How many jonestown survivors were there

Many were killed by Jones' aides, who squirted cyanide down their throats. Of the nearly 1, church members who began the day in Jonestown, a cult commune, only 33 survived to see the next day. The following is a thumbnail history of the Jonestown tragedy on Nov. More than Americans died in a South American jungle upon the orders of Rev. Jim Jones , who had tried to create a socialist paradise that survivors called a slave camp.

What led up to this? When California Rep. Leo Ryan arrived on a one-man investigative mission, bringing along a TV camera crew and various reporters, 15 church members asked to leave with him. Jones sent gunmen to a nearby airstrip, where they killed Ryan, an NBC correspondent and his cameraman, a newspaper photographer and one of the departing family members. Who was Jim Jones? He was a self-appointed minister from a small town in the Midwest, who first led his flock to California, where he hoped to avoid fallout from a possible nuclear war.

He then moved his people to Guyana when he came under criticism for church beatings and financial abuses. Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout. A band has apologised after their singer pulled down her pants during a live concert and surprised fans with a sight they will likely never forget.

Best of shopping Premium Membership. In the know quiz. Candace Sutton. More from north america. Join the conversation. Add your comment to this story To join the conversation, please log in. Register Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout. More related stories. Smith recalls how his mother, a churchgoing African-American, bought into Jim Jones' dream when he opened a new church in Fresno.

She gave her house to the Peoples Temple and they moved to San Francisco, where Eugene ran a temple construction crew. He was just Now, Stephan Jones is father of three daughters, ages 16, 25 and 29, and works in the office furniture installation business.

He says his daughters have seen him gnash his teeth when he talks about his father, but they also have heard him speak lovingly of the man who taught him compassion and other virtues. In this Nov. John was attending a San Francisco high school when he was allowed to join his best friends in Jonestown.

For years, Vilchez was ashamed of the part she played in the Peoples Temple, an idealistic group that imploded so terribly. Cobb lost 11 relatives that day, including his mother, youngest brother and four sisters. In this March 5, photo released by Kevin Kunishi, Jordan Vilchez sits at memorial for mass murder and suicide victims at the Jonestown settlement in Guyana.

Vilchez returned to Jonestown for the first time in 40 years. Kevin Kunishi via AP. Mike Touchette, a survivor of the Jonestown mass suicides and murders in Guyana, poses for a portrait on Monday, Nov. The year-old Indiana native felt pride pioneering in the distant jungle of Guyana, South America. As a self-taught bulldozer operator, he worked alongside other Peoples Temple members in the humid heat, his blade carving roads and sites for wooden buildings with metal roofs.

More than people lived in the agricultural mission, with its dining pavilion, tidy cottages, school, medical facilities and rows of crops. Jim was the Rev. Jim Jones — charismatic, volatile and ultimately evil.

It was he who dreamed up Jonestown, he who willed it into being, and he who brought it down: First, with the assassination of U. Leo Ryan and four others by temple members on a nearby airstrip on Nov. But some lived.

Dozens of members in Guyana slipped out of Jonestown or happened to be away that day. Plunged into a new world, those raised in the temple or who joined as teens lost the only life they knew: church, jobs, housing — and most of all, family and friends. Over four decades, as they have built new lives, they have struggled with grief and the feeling that they were pariahs. Some have come to acknowledge that they helped enable Jim Jones to seize control over people drawn to his interracial church, socialist preaching and religious hucksterism.

They divorced when Jordan was 6. According to CNN , the breakdown goes something like this: Of the 33 survivors, 11 managed to escape by fleeing through the jungle. An ambush at the Port Kaituma airstrip, where a handful of Jonestown residents were attempting to escape with visiting U. Mike Prokes and brothers Mike and Tim Carter and were sent away from the compound by the higher ups with instructions to turn over a large sum of money to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown.