The Making of a Monster: How Jim Jones Built Jonestown

Early Struggles and Neglect

In the 1930s, a little boy named James Jones was being raised by a pair of struggling parents. His father, also named James, had been injured in a chemical warfare attack in the first World War, making it difficult for him to work. It was the thick of the Great Depression, and the Jones family couldn’t make ends meet. It got to the point where they were evicted, forced to live in a shack without electricity or running water, foraging for food in the forest so that they wouldn’t starve to death.

A Troubled Youth

James Jr, who went by the nickname “Jim”, was neglected. He was seen walking naked through the streets, relying on the kindness of neighbors to clothe and feed him. One local woman, a pastor’s wife, felt especially sorry for Jim, and gifted him a Bible. Jim read it, and instantly became obsessed. He was baptized and started going to as many church services as he possibly could. He dreamed of becoming a preacher when he grew up, and in his spare time, he would pretend to be preaching to a crowd.

The Development of Unconventional Beliefs

Some of the local community might have felt bad for Jim, but they also recognized that he was a weird kid who only got weirder as he became a teenager. He would collect dead animals from the side of the road and hold fake funeral services for them, and one time, he peed in a cup and swapped it with a cup of Holy Water at one of the local churches.

A New Path: Marriage and Ministry

After graduating from high school, Jim married a trainee nurse named Marceline Baldwin. Religion was an area of conflict in their marriage, and by 1952, Jim made an announcement to his wife: despite not believing in Methodist ideologies, he was planning on becoming a minister for the Methodist church.

The Rise of a Cult Leader

Before long, Jim had accumulated a group of loyal followers. He offered an inclusive environment due to his preachings that condemned racism, which meant that his group of followers included a large proportion of African-Americans.

Jim’s own religious beliefs shifted over time, and he became fascinated with the Latter Rain movement, which believed that humans could obtain God-like superhuman powers. Jim started preaching his own version of these beliefs, and before long, he was telling his followers that he was actually a manifestation of Jesus Christ.

A Descent into Abuse and Paranoia

Jim started abusing drugs, and his abuse of his followers became more intense. He tried to ensure their loyalty to him by promising that they were being pursued by a wide range of common enemies, including the Nazis, the KKK, and even the US government. He also preached that if anybody betrayed him, God would kill them in a horrible accident. 

Before long, like so many other cult leaders, Jim became overly interested in the sex lives of his followers. He started dictating who his followers were allowed to marry and have sexual intercourse with, and ordered some of his female followers to have sex with him. He also sexually assaulted multiple male followers. Nobody had a choice - they all had to go along with Jim’s wishes. Disobeying him meant that they would be publicly humiliated, have their food restricted, or even be beaten. 

The Formation of Jonestown

Jim completely branched off from traditional Christianity and established his own religious sect, which he called “the Peoples Temple”, and despite relocating the group several times, allegations of abuse and financial fraud began to follow him wherever he went. He also became the target of significant media controversy due to his anti-racism preachings. The media attention surrounding the Peoples Temple began to make Jim paranoid, so he made a decision: the group would relocate to South America and settle in Guyana. He reassured his followers that the move would be the best thing they ever did, and they would all live in a utopia together.

The Jonestown Massacre

Some of Jim’s followers went to Guyana first and began converting an isolated area of jungle into a commune, which would be called “Jonestown”. In mid-1977, Jim arrived at the commune, along with 600 followers. 400 more people would soon follow, making the population of Jonestown more than a thousand. However, just like so many of Jim’s teachings, the utopia he had promised turned out to be a lie. The isolation allowed Jim’s paranoia to grow, and he began to control his followers more and more, censoring their communication with their families back home, punishing them for anything that he believed showed a lack of faith, and taking away their passports so that they were unable to flee.

The Final Act of Desperation

Back in the states, Jim continued to receive negative media attention. Multiple ex-members of Peoples Temple had come forward with stories of abuse, which were published in the press.

Jim started ordering his followers to participate in mandatory meetings in the middle of the night, which often lasted for hours. To test their faith, he made them partake in events he called “White Nights”, where he would convince them that they were under attack and about to be killed. Sometimes, the White Nights included suicide drills where the church members went through the motions of poisoning themselves under Jim’s orders. It was only after they’d consumed the supposed poison that Jim revealed it was harmless, and he had just been testing their loyalty.

On the 17th of November 1978, Jonestown was under investigation. Several journalists and Congressman Leo Ryan traveled from the United States to look at the commune in person, responding to reports from worried loved ones and ex-members of Jim’s cult. The investigation seemed to go without incident until the very end, when the group started to make their way back home. Several terrified Peoples Temple members approached the congressman and asked him to help them escape back home.

Jim saw this interaction and became upset about the lack of loyalty shown by his followers. One of his more loyal followers unsuccessfully attempted to attack Leo, who escaped - but then Jim gave the orders to kill the Congressman and the journalists before they were able to leave Jonestown. Sure enough, his followers waited in ambush and systematically murdered members of the group while they tried to board their planes home. 

Now, Jim’s paranoia was at an all-time high. He was abusing drugs and losing his grasp on reality, but he knew that he wouldn’t be able to get away with blatantly murdering a group of people sent to investigate him. As soon as he returned to the commune, he sent out the orders for all Jonestown residents, young and old, to meet him in the main pavilion.

He proposed something that he called “a revolutionary act” - a mass suicide, just like he’d made his followers act out during his late night meetings. This time, it would be real. 

Possibly as a way of controlling the adult members of Jonestown, Jim decided that the children should be the first to drink the poison. A deadly dose of cyanide mixed with fruit juice was administered to the children using a syringe, while the adults were instructed to form orderly lines to receive their dose of cyanide mixed with Flavor-Ade. For the people who didn’t want to drink voluntarily, there was no escape. Guards stood outside all the exits of the pavilion, ready to shoot anyone who tried to flee. 

The Aftermath and Legacy

In total, 909 people living in Jonestown died that day. More than a quarter of those victims were children. Up until 9/11, the event that became known as the Jonestown Massacre was the greatest deliberate loss of life of US citizens. In fact, out of the entire community living in Jonestown, only 85 people avoided death. Some of them were away at the time, and others escaped by hiding before the poisonings began or running into the dense jungle nearby. 

When military forces arrived at the commune, they found Jim Jones lying dead on the central pavilion’s stage. His cause of death was a single gunshot to the head, which was ruled as a suicide - however, Jim’s son believed that he might have ordered one of his followers to fatally shoot him. After Jim was cremated, his ashes were scattered over the Atlantic Ocean. 

To this day, nobody knows whether Jim truly believed what he taught, or whether he just claimed to have unlimited Godly power because he wanted to control other people. Jeff Guinn, author of the book “The Road to Jonestown”, stated that “it is impossible to know whether Jones gradually came to think he was God’s earthly vessel, or whether he came to that convenient conclusion to enhance his authority over his followers.”