"An audio recording made on November 18th 1978 at the Peoples Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana, immediately preceding and during the mass suicide and murder of over 900 members of the cult." --Fed Kid
"James Warren Jones (May 13th 1931 to November 18th 1978) was an American cult leader and mass murderer who led the 'Peoples Temple' cult between 1955 and 1978. He and the cult's inner circle orchestrated the mass murder-suicide of the cult at his remote jungle commune 'Jonestown' in Guyana, South America. Jones, and the events that occurred at Jonestown, have had a defining influence on society's perception of cults.
As a child, Jones developed an affinity for Pentecostalism and a desire to preach. He was ordained a Christian minister in the early 1950s. He founded the organization that would become the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955. Distinguishing himself through civil rights activism, he founded the Temple as a fully integrated congregation. In 1965 Jones moved the Temple to San Francisco, where he became heavily involved in political and charitable activity. Beginning in the late 1960s, reports of abuse began to surface as Jones became increasingly vocal in his rejection of traditional Christianity. Claiming his own divinity, he began promoting a form of anti-capitalism he called 'Apostolic Socialism', controlling his followers by having them trade their income and possessions, to the Temple, for a communal lifestyle.
Following a period of negative publicity, Jones ordered the construction of the Jonestown commune in Guyana in 1974 and convinced or compelled his followers to live there with him. Jones claimed that he was constructing a socialist paradise free from the oppression of the United States government. By 1978, reports surfaced of human rights abuses and accusations that people were being held in Jonestown against their will. U.S. Representative Leo Ryan led a delegation to the commune in November of that year to investigate these reports. While boarding a return flight with some former Temple members who wished to leave, Ryan and four others were murdered by gunmen from Jonestown. Jones then ordered the mass murder-suicide that claimed the lives of 909 commune members, 302 of them children. Almost all of the members died by drinking Flavor Aid laced with cyanide."
