Peoples Temple
American cult led by Jim Jones behind the 1978 Jonestown massacre in Guyana
Peoples Temple was an American religious organisation which, in a true crime context, is known primarily as the cult led by Jim Jones responsible for one of history's largest mass-death events — the Jonestown massacre of 18 November 1978 in Guyana. The organisation had no function within the American legal system, but became the subject of extensive police investigation, a congressional inquiry and subsequent criminal proceedings.
Peoples Temple emerged as a congregation in the United States in the 1950s under the leadership of Jim Jones. During the 1960s and 1970s the movement grew markedly and attracted thousands of members, primarily from socially disadvantaged and ethnic minority groups. Jones presented the organisation as a progressive, integrated Christian movement with social reform aims, but behind the facade a strongly authoritarian and manipulative system of control developed.
In 1977 Jones and a large number of the organisation's members moved to Jonestown, an isolated settlement project in the South American state of Guyana. The site was named after Jones himself and functioned in practice as a closed colony from which members had very limited opportunity to leave.
On 18 November 1978 the American congressman Leo Ryan was shot and killed near Jonestown while visiting the site to investigate reports of coercion and abuse. The same day Jim Jones ordered a mass death in the settlement. More than 900 people died — the majority by drinking a poisoned beverage, while a smaller number were killed by force or in other ways. Jim Jones himself was found dead with a gunshot wound to the head. It was the largest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural event until the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001.
In legal and criminological terms the Jonestown massacre is regarded as a combination of mass killing and coerced suicide. Criminal proceedings were subsequently brought against surviving members who took part in the killing of Congressman Ryan and other victims at the airstrip. Peoples Temple as an organisation effectively ceased to exist in the wake of the massacre and was formally dissolved shortly afterwards.
