Children tied in forest and injected with cyanide in last days of Jonestown cult

Jim Jones’ followers thought they were creating a community where ‘all children would be free and equal’.

Instead they were found lying like ‘pieces of confetti’, hours after consuming cyanide, either drinking spiked Flavour-Aid or, if they resisted, injected with syringes.

In total, 918 people died in the Jonestown massacre in November 1978. A third of them were children. Most were American.

‘There was the pavilion and all these bright colours around it’, journalist Charles Krause said of the scene as he flew into Jonestown with the military hours later.

‘To me, it looked like confetti but each of those pieces of confetti was the shirt of the dress of a dead person. It was just senseless.’

All had been lured their by Jim Jones, a charismatic reverend who capitalised on resentment about racism, inequality and the Vietnam War to attract followers of his Peoples Temple.

One former member, Yulanda Williams, said: ‘The first time that I got there I was greeted by a rainbow coalition of people, and this was the first time I had been in an atmosphere where it’s one church, multiracial and multigenerational as well.

‘When I heard Jim Jones, he spoke about how much he respected the civil rights movement and how important it was that we continued to live out Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream.’

The victims of Jim Jones were disproportionately Black (Picture: AP)

Black Americans formed a significant chunk of the church’s following, National Geographic reported.

What they didn’t know was that Jones was willing to die for his vision of a self-sufficient utopia free from oppression.

‘If I did’, he said. ‘I’d take a thousand with me.’

A new documentary – National Geographic’s Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown – reveals the inside story of one of the world’s most notorious cults.

Founded in Indiana in 1954, Jones’ Peoples Temple represented a blend of socialism, communism, Christianity and a commitment to racial equality.

When he moved it to California, it gained enough popularity to draw speeches to its congregation by civil rights activists and politicians.

It even caught the attention of actor Jane Fonda, Black Panthers founder Huey P. Newton, gay rights activist Harvey Milk and First Lady Rosalynn Carter.

Reverend Jim Jones used his charisma to manipulate people into following him all the way to their deaths (Picture: Bettmann Archive)

The church was in the spotlight, but it soon started to unravel as Jones’ claims to be a faith healer were discredited,

He faced accusations of coerced abortions, rape, public humiliation and physical abuse of members.

Already known for preaching that fire and death would blight his followers if they were unfaithful, Jones became even more warped by drug-fueled paranoia.

Convinced the country was out for him, he started planning an escape to somewhere far away from the ‘creeping fascism’.

Jones picked Guyana, a sparsely populated, English-speaking country on the Caribbean coast of South America.

He bought land there in 1974, and just three years later, waves of his followers started to arrive to build an agricultural commune.

The colourful shirts worn by those who died looked like ‘pieces of confetti’ scattered around Jonestown (Picture: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images)

Author Rebecca Moore wrote: ‘Members believed they were not just deserting something worse but also moving to something better.

‘They set the goal of creating a community without racism, in which all children would be free and equal.’

In just over a year, Jonestown’s population reached 1,020, nearly half of whom were Black women and girls. Most were under they age of 35.

Members shared the work. Some were cooks, carpenters and engineers. Others were teachers.

There were dormitories, a communal kitchen, electricity a health centre and even a library – all of it rent free.

It seemed like the project could deliver what Jones – and his ever-present voice speaking over a tannoy – promised.

Jonestown’s welcome sign still stood in the rainforest in 2011 (Picture: Girish Gupta/Reuters)

Williams said: ‘It was something that was absolutely amazing. We were safe and secure.

‘A great utopia, the better life, helping each other as one, big, happy family.’

But soon abuse again emerged.

Grace Stoen, who left the cult before it built Jonestown, said: ‘I started hearing that people were being badly mistreated.

‘Jim was making their lives a complete misery, bullying and controlling them.’

US military filling coffins with the bodies of more than 900 people who died at Jonestown (Picture: AP)

Jones locked passports up, bound children in a forest, wrapped a snake around a woman’s leg, and injected people with drugs.

His own son, Stephan, told the documentary: ‘Relationships were not okay.

‘He was threatened by family, he was threatened by romantic relationships because they were places where people could commemorate and conspire against him. He was always working people against each other.

‘Dad became cruel and we got numb to it.

‘There were beatings, people were abused and belittled and many were drugged towards the end’

It was so alarming, California congressman Leo Ryan flew in on a rescue mission, only to be shot dead as 30 people were saved hours before the massacre.

Jackie Speier, an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan, being taken from a plane after she was shot five times and Ryan and four others killed by members of the Peoples Temple (Picture: Bettmann Archive)

Thom Bogue, who fled with his family, said: ‘When the shooting started I was already on the plane. They started going around shooting people outside.

‘It seemed like it was happening in slow motion, like people say, but everything was also happening really fast.

‘They started shooting into the plane through the door and the lady in front of me had the back of her head shot and her brain literally fell at my feet.’

Few would escape.

Still convinced the US government was after him, and would storm the settlement with soldiers, Jones started to believe suicide was the only way out.

And like he said he would, Jones took nearly 1,000 with him.

Children cried as they were urged to kill themselves.

Some people drank the cyanide cocktail willingly. Others were coerced, perhaps afraid they would be killed if they didn’t.

Estimates initially put the death toll at 400 before the bodies of young adults and children were found beneath their relatives’ corpses.

Counting a shooting frenzy, and the death of eight local Guyanese people, the total death toll stands at 918.

Recalling the last days of Jonestown, Tim Carter said: ‘I felt that evil itself had blown into Jonestown, there was a cold chill, (I thought) it’s coming down, it’s coming down, whatever is going to happen, this is the beginning of it.’

Cult Massacre: One Day in Jonestown premiered on Hulu on June 17.

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