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Tim Reiterman, the San Francisco news editor for The Associated Press, covered Jonestown for the San Francisco Examiner. He was shot in the attack that killed congressman Leo Ryan and four others.
SAN FRANCISCO–Dark clouds tumbled overhead on that afternoon 30 years ago, in the last hours of the U.S. congressman's mission deep in the jungle of Guyana.
With a small entourage, Representative Leo Ryan had come to investigate the remote agricultural settlement built by a California-based church.
But while he was there, more than a dozen people had stepped forward: We want to return to the United States, they said fearfully.
Suddenly a powerful wind tore through the central pavilion, and the skies dumped torrents.
"I feel sorry that we are being destroyed from within," intoned Rev. Jim Jones, founder of the Peoples Temple, stunned that members of his flock wanted to abandon the place he called the Promised Land.
That freakish storm and the mood seemed ominous.
"I felt evil itself blow into Jonestown when that storm hit," recalls Tim Carter, one of the few settlers to survive that day.
Within hours, Carter would see his wife and son die of cyanide poisoning, two of the more than 900 people Jones led in a murder and suicide ritual of epic proportions.
A team of temple assassins killed Ryan – the first congressman slain in the line of duty – and four others, including three journalists.
But by their wiles or happenstance, scores of temple members escaped the events of Nov. 18, 1978. Some would commit suicide, die at the hands of others or fall victim to drugs. But many more moved on to new careers, spouses and even churches. They are, as they were before joining the temple, mostly ordinary people who wanted to help their fellow man and be part of something larger than themselves.
Peoples Temple sprang from the heartland in the 1950s. Jones built an interracial congregation in Indianapolis. Moving his flock to California, the minister transformed his church into a leftist social movement with programs for the poor. He was head of San Francisco's public housing commission when media scrutiny and legal problems spurred his retreat to Jonestown for what would be his last stand.
Yolanda Williams was 12 when she began going to temple services in San Francisco with her parents. Her father believed Jones helped him recover from a heart attack.
In 1977, as news media were beginning to investigate disciplinary thrashings and other abuse in the temple, Jones summoned Williams and her husband to Guyana.
Upon arrival in Jonestown, the couple felt deceived. It was far from the paradise Jones described. People were packed into metal-roofed cabins, sleeping on bunks without mattresses and using outhouses with newsprint for toilet paper. There were armed guards, and Jones warned that deserters would encounter venomous snakes and hostile natives.
The preacher, who once charmed U.S. politicians, had turned into a pill-popping dictator who sadistically presided over harsh discipline.
Because Williams' husband was a lawyer whose skills could be better used elsewhere, they were permitted to leave after a few weeks. And months before the horrific end, Williams and her family cut ties with the temple.
Eventually, Williams joined the San Francisco Police Department. Fearing for her job, she kept her temple history secret for a decade. But later she confided in a superior and was given a job working with gang members.
"I told my story to young people," she said. "They were amazed because they never imagined anyone could beat these types of odds."
While a temple dump truck ferried the Ryan party and 15 grim-faced defectors toward the Port Kaituma airstrip 10 kilometres away, we were unaware anyone had escaped. We made it safely to the dirt strip. But then, a tractor with a trailer full of temple gunmen – Joe Wilson among them – soon bore down on us. Gunfire exploded as we boarded two small planes.
Ryan died. So did defector Patricia Parks, NBC journalists Don Harris and Bob Brown, and photographer Greg Robinson, my colleague at the San Francisco Examiner.
I was shot in the left forearm and wrist.
Some survivors fled into the jungle, but most took refuge in a cramped rum shop, fearful the assassins would return.
"You're gonna see the worst carnage of your life at Jonestown," predicted one of the defectors the next morning. "It's called 'revolutionary suicide.' "
By the time the airstrip gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people in the pavilion and begun preparing them for the end. He used news of Ryan's shooting to convince the throng they had no hope, no future, no place to go.
"The congressman has been murdered!" he announced. "Please get the medication before it's too late ... Don't be afraid to die."
When potassium cyanide-laced Grape Flavor Aid was brought forward, Jones wanted the children to go first, sealing everyone's fate because the parents and elders would have no reason to live.
With armed guards encircling everyone and with youngsters bawling, medical staff members with syringes squirted poison down the throats of babies.
The killing already was underway when Carter was sent to the pavilion. Frozen in horror, he saw his own 15-month-old son Malcolm poisoned. Then his wife Gloria died in his arms.
"I wanted to kill myself," he said. "But I had a voice saying, `You cannot die. You must live.'"
He did live. Jones had one last mission for the Vietnam veteran.
A top Jones aide gave Carter, his brother and another temple member pistols and luggage containing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They were told to take the money to the Soviet embassy in Georgetown along with letters authorizing the transfer of millions from temple bank accounts to that government.
But the trio ditched most of the cash during the arduous hike to Port Kaituma, and they were detained by police there.
In the aftermath, Carter went to live with his father in Boise, Idaho. He landed a job at a travel agency and worked in the industry for many years. He has had two long-term relationships and is the father of three children. He collects disability payments for post-traumatic stress from Vietnam, but he reflects daily on the Jonestown nightmare.
"The more time that goes on, the better it is," he said. "I can think about Gloria and Malcolm without feeling that knife in my chest."
Thirty years later, dozens of surviving members come together for private reunions.
"I go because I feel so strongly about the need for and power of forgiveness and understanding," said Stephan Jones, the minister's son. He was 19, and in Georgetown with other basketball team members on the temple's last day.
Today, he is the father of three daughters and is the vice president of a small Bay Area office installation and services company.
In Jonestown's aftermath, Stephan hated his father. But he has come to recognize that the capacity for good and evil, and mental illness, coexisted in Jones.
"We don't want to face our own responsibility or part in what happened and feel ashamed for being duped or manipulated," he said. "We look for someone else to blame. I realized over time that there was a great need to forgive him, then I could forgive myself."
