
people have gone to see Mr. Fraser. I think Mrs. Brownfield has offered to help.'
Now, translated, that meant people were dead and it's time for you to die as well. So Sharon
Amos, one of Jones' most loyal, relayed the message to the Peoples Temple offices in San
Francisco. Stephan Jones, he tried his best to save everyone in Jonestown, he even wanted to
go back to Jonestown, cause he knew what the code meant. But he knew one, there wasn't
enough time, they'd have to charter a plane or take a boat and get all the way back there. And
even if there was enough time, they didn't have any weapons, you know? There were 25
armed guards in Jonestown that would've taken them down immediately. And Stephan almost
saved everyone in the capital, but in a moment of distraction when Stephan wasn't looking,
Sharon Amos locked herself and her three kids in the bathroom along with a man named
Chuck Beikman and slit her kids throats before opening up her own.
Back in the jungle, Leo Ryan and the others had reached the airstrip unharmed, but as they
were loading into the second plane with one plane already taxiing down the runway, the eight
gunmen arrived. Down the airstrip, a group of Guyanese soldiers watched from a distance
where they were guarding a broken down Guyanese plane, completely independent of this
entire situation.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Oh yeah, they're just sitting, just fucking hanging out, just doing their job. And all of a sudden
all of these people start opening up fire at each other and then they just didn't intervene cause
they didn't wanna get in the middle of a bunch of Americans fighting each other. Which I can
actually sort of understand, where they're just like, 'Uh uh. This is above my fucking pay grade.
I'm not going to go, I don't know what's going on over there.'
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, the Guyanese soldiers get involved and all of a sudden, you've got a diplomatic incident.
You've got an even bigger problem than these people killing each other, cause now your guys
are involved. At this point, the Guyanese government can say like, 'Hey, listen, we just gave
'em the land. We didn't know what they were doing out there.'
BEN KISSEL Right.
MARCUS PARKS So the soldiers just watched as the gunmen opened fire. Now, it was a good thing for Jones
that he sent the crew, because Layton was already on the first plane without Ryan and that
plane was about to take off. But even though Larry Layton, at this point, really didn't have any
reason to, he took the cue from the gunmen and started shooting his pistol anyway, and he
wounded Monica Bagby and Vernon Gosney, those were the ones who had passed the note in
the first place. Layton was disarmed by defector Dale Parks, but by the time the gunmen drove
off, 9 were wounded and 5 people, including Congressman Leo Ryan were dead on the ground.
The gunmen could have easily finished everyone off, but instead they focused on Ryan and the
reporters, the ones who had pissed off Jones the most. They pumped Ryan's body in particular
full of bullets, shot him in the face to make sure, and drove back to Jonestown where the final
White Night was beginning.
The settlers were called to the pavilion in almost calm tones, so calm that people assumed
Jones just wanted to talk about what happened that day. They didn't know about Ryan just yet
but they would soon find out. Armed guards surrounded the pavilion. This had been done
during previous White Nights, especially during practice runs, but this time it felt real. The
energy was different. And someone heard Jones ask, "Can you make it taste less bitter?" So
with most of the settlers present, Jim Jones turned on his microphone and began speaking.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: How very much I've loved you. How very much I've tried my best to give you the
good life.
(crowd cheers, applause)
Jim Jones: In spite of all that I've tried, a handful of our people, with their lies, have made our
lives impossible.
(baby crying)
Jim Jones: There's no way to detach ourselves from what's happened today. Not only we're in
a compound situation, not only are there those how have left and committed the betrayal of
the century. Some have stolen children from mothers in their pursuit right now to kill them
because they stole their children. And we are sitting here waiting on a powder keg.
MARCUS PARKS As Jones gave his speech, Larry Schacht continued to prepare the potion. Somewhere in the
camp already laid the bodies of those who had been Dr. Schacht's test subjects, possible
volunteers who gave their lives like they used to give blood for Jones' stigmata. It soon became
clear what was happening and only one person stood up and spoke out. 60 year old Christine
Miller. Back in California, Christine had been a successful real estate broker just like anyone
you'd meet on the street. She had more than a few times publicly disagreed with Jones during
meetings and had once stood defiantly, demanding Jones respect her all while he was holding
his .357 magnum to her head, screaming at her. She, one of the few people who wasn't afraid
to tell Jim Jones when he was wrong, stood up on the last day and asked him why they
couldn't go to Russia as he'd promised.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: Do you think Russia's gonna want... No. (stuttering) You think Russia's gonna want
us with all this stigma? We had some value but now we don't have any value.
Christine Miller: Well I don't see it like that, I mean, I feel like as long as there's life, there's
hope. That's my faith.
Jim Jones: Well, everybody dies. Some place that hope runs out, cause everybody dies.
(crowd shouts)
Jim Jones: I haven't seen anybody yet that didn't die. And I'd like to choose my own kind of
death, for a change. I'm tired of being tormented to hell, that's what I'm tired of. Tired of it.
(crowd applauds)
MARCUS PARKS There were some seniors in the back who agreed with Christine, but they were in the minority.
The only responses on microphone she got were in support of the plan, and in support of Jim
Jones.
LPOTL (audio)
Christine Miller: I think I still have a right to my own opinion.
Jim Jones: I'm not taking it from you, I'm not taking it from you.
Man: Christine, you're only standing here because he was here in the first place, so I don't
know what you're talking about, having an individual life. Your life has been extended to the
day that you're standing there because of him.
(crowd cheers)
MARCUS PARKS Then, after Christine had been shouted down and Jones continued justifying what was about
to happen, the assassins returned and delivered the news that their mission was a success.
LPOTL (audio)
(music playing)
Jim Jones: It's all over, all over. What a legacy, what a legacy. [inaudible] the Red Brigade's the
only one that ever made any sense anyway. They invaded our privacy, they came into our
home, they [inaudible] 6000 miles away. The Red Brigade showed them justice, the
congressman's dead.
MARCUS PARKS With that, Dr. Schacht had his cue. He, flanked by his nurses, walked out to the side of the
stage with syringes filled with Flavor Aid and cyanide. The children were to be first.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: Please get us some medication. It's simple, it's simple, there's no convulsions with it,
it's just simple. Just please get it before it's too late. The GDF will be here, I tell you, get
moving, get moving, get moving.
(crowd shouting)
(babies screaming)
Woman: Shut up! Shut up now!
Jim Jones: Don't be afraid to die, you'll [inaudible] if these people land out here, they'll torture
some of our children here, they'll torture our people, they'll torture our seniors, we cannot
have this.
MARCUS PARKS The first one to go was a woman in her 20s carrying a months-old baby in her arms. She went
willingly and took her child with her, but not all the parents were so eager. Armed guards
forced them to the front where one by one, nurses plunged the syringes full of cyanide into
the children's mouths. Parents were given the choice to go at the same time as their children,
a choice Jones unironically called 'humane'. And despite what Jones said, it is a terrible death.
It's cyanide. You convulse, your mouth fills with a foam of vomit and saliva and blood,
suffocating you. Drink to death, it took each individual member of Peoples Temple anywhere
from 5-20 minutes to die, and as this was happening, as babies and toddlers and children were
lying on the grass foaming from the mouth, people still praised Jim Jones.
LPOTL (audio)
Woman: [inaudible] I appreciate you for everything. You're the only, you are the only. You are
the only. And I appreciate you.
(crowd applauds)
MARCUS PARKS Until the end, there were people almost fighting to get to the microphone, all to thank him.
And the banality continued. This is Maria Katsaris giving directions.
LPOTL (audio)
Maria Katsaris: You have to move and the people that are standing there in the aisle, go stand
in the radio room yard, everybody get behind a table and back this way, okay?
(children yelling)
Maria Katsaris: There's nothing to worry about, everybody keep calm and try to keep your
children calm. And the older children help the little children and reassure them. They're not
crying from pain, it's just a little bitter tasting, they're not crying out of any pain.
MARCUS PARKS Then, when people started seeing what was actually happening, the scope of it, the enormity,
that this was actually real, that whole families were dying before their eyes, Jones rushed
them.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: Hurry, hurry, my children, hurry. All right, let's not fall into the hands of the enemy.
Hurry, my children. Hurry. There are seniors out here that I'm concerned about, hurry. I don't
want to leave my seniors to this mess.
(children crying)
Jim Jones: Quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly, quickly.
MARCUS PARKS Now there are quite a few edits on the tape so it's hard to put forth a specific timeline. Jones
had a pause button on his microphone which he seemed to turn on and off without reason.
And we don't know how long it took to murder all of the children. In all, the number of kids
killed sits at 270. To put that into perspective, that is 14 times more than the number of kids
that died in the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. We don't know how long it took to kill the
kids, but we do know that by the time the adults began, they were still in the process. These
are the last recorded words of Jim Jones, spoken as the adults began scooping cups full of
poison out of a vat with a big green 'C' printed on the side.
LPOTL (audio)
Jim Jones: We've set an example for others. We've set 1000 people to say we don't like the
way the world is.
(crowd shouting)
Jim Jones: Take our life from us. We laid it down, we got tired. We didn't commit suicide, we
committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.
MARCUS PARKS It's estimated that from the first syringe to the last cup, it took about four hours to kill the vast
majority of the 909 who died. The number of survivors that day at Jonestown stood at 7.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Shit. Four hours of that. It's four hours of the worst time in your life. And so add that to the
actual death by cyanide, this is just, it's terrifying. It's terrifying what it can all lead to, like all of
this started, a guy just wanting to help people in Indiana, I guess. Do you remember when he
was into airplanes?
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Jim Jones was really into airplanes at 7, he coulda worked for Delta.
BEN KISSEL A lot has changed.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Now, the Carter brothers, Tim and Mike, they were sent with Mike Prokes to
Georgetown with a suitcase full of cash that was to be delivered to the Russian embassy. Tim
Carter found his wife and child moments after they'd taken the poison, and they died in his
arms. And as they died, he decided he was going to survive.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Well he was working on a plan to try to get them out, cause he realized what the fuck was
happening. When he dot this detail allowing him to leave, he was gonna try and take them,
and when he found them essentially mid-dying, he said his wife looked confused. That's the
thing that fucks with me. The idea where she was like, what did I do? Like in my middle of it.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. Odell Rhodes had simply walked up to the guards and said he didn't wanna die. They
parted, let him pass and said, "Have a nice life."
BEN KISSEL Jesus Christ. How many people are like, 'We could have just done that?!'
MARCUS PARKS I mean, there's a lot of debate on that, as to how many people coulda done that and how
many people would've done that. And as far as what Odell saw that day, he said one girl
refused to go quietly. She just kept spitting the poison out again and again and again. Other
survivors, like Stanley Clayton, said he saw people being injected. Now, bodies were found
with needles bent in their arms, obviously injected by force. But Grover Davis, who saved
himself by hiding in a ditch, said he saw everyone go more or less willingly. So out of these
survivors that we have that were there that day, these seven people, there are different
perspectives, of course. The Alex Jones prototype, Mark Lane, talked his way past the guards
by saying he needed to stay alive to tell the story of Jonestown. And that piece of shit hid in
the jungle while the people he helped get to that point were dying on the ground thousands of
miles from home.
The documentary Paradise Lost shows Marceline Jones being dragged to the vat. It's almost
certain that it did not happen that way, that's something that Fielding McGehee pointed out to
me as well. Most likely after seeing the destruction of her life she took her drink willingly. Her
body was found amongst her people. The last group to die were the leadership and their
children, 13 of them including John Victor Stoen whose custody status had helped precipitate
this entire mess. They walked around the compound with guns, taking care of the animals
before they went. The 13 met their end in Jim's cabin. Some drank from a thermos filled with
the potion, some injected themselves, and some did both, either making sure it stuck or
proving one last time how much more dedicated they could be than the others.
Then there was Jim Jones himself. When they found him, he was sprawled out on the pavilion,
his eyes no longer shielded by sunglasses, were staring upward and his head was resting on a
pillow. He had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the skull. The only other person to be
killed by gun that day in Jonestown was Annie Moore, the last to die and most likely the one
who killed Jones. According to the survivors who lay listening in the jungle, hours passed
between the last and the second-to-last shot.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Annie seemed to have been given the detail of wrapping everything up. It seems that what she
did was make sure all of the inside circle was dead, she administered probably shots and
helped give out all of the poison. And it seems like she killed Jim Jones and then put his head
on a pillow. I think that she must have done that at the very end and then she was just doing
last minute shit in those hours.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah. They found Annie lying in Jones' cabin, blocking the door. Shed either been wandering
the grounds for hours taking in what they'd done or she'd spent her time inside crafting her
suicide note. Either way, she seemingly went to the grave still believing in Jim Jones. The last
line of her note, written in different colored ink than the rest, read: 'We died because you
would not let us live'.
BEN KISSEL God.
MARCUS PARKS Counting the people on the airstrip and those in Georgetown, the total dead on the order of
Jim Jones was 918. That's where all of this ended.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Holy shit.
BEN KISSEL Wow.
MARCUS PARKS Thankfully, Stephan Jones, who deserves to be hailed as a hero, spent all night on the phone
with the San Francisco office and no one there took their lives. So in the end, Jim Jones got
only half of what he wanted. He wanted to die and he wanted to take people with him, and he
got that, but he didn't get the legacy. He wanted a grand revolutionary gesture that would
inspire others, that would make people see him as a great man. What he got was a joke, and a
bad one at that. He got pundits and politicians and writers smirking as they casually shrink this
tragedy down to one stupid, thoughtless phrase that's become Jim Jones' biggest contribution
to the world. Don't drink the Kool-Aid.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's Flavor Aid!
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI It's fucking Flavor Aid!
BEN KISSEL Well don't drink the Flavor Aid, either.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI You shouldn't be drinking Flavor Aid, honestly, because of the sugars. But think about this shit,
man, honestly. I actually really love this ending, Marcus, because a part of it is that, that's what
he left the world with. In the end, he left the world with a shitty joke, he left the world with
people like us making commentary on him, now which has become a genre of entertainment
that we're sitting on that we had no clue was gonna be a genre. This man's whole legacy is
garbage, and he killed 918 people and now I have a collection of pins with his face on it that
says 'The Kool-Aid Man, Oh, Yeah' underneath it and all that shit, where it's like, what a waste.
MARCUS PARKS What a gigantic waste.
BEN KISSEL Well All Sport is a horrible drink too.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes.
BEN KISSEL Remember All Sport? The future of drink.
MARCUS PARKS I had a little bit of a thing for All Sport-
BEN KISSEL It's carbonated!
MARCUS PARKS I mean, Gatorade is the best of all but I'll take All Sport over Powerade any day of the week.
BEN KISSEL All right everyone, there it is! The 5 parter.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I'll tell you what, I'm really excited for the next episode, I'm excited to do... We've got
something coming, something, of course, that's near and dear to my heart and I think it's
gonna be a lot of fun.
MARCUS PARKS Yeah, but on the other hand man, most of the time when we get to these long series, I'm so
like oh god, please, let's move onto something else but with this one I'm fascinated. I could
have done four more episodes on this-
BEN KISSEL All right, well we'll call this point-counterpoint. I'm good. Jonestown Part 5, finishing up the
series, great research guys, unbelievable information. Do not get into this cult mentality,
people do it all the time and it still happens, you gotta make sure if you feel like one of your
friends is slipping away, make sure that you address it and take care of it early on. Because as
soon as they get totally separated from ya, there's nothing you can do.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI I just did my first yoga class, this ashram, I'm getting into yoga cause I think it's fun, I wanna
get more flexible and I like it. But I've definitely, I feel like I've accidentally joined a cult
immediately. Turns out, I guess that's like an L.A. thing, is that pretty much everybody just
accidentally joins a cult like three or four times and then you go oh I'm sorry, this is a cult. I
have to leave. Check, please!
BEN KISSEL Check, please! I think frogurt's a cult...
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Frogurt?
BEN KISSEL Is frogurt frozen yogurt?
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So you're saying the cult of Pinkberry? How many bodies will they leave?
BEN KISSEL No, trying to tell us the future of ice cream in Dippin Dots. I mean, don't do it, people.
MARCUS PARKS Well Ben, you mentioned research and I had a lot of help on this one. First I wanna thank
research assistant Rachel Hsu for tackling Raven, I wanna thank Fielding McGehee at the
Jonestown Institute for speaking with me and really opening up our eyes to a lot of different
perspectives on the last days and the last year. And I also wanna thank Carolina for spending
hours searching through the transcripts of Jonestown meetings to find the excerpts that we
played on this episode and finally, I want to thank you, the listener, for coming along on this
very long journey with us. We very much appreciate it. Thank you guys so much and fuck,
thank you for everything.
BEN KISSEL Absolutely. Thank you so much for listening-
HENRY ZEBROWSKI So are you and Carolina legally married after that? Is that like a thing, your true crime legal
marriage if you sit and listen to-
BEN KISSEL I think after they split their 1000th pickle together, they are legally married in the eyes of the
Polish.
MARCUS PARKS (laughs)
BEN KISSEL All right everyone, thank you so much for your support. Thank you for all the Patreon
subscribers, without you none of this is possible. Keep on supporting everyone here, all the
shows here on the LPN Network, Abe Lincoln's Top Hat... I wanna thank everyone for being so
kind, we put that in the feed here on the Last Podcast feed and we were a little nervous about
it, it's a different show, it's Marcus and I talking politics and it's really fun, we've had such a
great feedback from it. So thank you all so much and thanks for supporting Page 7 and all the
other great shows here on LPN, we really appreciate it.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Yes, as always, honestly. And follow us on all the various social media bullshits, on Twitter
@henrylovesyou, @marcusparks, @benkissel. On Instagram @drfantasty, @marcusparks,
@benkissel1. And follow @lpontheleft on all of the horseshit that is speeding us towards
dystopia. I think we're living in a dystopia.
BEN KISSEL We are in it. We are in it. We officially will be possibly having a military parade (sighs) because
who doesn't love a parade?
MARCUS PARKS Yeah I think we entered it about six months ago. I think the moment we got into the Top 5
Podcasts of iTunes, that's when the dystopia began.
BEN KISSEL Yeah, perhaps, or maybe it's Omarosa spilling the beans on a reality show! Big Brother, who
knows, we'll talk about that on Top Hat.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI What I will say is if this is a dystopia, my favorite dystopia character who I wish I could be is
Michael Caine from Children of Men. Or I wanna be the guy that's got all the water and he
lives in a world of gates, like slatted gates, and then I'd wear a big tub of water on my back and
I'd suck it around being like, 'Things have been bad in the dry land for 27 generations.' Like I
wanna be that guy.
BEN KISSEL Ooh that's fun! I wanna have a lot of water.
MARCUS PARKS If we get all the way to post-apocalyptic, I just wanna be Three Dog. Three Dog! (howls)
BEN KISSEL Oh, all right. I wanna have all the chili, all the water, mmm... Hail yourselves!
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hail Satan!
MARCUS PARKS Hail Gein.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Hail me. If you have the energy. Is there anybody not sick right now? That's what I wanna
know, is there anybody out there who doesn't have a cold?
BEN KISSEL No.
MARCUS PARKS I don't have a cold but I do have a pinched nerve.
HENRY ZEBROWSKI Give me your blood.
BEN KISSEL Hey, all right. Megustalations, everyone.