Jones’ second in command, Teresa Buford, was a survivor of the massacre. Her confession, revealing the true nature of what happened, details Jones’ blueprint for creating his own nation, funded by US taxpayers’ dollars stolen as part of San Francisco’s corrupt political system. Buford’s allegations have been supported by Charles Garry, Jones’ first lawyer, eight boxes of notes, and correspondence found by The New York Times, and newly unsealed records turned over to the California Historical Society. In my research, all discrepancies between what she alleged and what was reported in 1978 have been resolved by independent documentation supporting her position. I believe Buford. This is her story:
Terri Buford was Jones’ mistress and financial manager of the People’s Temple in California. The daughter of a former naval commander and spy, Buford reveals the mind control and brainwashing techniques used by Jones and his followers to manage the members of the People's Temple. That was just the beginning, however. Jones’s objective was power. Using the Temple as a base, he manipulated its members to vote for, and support, local Californian candidates. Membership in Jones’ church reached 20,000 in California by the early 1970s, and his church had 13 buses used to transport large groups on short notice to any political rally or demonstration he supported. In the successful 1975 San Francisco mayoral campaign of George Moscone. Temple members went from precinct to precinct, voting over and over. Officials at the polling places never confiscated the voters’ yellow registration forms. There were more votes cast than registered voters. When Moscone’s opponent, John Barbagelata, complained about voter fraud, Jones sent him a box of candy with a bomb. Jef Schnepper, Jonestown Massacre: The Unrevealed Story
But along with liberal crusading ideas a hint of madness was already apparent. Obsessed with a vision of the apocalypse Jones moved to Brazil in 1962 when he read that it was the safest spot in the world in a nuclear holocaust. He left his church in Indianapolis in [the] charge of his disciples. After two years he returned and organised a migration of a hundred followers to California, making them hand over all their worldly goods to his church first. There they successfully set up a new temple and self-contained community in Redwood Valley, also listed as another safe spot in a nuclear war. Great Crimes & Trials s1e8: The Jonestown Massacre, BBC 1993
Investigative journalists began to accuse him of running the Temple as a private empire with bizarre sexual practices and savage punishments. There were also rumours of financial deviations. Cult members were being persuaded to give all their wealth to the Temple. And the money was allegedly sent abroad from San Francisco to banks in Switzerland and Panama. ibid.
And welfare agencies even gave his church custody of more than a hundred children. But the pressure finally told. A morals charge and massive press speculation made Jones leave San Francisco in 1977. For three years he had been building a village for a hundred and fifty people in Guyana. Now he suddenly airlifted almost a thousand of his credulous followers there including the children in his care. ibid.
Before the party left for the airport a man with a knife tried to stab Ryan. The Congressman described the attack. The party had now been joined by about thirty cult members who wanted to get away. And the enlarged party walked out towards the aircraft. Congressman Ryan went over to shake the pilot’s hand. As the party waited, a tractor and trailer appeared in the background. Hidden men opened fire. Congressman Ryan, two reporters, and an NBC cameraman were killed. Several other journalists and defectors were injured. ibid.
Meanwhile, back at Jonestown, Jim Jones called his followers together. He told them of the congressman being murdered and that to avoid inevitable retribution they must all kill themselves. His lieutenants prepared two fifty-gallon drums of Kool-Aid laced with Valium and Cyanide. Mothers gave the mixture to their infants before the adults lined up to take the poison from paper cups. Finally one Jones and a nurse were left. They used a pistol to kill themselves. In all 913 died. ibid.
Jim Jones claimed to have special powers to heal the sick and dying. Staged miracles were a popular attraction at Temple meetings. As his popularity grew, Jim Jones preached less about the Bible and more about social activism. He called himself a prophet. Jonestown: Nightmare in Paradise, National Geographic 2012
I knew for a long time my father was nuts. He was sick from very early on. Stephan Jones, surviving son
I think what drove him most was the need to be loved, to be centre stage. He needed to be the end-all, the be-all. Stephan Jones
A man that could get inside your mind in an instant. Stephan Jones
But we do understand that it’s extremely difficult for anyone to comprehend people being in a cult group, standing by watching their daughter being beat seventy-five times as I did, watching children being beat, microphones held to their mouth while they’re screaming so that everyone in the building that are not in a public meeting can hear them screaming also. Going through electric shock. Treatment where they’re screaming. It’s incredibly difficult for anyone to believe a story like this. Male witness, of Jim Jones’ People’s Temple
Jim had armed guards. I mean young men and women who were told that they needed to watch everybody. And it kept you working hard. Female witness
Jonestown was wired with loud-speakers. And Jim spoke twenty-four hours a day on it. And when he wasn’t speaking, the tapes that they’d made of him speaking played on and on and on ... Female witness
It was terror. It was living terror ... The suicide drills were the most frightening and most disturbing things there. That we would be awaken from the middle of a dreamless sleep to Jim’s voice screaming over the loud-speaker that we were going to die, that we had to go to the pavilion, that mercenaries were going to kill us. Deborah Layton-Blakey, author Seductive Poison, pre-Ryan affidavit
Kool-Aid – without sugar – that’s what it was; it had a horrible taste initially. Deborah Layton-Blakey, televised interview
On November 18th 1978 members of the sect drank a cyanide-laced fruit punch from their spiritual father Reverend Jim Jones. They then lay down to die. Or so it seemed. Jonestown Cult
In November 1978 Congressman Leo Ryan had taken a news team and a group of concerned relatives to Guyana. The previous year Jim Jones and his Californian People’s Temple had relocated there following allegations and increasing media scrutiny. ibid.
What began as a Congressional investigation ended in massacre: five people lay murdered on the air strip, but twenty others had managed to escape into the bush. ibid.
Jim Jones was just twenty-five years old when he founded the People’s Temple in Indianapolis in 1956. He’d been fascinated by religion since an early age. ibid.
In 1965 Jones moved his controversial congregation to rural Redwood Valley in northern California. He’d read in a magazine article that it was a safe haven from nuclear war. ibid.
There were stories of systematic abuse. ibid.
As Temple defectors revealed one horror story after another to reporter Marshall Kilduff [San Francisco Chronicle] the contrast with Jones’s humanitarian image couldn’t have been greater. ibid.
Suicide drills and beatings were as much a part of the Temple internal life as social service was to its public face. ibid.
On November 18th 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana, 909 members of People’s Temple died in what has been called the largest mass suicide in modern history. Storyville: Jonestown: The World’s Biggest Mass Suicide, BBC 2012
‘Tim, how’s it going … I’ll fuck you in the arse if you want.’ ibid.