Tag: Peoples Temple

Ashes of nine victims of the 1978 Jonestown murder & suicide massacre have been found among unclaimed containers in a Delaware funeral home.

The forced sale of an Australian doomsday cult’s compound fell through as the property did not attract any bids.

The accountant in charge of the FLDS cult’s property trust is in hot water over allegations that he patronized a prostitute.

Also, cult expert Rosanne Henry.

A french bishop has acknowledged the issue of spiritual abuse in religious communities. Also: the Scientology cult has removed an illegal sign from a temporary building, but makes no promises.

Self-proclaimed psychic Sylvia Brown, who notoriously claimed Amanda Berry was dead, has died.

Plus: Saudi Arabia’s religious police demonstrate the effects of religious insanity.

A woman who lost 27 family members in the 1978 Jonestown Massacre has sued an Oakland cemetery association and its top officers, claiming that after she spent 18 years raising money to build a monument to the victims, the cemetery pulled a switch and decided to erect a different monument, based on a design from Jones’ People’s Church, which “proposes to include the name of Jim Jones himself as a victim of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides.”

Jynona Norwood says the defendants misappropriated the money she raised for the memorial and “defrauded plaintiffs of the use of a sacred site which plaintiffs have used for years to honor the victims of the Jonestown Massacre-Suicides.”

The person who posted this video to YouTube writes, David Miscavige, the leader of the Church of Scientology has strange and dangerous simliarities with Jim Jones, former leader of the People’s Temple, who killed 909 people on Nov. 18th, 1977

• Scientology    • Peoples Temple

Today in 1978: A total of 912 people die in Jonestown, Guyana, after People’s Temple cult leader Jim Jones convinces most followers to kill themselves by drinking cyanide-laced punch. Others are shot to death or forcibly poisoned.

While reading an exposé about San Francisco preacher and cult leader Jim Jones in 1977, Ken White was surprised to see mention of Michael Prokes, an old friend who had become a spokesperson for Jones.

Prokes killed himself a few months after the mass murder/suicide took place at the cult’s compound. White has now turned his friend’s story into a play.

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.”