Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings/Conspiracy Theories Book II

Jim Jones: The Peoples Temple (Part I)

James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American civil rights preacher, faith healer and cult leader who conspired with his inner circle to direct a mass murder-suicide of his followers in his jungle commune at Jonestown, Guyana. He launched the Peoples Temple in Indiana during the 1950s. Rev. Jones was ordained in 1957 by the Independent Assemblies of God and in 1964 by the Disciples of Christ. He moved his congregation to California in 1965 and gained notoriety with its activities in San Francisco in the 1970s. He then left the United States, bringing many members to a Guyana jungle commune.

In 1978, media reports surfaced of human rights abuses in the Peoples Temple in Jonestown. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune to investigate. Ryan and others were murdered by gunfire while boarding a return flight with some former cult members who had wished to leave. Jones then ordered and likely coerced a mass suicide and mass murder of 918 commune members, 304 of them children, almost all by cyanide-poisoned Flavor Aid.

Early life

Jones was born on May 13, 1931, in a rural area of Crete, Indiana to James Thurman Jones (1887–1951), a World War I veteran, and Lynetta Putnam (1902–1977). Jones was of Irish and Welsh descent; he later claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother, but his maternal second cousin said this was untrue. Economic difficulties during the Great Depression led the family to Lynn, Indiana in 1934, where Jones grew up in a shack without plumbing.

Jones was a voracious reader who studied Stalin, Marx, Mao, Gandhi and Hitler, carefully noting the strengths and weaknesses of each. He also developed an intense interest in religion. One writer suggests this was primarily because he found it difficult to make friends. Childhood acquaintances recalled him as a "really weird kid" who was obsessed with religion and death. They alleged that he frequently held funerals for small animals on his parents' property, and that he had stabbed a cat to death.

Jones and a childhood friend both claimed his father was associated with the Ku Klux Klan, which had gained a stronghold in Depression-era Indiana. Jones recounted how he and his father clashed on the issue of race, and how he did not speak with his father for "many, many years" after he refused to allow one of Jones's black friends into the house. Jones's parents separated, and Jones moved with his mother to Richmond, Indiana. In December 1948, he graduated from Richmond High School early with honors.

Jones married Nurse Marceline Baldwin (1927–1978) in 1949, and they moved to Bloomington, Indiana. She died with him in Jonestown. He attended Indiana University Bloomington, where he was impressed with a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt about the plight of African-Americans. In 1951, the couple moved to Indianapolis. Jones attended Indiana University for two years and then took night classes at Butler University, earning a degree in secondary education in 1961—ten years after enrolling.

Founding of the Peoples Temple

Indiana beginnings

In 1951, twenty-year-old Jones began attending gatherings of the Communist Party USA in Indianapolis. He became flustered with harassment during the McCarthy Hearings, particularly regarding an event that he attended with his mother focusing on Paul Robeson, after which she was harassed by the FBI in front of her co-workers for attending. He also became frustrated with the persecution of open and accused communists in the United States, especially during the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Jones said he asked himself, "How can I demonstrate my Marxism? The thought was, infiltrate the church."