Peoples Temple
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Monday November 17, 2008
Peoples Temple:
30 years ago more than 900 men, women and children were massacred in a murder-suicide ritual thought up by cult leader Jim Jones.On Nov. 18, 1978, members of the Jonestown security unit shot and killed congressman Leo Ryan, three journalists and one defector as they attempted to leave an airstrip near the settlement on two planes. The gunmen injured 10 other people, including Speier, who sustained five gunshot wounds.
By the time the airstrip gunmen returned to Jonestown, Jones had gathered his people in the pavilion and had begun preparing them for the end. He used news of Ryan’s shooting to convince the throng that they had no hope, no future, no place to go. “The congressman has been murdered!” he said. “Please get the medication before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid to die.”
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Wednesday November 12, 2008
Peoples Temple:
Cyanide was being bought and shipped to the Rev. Jim Jones’ jungle compound in South America for at least two years before 900 Americans died there at the command of their cult leader, CNN has learned.Jones led his followers to their death after his gunmen killed a visiting congressman, Rep. Leo Ryan, and four others, including an NBC News correspondent and his cameraman, on November 18, 1978.
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Saturday May 31, 2008
Peoples Temple:
Of all the comebacks on Capitol Hill, Rep. Jackie Speier’s ranks among the most unexpected. Her first stint here, 30 years ago, nearly killed her.
In November 1978, Speier, then a 28-year-old legal aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), accompanied the maverick lawmaker, a handful of reporters and concerned family members into the jungles of Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult. Cult members attacked and killed Ryan and several members of the entourage.
Speier was shot five times and left for dead, and more than 900 cult members committed mass suicide at the urging of their leader, Jim Jones.
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In November 1978, Speier, then a 28-year-old legal aide to Rep. Leo J. Ryan (D-Calif.), accompanied the maverick lawmaker, a handful of reporters and concerned family members into the jungles of Guyana to investigate the People’s Temple cult. Cult members attacked and killed Ryan and several members of the entourage.
Speier was shot five times and left for dead, and more than 900 cult members committed mass suicide at the urging of their leader, Jim Jones.
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Wednesday April 9, 2008
Peoples Temple:
Jackie Speier, who as a Congressional aide nearly 30 years ago was shot and left for dead on a Guyana airstrip, won a special election Tuesday for the House seat once held by her former boss
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Saturday October 6, 2007
Peoples Temple:
The question has been asked more than once of Rob Jones by well-meaning but obviously history-challenged inquirers. Essentially, it is: Where were you when family patron Jim Jones led more than 900 of his cult followers in the infamous mass suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Flavor Aid at Jonestown, Guyana?
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Monday April 9, 2007
Peoples Temple:
Tragedy struck the Moore family in 1978 in the form of Peoples Temple, a religious group whose hundreds of members killed themselves at their jungle commune called Jonestown.
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Peoples Temple:
The Rev. Jim Jones’ journey to the Promised Land turned out to be a dead end – a mass murder/suicide in Guyana that took more than 900 lives. Although Jones’ sick tale is familiar, filmmakers Stanley Nelson, Marcia Smith and Noland Walker have produced a riveting documentary about it.
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Saturday March 10, 2007
Peoples Temple:
Stephan Jones hasn’t seen – nor does he plan on seeing – Jonestown: Paradise Lost, a harrowing docudrama recounting the last days of the People’s Temple in the jungles of Guyana in November 1978. He lived through it. Jones is the son of infamous cult leader Jim Jones, the mastermind behind one of the grimmest chapters of the last century.
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Wednesday March 7, 2007
Peoples Temple:
It has been 29 years, but the archival images of those hundreds of corpses, lying just as they fell, scattered across an eerily silent Jonestown compound, are no less shocking or horrific. The tragic saga of Rev. Jim Jones and his followers still has something relevant to say about abused power, unconditional influence and extremist faith.
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Peoples Temple:
“Nobody joins a cult,” insists the former Peoples Temple member Deborah Layton in Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. “You join a religious organization. You join a political movement. You join with people you really like.”
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Monday January 15, 2007
Peoples Temple:
The People’s Temple, the cult that expired in the mass suicide and murder organized by Jim Jones, is often regarded as a cancer that 1960s utopianism wrought, a disease of idealism splintered and sent off course.
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Wednesday November 22, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Mass suicide, or was it mass murder? More than 900 dead — new research and new details, a terrifying look at what turned Jonestown into a killing ground.
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Saturday November 4, 2006
Peoples Temple:
One of the most amazing elements of Stanley Nelson’s riveting new documentary about Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple is just how much film footage and audio had been recorded of this cult.
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Friday November 3, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Almost 20 years after he led more than 900 people to suicide, cult leader Jim Jones continues not just to fascinate, but to elude. In Berkeley filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s thoughtful documentary Jonestown, we see footage of Jones we haven’t seen before, but the man’s legendary magnetism remains mysterious.
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Saturday October 21, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Do their new friends encourage them to leave home and move in with them? Do they discourage them from continuing old relationships? Do they ask them to sign over assets, go without sleep, listen to constant lectures, stop following the news and always, always stay on the lookout for traitors? Then the friends they’ve found aren’t part of a normal religion, or genuine movement. They’re part of a cult. And Jonestown: The Life and Death of the Peoples Temple, a fine new documentary, explained how hard it was — and later, tragically impossible — for some people to see that.
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Friday October 20, 2006
Peoples Temple:
In November 1978, 913 people died in a shocking mass murder-suicide, and 28 years later, the Jonestown Massacre still remains the most chilling example of faith turned against the faithful. The group was led by the charismatic Jim Jones, who started his church, the Peoples Temple, in Indiana. He then moved the group to the San Francisco area, and ultimately to a desolate area of Guyana, where the tragedy played out as a concerned group showed up to investigate. Leo Ryan, a California congressman, led the delegation, and was killed by Jones’s guards when he attempted to fly defectors out of the site. Hours later, Jones instructed the group to drink cups of grape Flavor-Aid laced with cyanide.
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Tuesday May 2, 2006
Peoples Temple:
The buzz this past week among movie critics was about United 93, a gut-wrenching film about the courage and heroism of the passengers and crew of the one hijacked plane that didn't hit its intended target on Sept. 11, 2001.
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Monday April 24, 2006
Peoples Temple:
SAN FRANCISCO --When Stanley Nelson set out to make a documentary on cult leader Jim Jones and the mass murder-suicide of his followers, his biggest challenge was unearthing enough new footage to make the 28-year-old story seem fresh again.
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Wednesday April 5, 2006
Peoples Temple:
Matt Gonzalez and director Stanley Nelson ponder the fate and impact of Peoples Temple and the truth behind the powerful new doc Jonestown
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Peoples Temple:
A documentary uncovers Jim Jones's bad faith and the how behind the Guyana tragedy
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Friday December 9, 2005
Peoples Temple:
No charges filed against son in 1980 murders
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Wednesday December 7, 2005
Peoples Temple:
BERKELEY -- A surviving member of a Berkeley family some believed were murdered in 1980 because they defected from the People's Temple cult has been arrested on suspicion of killing his parents and sister.
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Thursday May 26, 2005
Peoples Temple:
More than 900 people died in the Jonestown massacre. Now the survivors - including cult leader Jim Jones's son - have turned their experience into a play. By Dan Glaister
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Monday May 2, 2005
Peoples Temple:
One day my sister told a group of my friends that Ukiah was "God's country."
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Friday April 29, 2005
Peoples Temple:
BERKELEY, CALIF. - "The People's Temple," a new docudrama at Berkeley Repertory Theatre in California, takes the lid off a powerful and anguishing history. In the opening scene, a white-gloved archivist delicately removes a choir robe from a storage box. So begins this compelling look at the Peoples Temple, a San Francisco-based congregation that spawned Jonestown, the communal settlement in Guyana. The community ended with the deaths of more than 900 residents, most by cyanide poisoning, on Nov. 18, 1978. Nearly 100 survived in Georgetown, Guyana's capital, or by fleeing in the hours and days before the calamity; hundreds more temple members remained in the United States.
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Most Read about Peoples Temple
- Survivors' perspectives differ
- Jonestown Survivors Recall Cult Suicide-Murder 25 Years Later
- The son who survived Jonestown
- From here to Jonestown: PBS film tonight focuses on Peoples Temple
- Anderson Cooper: Inside Jonestown
- Jonestown revisited
- Villagers Recall Jonestown Massacre
- Death In Guyana: Riveting film recounts the life of Jim Jones
- New revelations on Jonestown tragedy
- Documentary offers rare film of Jim Jones
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